The decision to flee came suddenly.

It is about time. The father has reached that point where no longer can I stand anything about existence. This is not meant to be as cruel as it sounds, but long periods of time with him do not agree and I do feel like a horrible, ungrateful leech of a son. No one appreciates the sacrifices he made as a single father more than I do. I truly doubt it even phases my brother.

Yet, enough is enough. The "where are you running off too? Sit a while, let's talk." Seems caring enough until the talk simply consists, "I got your grandfather some groceries. I still need to get him laundry detergent. I'll get that at Target," he says through cookies adding, "It's cheaper there." The proud moments of only eating half of the food on his plate, but then snacking for the rest of the night. This house is overflowing with candy, cookies, cakes, pies, etc. I tell him it is enough. Weakness. I truly am a kid in a candy store. He returns from stores with more candy, "It was half price."

You know what's cheaper than half price? Not buying it. Leave it on the shelf for the next American.

I went to a bar with people from high school. A kid who I was close with throughout which tapered off once college hit and then numerous kids from high school he is still friends with because, well, they went to the same college. No one has changed. Snide comments around, not meant to be snide, just stupidity. "You look the same" shouldn't sound so negative. Some graduate and have no direction, others graduate soon, with, somehow, less direction. Granted, mine is not great, but I have an inkling as to what I'm going to do.

Work on ads till May. Try to get a job, and research grad schools. Write. Write. Write. Read. I keep buying books and find more to add to my list. Langston Hughes, Thomas Lux, Dean Young, Joe Wenderoth, Joe Brainard. Just a few of the poetry books I want to absorb into my blood. Tear out the pages, place them on a spoon, heat, and plunge. Not to mention my desire to read Dante's Divine Comedy, Roald Dahl and Hemingway stories, and more. I don't think I have the energy to force myself into situations with the people here.

When home, I enter faux-romances. Repeatedly. Pursue something even though my heart is not at all in it. It is the equivalent to me craving zucchini. I don't like zucchini, but if it is available, meh, I'll try it again and again.

One more week. Push through for one more week. Onward. Then back to Syracuse where I can sit in my own place. Read. See people I enjoy. People who are more interesting, have opinions on more than just beer. People with something to say. Read. Enjoy the purity of snow. The fleeting snow. I love it.

My bamboo is dying. Spotty. Spotty and torn.

There is a bright spot in New Jersey. There is a bright spot every where. Through chance years ago. Never pursued till awkwardly from a distance. The distance will get in the way. I don't understand it.

My bamboo looks horrible.

Tilting different ways.

Part of me thinks it is filled with spiders. I've heard stories. Plants filled with spider eggs.

In the end, home is what it is. My goal is to make this the last extended stay. One of the reason I need to work so hard at advertising. Give me an escape in May. My aim is to go anywhere. NYC, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Miami, Richmond, El Segundo, Seattle, Salt Lake City...try me. Do my best where I land and see if writing and grad school is still the answer.

Catch Twenty-Two. Advertising gets in the way of writing and writing gets in the way of advertising, but I can't drop either. I've said it before. Damn you, Joseph Heller. God damn you, sir.

for Dorothea Lange

for Dorothea Lange

It was not until
the cat
woke me from
a dream
that I realized
my cat was a realist.

No time to waste
under water with
bubble-talking fish
and tea.
No time to waste
trying to pick up

a penny
from the ground
with hands
10x larger than usual.
No time to waste
dining with a king-

or rather under
the employ of a king
because someone
might have poisoned
the roast boar
and it is my sad job

to make sure it is safe.
No time to waste
networking with babboons
in an African field
in the shadow of a mountain
that more-or-less

resembles
my dead grandmother.
No time to waste
sitting in a field
cross-legged while
the opera singer hits a screaming note

only for me as
the moon slowly
encases us both.
No time to waste
walking in the west
arm-in-arm with

a migrant mother,
some Okies and
dusty children follow-
clutching stomachs
that soon burst forth
with moths and profits.

My realist cat now
tips its derby, adjusts it’s waistcoat,
and tells me I have
no time to waste on dreams
before it leaves for a meeting with the prime minister
of some romantic place.

Pick me.

"You'll know advertising is your destiny if you can't imagine anything you'd rather leap out of bed every morning to plunge into."

That is merely a few pages into a book about breaking into advertising, and already, I think I chose poorly. However, that sentence can apply to anything. More than anything, I'd love to wake up and have sex. Should I pursue a career in pornography? Buy myself a nice robe and grow a mustache? No. God no. That isn't for me. However, waking up in the morning to write or to go teach a class on writing or lit...yes. That sounds lovely.

To get into advertising I should have been working seriously on my portfolio all semester so that at this point I am happy with it and can dedicate most of my time to sending out minibooks and writing cover letters. Yet, I spent the semester juggling an interest in poetry and a need to succeed in advertising so my book is no where near what I want it to be.

Honestly, working harder on my portfolio and getting a job is what I decided I'd begin doing today. After spending a few minutes jotting down ideas for Doritos, I found myself in my car heading to Barnes & Noble where I bought a book of selected poems by Langston Hughes. It wasn't until I was holding the book in my hand that I thought, 'Wait, how'd I get here from that?' Baffling.

Now when I go to pick up a book guilt settles in and I feel like I should be working on the portfolio. Time management is what I need to get into. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Or so I think. Hour for the gym. Hour for advertising. Hour for writing. Plus classes when those hit and then the general happy amazing fun time I need. It seems possible as long as I stop screwing around. Hour on ads is not gonna cut it. Two hours is more like it.

*

Suicide's Note
Langston Hughes

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

*

Question 1
What should I do ads for?
Currently my book contains: Cheer Dye & Perfume-less Detergent : Jolt Caffeine Gum : La-Z-Boy : Harmonicas : Lonely Planet Travel Guides : soon Doritos.
I need more ideas for products.

*

Question 2
How are you doing? What were you doing before you read this?

Hanging in and holding fast.

No new writing. Just ideas for future writing. Just being home I don't feel like doing much of what I should. No ads either despite how crucial that is. A massive list of places I will apply to is coming together. Even if I think grad school suits me better in the near future.

*

Since I recently purchased an SLR- recently as well I have become a member of Flickr.

I don't know what I'm doing yet, I need to learn.

Enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boy-child-thing/

*

Question

What have you learned?

Sex having is like bicycle riding.

For the first time in months I'm home. For the first time in that same amount of time plus two months New Jersey is shaping up to be an alright place. Even if I've already briefly left it.

*

Something about listening to opera makes me think I should be a) killing someone, b) on my way to kill someone, c) on my way to dispose of the body of a person I have just killed, d) at the least sitting in an immaculate and marble office plotting to kill someone, e) making love to someone Italian.

*

Winter Break Reading (Hopeful)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(Finish) Underworld
(Re-read) Brave New World
(Re-read) Nine Stores
Poetry, poetry, poetry

suggestions?

*

Thinking about a chat with Paola I've come to realize that Bruce Smith was in some way my gateway poet.

*

Recently I spent a good half hour watching a kid trip on acid or LSD or one in the same. Standing in a kitchen not unlike that of most grandmothers with white linoleum-tiled floors. He insisted they were lighting up and he was playing a life-sized version of Simon Says.

*

We should be lovers.

We shouldn't do that.

We should be lovers, and that's a fact.

*

I haven't been writing now that I'm home. Which seems to be the norm with me being home.

It's not that I don't want to do. I just don't. I also don't read much poetry.

Somehow that makes me feel guilty. The not reading. But oh well, I read other things. I can't read poems all the damn time, right?

*

Assignment

Pair a vegetable with an emotion and explain yourself from someone else's view.

Some people fake their death.

I'm faking life.

*

Tonight's fortune cookie told me, "It could be better, but its good enough."

Essentially, your life is what it is, Dave, deal with it. How much of a downer. I see how it could be positive, but it seems more like settling. Why try, Dave? This is what you deserve. Take it and shut up.

I don't think I'll be ordering Chinese for quite some time.

*

My advertising portfolio is due in a little over a day. Flipping through it, what makes me better than anyone else? Largely, ideas are held back because of an inability to art direct. That's not my job though. My job is ideas. Yet, my book needs to be both. If I get hired, I won't have to art direct ever again. Fucking catch-22. Fucking Joseph Heller.

Each ad I think, Anyone else could have thought of this. True. They did not. But really, couldn't they have? Ha ha- old recliners are forced to prostitute themselves on the street because a La-Z-Boy replaced them. What a gas. Oh, and look, a mildly witty headline pimping perfume & dye free Cheer. Gee.

The problem is, I cannot accept opinions. The only feedback I can accept is negative. Dave, this is pure shit. Why are you in advertising? I would accept that. Instead I get, Hey, keep going with this, I like it. No. No you don't.

Really, the same goes for my writing. No one's ever said something is bad, but I know it is bad. I've heard good things, but I don't buy them. Who will be rude to your face about it? In the end though, at least there are a few (maybe 30 out of 3 years of writing, not a good ratio) that I somewhat like. Maybe I just like the idea though and hate the poem itself. It comes down to- I should have considered immediate grad school.

Truthfully, if advertising doesn't work out sometime this summer, I will apply to grad school. Let's just hope that works out. I do not want to take some shitty local advertising gig doing billboard work for some no name casino in Atlantic City. Someone out there just needs to take a chance on me. Someone needs to look at my book and think, If he wasn't worried about art direction, if he was in a place where he could talk with others, he'd have it.

I truly think that way. Newhouse has it set up so that you are forced to think of ideas on your own. This seems logically, yes, it is my work. But no. This is not how it runs. Most agencies you are at least in a team of two kicking things back and forth and out of that something fucking stellar occurs. Cavemen didn't make fire by rubbing one rock against itself.

What a horrible metaphor.

Before my psyche crumbles...adieu.

*

Rather, I'll leave you with this. I'm writing from dreams now. Dreams and whatever else I see when I close my eyes. This is from last night.

The Bird Was a Jackal

The bird was an elephant.
Size-wise taking
up the room. No.

The bird was a jackal.
Size-wise and in
spirit. Bed side.

The bird was hollow.
It had eyeless sockets-
managing to stare.

Staring into my head.
Until I found
myself standing

inside the socket.
And I became
the bird’s lone pupil.

The bird had one
eye now. I led it
to find the second.

My hands create a frame for the day.

An interpretation of Jessie and Flowers meeting under different circumstances.

*

And here is a work in progress;

The Mountains

Why shant we?

The Verbal Seduction couldn't have been more wonderful.

I am giddy. Giddy.

Grad students were so supportive of what we do and how the new issue looks.

Once a month next semester we will have a reading.

With Paola live via web cam.

8 people read, and we'll get even more next time.

Alexis at Second Story Books is also amazingly supportive of us.

She is going to SELL the issue. I told her no, she insisted, so go for it! $3 bucks for VS in it's glory!

We are going to get ETS and Grad Student funding next semester and be glorious.

I don't want to go to bed. I don't want this feeling to end.

Come on, world. Try me.

*

This hit me at 3am as I found myself unable to fall back asleep and wandering a chilly house in search for cranberry juice. If nothing else, if not the people I've met, friends made and lost, papers written, knowledge gained, job I could potentially get after this, how I've changed, if nothing else, I've left behind Verbal Seduction. This issue made me see how far the magazine has come which is going to make it hard to let go of. We've become an actual magazine. It look professional. It has undergrads, grads and faculty between its covers. Yes, we lost a lot of money from SA for the spring, but because of how we've grown and the dedication of some members, the ETS department is willing to get involved in funding. Even if it is on a semesterly basis and not permanent, it is something. We can even go to the graduate association and request money. Glorious. Everything is wonderful.