i love america

"In Gallup polls over the last 25 years, nearly half of American adults have consistently said they believe God created all living things in their present form, sometime in the last 10,000 years."

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/24evolution.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&em

"In 2000, when the independent Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluated the evolution education standards of all 50 states, Florida was among 12 to receive a grade of F. (Kansas, which drew international attention in 1999 for deleting all mention of evolution and later embracing supernatural theories, received an F-minus.)"

You have to love F minuses.

listening to tom petty wait for a phone call

I miss my life and I'm sorry for those of you who are standing between that and my nostalgia for it. I'm writing this poem called "The Ship" right now and re-reading it, it inadvertently sounds like a critique of a blow job...I'm trying to decide whether or not I should write the unintended innuendo out of it or not--psychology says no, right? Yeah, I probably wont. It's definitely not a John Ashbery "I let a guy blow me once" sort of a thing, but it definitely has some blow job imagery. I'll give it to the readers and let them decide. Maybe all of my poems are about blow jobs to my readers (although you probably have to have readers to have readers). "Hi I'm Kyle. I'm a blow job poet." Enough.

I don't think I have anything strong enough to submit to Octopus this year. Shit, I'd like to have someone look at some of my stuff and tell me I wouldn't be embarrassed if I submitted some of it. Jeff, where are you? I have these ideas for things but they never materialize. Williams must have been right when he said, "No ideas but in things." I need to stop being so neurotic about my writing and just get comfortable with what comes out. No ideas but in things. My imagination is my savior.

I'm going to start writing a series of short poems. They will be in couplets, possibly tercets. That sounds tasty.

My sister is dating a cowboy who says he's not a cowboy because instead of riding horses to round up cows, he rides a four-wheeler. I've got news for everyone, cows are cows and boys are boys. Think about it dude.

Andalusia ca. 711

"Now I'm old and I don't understand where I'm going."

Neva Dinova is playing at The Waiting Room in October. It's on a Friday so I'll likely be going. I would like to attend Neko Case and believe I will since the show starts at eight. Going to Okkervil River is looking to be questionable at best. Yeah, I doubt I'll be going to that show. It is on a Saturday, however. I don't know. Mr. 1986 is playing two final shows of which I will be attending both. Rumor has it Neil Young is coming to Omaha in November. That would be interesting. Shows. Oh shit, I was seriously thinking about going to see Sigur Ros at Red Rocks in September. I wonder if it's sold out. I'll have to check that out. The problem I'm having with every one of these shows is both excitement and motivation. I am RARELY excited about any concert anymore and I can RARELY get motivated to a) buy tickets and b) even if I have tickets, get motivated to actually drive to wherever the show is. I think that the only band that would get me SUPER excited to see would be Do Make Say Think. They are the best band in the world. Yeah, I said that. I'm thinking about going to see Broken Social Scene just so I can see the bass player of Do Make Say Think (as he is also in Broken Social Scene). That guy is awesome.

I'm only 23. I used to be a wild man. What happened to my hair? Fuck. I only get sad when I drink now. I'm only 23. I'm still looking ahead into what my life will become as opposed to looking back at what my life was. THAT is when you're supposed to get sad while drinking, and I think to a certain extent actually should. At this point I am more scared than anything. I am afraid of alcohol. I'm only 23. I don't remember how to interact on weekends without it though nor do I necessarily want to. I guess we'll see. I'm still scared. Tonight isn't going to be at my house so maybe that will help. I will have no easy out to escape to my room if something "bad" happens in my drunk eyes, although that hasn't stopped me before as some of my friends can attest to. It shouldn't be this much work, haha, but I'm too self aware to not concern myself over insignificant things that happen to me. I am very sensitive. I wouldn't say I'm the most sensitive of my friends (I think we all know who that is), but I have my moments. What am I talking about?

I found this drawing I did a few months ago in one of my training binders that I really like. It's a head of this person who looks like he should be a character is A Charlie Brown Christmas or something, the hair and such, but looks very dignified. There is a dialogue bubble coming from his lips that says, "GREECE!" Maybe I'll recreate it some day.

Frank O'Hara's poem, "Meditations in an Emergency" sums up the way I've been feeling lately in an exaggerated way:

"Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there will be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves."

LOVE! There is nothing wrong with it.
"Love is simple."

i tried

Cat Update:

Alisa and Jake dropped off Marco and Gertrude (cats) yesterday. For the first seven hours they were both pretty shell shocked and hid themselves away in my bedroom. I turned off the lights to see if they would come to life and come to life they did! Throughout the day, Marco was hissing at the air. I would lean down to pet him and he would roll over like he wanted to be pet, but he continued to hiss while I pet him. I didn't and don't take it personally because it appears to be a natural, instinctive defense mechanism of some sort. Alisa and Jake told me that Marco would be a little more willing to explore and would adapt to the environment quicker than his sister. However, it appears as though Gertie has adapted and possibly accepted things a bit better than Marco has. She jumped up on my bed while I was sleeping and scared me, but she didn't mean anything. I would be curious of me too. I opened the door a bit last night to allow them to explore if they wanted to while I slept. I woke up this morning and found neither of them in my room. I didn't look very long, but Gertie was under Bennie's bed and Marco was being cavalier somewhere. Day one went about as well as expected. It will be exciting to see what day two brings.

K Update:

I can't write anything. I asked Jeff to send me a poem so I knew they still existed. He is struggling but said he would try. August is a bad month, but Labor Day is coming soon. I'm just struggling with her too. A poem? Yes, she is a poem. Struggling can be good. It is. But it really is easy to love something when you actually do. And I love poetry! "People don't listen to poetry anymore." I am listening, I hope you are too, poem.

Where are you Sherwood Anderson? My god you write a beautiful prose.

say good bye to the top of my head

I will be getting a hair cut tomorrow at 5:15 pm. Anxiety. I don't know the woman. And then the talking.

Jesus the talking.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I did get my hair cut.

Yesterday I was walking back to my car after work and I noticed a "new" used book store on ninth street. It's called Bluestem books. Apparently it's been in Lincoln for over 20 years, but just now (a month ago) resurfaced from the underground. I bought a few things. Ezra Pound's Cantos, Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems, Louis Zukofsky's Selected Poems, and Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. I'm thinking about printing off Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson at work, but think I might get in trouble if I get caught. Yeah, I wont. Damn.

Zukofsky is an interesting poetic specimen from the looks of his poems. Of course I've HEARD a lot about the man, but I can't say I've ever actually read anything by him so at least after I read his selected poems along with the introduction by Charles Bernstein regarding his linguistic PROCESS I might be able to speak on him. I saw a poem discussed in the introduction briefly called "Belly Locks Shnooks Oakie" while flipping through the pages yesterday. The poem is as follows:

Belly Locks Shnooks Oakie

Belly Locks Shnooks Oakie

When he awoke, he

Scared all the spooks. he

Was some oak, he

Was.

This, to me, is an extension of Stein to a point. Reading the first line (as well as the title itself) is syntactically frustrating; there is basically no syntax (at least our conception of it). Anyway, it should be interesting and surprising!

I nearly keeled over because of you Louis.

I nearly did.

DRAGONS!

I finished reading John Ashbery's biographical chapter in The Last Avant Garde last night, and got well into Frank O'Hara's. I really enjoy the sections that discuss their respective processes, but am unsure whether I appreciate learning about them personally. I don't really care whether John Ashbery was apprehensive about discussing his homosexuality freely and openly. I'm sure that if this were true it would have some lasting impact on his work, but I don't necessarily want to know what a certain Ashbery poem means to him or why he wrote it. I guess that's New Criticism, something I am also suspicious of to a point, but I want to know more about what a poem means to me and what specifically about the poem makes it that way. Again, New Criticism.

The idea of cutting an artist completely out of their work has its obvious appeal. However, I think that one of the important points about Ashbery's intent, and as an extension his art, would be completely lost were we not to consider it. The idea that a poem doesn't have to be an extension of something, but rather can itself be an extension of itself, a completely imaginative product, is, I believe, important in "understanding" or even appreciating an art where artifice is more apparent, even celebrated, and conventional conceptions of "meaning" are at times abandoned. So if we were to consider Ashbery's intent syntactically or grammatically, or his ideas regarding language and poetry, this would fall outside the scope of New Criticism, yes? What I'm saying is I am interested and feel as though it is an important point in reading poetry to have a certain understanding of a poet's process for language, but see little to no interest or importance in personal circumstances that a poem may have resulted directly from. Does that make sense? I don't even know what I just typed. Jesus look at all those commas. Fuck. ,,, There's always something a little off putting when you read something about language or writing and the author makes a variety of grammatical errors and such. Oh well I'm just BLOGGING. I also

have an obsession.

Last night I couldn't sleep and kept thinking about poems and about how I should be writing what I was thinking down. I was thinking in line breaks and knowing just how certain things would sound and sound together. I talked to Carrie around three-ish and fell asleep, finally, seeing where things should break but not remembering the words themselves. I will arrange the words beautifully. So many surprises are coming around the next lines! Build up to nothing and then surprise them after a turn of a line. Yes! Let's all write poems and surprise our parents with our wit and line breaks! They'll never see it coming! My mom doesn't get any of my poems anyway.

Let's have a party where everyone has to wear this kind of shirt:



All we would need to do is go to a truck stop along the interstate and buy them. Nothing smaller than XXXL allowed, however. Dragons or tigers or, you know, whatever that kid from your high school wore.