Round 1:
I found an exquisite corpse today,
Sittin there scared living with fear,
Maybe you dont deserve to be here.
Do not fear dying itself,
Rather fear dying without having lived.
Enjoy the paths that life has lead you to.
Why try to fit in when you were born to stand out?
I'm ready to be out...
Hell yea because I got my new car WHOOP WHOOP!
Where's the love?
If people understand each other peacefully we could probablty find it.
That is a problem,
People need gathering to solve it.
Round 2:
Life aint no joke but I still keep laughin.
Play life well enough to make it to the finish line with pride.
She left me speechless and confused!
My favorite color is purple,
My Knicks lost against The Lakers,
Who gives a fuck!!
Life goes on!!
There is nothing right or wrong,
Do things if you think it's right.
***another successful collaboration with students
17 February 2011
09 February 2011
Integrated Corpse Part 1
My favorite color is purple and when I get money, I'm going to do my nails.
I listen to music it's kind of fun, especially when rappers talk about guns,
Guns are nuthin but fun, when someone dies their lives are done.
Love you like a brother treat you like a friend respect you like a lover,
Never ending love, timeless.
I want to become someone successful and known,
I am a talented person when it comes to achieving my goals.
*written as a collaboration with my students today as a result of The Exquisite Corpse exercise
I listen to music it's kind of fun, especially when rappers talk about guns,
Guns are nuthin but fun, when someone dies their lives are done.
Love you like a brother treat you like a friend respect you like a lover,
Never ending love, timeless.
I want to become someone successful and known,
I am a talented person when it comes to achieving my goals.
*written as a collaboration with my students today as a result of The Exquisite Corpse exercise
03 February 2011
i was told
# 1
i was told to back off from so much interaction
because i was the one who ran away
i should know not to touch that nerve
and not be the one to react because i never seemed to care till i was gone
# 2
i was told you have a migraine and its my fault
because you expected this and nothing less
its "your problem not mine"
so i should not worry about false truths
# 3
i was told you need to slow it down a minute
because you can't deal with it
it's too much ... what's too much?
i believe you used the 3 words that were worse than the real three words
# 4
i was told i deserve better even as i walk away
because there is something i should know
and i know but it doesn't matter because it's already been this way
so it is what it is
# 5
i was told "i heard...and i heard.. and it's so great to .."
and finally of course "i have to go" because it was always too much and it always will be.
and we know that no matter when where or who it won't be how it was.
so it was what it was
# 6
i was told that it's better this way because it's all just too much
because we should not be toxic and that's what this is so forget it
forget it...eleven years of forgetting and it doesn't go away
but it was amazing
# 7
i was told that i was perfect and an apology for circumstances was weakly recited
and in the same breath you ask if i even own a pair of pants or do i always look like this
i never knew short skirts were an affront on a friendship
but apparently my "it is what it is" cut like razors
# 8
i was told this was it and it sounded like summer
because spring and fall were the ones that hurt so summer was promising
until summer fell like boxers around ankles that got kicked onto the floor mat
and summer leads to fall and we all fell down...again
# 9
i was told i should switch over because it's too much trouble to worry about accidents
because even if they knew this was the safe way
the easy way out and it was all good till i walked you home again and again
and you dissappeared into the midwest like you were the # 1
# 10
i was told to remember the early years because they should be valued
but all the pills and tabs and sticks make a blur something like summer
but with more sunsets than sunrises but same aplenty on the rocks
literal rocks that turned liquid as all my summers swam away.
i was told to back off from so much interaction
because i was the one who ran away
i should know not to touch that nerve
and not be the one to react because i never seemed to care till i was gone
# 2
i was told you have a migraine and its my fault
because you expected this and nothing less
its "your problem not mine"
so i should not worry about false truths
# 3
i was told you need to slow it down a minute
because you can't deal with it
it's too much ... what's too much?
i believe you used the 3 words that were worse than the real three words
# 4
i was told i deserve better even as i walk away
because there is something i should know
and i know but it doesn't matter because it's already been this way
so it is what it is
# 5
i was told "i heard...and i heard.. and it's so great to .."
and finally of course "i have to go" because it was always too much and it always will be.
and we know that no matter when where or who it won't be how it was.
so it was what it was
# 6
i was told that it's better this way because it's all just too much
because we should not be toxic and that's what this is so forget it
forget it...eleven years of forgetting and it doesn't go away
but it was amazing
# 7
i was told that i was perfect and an apology for circumstances was weakly recited
and in the same breath you ask if i even own a pair of pants or do i always look like this
i never knew short skirts were an affront on a friendship
but apparently my "it is what it is" cut like razors
# 8
i was told this was it and it sounded like summer
because spring and fall were the ones that hurt so summer was promising
until summer fell like boxers around ankles that got kicked onto the floor mat
and summer leads to fall and we all fell down...again
# 9
i was told i should switch over because it's too much trouble to worry about accidents
because even if they knew this was the safe way
the easy way out and it was all good till i walked you home again and again
and you dissappeared into the midwest like you were the # 1
# 10
i was told to remember the early years because they should be valued
but all the pills and tabs and sticks make a blur something like summer
but with more sunsets than sunrises but same aplenty on the rocks
literal rocks that turned liquid as all my summers swam away.
24 January 2011
Attraversiamo / Missing MPS
Attraversiamo.
Fresh from watching a film about a woman who learns to embrace her own life and live it, I can't help but smile at some of the events I've experienced over the past few months. Knowing what you want is not something that comes easily...especially when you avoid what you really want for so long. It takes an immense amount of time for people to do this thing. They like to call it "finding themselves" but mostly, they are just getting more and more lost in the lives of others. I say "they" with absolutely no particular faces in my mind, and maybe I mean "we" or "I" but whatever I mean is not what matters.
People travel, they take planes and hikes and trains and journeys to places so remote they feel like they want to jump off the edge of the earth. And that's fine. Traveling is good. Experiences in various locations, with various cultures, a rainbow of emotions, full bucket lists, and years and years of living. People get married and divorced, have babies and take care of them, and eventually, those babies grow up and do the same. It's a cycle. During the cycle there are so many possiblilties that people are simply blown away by the beauty of it all.
Thinking about the past year I literally get a headache. I have been back in the town I grew up in for almost five months, and in that time I've realized a ton of things that I think I may have already known and not wanted to see. I've learned a lot of new things that I know will help me to grow and be this stronger woman I have become. I have forgotten over the years that there are certain things that prompted me to leave this place, and have met them all again as well. Thinking about how very much I have learned, and how much memory has enveloped me since I've come back, there is a vivid rainbow of raw emotion and a world of feeling that I can't even begin to put into words. But...and there's always a but, there is also a blankness. I mean this in a positive way for now...I think; even though it may not always have a positive impact, or it may not always feel positive in the everday sense of things.
My life has become a blank canvas that I can't wait to paint.
I went shopping for art supplies with a friend yesterday. I walked through aisles of brushes and colors and pastels and spraycans and markers and pencils. It was beauty. It was creativity waiting on platforms to be lifted in hands that tell stories in ink and paint and strokes and loops and curvy spirals that caress the corneas of onlookers. At the end of each aisle were stacks and stacks of blank canvas: pure white with gesso waiting to just be loved with color and inspiration. I recalled being fifteen, staring at my first big canvas, thinking about where to begin. Would it be a landscape? End up a portrait? Abstract squiggles? My boyfriend's graffiti name and that little smiley with the tongue sticking out that he painted on my bookbag...
*****
MPS
Flash to one of a thousand fall days in 1992, 93 or 94: I remembered smoking on the steps of the art room watching my Swatch between fourteen hole Docs untill it was time to run down the hill and get a flannel coated hug and kiss when he skated up to the gate. I remembered crossing Victory Boulevard to Silver Lake where we would write and laugh and kiss and smoke and be teenagers in the grass; watching ducks waddle and honk, squirrels frolic joggers run, water lapping, rocks skipping, sky darken...dreading getting on separate busses but knowing we would always have tomorrow...
I remember being mesmerized by the ability he had to stay inside the lines, spraying with such precision and the skill with which he kick flipped and how his maroon Converses matched my thrift store dress and his polka dot tie when we got persuaded to go to a semi-formal even though we didn't fit with the rich kids. I remember at my 16th birthday debacle he gave me a card with a hefty 500 bux in monopoly dough and it was the sweetest gift I ever got.
I recall pain on his face as I tearfully told a story of my own remorse and our connection wavered for a few moments but never died. We both lost so much, gave so much, learned from each other in a way I never knew again...and hope I never will because to lose that again...unrepairable.
The fall of the year he was supposed to come back, we sat in a cemetary and carved our names in a tree, smoked a blunt and swore that when summer came we would try to be adults and try to repair the damage everyone else had inflicted on our two broken hearts. We would keep writing filling black and whites, look at the same stars every night, fill our hearts with hope for what's next despite all the messy interference we both ran for years of self destruction. We would get on planes when he got off the road and see things we dreamed about and surf and cliff dive and explore caves there was so much. So much we wanted to do.
But he never made it back. So I ran away again and again and again.
As I sit scrawling daily in fitful bursts of electric memories, I feel like there are so many important things we learn from the people we love, the people we lose, and they learn from us too. But I guess what's most valuable, most precious, most dear, is that we always remember if it's at all possible not to lose them in the first place, we should never let them go. Because when we think someone is gone, they aren't really gone until you can never see them again...
goodnight dear heart i know you still hear me.
Fresh from watching a film about a woman who learns to embrace her own life and live it, I can't help but smile at some of the events I've experienced over the past few months. Knowing what you want is not something that comes easily...especially when you avoid what you really want for so long. It takes an immense amount of time for people to do this thing. They like to call it "finding themselves" but mostly, they are just getting more and more lost in the lives of others. I say "they" with absolutely no particular faces in my mind, and maybe I mean "we" or "I" but whatever I mean is not what matters.
People travel, they take planes and hikes and trains and journeys to places so remote they feel like they want to jump off the edge of the earth. And that's fine. Traveling is good. Experiences in various locations, with various cultures, a rainbow of emotions, full bucket lists, and years and years of living. People get married and divorced, have babies and take care of them, and eventually, those babies grow up and do the same. It's a cycle. During the cycle there are so many possiblilties that people are simply blown away by the beauty of it all.
Thinking about the past year I literally get a headache. I have been back in the town I grew up in for almost five months, and in that time I've realized a ton of things that I think I may have already known and not wanted to see. I've learned a lot of new things that I know will help me to grow and be this stronger woman I have become. I have forgotten over the years that there are certain things that prompted me to leave this place, and have met them all again as well. Thinking about how very much I have learned, and how much memory has enveloped me since I've come back, there is a vivid rainbow of raw emotion and a world of feeling that I can't even begin to put into words. But...and there's always a but, there is also a blankness. I mean this in a positive way for now...I think; even though it may not always have a positive impact, or it may not always feel positive in the everday sense of things.
My life has become a blank canvas that I can't wait to paint.
I went shopping for art supplies with a friend yesterday. I walked through aisles of brushes and colors and pastels and spraycans and markers and pencils. It was beauty. It was creativity waiting on platforms to be lifted in hands that tell stories in ink and paint and strokes and loops and curvy spirals that caress the corneas of onlookers. At the end of each aisle were stacks and stacks of blank canvas: pure white with gesso waiting to just be loved with color and inspiration. I recalled being fifteen, staring at my first big canvas, thinking about where to begin. Would it be a landscape? End up a portrait? Abstract squiggles? My boyfriend's graffiti name and that little smiley with the tongue sticking out that he painted on my bookbag...
*****
MPS
Flash to one of a thousand fall days in 1992, 93 or 94: I remembered smoking on the steps of the art room watching my Swatch between fourteen hole Docs untill it was time to run down the hill and get a flannel coated hug and kiss when he skated up to the gate. I remembered crossing Victory Boulevard to Silver Lake where we would write and laugh and kiss and smoke and be teenagers in the grass; watching ducks waddle and honk, squirrels frolic joggers run, water lapping, rocks skipping, sky darken...dreading getting on separate busses but knowing we would always have tomorrow...
I remember being mesmerized by the ability he had to stay inside the lines, spraying with such precision and the skill with which he kick flipped and how his maroon Converses matched my thrift store dress and his polka dot tie when we got persuaded to go to a semi-formal even though we didn't fit with the rich kids. I remember at my 16th birthday debacle he gave me a card with a hefty 500 bux in monopoly dough and it was the sweetest gift I ever got.
I recall pain on his face as I tearfully told a story of my own remorse and our connection wavered for a few moments but never died. We both lost so much, gave so much, learned from each other in a way I never knew again...and hope I never will because to lose that again...unrepairable.
The fall of the year he was supposed to come back, we sat in a cemetary and carved our names in a tree, smoked a blunt and swore that when summer came we would try to be adults and try to repair the damage everyone else had inflicted on our two broken hearts. We would keep writing filling black and whites, look at the same stars every night, fill our hearts with hope for what's next despite all the messy interference we both ran for years of self destruction. We would get on planes when he got off the road and see things we dreamed about and surf and cliff dive and explore caves there was so much. So much we wanted to do.
But he never made it back. So I ran away again and again and again.
As I sit scrawling daily in fitful bursts of electric memories, I feel like there are so many important things we learn from the people we love, the people we lose, and they learn from us too. But I guess what's most valuable, most precious, most dear, is that we always remember if it's at all possible not to lose them in the first place, we should never let them go. Because when we think someone is gone, they aren't really gone until you can never see them again...
goodnight dear heart i know you still hear me.
21 January 2011
claustro-manic vacancy
i crashed my car last night
as snow blanketed and buried.
flakes coating streets already unsafe in so many ways
sliding backways and sidewards.
a cab driver was robbed on my corner last week.
i woke up to detectives at my door.
hard working man gets beat half dead for money
outside my window twenty minutes after i got home.
if it's at all possible the world is getting even smaller
walls press in like sides of a cardboard box studded with tacks.
top flaps keep slicing my eyes like manila paper cuts under a fingernail
not enough packing tape in the world to close up these wounds.
my uninsulated windows let in the cold
while project heat forces naked slumber and cold pillows shield my eyes.
blinds broken and too thin to keep out the days i just want over.
kitchen floor crumbles daily--shards of linoleum pierce my feet.
i had a conversation with a man who broke my friend
not knowing with whom i spoke i thanked him for the drink.
i smiled when he said i was beautiful
and we danced in a sweaty group of thirty like teenagers.
boy with blue eyes talks about love
then leaves town while i break.
soulmate comforts with voice but follows with veiled insult
the one i want to laugh with prefers anonymity drenched in miscommunication.
constant blaring rock music shouts from the house across the street
no band was playing when i was looking for a place to lay my head.
a friend called me a hoodrat at heart the other day
i can't say i would disagree.
i stayed in bed all day today
ate my bowl of cereal reading friends poetry
and writing my own through a shroud of tears and tears and tears
the wind shakes my windows and sobs shake my shrinking frame.
fairweather friend sends me videos of her greyhound at the dog park with my pitbull
my heart shatters every time i turn the key in my door and there is nothing.
no ecstatic red nose waiting for his mom to snuggle with
there is only an empty space where his cushioned brown corduroy bed belongs.
a purple candle in the scent of shiraz was sent careening across the rug one night
spilling violent beautiful wax that i stare at every day.
there is no couch no chairs no table no pitbull no home feeling
but plenty of room to fuck on the carpet.
beautiful 3-D artwork adorns a wall with cracks and stains
a fraction of my thousand books rest their sacred leaves atop my fridge.
dollar store curtains do nothing to shield me from danger because danger
is myself in this state in this mind in this place in this world i can't seem to crawl out of.
gusts and gales hit these unstable panes and i feel like dying
i feel like erasing the past year of my life and i take out my pencil to do just that
and someone has chewed the fucker to bits probably while rolling on E.
so i stare at the wall and wait for tomorrow.
i contemplate how the people i feel close to i have known for short burts of time filled with life
how the people i feel far from ask me why i'm a trainwreck,
and why i'm so sad,
and why did i leave and why am i back here and why and why and why.
i don't have these answers and i don't want to feel far from home
i despise the distance and the drafty windows,
the broken floors and the miscommunication but i need them all
just like i need air and water and sex and wine and books and pens and ... and you.
as snow blanketed and buried.
flakes coating streets already unsafe in so many ways
sliding backways and sidewards.
a cab driver was robbed on my corner last week.
i woke up to detectives at my door.
hard working man gets beat half dead for money
outside my window twenty minutes after i got home.
if it's at all possible the world is getting even smaller
walls press in like sides of a cardboard box studded with tacks.
top flaps keep slicing my eyes like manila paper cuts under a fingernail
not enough packing tape in the world to close up these wounds.
my uninsulated windows let in the cold
while project heat forces naked slumber and cold pillows shield my eyes.
blinds broken and too thin to keep out the days i just want over.
kitchen floor crumbles daily--shards of linoleum pierce my feet.
i had a conversation with a man who broke my friend
not knowing with whom i spoke i thanked him for the drink.
i smiled when he said i was beautiful
and we danced in a sweaty group of thirty like teenagers.
boy with blue eyes talks about love
then leaves town while i break.
soulmate comforts with voice but follows with veiled insult
the one i want to laugh with prefers anonymity drenched in miscommunication.
constant blaring rock music shouts from the house across the street
no band was playing when i was looking for a place to lay my head.
a friend called me a hoodrat at heart the other day
i can't say i would disagree.
i stayed in bed all day today
ate my bowl of cereal reading friends poetry
and writing my own through a shroud of tears and tears and tears
the wind shakes my windows and sobs shake my shrinking frame.
fairweather friend sends me videos of her greyhound at the dog park with my pitbull
my heart shatters every time i turn the key in my door and there is nothing.
no ecstatic red nose waiting for his mom to snuggle with
there is only an empty space where his cushioned brown corduroy bed belongs.
a purple candle in the scent of shiraz was sent careening across the rug one night
spilling violent beautiful wax that i stare at every day.
there is no couch no chairs no table no pitbull no home feeling
but plenty of room to fuck on the carpet.
beautiful 3-D artwork adorns a wall with cracks and stains
a fraction of my thousand books rest their sacred leaves atop my fridge.
dollar store curtains do nothing to shield me from danger because danger
is myself in this state in this mind in this place in this world i can't seem to crawl out of.
gusts and gales hit these unstable panes and i feel like dying
i feel like erasing the past year of my life and i take out my pencil to do just that
and someone has chewed the fucker to bits probably while rolling on E.
so i stare at the wall and wait for tomorrow.
i contemplate how the people i feel close to i have known for short burts of time filled with life
how the people i feel far from ask me why i'm a trainwreck,
and why i'm so sad,
and why did i leave and why am i back here and why and why and why.
i don't have these answers and i don't want to feel far from home
i despise the distance and the drafty windows,
the broken floors and the miscommunication but i need them all
just like i need air and water and sex and wine and books and pens and ... and you.
20 January 2011
falling
slipping...
down a tunnel
sliding...
down the spout
tripping
into the clouds
tripping.
jumping feet first into a well
jumping.
headed...
for certain death
or
infinite pleasure.
running...
while running away i start
slipping away.
falling...
falling...
Falling.
Yet never hitting the bottom,
only to climb up the sides of the well,
Never to reach the top.
down a tunnel
sliding...
down the spout
tripping
into the clouds
tripping.
jumping feet first into a well
jumping.
headed...
for certain death
or
infinite pleasure.
running...
while running away i start
slipping away.
falling...
falling...
Falling.
Yet never hitting the bottom,
only to climb up the sides of the well,
Never to reach the top.
13 January 2011
Wednesday Night Open Mic at Uncle Bourbon's
Hello Friends!
I've begun hosting an open mic night at Uncle Bourbon's on Staten Island. Wednesdays at 9pm sharp.
http://www.unclebourbon.com/index.php/events-3/?event_id=33
See the above link for info. It's a great time in an amazing atmosphere and the food is delicious!
Hope to see all of my local friends there!
Much Love,
Keri
I've begun hosting an open mic night at Uncle Bourbon's on Staten Island. Wednesdays at 9pm sharp.
http://www.unclebourbon.com/index.php/events-3/?event_id=33
See the above link for info. It's a great time in an amazing atmosphere and the food is delicious!
Hope to see all of my local friends there!
Much Love,
Keri
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