Archive for the ‘Classics’ Category

Beauty Catch Me On Your Tongue

October 26th, 2013

This is beautiful and hard to put descriptive words to. I used to write as a way to let the crazy voices escape my head. I need to start writing again, as the voices have only gotten louder as they have been trapped. But a video like this, reminds me that I will never be a “good” poet. Not sure if this video encourages me to write more, or discourages me as I will never be this good. This is good. Watch this.

Birthday

At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
and left bruises the shape of Salem.
There are things we know by heart,
and things we don’t.

At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
I’d watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
but I could never make dying beautiful.
The sky didn’t fill with colors the night I convinced myself
veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
I suppose I love this life,

in spite of my clenched fist.

I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

But my lungs remember
the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister’s heartbeat.
And I knew life would tremble
like the first tear on a prison guard’s hardened cheek,
like a prayer on a dying man’s lips,
like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
just take me just take me

Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
but you still have to call it a birthday.
You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
further than any boy in the whole third grade

and I’ve been running for home
through the windpipe of a man who sings
while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
on a street corner in New Orleans
where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
We’re Coming Back
like a promise to the ocean
that we will always keep moving towards the music,
the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.

Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
Thunder, clap us open.
The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona dessert,
then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier’s gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.

Don’t cover your ears, Love.
Don’t cover your ears, Life.
There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
and as he writes he moves
and his bones become the bars of Mandela’s jail cell stretching apart,
and there are men playing chess in the December cold
who can’t tell if the breath rising from the board
is their opponents or their own,
and there’s a woman on the stairwell of the subway
swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
and I’m remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
with strip malls and traffic and vendors
and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.

Ya’ll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.

Opportunities Look A Lot Like Work

August 13th, 2013

a good award speech by Ashton Kutcher and worth a watch.

Dexter In 60 Seconds

June 18th, 2013

Dimes

May 24th, 2013

A great game to play at a baseball game, better with more people, but I have played with as little as 3.

It is your batter…

Out = -.10
1B = +.10
2B = +.20
3b = +.30
HR = +.25
Beach Ball on Field = -$1
HBP = +.10
Walk = +.10
Sacrafice = Even
Reach By Error (unless it is a single and an error etc) = Even
RBI = +.10
SB = +.10
CS = -.10
K Swinging = -.10
K Looking = -.25

Paid out to each player, or from each player

Vertical Video PSA

August 29th, 2012

Always say NO to old Mila Kunis.

We’ve Accomplished Almost Nothing

June 3rd, 2012

This video was made by Yahoo! Sketch comedy team, and it is a parody of the bottom video/song We Are Young. And it is sad and depressing. And it is something that I have been relating to all my life. Which is even more sad and depressing. But I love songs and lyrics that can pull those emotions out of me, kind of makes me feel alive – and sad and depressed.

I find it funny, this song was made by yahoo, but at the 3:29 mark, the character does a search and uses google.

Original Song:

Everything’s Amazing And Noboby’s Happy

June 13th, 2011

Hands, 90% Of Spanish

June 7th, 2011

Don’t Drink The Water

May 19th, 2011

I thought I had this video on my site already, but couldn’t find it when I searched. It is definitely a classic, definitely gross.

Hip Hop Medley

October 4th, 2010

Justin Timberlake can do no wrong!

This Week I'm Thinking About: Jason Roth