Speaking of movies, I heard that Brittney Spears walked out on one at Sundance because she "didn't understand it". Haha! Why do people like that even bother to go to Sundance if they don't want to make themselves look stupid? Oh, and another movie related note... David Gordon Green (director of George Washington - one of my favorite movies of all time) has a new movie out called All The Real Girls. Not sure if it's gonna be playing near here any time soon, but I sure hope so.

"The rain people are people made of rain and when they cry they wash themselves away."
- James Caan in Rain People (a good movie)

YellowTimes got shut down by so-called "patriots." Read about it.

I wish Death Cab For Cutie would come to a town near me. I was rocking out to a song by them that Nick put on a mixtape that he left in my car.

Oh! Before I forget, there's a show on Saturday that yall should go to. It's the first Rochester Anti-Racist Action show (yes, I realize that that spells RaRa! Please don't run around shouting it like a cheerleader) and it's at 9pm at Rocket Coffee (on Monroe Ave. near Krudco, Abundance Co-op and Atomic Eggplant if yall don't know). It's a benefit for Food Not Bombs I believe since ARA isn't having benefits for itself yet I guess.

Mike Soto is a genious.

---

On the bathroom wall today it said, "Don't ever fall in love."

it's really cold, but i'm still sweating
here's a poem i wrote last night

*LEVELSOFSOCIOCULTURALINTEGRATION (LEVEL50F50C1OCULTURAL1NTEGRAT10N)*

I had a dream that you were asleep next to me
And when I reached over to touch you you were gone
It wasn't a dream so much as a nightmare
Complete with gouls and goblins and ghosts
The irradiated vermin that crawl around under yr skin at night
And then force you to ask existential questions
Anyone who has never questioned the existance of everything has never questioned anything
Because you can't start in the middle of the labrynth and find yr way out in both directions
You can follow the herd by starting at the starting line
Of you can question everything by starting at the finish line
But you can't lock yrself away and throw away the key
You can't bury yrself in books and mud and then shatter the lenses of yr eyes
You can hide away in the forest of paradox
But the search party of reason will eventually drag you out

I had a dream that one day my children would be judged by their character and not their race, gender or class
That's a dream deferred
I inflated the plastic cloud past critical mass
It burst in a whirlwind of fanciful colors and sounds
But somehow the brilliance of the whole schene just left me empty

I wrote you a neurotic messsage and sent it from this computer to yrs
I typed without capitalization or punctuation
I said things that I was embarassed to say out loud
The computer stripped the romance away
And left just lines of passionless text
I almost regretted sending it
And I wondered...
Have we become little more than cyborgs?
Are we still divine beings or do we simply exist to use and maintain the machines that enslave us?
I wrote this poem on my weblog
I don't feel too good about it though
The computer needs us
We don't need the computer
These robots are in love with us!
These robots are killing us!

more spontaneous poetry...

i told dr. greenstein i'm already an existentialist
i told him he's got me figured wrong
i told him i'm sick of trying to prove the reality of my beliefs
i told him i'm content to believe in my existance and deny the orthodoxy of reality
i didn't tell him how tired i am
how i've been up countless nights imagining that i'm someone else or that i'm on the moon mining cheese
i've been through rivers of tears and blood or else rivers made of sand as a prop in my television mirage
i can't say if anything's real
there's nothing i really know

i told caitlin that i love her
i don't know if she believes me
but i create my own reality so who's to stop me from loving whomever i want
and i do want to love her
so i make my self sick with doubt and longing
i breathe heavy like an ox ready to strike
i swim in my own in-ground pool filled with self-pity
maybe i'll drown in there some day
but for now it works to plunge me deeper and deeper into hopelessness
the fountain of youth tainted by urine

I guess Laura Bush backed out of the symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice" because she was afraid they'd read anti-war poetry. http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030130.html

someone sent this to me. I guess it's been circulating around the internet.

If You're Happy And You Know It Bomb Iraq (by John Robbins)

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi,
And your alibi is shoddy,
And your tastes remain quite gaudy,
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think that SUVs,
Are the best thing since sliced cheese,
And your father you must please,
Bomb Iraq.

If the globe is quickly warming, bomb Iraq.
If the poor will soon be storming, bomb Iraq.
We assert that might makes right,
Burning oil is a delight,
For the empire we will fight,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think that someone's dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

If corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that ain¹t easy,
And your manhood¹s getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might now knows no borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We¹ll call it treason,
It's the make war not love season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

I am Ned Flanders!
Which Simpsons Character are YOU?

This is my poem of conscience. Maybe the President will read it and it'll make him choke on a pretzel or something.

*War Is a Joke... and I'm not Laughing*

I saw Viggo on Charlie Rose wearing a home-made t-shirt that said, "no more blood for oil"
I saw the way they explained him away as if an obstruction to the escapism of entertainment
I saw the pseudo-intellectual post-modernist writing another page to his autobiography at the bar at the coffee shop
And I wondered if the chapters of his book will be about writing at the bar at the coffee shop
I saw the children rejoicing in Palestine and Iraq at the prospect of free candy and what appeared to be Amerika's demise
I also saw the prayer service
The zealots praying, "Dear God, kill the fuckers that did this"
Or praying, "Dear Allah, be with them in this time of need"
I watched in horror as the world melted into the palm of a dick-tator's hand
I heard them saying, "We killed them to save them" and citing Numbers 31:17
I saw the doves and hawks competing for breadcrumbs thrown at the dirt by the tourists of terror
I saw the candles, the infinite candles, melting and the wax blending and pouring over into the flower box
I watched in quiet desperation as storm troopers with gas masks trampled the flowers that once grew
I saw the dispossessed huddled in the corners of Western society with pockets full of herbs and heads full of ideas
For a fleeting moment I could see a beautiful existance where the only law is that of egalitarianism
I watched my friend spike his hair into a mowhawk because it made him feel like a righteous social misfit
I watched and I watched and I watched television in my angst ridden boredom
I played with fire because I thought it would change things
I disguised myself as a Democrat and wrote angry letters of protest to Hillary Clinton
I hid my face behind a black dandana like a villan in an old Western melodrama
I did everything I could
But Amerika still wouldn't see

I support this:

From: Sam Hamill, founder of Copper Canyon Press, Port
Townsend WA

January 19, 2003

Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:

When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked
"The White House," I felt no joy. Rather I was
overcome by a kind nausea as I read the card enclosed:

Laura Bush
requests the pleasure of your company
at a reception and
White House Symposium on
"Poetry and the American Voice"
on Wednesday, February 12, 2003
at one o'clock

Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on the
President's proposed "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq,
calling for saturation bombing that would be like the
firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless
innocent civilians.

I believe the only legitimate response to such a
morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to
reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the
one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.

I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience
of our country and lend his or her name to our
petition against this war, and to make February 12 a
day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an
anthology of protest to be presented to the White
House on that afternoon.

Please submit your name and a poem or statement of
conscience to:
kokua@olympus.net

There is little time to organize and compile. I urge
you to pass along this letter to any poets you know.
Please join me in making February12 a day when the
White House can truly hear the voices of American
poets.

Sam Hamill

I'm at school right now. It's my second day of my second semester of college. I'm liking the classes I've had so far: Environmental Science, Philosophy, Sociology, Art and coming up at 1:15 is Anthropology. I'm interested in all those subjects, so I don't think I'll have a problem with boring classes this semester. Anyway, yall don't care about my schooling. Here's a poem. I probably could have structured the lines a little better (more sentence like) so they made more sense, but what ya gonna do.

*This Watch Says Yr Blind*

Friday bleeds into Saturday which bleeds into Sunday which fades into a deep blue Monday where the sun refuses to shine and the street lights only cast shadows
8am is a black widow spider enticing her prey, luring him with sex and excitment into the alleyway where no light can touch
The red illumination that burns the tired dreamer's eyes and scolds the tireless wanderer with a wage-system notion of scheduling seems bright against the black hole of digital clock
A post-industrial conception of time and the unnatural color of neon lights makes sure we don't step out of our roles as zombies in a made-for-television horror flick
They'll pass our act off as entertainment
A life size flea circus to sour the taste of bread and roses
But there's nothing entertaining about watching lemmings follow eachother over a cliff and into the pyre of Gehenna after you've seen it so many times
Even violent stupidity gets boring after a while
And so the half-hour-time-slot scheduling for the after-hours wage-system where we all pay mental rent ultimately defeats itself
Like a snake whose motto is "Join or Die" struggline to swallow its own tail whose motto is "Don't Tread On Me"
Time burns a hole in time and the natural illumination comes shining through
Humanity has come full circle
We've turned back the clocks again to the tribal ways of green anarchy
But have we only tipped the hourglass on its head
Of have we smashed it and scattered the sand over the cemetary lawn like the ashes of a friend who we all used to know but eventually somehow lost touch with

a mouse scurries around on the floor on which you walk lightly and gracefully
you are watching every step
careful at every corner
a mouse runs around trying to be the last ray of hope
you are walking slowly
the mouse's feet move swiftly
you step down and for a moment are distracted by the beaming sunlight in the stained glass window
the mouse stops at the wrong second
and it's all over
but we all gotta go sometime

Go to Rocket Coffee tomorrow at 9pm and see the Jesse Ames Experience. It'll be worth it (I think).
Also, go to Visual Studies Workshop at 7pm tomorrow to see init.two featuring Joe+N among others.
I'm gonna try and do both.

There's some good poetry here
Quote: thisisntjoesoto: you win this round miss dictionary 2000

http://www.infowars.com - I scare myself sometimes at how many things I agree with these people on. Filter through the racism, sexism, capitalism, homophobia and religious dogma and you've got some pretty brutal conspiracy theories that will keep the status quo on their toes.

Watched Two Towns of Jasper on tv last night. Did you ever notice how racist people always say, "I'm not racist, I just think n****rs are inferior." Maybe you should check yr definition of racism, buddy.

*MLK: A Memorandum*

Lots of people let locusts fly out of their mouths
Saying they know Jesus
So-called Christians with self-serving answers to What Would Jesus Do
Jesus would attack Iraq, Jesus was kill Saddam Houssein
But nobody knew Jesus of what or who he was
The so-called Christians say "know Jesus, know God"
But the Gospel of Thomas says "know yrself, know God"
Self knowlege is knowlege of the divine
Take a stand for justice
That's all Jesus was really saying
Dr. King took a stand against Vietnam and the FBI killed him
Dr. King was no killed by some cracker with three names like James Earl Ray
He was hunted down on the Poor People's Campaign Trail and in a brief moment of weakness outside his hotel room was slaughtered by the military-industrial establishment
The President was LBJ, Disciple of Christ
Would Jesus Use Agent Orange?
Rest In Peace Reverend King

Genious is relative. Celebrity is ridiculous. Consciousness is a lie.

*The Stars Are Really...*

I

Circles of sadness form around my eyes
I'm so alone when I'm without you
The hopeful swaying waves
Bring the driftwood that hits my feet
As it goes tumbling by on the water
The universe implodes around my mind
Inducing an alternative state of consciousness
Recalling the meaning of star-crossed lovers
A drop of blood in a bucket of tears
God's fatalistic snares
The dying roses that wash up against the shore
I held on up to you
But instead you gently kissed my neck
The circles of sadness form
Like Saturn's rings
Growing every minute I'm away from you
When yr near me again
I'll hold you like my shield from the radioactive world
You'll be my shelter from its deadly rays
And then I'll stare into the face of the moon and laugh
At the idea that whoever's face it is up there all molded in blue cheese
Has never felt the way I do at that moment
But (s)he's always been alone
And (s)he always will be

II

I wrap myself in the night sky like a blanket
Hoping maybe I'm delusional enough to believe it'll keep me warm
When it's so cold without you
I wish the summer would just melt everything
Including our hearts
And then we'd walk slowly to the irregular beating in our chests
I wish a lot of things
But there are never enough shooting stars to strap yr wishes on
Until one day you wake up to a giant meteor plummeting toward yr home
The great red shift
Or else you wake up to realize that all yr dreams have died
Suffocated when you weren't looking
And yr too old to start making new wishes
That's how people die alone