Poetry is Real

I was talking to Mr. Cohen and I wrote a little paragraph as kind of a joke. I told him I couldn't write poetry and that I didn't understand it yet. He sent me back the paragraph--only with the lines broken up. It really added umpf. I was amazed. Here is the result.

Fleeting

The little chick
was right--the sky
really is
falling.

And the snow
growing from the grown
ascends
to replace it.

The beautiful white
in loops
declares it time for Christmas
a time of shopping
and uncles drunk on eggnog.

The white
is so peaceful
so serene
so real.

In the name of reality
the little hoodlums run
about town in secret
throwing snow
proclaiming Christmas


The next morning
the cars are driven
by the very men
who stood on their porches
the very night before
and tried to "grinch" Christmas away.

But it cannot be stopped.

Any complaints
or fears
are ignored
and caroled away.

So these old men
relinquishing control
of time
staple on their dimples
for the coming season--

it's no longer up to them.

orange

At the end of every day, there is a flash in my heart. for that moment, that click, I am insignificant. Everything I have done and dedicated my existence to, is meaningless. Each night, after my eye shadow is off, and my designer dress hung over my father's old office chair, I have to come to terms with one thought that's been following me like a strong guilt over my head. Like the cold puffy bedsheets, it leaks onto me.

What's most scary about this, is that, i realize something as I try to distract myself by counting the dots in the cheap cieling tiles, small little disfigurements---moving me out of my head. But not really; I realize this---I have such little control over the insignificant and petty changes that surround me. In that one instance, I am nothing. Nothing. A smile becomes my face.

Not just on my face--but my whole face.
Every part, every wrinkle, every molecule, a smile.
I am that smile.

Blind Date

I hear a dripping sound. A sound that used to cause so much panic has somehow become a security blanket. Without that sound, I doubt I’d even be able to get up. My next project, my next motive. My eyes blink open, showing all the light in the world. It’s like the first time I’ve ever opened my eyes. As I’m getting out of bed, I’m still getting used to the way my eyelids work, like a butterfly pumping their wings for the first time. I follow the dripping sound. it leads to the charming Abraham Lincoln-shaped stain on my ceiling. It’s dripping water of a charming yellow-ish hue. Morning.

I travel about 3 feet to what my super described as “a luxurious and wonderfully kitsch food area”. You might say he’s a bit of an embellisher, necessarily so. In the midst of my luxurious and wonderfully kitsch meal of Berry Berry Kix, I glance up at my calendar. October seventeenth. The apocalypse.

“Here. Put this on. And try to smile.” The purple half-shirt that my sister forced me to wear to speed dating is riding up my back, a part of my back once considered nudity. Not anymore, now it’s sexy.
“Stop pulling on your shirt. You look fine.” My sister was guilted into dragging me to a speed dating event because my mother’s convinced I’m going to end up alone if I don’t get married tomorrow. Talk about a self-fulfilled prophecy.

I sit down at one of the plastic chairs. My mind wanders into wondering what goes into the planning of one of these things. Probably planned by some overly-enthusiastic woman named Amy. She’s probably un-happily married and instead of putting her energy into a divorce, she plans speed-dating events in a futile attempt to save us all.

“Hi. I’m George, I’m in architecture, I just lost my wife, and my favorite food is tofu salad.” George’s eyes darted up to the white board where “Amy” had written a few bullet points of what we could talk about. Adorable. Now I can learn everything about a person in three minutes. I’m bound to find true love here. We should have bar codes too. Just then my sister pins a name tag to my half-shirt.

“So who are you?” he says, his eyes glancing at--my name tag? I take an unenthusiastic gulp of martini. The bell rings. Oh well George. Guess you’ll never know who I am.

Part II

Each morning, the red vest I am forced to wear looks more and more becoming on me. At least I didn’t work at PriceMart. I heard at PriceMart, you have to wear a walkie talkie that spews out advertisements as you do your job. Like having your mother-in-law sewed to your back.

“Fourteen seventy three m'am.” I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to call anyone m’am anymore. Everything’s a damn fight these days.

“Oh,” this woman had been in the store eight times in the last three days. How much birdseed could a person possibly need to buy? But I guess that was none of my business.

“Here you go,” she handed me a twenty and once again said “keep the change.” Most people might think it was creepy that she sat at the bench all day watching the birds across the street. I thought it was kind of beautiful. I didn’t have to be alone in my red vest. My red vest. I didn’t like how that sounded.

“Excuse me, m’am?” she was walking away without her groceries. More and more she was looking more and more lost. Each and every day this old woman would convince me she was ready to live in an alley and conform to hobo culture. That or she was secretly a distracted genius distracted by all the genius floating around in her head. “You forgot your bag…” my voice trailed off.

“Oh.”Her eyes blank.

“M’am can I ask you something?” She stared at me. “Why are you always feeding the birds?”

“Is there a prob-lem here miss?” My supervisor, that walking stereotype, decided it was time to interfere. There can’t be too much conversation in his fine establishment without his consent. Ideas being traded, personalities being discovered. It would economically-ineffectient. It would be chaos!

“No.” She looked at him hatefully. “There isn’t.”

Part I

Everything about my car was maniacally unsatisfying to him. My father and mother had recently separated. Their marriage was like the big bang. Not meant to last longer than an instance. The first sixteen years of my life had been a 51 minute short film at some offbeat film festival. The usher was now blinding me with his unnecessary and I’m sure, empowering, flashlight, pushing me out into what is now existence.

Whenever I visited my dad, I would pick him up in my broken-down Toyota with the chipped red paint and the seat belts that pulled themselves on. When I slammed the door, the seat belts would not simply beep; they would choke themselves onto you. As if my mother’s voice could be heard through the crappy stereo system saying, “Drive safely dear.” The passenger side would jam as if to say aggressively, “Do whatever you want Howard.” My father’s mustache twitched as if not only conscious of this presence, but dependent on this hateful relationship. What were they if not only defined by what they weren’t? The car was borrowed from my mother, with remnants of her, the sierra club sticker on the rear window. And the shoes I drove with were my father’s old sneakers, but you’d be crazy not to believe that I was the one driving. This was mine.

When I got home, I reveled in the awkward silence my mother couldn’t help but create. For the first few weeks since their separation, my mother would ask 6-10 motherly questions, all with the form of “how was it?”, but reworded slightly. At a certain point, both of us got tired of the charade. Visits to my father are starting to feel more and more like infidelity.
The routine became simple.
Come home.
Shower.
Don’t discuss it.
Move on.
“Can I be excused?” was a phrase I had become increasingly comfortable with. Excusing myself from their fights, from the silence, from everything. The answer I received had not changed since the introduction of that fine selection of words into my life. They would both pause, nearly choking one another, and say the same thing. “Of course dear.” With that same fake look of concern they had rehearsed so many times for one another.

I lit a cigarette in bed. My mother hated it when I smoked in the apartment. I watched the end of the cigarette glow red and fiery. I took a puff and exhaled it. The smoke ascended to the yellow stained ceiling. The smoke caressed the silhouettes and shapes the water damage created. The kind of fantasy kids would get from watching clouds, I would get from water stains. Charming.

The shapes and forms melted off my hand effortlessly. It was as if there was a way for me. As if my hands didn’t spend the whole day “ring-ing up” customers. I hate that phrase. With that cigarette held between my middle and index finger, it was as if I’d never done anything else. My little piece of happiness stuck between the most offensive and most significant fingers on my hand; my middle finger, and my ring finger. What I said and who I belonged to. Imagine that. Lying there, watching the smoke move, I’d never felt more real.

“Will you stop smoking inside? I’m god damn sick of the smell!” Once again. Saved by the freaking bell. I smudged my cigarette in a “Jesus Loves Me” ash tray I made out of cheap shop rite brand clay in the fourth grade. I was so young and stupid. Jesus loves me. Bullshit. I turned out the light and lay in the dark.

Tyler Perkins

“Excuse me.” I was raised properly. I was taught to always use polite words. Anyone who was raised properly and given a good home knows to use polite words.

“Oh,” Honestly, I don’t know how people live with bad childhood. Mine was near perfect. And I’m not just saying that to brag. I was given the gift of a good Catholic home with a proper upbringing. And I’m not afraid to say so.

“M’am, could I get buy?” This woman was intolerable. I’ve always been taught that you give people 35 days of excuse after they lose a loved one. For 35 after their spouse’s death, they are excused from normal behavior. It’s silly, but it’s in the Bible.

“What?” Mrs. Tabitha Warren. She’d been so distracted since her husband died. I don’t spread rumors, because that creates chaos, but I did hear that she has only been able to sit by the lake feeding the birds. Poor soul. She moved aside.

“Mrs. Warren?” She stared at me blankly. Seeing as I was raised to be a proper gentlemen, I know that the etiquette is to address the widow by “Mrs.” Until she requests otherwise.

“Don’t you dare call me that.”

“Oh dear I’m sorry.” I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead. “I just wanted to know if you needed help with your groceries.” My pastor says that a proper gentlemen is kind and considerate to other members of the church. And before Tom Warren died, the Warrens were at Church service nearly every Sunday since before I was born.

“Do I look like I need your help carrying my birdseed? If I did, don’t you think I would ask my stupid husband to do it?”

“Yes. Of course Ms.” She had twenty twenty-nine days to behave like this. After that, it was uncordial conduct. And the Bible says I don’t have to tolerate it. Sometimes before I go to sleep, I wonder what it’s like to live with a bad childhood on your back. That must be such a burden to live with. Like a small child-version of yourself strapped to your leg. Constantly begging you to hang on to the past.

Collaborative Work

currently, i'm working on two collaborative pieces, both very different from one another.

the first is an undeclared creative work with a friend of mine. we both write a little bit and send it back and forth, never discussing what it will be about, only going with the direction it takes us in.

the second is a slightly more planned piece, but still left open to twists and turns. basically, it's a theological psychology fiction based on a condition we recently learned about in psychology, in which a case study revealed a patient who would have epileptic seizures during which he considered himself God. there is a lot more to it that I don't wish to reveal, but that's the starting point. in this work, there's more discussion about what we're trying to do.both are a great experiment in how collaborative writing works for me, and at large.