Monotony

I really like the imagery in this poem, even if it is pretty sad.

Clean Break

Making your rounds, a new morning

Stirs, a honeycomb adorning

The stark silhouette of tree-tops,

A chrysalis of stars that drops

Its dark shell into the coffee pot.

Stiff smelling, out to local shops

You go, the old familiar stops;

Inside a mug some flowers rot,

Making your rounds.

Down the fridge, petals mourning,

Falling past son’s art: a warning,

Scraping the sinews.  The soiled mops

You use that act as callous props

Caught in a stale, old-fashioned plot,

Making your rounds.

The Weekender

The past few weeks have been some of the most stressful of my life.  So this weekend I tried to put all my stressful thoughts aside for awhile and just enjoy myself. 

On Friday night Nikki and I went for dinner at Zia’s at the Red Door in downtown Harrisburg.  This was the first time for me at this particular restaurant and I told myself I was going to step out of my comfort zone a bit.  For an appetizer we got fried calamari with marinara, which was absolutely delicious.  It’s crazy how someone can take such an ugly animal and make it so yummy.  For my main course I got pesto roasted Chilean sea bass with asparagus and corn risotto.  It was probably the most moist, flakey piece of fish I’ve ever eaten.  All-in-all our experience was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to all my friends.  Sorry I don’t have any pictures; guess that’s what I get for still having a crappy flip-phone.

Saturday was fairly uneventful.  Most of it was spent lounging in front of the TV on my incredibly comfortable love seat.

Sunday saw me pick up my guitar for the first time.  I’ve been reading my Guitar for Dummies book and the first few chapters don’t really have much to do with actually playing.  Sunday however, I worked on positioning the guitar, hand placement, tuning the guitar, and even attempted a few chords (poorly).  One of the most difficult things about playing the guitar, according to my book, is building up the muscles in your left hand in order to depress the strings properly.  Guess I need to start using my left hand more.

Now the weekend is over and it’s back to work and back to my stressful thoughts.  Oh well, maybe if I just ignore them they’ll go away.

Codes and Keys

I had a chance to listen to more of Death Cab for Cutie’s latest album, Codes and Keys; definitely enjoying listening to Ben Gibbard’s voice.  Also, while playing around on the internet looking for videos of some of Death Cab’s songs I found out that Gibbard was actually married to Zooey Deschanel for two years and that they just recently finalized their divorce.  That definitely puts an interesting spin on some of the lyrics in the songs.  I have a feeling that I’ll be listening to this album nonstop for some time J.

Poem: Chinese Finger-trap

Another old poem.  I wrote this after winning a consolation prize at a carnival game.

Chinese Finger-trap

Thin strips of wood weaved pink and tan,

Like ribbon braided into golden locks,

To span the body of a hollowed snake

That squeezes with each gentle tug.

Such is the finest bondage for any loving pair

That when one starts to pull away

Both are squeezed and made aware

Of the warmth of drifting hands

That if ignored could make,

With slightest strength, a tear

And expose no-longer-touching fingertips.

New Music

So I’ve been dying for some new music recently.  I’ve been finding little songs here and there to kind of wet my appetite, but up until a couple weeks ago I hadn’t really found a new band that I liked enough to buy an entire album.  That all changed when I listened to Goldspot’s album Tally of the Yes Men. 

I first heard their song Rewind on an episode of How I Met Your Mother and decided to give them a try.  Best decision of 2011, by far.  I have been listening to it nonstop for about a week now.  The lead singer is an Indian guy by the name of Siddhartha Khosla, which makes his voice that much more impressive.

My favorite songs on the album are, in order, 1)Motorcade, 2)Friday, 3)Rewind, 4)The Assistant, and 5)Time Bomb.  The rest are pretty good as well, but those are definitely in a class of their own.  If you haven’t heard them before I highly recommend you give them a listen.

In other music news, I am currently trying to catch up on my Death Cab.  I’ve been slacking and a recent Google search enlightened me to the fact that they put out two new albums while my back was turned.  Very sneaky.  Anyway, I haven’t gotten to listen to much of either one so far but this song kind of caught my ear.

Premonition

I wrote this a couple year's ago and reading it now it seems appropriate.  Perhaps it's a vision from the future.

Doing the Dishes

This afternoon I caught you with

Your thoughts spread out over the fields of Kansas

Like mayonnaise over whole wheat toast,

All white and bland and completely unknown to me.

So I sat and watched you do the dishes

As food gathered in the mouth of the drain

And water welled up in the sink.

You stood bowed in prayer beneath the westing sun

Like one who comes upon a box of trinkets

Tucked away under an old brass bed

The bottle caps and broken toys that seem

To sum up, with a mournful sigh, a life.

And you cradled each dish for a moment

Turning them over in the fading light;

And food gathered in the mouth of the drain

And water welled up in the sink.

Your pale ringless fingers skated over the Teflon

Face of a pan you caught your reflection in;

I heard the flick of your long nails picking at the crusted

Bits of acne from last nights’ dinner;

Your hands were slow and gently methodical

As though you were washing the face of a child;

Food gathered in the mouth of the drain

And water welled up in the sink.

I listened to you idly remark of several springs ago

And how dreadfully pink your shoulders got

As you stood rubbing the fake porcelain plates,

Trying to coat them with the warm luster of your skin

As one panning an old stream rubs yellow rocks with gold;

And food gathered in the mouth of the drain

And water welled up in the sink.

So this is the New Year

With the start of a New Year come hopes and dreams for the future.  Now, I am terrible at making a plan and following through with it, but I figured that a good place to start would be to make a list of the things I hope to accomplish this year; this way I can look back at it periodically to see how I’m doing.

·         BABIES.  The most important thing on my mind right now is getting this whole baby situation figured out.  Nikki and I have been talking on and off about it for a couple days now and don’t seem to be getting anywhere.  She keeps trying to reason with me and get me to feel something that just isn’t there.  I’m just not ready for children yet.  Not sure how this is going to play out, but something has got to give.

·         RELATIONSHIPS.  In an earlier blog post I complained (seems like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, sorry) that I seem to have fallen out of contact with most of my friends.  I have already started trying to change that.  I e-mailed one friend from college who I haven’t spoken to in almost 4 years and who seemed genuinely happy and excited to talk to me.  As bad as I am at following through, I have to keep this up.  My life just seems to be missing some good close friends and that is not the life I want.

·         BEING MYSELF.  It seems that whenever I’m around people I tend to change what I say and how I act to accommodate them.  I feel like I have lost a bit of who I am, that I’m slowly turning into this bland amorphous goo.  I need to stop trying to please everyone, stop worrying about what other people think, and just be myself.

·         GUITAR.  My biggest present this Christmas was my very own guitar.  I also got Guitar for Dummies and a couple song books.  My goal for this year is to get the basics down and hopefully be playing some easy songs by years’ end.  I know me, and it’ll be tough to stick with it at first, but I can’t let myself get discouraged.  This has the potential of being yet another great creative release.

·         SIGN LANGUAGE.  I started learning sign language as a way to pass my down time at work and found it to be very enjoyable.  I was hoping to get a book on sign language as a Christmas present, but I guess Santa didn’t get my letter.  No matter, I plan on buying the book myself and continuing my deaf education.

·         DO SOMETHING I’VE NEVER DONE.  I’ve been thinking that my life is missing a certain bit of excitement.  Yes, I’m a fairly successful 26-year-old accountant, but that isn’t exactly something to write home about.  Most of my weekends consist of sitting at home watching TV or visiting the in-laws.  I want more than that from my life.  I want spontaneous road-trips to random destinations.  I want to eat strange food.  I want to find things I didn’t even know existed.  I want to have adventures.  I don’t want to rot in front of a TV or a computer screen for the rest of my life, seeing pictures and reading stories about people living the life I want.

·         EXERCISE.  Near the end of the summer I started going to the gym again, something I did daily during high school and early on in college.  I was able to get into pretty good shape and while I don’t consider myself a vain person, I do like to look good.  I haven’t been to the gym in several weeks, due in large part to Nikki’s situation with her knee, but I hope to get back into it.  I know all too well that the hardest part of getting in shape is the first week.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.  Not sure if any of this really matters since the apocalypse is happening at the end of this year ;-).  Better get busy livin’ it up while I can!