God, i’m tired. too many late nights, too many books, too many poems in my head.

i’m off to bed. wish each other well. i wish you well.

Some nights are sadder than others, I think, for all kinds of people. Like a wave travels through the air and knocks a bunch of people down, all at once.

Here’s to standing upright again, friends, beloved…to all and sundry.

If I were to be told
that there are equations that measure
the curve of joy I would soon be
endlessly calculating:

scratching one term out, then
another, adding forever,
tumbling the quotients around,
eventually rethinking the whole process.

Then I would recall that every moment of math
demands its physics. I would
step outside and face the stars,
like a bad student who’s wasted his time.

In the movies the brilliant professor
spins the blackboard to reveal the proof.
I’d let the sky spin before me
and fall flat back, looking up, solving for joy.

Q.
How many slam poets does it take to change a lightbulb?

A.
Actually, none. Somebody else will probably get to that, eventually.

But 100 of them will stand around screaming about the NEED for change.

to know in your bones that you are no longer obligated to apologize for something you do that doesn’t conform to someone else’s idea of what is right.

Especially if it is something you know is right for you, but you’ve denied yourself or apologized for it just to keep the peace.

You learned early on that failure is your lot, and you’ll never live up to expectations anyway, so why bother to live up to your own? Someone’s bound to be disappointed either way; it might as well be you. You can take it, right, stud?

And if you do walk the line, try to please everyone…why then, you’re a hero. For as long as it lasts, no matter the cost to you.

Of course, someday you’ll fall off that tightrope…because failure is what you do, isn’t it? And if you fall, you fail, right?

Maybe not. Maybe you just fall. Maybe you die upon landing, maybe not. Maybe your entire life cracks open and spills a huge mess all over the ground; or maybe, it bounces.

That’s the point of walking the tightrope, isn’t it? To see how long it takes for you to fall?

It couldn’t possibly be that you have to walk it just to get to the other side.

If that were true, it would suggest that failure is optional. And it’s a given that that’s not true. A given.

Well, it always has been. But maybe it’s time to just give that back.

so we do this instead…

How to Be Catholic

there’s a small statue
of a fire breathing nun
sitting not a foot
from my face, right in front of
the monitor.
i swear she looks like
my kindergarten teacher,
sister rose concepta.

religion
of my mothers, you keep me
snickering all night long.

friends of mine
got raped by priests
not one mile from here
at the house of affirmation.
we had learned about
the inquisition in school,
so we should have known
you had it in you.

religion
of my fathers, by jove,
you’ve done it again.

one priest locks a church against
vandals. another locks a church
against its parish. they all lock
the church against someone.
a pregnant woman
spontaneously combusts
as she kneels before
a mahogany altar.
a dying man spits
into the baptismal font.

religion
of my townspeople,
what could you be thinking?

never fear, i will hold my tongue,
i will remember
to be a good boy:

i will swallow this poem,
all of my poetry,
all of my dirty glory,
so that no one can see it,

and i will pretend
that it tastes like honey
and cry sweet tears for it
every time i pray.

more available time than i expected to have.

i’m making real progress in all this reading for school. which is good since class is friday/saturday/sunday, and then i leave for a week in beautiful fucking orlando FL which is one of my least favorite places in the world (arlington heights IL is on that list as well).

i’ll be at the national ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) conference for the week. doing a bunch of work on e-learning in the corporate environment — research and schmoozing, mostly. woo. i think we get tickets to shrek 3-d too. woo-woo.

nonetheless, i do have one high point next week: i get to feature at the Broken Speech Slam on thursday night, june 9, before i leave. so…if you’re near me in FL, come on down and say hi.

for more info: http://www.brokenspeech.com

see ya…fun stuff regarding changing views of the study of american history call me…

while at a friend’s house studying.

i’m reading a book by CLR James on american culture as it relates to the struggle between individualism and social integration. great stuff if a little heavy on the marxist interpretations.

my classmates, via e-mail, are peppering each other with questions about what the hell the book is even about.

gonna be an interesting class — especially with 6 fundamentalists out of 12 students.

i’ll be among the missing for the next couple of days.

see y’all later.

Weedwhackers rule.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/05/26/drivers_study/index.html

The fact that we came in second to Rhode Island is the only semi-surprise. And New Jersey taking third is no surprise at all.

There’s a reason they call us Massholes.

if I remember anything clearly
about us it’s this:
we went stoned to a carnival once
we made love on a grass bed
and the neon behind your shoulders
made me think I was loving the moon

if I could say this
to your face now
I believe you would be
astonished at the comparison
for back then
you did not like poetics
and were as practical
as an assassination

I’m tired
after all these years of wishing for carnivals
after all the meat and dirt of boundary and stink
I say this:
I don’t want to keep dreaming of how
I once made love to the moon
I want to wake up and smell the midway
the fried dough and the sweat of teenagers

I want to slap the gun
from your hand
and run

It was a good night.

I like those.

I want more of them.

I want more.