Wednesday, April 27, 2005

New poem from Siddie! I haven't written in so long... anything decent that is... and I would really love some feedback from you experts. I am also graduating in a week, so any advice you have in that department would be appreciated as well!! :)

walk home. 4 am in my
pocket. rain. streetlight. smells
like doughnuts. alone except
10-speed biker, darkly dressed. this
is where I find you. spanish
guitar, las canciones mas tristes. I
return. hands in your pockets. fingers
fidgeting with forgotten palabras.
invented amor. I imagine this
dewy night-morning in Cuba, walking same
shining streets. mundo nuevo valiente.
your face there too. I reach
el extremo. you will always
walk on. solamente junto,
junto, solamente.



I've never used a different language in poems before. I don't even speak Spanish. I was going somewhere else with the poem and then I turned on the Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack (you all should see the movie, it's phenomenal) and decided the poem needed a more beautiful language.
If this helps the reading, here are the translations.
las canciones mas tristes = the saddest songs
palabras = words
amor = love (obviously)
mundo nuevo valiente = brave new world (I've also been reading The Tempest a lot)
el extremo = the end
solamente junto, junto, solamente = alone together, together, alone

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Haruki Murakami

"There must be communist dentists in the world, but the whole lot of them could probably fit in four or five buses."

Haruki Murakami
South of the Border West of the Sun

Portraits of the Coffeehouse Patrons

Welcome to The Galley Cafe where the most diverse patronage could establish a community in the place. Conversations happen between complete strangers in ways a typical Starbucks never could. People become friends without ever learning one another's names. This is the "third place."

* A student sits revising a paper with a latte.

* A Greek Orthodox priest sits with a library book and the house blend.

* A woman sits with the morning paper and her cappuchino.

* A builder talks through a project with a client and a light breakfast and what smells like hazelnut.
* Two Thai business people dressed entirely in black get lattes to go.
* The group of men who meet every Thursday drink French Roast and tease the man who drinks decalf as they grip about the direction America's youth are taking the country. If only they could be in office.
* A former resident is back in town, drinking outside, smoking.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

What fun!

So after a long island, a nice shot and a beer, I joined my fellow poets in the blitz the other night.

Let me tell you....it was fun.

We successfully evaded the custodian in Lubbers while others got caught in Phelps. :)
And then we ran around campus taping poems to trees and signs (in my tipsy state of mind I kept taping them to trees and then yelling 'look! it's poet tree!').

Eventually, we ended up with more tape than poems....so we, uh, double and triple enforced them. Trust me, whoever took some of them down must have taken quite some time doing it.

I wish I could do that every night.
This was the first year that I actually saw poetry up after 11 am.
Well, at least outside.
It seemed as though the grounds crew was a little slow on the picking up process.

That made me happy.