Age 10: The Offspring - Smash (Angry lyrics, lovely noise...)
Age 11-12: Soundtrack to The Crow (Love and pain and killer's poise...)
Age 13: The Roots - Things Fall Apart (Boastful pride as darkness looms...)
Age 14: Jack Johnson - Brushfire Fairytales (Smooth notes soften schoolhouse doom...)
Age 15-16: Modest Mouse - Lonesome Crowded West (Headphones on, alone at last...)
Age 18: Phil and Jimmy - EP (Found: excuse to fail in class...)
Age 20: Ani DiFranco - Out of Range (Understanding woman's scorn...)
Age 22: Paramore - Riot (From the ashes, love reborn...)
Age 23: Imogen Heap - Ellipse (Fountain, liberated, wild...)
Age 24: Ben Folds & Nick Hornby - Lonely Avenue (Purpose-hungry, music-child.)
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Greenwich Village
When I got sick of my folks I got into Dan's car and we drove all over the place. Dan had this real bad acne. Sometimes he put vaseline on it so the zits would ripen up and he could squeeze them. He was a real good guy.
We drove all the way up to Ohio once. We had a girl with us and she wanted to see the water that went out to the sky. I'm sick of the fucking quarry. She had a cigarette that she kept bringing to her mouth between her thumb and her forefinger. She wore a striped shirt and I could see her nipples rippling in the irregular cotton like the jiggling navels of water balloons. She was beautiful. She made me want to eat glass and rip baby ducks apart. We were taking some pills that Dan had stolen from his mother. When we passed the square, he laughed maniacally and wouldn't turn, even when the girl yanked on his collar and shrieked with her mouth pressed up to his hair. We drove through the night and when we reached the lakes she was asleep, curled up like a dog on the carpet behind the passenger side with her head propped on the leather bucket seat. Her hair was splayed out like a frond. I remember that blond dyed color. It had a brass to it that shone like a copper fan in the dawn glow. It was nice.
We hitchhiked to New York. We got into Greenwich Village and this head trucked up to us. C'mere. He gave us a joint and walked us through street after street. We were both about fifteen. I had on my army jacket and my filthy denim johns. I'd patched them up. An archway rose before us, stark and tan, birdshit cascading off it like icicles. We stepped through the arch into the jangling purse of a war rally. I held a little leather gris-gris bag around my neck with some money in it and a gold watch I'd found on the ground. This bag was stolen by the head. He snapped it from my neck and fell into the spitting banks of crowd with a stag grace at just the same moment that a tear gas bomb sliced the wall just by my ear. The crowd drew from me like I've seen paint draw from salt. I remember the still faces of the hippies. They looked like a river right after a car gets in it.
We drove all the way up to Ohio once. We had a girl with us and she wanted to see the water that went out to the sky. I'm sick of the fucking quarry. She had a cigarette that she kept bringing to her mouth between her thumb and her forefinger. She wore a striped shirt and I could see her nipples rippling in the irregular cotton like the jiggling navels of water balloons. She was beautiful. She made me want to eat glass and rip baby ducks apart. We were taking some pills that Dan had stolen from his mother. When we passed the square, he laughed maniacally and wouldn't turn, even when the girl yanked on his collar and shrieked with her mouth pressed up to his hair. We drove through the night and when we reached the lakes she was asleep, curled up like a dog on the carpet behind the passenger side with her head propped on the leather bucket seat. Her hair was splayed out like a frond. I remember that blond dyed color. It had a brass to it that shone like a copper fan in the dawn glow. It was nice.
We hitchhiked to New York. We got into Greenwich Village and this head trucked up to us. C'mere. He gave us a joint and walked us through street after street. We were both about fifteen. I had on my army jacket and my filthy denim johns. I'd patched them up. An archway rose before us, stark and tan, birdshit cascading off it like icicles. We stepped through the arch into the jangling purse of a war rally. I held a little leather gris-gris bag around my neck with some money in it and a gold watch I'd found on the ground. This bag was stolen by the head. He snapped it from my neck and fell into the spitting banks of crowd with a stag grace at just the same moment that a tear gas bomb sliced the wall just by my ear. The crowd drew from me like I've seen paint draw from salt. I remember the still faces of the hippies. They looked like a river right after a car gets in it.
Memoir.
This week, we'll be celebrating the new year by looking back.
Real memoir, fictive memoir, memoirs of a geisha--spill your guts or someone else's, but irregardless,
Write with guts.
HERKIMER
Real memoir, fictive memoir, memoirs of a geisha--spill your guts or someone else's, but irregardless,
Write with guts.
HERKIMER
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Bird
The bird was dead before I got there.
I looked up at the heavy gray clouds, which were crying for the tiny brown-feathered avian life form that had been snuffed out in a manner unknown to me. I was hiding under a hard yellow plastic chair, trying to keep dry. It was melodramatic of me, and it wasn't stopping the rain from drenching my clothes. I was seven years old, so maybe I just didn't know better.
I studied the bird hard. Did the cold rain kill him? His dead body seemed lonely, just like me.
Rewind two hours. My dad dropped me off at the schoolyard, and neither of us noticed anything strange. I was late, of course, and both the parking lot and playground were empty. My dad gave me a bear hug, and I hopped out of the car wish a wet rubber squish. It had rained the previous night, and puffy coal clouds threatened a second round. I ran with that awkward side-to-side gait peculiar to young kids running quickly under a heavy backpack.
I speed-waddled up to the classroom door. Locked...pupil-free day. This is bad.
That's when it started to rain.
Two hours later, I was under the only shelter I could find. Actually, I think I sought out the hard yellow plastic chair because it seemed to be the most pitiful option, and I felt pretty pitiful. I found the dead bird there -a sparrow perhaps? - laying on his side under the chair, stiff as a board but whole. Did he die from feeling pitiful?
I knew my situation wasn't hopeless. Truth be told, part of me was excited that this unusual thing was happening to me. In my head, I half-hoped that this was the beginning of a magical adventure. I was always hoping during that time that a magical adventure would happen to me. That's probably why I buried the bird.
I carried him in my hand, over to the planter that housed the only tree in the otherwise asphalt playground. My fingers hit the hard earth, and I kept digging until I had a hole big enough for a little bird in the mind of a seven-year-old. I think it was about four inches deep.
Gently, gently, I dropped the bird friend I had never had into the hole and covered him up. I felt that I had done a good deed, that my time when everyone was gone at school had left a story in the black asphalt. I guess it did.
My Dad picked me up at 3:15, and did not seem appropriately horrified that I had been left alone at school all day. I didn't tell him about the bird, but now I can't remember why.
I looked up at the heavy gray clouds, which were crying for the tiny brown-feathered avian life form that had been snuffed out in a manner unknown to me. I was hiding under a hard yellow plastic chair, trying to keep dry. It was melodramatic of me, and it wasn't stopping the rain from drenching my clothes. I was seven years old, so maybe I just didn't know better.
I studied the bird hard. Did the cold rain kill him? His dead body seemed lonely, just like me.
Rewind two hours. My dad dropped me off at the schoolyard, and neither of us noticed anything strange. I was late, of course, and both the parking lot and playground were empty. My dad gave me a bear hug, and I hopped out of the car wish a wet rubber squish. It had rained the previous night, and puffy coal clouds threatened a second round. I ran with that awkward side-to-side gait peculiar to young kids running quickly under a heavy backpack.
I speed-waddled up to the classroom door. Locked...pupil-free day. This is bad.
That's when it started to rain.
Two hours later, I was under the only shelter I could find. Actually, I think I sought out the hard yellow plastic chair because it seemed to be the most pitiful option, and I felt pretty pitiful. I found the dead bird there -a sparrow perhaps? - laying on his side under the chair, stiff as a board but whole. Did he die from feeling pitiful?
I knew my situation wasn't hopeless. Truth be told, part of me was excited that this unusual thing was happening to me. In my head, I half-hoped that this was the beginning of a magical adventure. I was always hoping during that time that a magical adventure would happen to me. That's probably why I buried the bird.
I carried him in my hand, over to the planter that housed the only tree in the otherwise asphalt playground. My fingers hit the hard earth, and I kept digging until I had a hole big enough for a little bird in the mind of a seven-year-old. I think it was about four inches deep.
Gently, gently, I dropped the bird friend I had never had into the hole and covered him up. I felt that I had done a good deed, that my time when everyone was gone at school had left a story in the black asphalt. I guess it did.
My Dad picked me up at 3:15, and did not seem appropriately horrified that I had been left alone at school all day. I didn't tell him about the bird, but now I can't remember why.
Postapocalyptic Haiku
Ummm... Mom? Dad? Stacy?
...
Perry? Fred? Steven? HELLLLOOO??
...
Where is everyone?
...
Perry? Fred? Steven? HELLLLOOO??
...
Where is everyone?
One day, everybody's gone.
Hi from the Herkimer Review!
This week, you have the world to yourself.
Write with guts!
Snowstorms, free cars, and zombie apocalpyses,
HERKIMER
This week, you have the world to yourself.
Write with guts!
Snowstorms, free cars, and zombie apocalpyses,
HERKIMER
Friday, December 17, 2010
Kudzu
Along a grey road that cuts through a green world,
you reach across the horizon,
each leaf the same, twisting, circling up.
There is a car, a Chevy from the 70's, perhaps once it was blue.
The creeping blanket has engulfed it mostly, through each window,
across the cab, over the hood, with a pointed tongue, its tip extended, its brown tip.
A house, no longer a home, verdant and abundant, sits sentinel over a field, where cotton was picked and pickles were made.
I lay on the grass and wait for the kudzu to reach me, I wait to forget.
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