Liam

Peach-faced with an infant grin
Screams, milk hungry fingers
Pink palms careful against my beard
If I were small again...
Net-eyed and absurd with beauty
Instead of a small bodied nothing
The correct kind of miniscule
His artist heart in every moment
Noticing the language of eyelids
And reading lips like a mechanic

I now function on fear and panic
Crawl on all fours out of sadness
When did I stop howling for joy?
Blind and deaf to derisive observers
The howls now hushed to moans
I still find echoing in my stomach
How I shrink in time's tyranny
And agree to believe in other ideologies
Outside that of being naked and free
Little mentor make me bold!

I will lie beside you Liam
Catching coos and awws
It is more like poetry to me
Than any man or woman in a suit
With a Degree
Bleeding beneath it all.

Delay

Finally a teenager at twenty
Allowed to feel brash and dirty
The head of a handled beer
Off flies the bottle cap
Here comes the queer
A manic dancer between hands
And heads and lips and hips
Feel me up already
I felt you across the room
Fit in your iris like a microorganism
I can only love you there
The company kills my senses
Words spoil me and seem enemies
Alcohol adrenaline did it again
Sorry Sorry Sorry
More sincere than a smiling dog
A punch to my maw is necessary
I am not a cautious mouth here
Unbridled and obnoxious
I killed the kid in me too quickly
Now he's going to kill me
...I don't mind.

Wolf Wind

All this way the wind blows out my mouth
Whistling mad through my teeth
An outward gust from the pit of my gut
It's been whipping up inside
Along with my hunger for pigs and houses
A plump pink thing with no sense for
Reckoning
How his or her home might be my end
I can't exist with pigs for friends
They eat and eat and eat
Until there's nothing but them
Is that what it means to be happily ever after?
Pigs forever

War of the Words (Poem Four)

What a monster my vocal chords

A sentence screamed like a soaring battle axe

At a man who threatened my existence

If I don't keep them tamed

I might say something so useless

Monster enemies will gobble me up effortless

I think I'll stop speaking

Am honorary verbal suicide

For now I'll just write

Words so redundant and trite the ink flops dead

Like a soldier on a battlefield between lines

Every form of communication feels like war zone

Where verbs, adjectives, and nouns are deployed

Little atom bombs in the air

I feel my fingers itching for a pen

I'll stab every last one of them

But speech and script descend and despair my ideas

Like modern technology

No

I'm just too rusty

A saber rotting in its sheath

Shrapnel slinging ideologies!

Bullet flowing oratories!

I'm cutting off my ears and tongue tomorrow

And absorbing the last rounds of your stupidity today

My final wounds on my final day

Scars to show what a monster you are

Oh dear...there go my words again

Bombs away!

The Hat (Poem Three)

The Hat sat snug upon the Head
Like a tired friend.
A black fabric buddy
Who’d seen everybody the Head had
Seen and been on every journey
The head had been.
Recently the hair of the Head
Had thinned.
The Hat was feeling more and more
Of the Head’s skin.
It irked the Hat to rub the Head’s flesh
Like that
But the Head needed the Hat
And the Hat needed the Head
Both thought that they would rather
Be naked
And empty
Than separate.

Digging Windows -A Poem on "Tunnels" (Poem Two)

An ear to the wall of sound,
I found in my headphones
And somewhere in my soul,
Lovers digging tunnels
And running away from home

I’ll be a mole for their music,
Scooping notes by the shovelful
Of melodic lust that busts
My eardrums and thrusts through
Every orifice I possess,

Yes this is my escape.
The snare drum and string rush
Harmonies loud than hushed.
A Win for a Regine
And both of them just for me.

Windows are being made daily
In a hundred different graveyards
And numerous neighborhoods
Windows in the ground and on
Rooftops where singers sit whistling

I’ll dig them all out
In you, in them, in death and in bed
I’ll be visiting.

Thoughts On My Cousin's Funeral (Poem One)

Healthy Hellos.
God awful Goodbyes.

Rows and Rows and Rows of eyes,

All peering over the wooden sunset of a coffin
To see a mannequin
represent my cousin,
I don't remember him
Purple
But I see him prayerfully slumped at the ledge's foot
Like an honest Christian
Dear Christian.

An accidental bird for 120 feet
Forgot he didn't have wings
Poor thing.

It is amazing how they say his name
But never mention his flesh

Give it up for Jesus.

He put my grief in his all encompassing pocket
Before I could play with it.

Religion,
You take
But I swear to God you never give.

A letter read by your brother
I'll never forget
Can you forgive?
A brother who loved you alive
But loves a book now you're dead.

Oh Christian,
Your mall window head
Made to display what's left.
Your images should not accompany this plastic
remake.
The images kill the fake,

They cut your corpse to pieces.

Your sister
That blonde twig
Trying to be a tree in the company she's in.

Oh God let her be!

I nearly wept when she greeted me.

Healthy Hello to her,
God awful Goodbye to her too.

I want to kill all the Goodbyes,

But there will always be funerals,

And Rows and Rows and Rows of eyes.

Tentative Short Story Conceptamabob

I'm in prepping mode for a short story, but the problem is I'm not quite sure what to write it on yet. If I am to go by the National Geographic picture I observed, then the story will be about a Mother-Daughter duo in the fifties who begin a meat-oriented cult dedicated to serving a golden pig head who has replaced the father as head of the home. That's a pretty rough sketch...and not a very good one. I have another story that's been mulling around in my head for a few years now that I think would fare well in the context of a short story. The problem is it's very fantastic and almost unbelievably so. I have serious problem with wanting to make stories overly fantastic or morbid...maybe I should try and ween myself away from this. Who knows? Regardless I'm going to begin working on it straight away this weekend.

Losing My Religion

I'm going to write my creative nonfiction piece on the gradual loss of my belief system. I will cover the reasons why and possibly how my disillusionment came about and then hopefully have some sort of reconciliation. I will be incorporating the words ugly, cant, and decussation. I apologize for the previous post; I misunderstood the assignment. Wish me luck.

Decussation

I feel I share more in common with a butterfly than a monkey. I may be related to the ape, but I relate with the bug. I think it's the metamorphosis aspect. Life isn't gradual or natural; it's jarring and confusing. A lot of people just go naturally into their roles; seem to know how to grow. Butterflies, however, go through a variety of traumatic stages from larvae to pupa to caterpillar to finally the winged beauty everyone becomes giddy about. That sort of growth seems so much more applicable to my experience, almost as physically as mentally. I'm just now getting out of my ugly stage...I would like to think anyway. I would also like to think that one day I can be a something someone gets giddy about, but that's probably a healthy distance off.

Having crissed and crossed my way through varying mindsets, sometimes in a single day, I find my life in strange and constant state of decussation. A constant X. An X that doesn't always mark the spot. X means I'm in one place while in another, and somewhere in the center is what I am. Thus through this process of the X, my metamorphosis began.

Waking up was hard to do at fourteen. Every morning I felt like that man in that Pixies song, the one that got killed by ten thousand pounds of sludge or whatever. It may have been routine to blame; the great soul destroyer, or maybe routine was what I needed; the holy soul saver? Showers were nice, but only because they made it easier to imagine washing all the sludge off. After that I'd throw something on, skip breakfast, and trudge to school, dripping slime all the while.

If routine wasn't a murderer, education most certainly was. Everyday was a box with no light and very little oxygen. On this day in particular, I had found the room to breathe slightly less and the light much dimmer. I was supposed to be doing a mock interview for Sterling Scholar, something I wasn't prepared for in the slightest. There was a twisting in me, a grief, and it had been tumbling about in my mind and my stomach for a good period of time. A change was needed, a puncture, and then a rupture. If it didn't come out soon, it would find it's own way to express itself, possibly by making my head pop off like a bottle cap in the middle of class. Not only would I be headless but my unsaid sorrows would spill(along with a lot of blood) all over the floor and everyone would be able to see it.

I decided it best to leave class and indeed school, less a sudden cant from my insides forced me to spontaneously dishevel.

(to be continued).

Bad Vibrations

Sometimes our sense of mortality needs refreshing; needs a reminder that death can come very easily and at any given moment, and really what better method of refreshment than a near death experience? I was eighteen and marginally less aware of how effortless it is to be six feet under, working a time consuming two online class schedule from the then named UVSC (tough stuff) when my family decided to make a quick trip up to the turgid establishment of Thanksgiving Point. The reason for this escapade was my sweet (but not sweet at the time) sister's wedding. She needed some shots of herself and her hubby strutting their stuff in full marriage duds in the lovely but expensive gardens of Thanksgiving point; more expensive than lovely to be sure.

Our party consisted of me, my Mother, my little sister Jillian, and of course the soon to be hitched duo, Bronson and Tana. My older sister and one half of a fraternal twinship, Cassidy, who was located in Logan, UT at the time, would be meeting us there. I don't know why I thought it would be fun to go, I mean, what angst ridden eighteen year old in the proper state of mind says to himself,"Wedding pictures with bridezilla at Thanksgiving Point! I'm so there!" Just so happens I went, and just so happens I got a lot more than carsick and cranky out of it.

The day went as it was supposed to, given a few slip ups with reservations and camera gear, but overall everyone was good natured and sufficiently photographed by the end of the day. Suddenly, however, my sister in her pre-marriage frenzy decided she wanted some more pictures by the temple in Salt Lake. Now I don't think anyone including the husband-to-be, were too thrilled with the idea, but considering my sister was on birth control to help subdue her ovarian cysts and under due stress from all the preparations leading up to the big day, trying to resist her would be like trying to resist the pull of a giant class five tornado, a tornado with a wedding dress. Compliance was a must.

We split ourselves up into two vehicles: Mom, Jillian and the Disgustingtons (an affectionate term) in the suburban and Cass and I in her old Subaru. Off we went, my new cherished Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire playing loudly in the car. I was smiling, Cass was smiling, Black Waves/Bad Vibrations was playing when suddenly a vehicle two lanes over swerved into our own, causing a white pick up to cut in front of us. With a bang and a crack and possibly even a snap, my head was bleeding and Cassidy was having trouble breathing. Neither of us were smiling anymore...well, until I pulled a chunk of my own hair out and turned to my sister, "Look" I said, smiling blood, "My hair." Then we both laughed; everything is funny after almost dying or dying or whatever state we were in. Even more funny was the giant star shaped crack in the windshield where my head had hit, little tufts of bloody hair poking out of the cracks. I got a real kick out of that in particular.

Some dumb questions like,"Who's the President?" and "What's the date?" and an ambulance drive later, we were both in the hospital. I was a bloody mess, but quite possibly the sweetest bloody mess since Carrie. Seriously, I checked my medical records later and the report made constant reference to my "pleasantness." Adrenaline had done its job and I was simply happy to be alive...but that happiness would soon fade, and fast, for my precious Arcade Fire album had been permanently damaged in the crash, never to be recovered. Life is fragile...but so are fifteen dollar Cd's. Regardless I don't listen to that album when driving anymore, not out of superstition, but out of the fear of losing my favorite album again.

Oh, and as for my dear Cass, she they thankfully turned out okay, with the exception of a neck injury which forced her to wear a neck brace for the next few months. As for my mother, my sisters and my brother-in-law...they may have a suffered some emotional trauma, but as my nurse constantly reminded me it could have been worse. "My son-in-law was decapitated in a car crash like the one you were in."
"Oh really?"
I responded, still smiling and giddy but extremely concerned, "That's terrible." Later on when preparing for a nasty shot of something-or-other to the forehead so glass could be removed from my face, she sweetly consoled,"This will feel like a thousand bee stings." In that brief moment I realized I didn't feel so bad for her or her headless son-in-law after all.

We all stayed at my relatives house in Orem that night, and I had time to reflect on my situation with the cosmos. "Maybe I'm alive for a reason," I thought, "Or maybe I'm just damn lucky," I also mused. It didn't matter, I learned some important things that day. I learned how precious life is and how easily it can all be stripped away from us in split second and that I should probably appreciate it more, but most importantly I learned that it's also usually a good idea to wear a seat belt, and I only say "usually" because if I would have worn a seat belt I wouldn't have a totally bad ass scar on my eyebrow. There are are trade-offs I suppose.

So It Goes.

The aging process can be a real beast, a beast with many teeth. Whether you're twenty and still trying to figure out how to be a proper adult, while all the while resisting the adult world, or nintey and forgetting when to eat and pee, it's all some sort of suffering or striving. It's not like this is a big surprise to anyone who's been alive more than three years, but sometimes it strikes you just how vicious time can treat it's abiders. Makes you want to be timeless sometimes. Tough shit I suppose, but that doesn't stop me from holding on to my Peter Pan complex with all ten of my stubborn little digits.

The only reason I bring any of this up is my grandfather, the subject of my last and admittedly poor blog. I was taking him for a walk today and just as we were finishing our short down-the- block-and-back stretch of pavement, he suddenly turns to me and says, "Not bad for the first time, huh?"
I found this sad. Sad because I've been walking with my grandpa consistently for over a year now. What can you do? The time beast has bitten again, and my grandpa is once again slightly less of himself. A chew toy of time I suppose. So it goes, as Mr. Vonnegut would say. It goes and goes and goes.

Obama Mama

My grandpa suffers from Alzeihmer's disease, and my dear mother, in light of this fact and the upcoming elections, decided to take advantage of this. As a bit of a background I should probably mention that my grandma is extremely conservative and as such is not a fan of Obama...at all. If she were to have her way with things there would be less black people on t.v. in general, much less a black president. My mother on the other hand, is a democrat and is behind Mr. Barack 100%. As you can imagine, the two often butt heads politically. My grandfather in his ailing mental state probably doesn't give a damn about politics either way. This does not however mean, that he is impervious to influence with a little bribery.
So my mother, in her fervor and excitement for Obama, took my grandfather on a drive to the local eatery in Parowan and bought him a shake. She then proceeded to drive him around the block and question him,"So who are you voting for Dad?" she began.
"Well, I don't know." he replied.
"What do think about Obama, Dad?"
"Who's that?"
"Well Dad..." and thus through repetition and a few loops around the block my grandfather was educated on Obama. At the end of this my mother questioned again, "Who are you voting for Dad?"
"Well, Obama I guess." Mission complete.
My grandfather was lovingly brainwashed by my mother and my grandma was in for a rather nasty surprise.

First Post MWAHAHA!

Hello I am Austin and this is my very first post on my very first blog. The title of my blog comes from an Arcade Fire song titled, "My Body is A Cage," a lovely song that'll kill you with its pipe organ. I hope to get something of a feel for this blogging business, so that other people can enjoy my blog as well...we'll see. Ta ta.