March Mission: The Bloomin' Muse Poetry Slam and Art Expo

For our March mission we decided to read a poem for The Bloomin' Muse, a poetry slam/art expo at Living Word on March 15. The theme was "Spring".

Chris

Last year I read one serious poem, and one funny poem. The funny poem got so much good feedback, that I wanted to do something fun again, but it turned out to be mostly serious. Oh well, there's always next year. It was fun to read, though, and I really liked it, even if I was the only one. Here it is:

Enjoy It

 

Saw a crow

Lunching inside a ribcage
At the side of the road the other day.
Seriously.
Felt like I caught Nature in the act
Of poking a corpse with a stick.

Nature’s such a kid sometimes,

Playing with dead stuff.

But hey,
It’s Spring!
A time when we forgive
The earth for being
Cold towards us and all we love.
Swollen-veined leaves,
Blood-ripe fruit,
Pods bursting,
Birds singing,
Bees buzzing,
Bugs biting…
(Hate them),
Everything sporting its new flesh;
Showing off its abs.

Who couldn’t get caught up in it?

Plants, animals and people in good health
And…
Still alive.

 Apparently,

This is too much of one thing.
Bodies are painstakingly engineered with a short shelf-life.
Planned obsolescence.

I can hear Nature cajoling her children,

“Oh my, what a beauty you are.
Oh if last year’s flowers could see you now.”

Ah, yeah well, I try.

“Only, I still think I can do better…”

Wait…wha?!!!

 Extravagant Nature,

Picking her darlings,
Bleaching their skulls clean,
To try ‘something new’.
Cashing in her prize-winners,
For fertilizer.
Tucks them quietly in the sod,
Sometimes not so quietly,
Wrestling them to bed.

 So extravagant a remodeling.

 In this way, generations pass.

People, animals, grass.
Swept away.
And for what?

 Well…

For me.
For you.
For what you could be
But can’t see.
For your love to be free from greed
Of what doesn’t live or bleed.
For a new seed
Of a dead dream.

 You ask,

“How can this be?”
“Can a man be born when he is old?”
Don’t you know, silly?
Your roots are deep.
They penetrate to the very heart of all that is.
They are the arteries of the Cosmos.
You are the hairs on God’s arm, son!
You, the eyelashes, daughter!
Your brains rot,
But your mind is safe.

 File. Click.

Save. Click.
“X.” Click. [closed eyes]

 Now go ahead.

Sing your most expensive song.
Don’t waste your time,
And mine,
Whimpering your anthem.
What are you thinking???
Belt it out!
Burst your lungs with that one wild song!!!
Make the Universe
Turn its head,
To watch you,
Just you,
And ask you to sing your song
One more time.
Oh, I promise you,
You won’t be soon forgotten,
Or without some new face,
When next Spring rolls around.

Matt

February Mission: Kemper Art Museum

Matt:

For February we tried to inject a little culture into our brains, and went to see the art at the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University. This was reminiscent of our August mission last year, except instead of modern video art, the main attraction was the newly opened Georges Braque Exhibition.Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945 was an entire collect of Cubism art, which Braque and Pablo Picasso invented. It’s interesting to me that students of art put labels to different styles of painting, and more interesting still that some artists choose to do all of their work under one style. While viewing the gallery, I was able to see what made Cubism unique, but I have to admit that I didn’t really get it. There were a few paintings where I did get a sense that the painter’s perspective had varying angles that were all painted together, but overall it just looked kind of… well, juvenile. What I mean is that there were very few that looked like they took a great deal of talent to make.

I think that there is something to be gained to try and get a deeper understanding of something that someone else has put themselves into. That’s why I decided to spend one hour researching Cubism, to see if I could gain at least more knowledge, if not a better appreciation, for the art form.

I have to admit that I may have not made it the entire hour. I basically looked closely at 3 different search results, including Wikipedia, an article from an art site, and wiki.answer.com. Surprisingly, I got the most out of the wiki answers site. It was the shortest, but I really liked the artists’ quotes:

- Many think that Cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a fetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life… …If Cubism is an art of transition I am sure that the only thing that will come out of it is another form of Cubism (Paris 1923). 

* artist quotations from 'Picasso speaks', text by Marius Zayas, in 'The Arts', New York, May 1923

- When objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909; this for me was a way of getting closest to the object… …Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.
* artist quote by George Braque, from "Braque", Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 55

The summary on Wiki answers made me realize that Cubism is an analytical method. I like the idea of breaking something down into 3-dimensional pieces in your mind, then reassembling them on a 2-dimensional canvas. Now, I’m not saying that all of the artwork we looked at suddenly made sense to me, but I like the idea. I’m sure that the artists liked the idea as well, which is why they spent so much time working on it, but I’m also sure that they didn't always get it right. I think that’s why I don’t spend a lot of time of making my own art. What I end up with rarely fits the image in my head. BUT, it’s also true that sometimes, sometimes, the manifested thing is better than the idea. Or sometimes it’s altogether different, but that’s okay too.

This was an interesting, if somewhat passive, mission that I’d like to believe led to me having gained a little bit of appreciation for some art. My “research” was pretty interesting, even when Wikipedia started to delve way deeper than I was prepared to go on the subject. I don’t know that all art needs context, but for me it can give deeper meaning and interest to the subject. 

Chris:

This was really fun. The art museum has some great pieces in it, including a great money museum on the lower level, and the concentration of Braque’s works was outstanding. It was a very educational experience, and offered us a chance to break our eye open to some new ways of thinking about the function of art.

Matt and I challenged ourselves to try and appreciate Braque’s work when leaving the museum. Some of it, honestly, was ugly. But could there be a revelation we might unearth that could transform the meaning of his work in our minds as something beautiful? We wanted to find out. I tried to pick out the ugliest piece I could remember for this experiment. “The Blue Mandolin” was that piece. It’s hideoderous. http://c48743.r43.cf3.rackcdn.com/Images/2009_03/12/0009/78037/78037_69847e57-dd6d-49a9-8a97-445617523aba_-1_273.Jpeg. Say it with me, “What thuh bloody hail?” But here’s how I learned to appreciate this piece of crap after a bit of autodidactic sleuthery.

Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. Remember, cubism came at the end of the impressionist movement, which already began experimenting with immediate, personal sense impressions of a scene, and not an attempt to replicate a traditional outlook. He questioned our perspective, and attempted to dissect our perspective into its  distinct elements as we try to ‘blend’ with a summarizing glance. What basic geometric shapes come together in our mind to form the outline of this object? Braque attempted to communicate these shapes and distinct perspective in his painting. But how was that to be done? There’s no precedent? Of course there’s not. So Braque did what any sensible person of his artistic caliber would do: he B.S.’d it. I mean that idiomatically, but not in its worse sense. He made it up. It’s what artists do. And someone must’ve looked at it from the perspective of a post-impressionist, avant-garde artist, and recognized the message of spacial deconstruction of perspective and thought it was genius. The colors, lines, and other novel methods such as decoupage served mostly to accentuate the technique further. The reason, in my understanding, that some of it is more esthetically pleasing than others (see “Violin And Pitcher.” http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-braque/violin-and-pitcher-1910) is because it took pains to be so, while the other did not. Can’t always have the music with the message, if you know what I mean.

I would even go so far to say that works like “Blue Mandolin” were supposed to look like crap. On first look, anyway. It is a stripping away of our conventional, rational trappings, our way of ordering the world according to old, familiar ideas. It is the breakdown of narrow perspective; to render, according to some, “familiar worlds unfamiliar, or even hallucinatory,” not to dispose of the notion of perception, but to broaden it. Whereas impressionism took a step back from the crystallized lines of our limitations for reality, and oiled the joints of our mind to enwrap the whole in a single glance blurred to clinching details; so now cubism sought to help us be a bit more conscious of our judgments and categorizations that we often too quickly slip into.

And we have to keep in mind that art like cubism is a bit esoteric, and even the ugly stuff is loved by many people because it is mysterious and somehow stands in our minds as a tightly locked riddle that holds in front of our dim eyes the solution to the secrets of geniuses like Picasso and Braque. Braque himself stated, “The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, and even if they were, no one would understand them anymore. It was like being roped together on a mountain.”

So, yeah, I think I can say I understand Braque a little better, and even appreciate his works more than I did. And I feel wiser, not merely to his works, but because of them. But, I would have to have a little more wine before I go directly back and try to understand more of Braque’s ugly art anytime soon. One can only do so much ugly at one time.

First mission in January, 2013 --We climbed trees!

So we decided to kick things off with tree-climbing. Yup. Oh how close to adventure we so often rot! You don't need to travel across the globe to find excitement...it's right there in your backyard! Are you brave enough to flout your neighbor's opinion of you, dredge up a simple childhood pleasure, and crack a joint open for a change of scenery? Our stories and pictures below.

Chris:

We chose to climb trees for our first Not-Rot mission because it was relatively simple, easy to commence, and full of potential for…fun! I used to love climbing trees. Some of my favorite memories are of racing my brothers up the gigantic pine tree that was across the street. We literally had timed races to the top and back down, the branches being so abundant and close together that there was small risk of falling. The tip had been sawn off years earlier leaving a relatively flat area so we could stand hands-free from the branches at the very tip and look out over the two-story houses in any direction. I’ll never forget the hawk-like perspective, “the earth’s face upward for my inspection”,and thinking how different the world could look with a relatively small shift in bodily position.

G.K. Chesterton said that we tell children fantastic stories about the world, not because children necessarily need a new twist on reality, but because we as adults have forgotten how wonderful the world is as it is to new eyes. “These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.” We have forgotten there are still adventures to be had even in our own backyard where the organic playgrounds we call trees beckon to us. But many of us are too old. Just in case that wasn’t insulting enough, allow me to rephrase: maybe we’re afraid we’ll break if we brush against the elements like we did when we were children, but I think maybe we’re just mostly tired and working too hard for a sleepy retirement on a nice couch somewhere where Obama can’t break through the walls of our hoarded property. I want to live “close to the bone”. This is my body, that is a tree. Climb on.

Matt and I climbed on a perfect January day. I keep thinking back on it. We had so much fun. We made contests out of picking out ‘climbable’ trees versus ‘unclimbable’ ones, and trying to best each other in a multitude of climbing games. One tree only had a couple small knots we could get a handle on to hoist ourselves up to the lowest branch. Another tree was small and bent over so that it didn’t extend above my head, but we created an objective to walk up its bowed trunk and balance on it for a picture. We had to use muscles we didn’t normally use, we had to problem-solve to get to new branches without killing ourselves, and we were both battling our fear of heights. All the while it was a gorgeous day, with perfect weather.

Looking at the pictures we took is a bit surreal because I don’t usually picture myself at the top of trees. I’ve become a ground-dweller in more ways than one. Every object in the world that registers in our minds represents either a possibility or a limitation. I want to keep the tops of trees open in my mind as a possibility, an opportunity for a new perspective. I want to make friends with trees again, like the boy in The Giving Tree, and I don’t want to realize at the end of my life that I sold everything that was dear to me only to sit on a dead stump.

Matt:

We didn't choose to climb trees in January because it was easy. In fact, 'easy' rarely factors into Not-Rot missions. Yeah, we know it's cold (or should be without global warming...be prepared snitches!!), and we know some dead branches look strong but are really empty husks waiting for the right opportunity to snap off under our weight. But we weren't stupid about it. We wore gloves when we needed them, had multiple points of contact on the tree, and didn't climb too far beyond our comfort range. We took just enough risks to flout our mattress-worshipping asses. Here's what I liked most:

• Simple, physical activity that acted as a sort of skill check for strength and agility
• Targeting trees that had good climb potential
• Creating new challenges for trees that didn't immediately appear climbable
• Exerting our strength to go UP against demon Gravity
• Not falling and splitting a pelvis

I was most surprised to discover as the day wore on that my will to climb more trees wore out way before my physical strength. While the activity itself was exhilerating, it was also stressful. A heightened awareness of danger, however small, weights on you after a while. Climbing up wasn't so bad, but getting down was something else altogether! The sense of risk, real or imagined, increased, and eventually outweighed the rewards. We became exhausted. Studies show that our willpower is not unlimited, and can be quite literally spent. However, we can "exercise" our will by occasionally doing just one more thing that we don't feel like doing. Like muscuclar exercise, this incremental increase in risk-taking can amplify and strengthen willpower, and who doesn't need more of that? Sure, safety isn't to be mocked at, but as far as this blog is concerned...get off your duff and go climb something!

2013 Not-Rot Calendar

The Not-Rot calendar for 2013 is set! Be watching for our blogs to come out by the end of each month. Want to come along? Send us a line!

January 26: Tree Climbing
February 9: Kemper Art Museum
March 15: Bloomin' Muse
April 23: World Book Night
May 4: Shortest distance, furthest culture
June 8: Youtube video
July 13: Host a not-rot meetup--Thrift Art Contest
August 10: Build something for soapbox derby or something of the like for Cesi/Oliver.
September 14: Join a meetup
October 4-5: Camp and Climb
November 9: Burn shtuff
December 14: Join a meetup--caroling/sports/snowball fight

"Are you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet." --Jack London

December Mission: New Job and 2 Books

So, Matt got a new job! Which means things sort of got rearranged for our Not-Rot missions at the end of 2012. But we decided we would still blog about new things we did in December and the year in review.

Matt:

We did it! An entire year of this grand experiment we call Not-Rot. For our December mission we had to deviate a little from the norm, and instead of an active mission, we chose to focus on some other ways we avoided rotting. Below are some things I did this year to better myself, benefit my family, and most of all stop the creeping rot. In some ways, this blog may have spurred me to try and better myself, pushing me to do things I otherwise wouldn't, by reminding me each month that I should be striving for more in my life. Because even though the blog was mostly a once a month event, it didn't mean that I was bummin it on the couch the rest of the time. Here are some things I did this year to be a better Not-Rotter:

• Finished my degree. Since this happened more than 6 months ago, I almost forgot it happened this year. This was a major achievement for me, and I'm proud to say I'm finally a college graduate.

• Got a new job. This was kind of a big deal, My old job was pretty stable, I made decent money for a entry-level position, and I was good at it. The new job is with a much smaller company, there's a huge learning curve, and I went from being in a lab all the time to being on the road all the time. That's a lot of changes all at once. But as Jack London said, "I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet." 

• Joined a climbing gym and climbed 1-2 times per week, every week this year. For years I have wanted to be a climber, and climb regularly in a gym (and outside too). Since I finished up school this year, I was finally able to make this a reality. This was so important to me because it's something I really enjoy, and it is so good for me physically. 

What an amazing year! This post sort of became a shout-out to my own accomplishments, but I feel pretty good about this year, and these things above all reflect my desire to follow the philosophy of the blog, and NOT ROT. This year will be a tough act to follow! 

Chris:
I made two books for my kids for Christmas. For my 6-year-old daughter I made a "Break-A-Book." I saw a book called Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith in a bookstore, and totally ganked some ideas. It is a book that you can tear up, draw in, and otherwise destroy piece by piece. I decided to buy a blank book and write my own challenges for Cesi in it. I came up with 115 challenges, including these:

• Stand on this page and jump up and down. Now wipe your shoes on it.
• Poke your pen/pencil through these holes.
• Write really hard with a pencil. Now write hard with a pen, a marker, and then a crayon.
• Go get your hands in the dirt. Now smear a picture with that dirt on this page.
•  Draw a big head with a big face. Now draw so much hair on the head that it covers the entire pages!
• Find a picture of a house. Put it in here. Now find pictures of little people and fill the house up with family!
• Ask people to draw 5 beautiful faces on this page. Now draw mustaches on those faces and laugh!
• Scratch using a sharp object
• Color with crayons of all colors on this page. Now cover it all with black. Now, scratch pictures into it with a paperclip, penny, or your fingernail.

She loved it of course. We're still only halfway through the book. We complete missions together, and we have so much fun. It took me about 3 hours to complete, but she loves it.


For my 3-year-old boy, I made a book that basically is a bunch of shapes from page to page that change shapes, colors, and positions as you poke them and turn the page. I titled it "Poke It Sir!" (after Scrooge's famous line urging Bob Cratchet to poke the fire instead of buy more coal), and he loves saying "poke it sir" when it's time to influence the shapes. It is such a simple idea, based on a book we found in the library called Press Here by Herve Tullet, and only took me a blank book, a new set of markers, and a couple hours to make. Such fun projects that the kids loved and seemed to appreciate the time I put into them. Of course, I only have pictures of the Break-A-Book. My son must have eaten his book or something, because we can't find it.

November Mission: Burning Shtuff

Chris:

So for our November mission, we burned stuff. Yep, we stoked the bonfire, got the flames licking the tree leaves above us, sat with beer and cigars, and burned crap we didn't need anymore. The goal was to throw in objects that had been lying around gathering dust, and yet needed to tell its story. So, we unloaded any sentiment associated with the object before we burned it to hell. The idea here, children, is that we all have things we're holding on to that have some memory or importance embedded in it which end up taking up space and stealing our oxygen. More the former than the latter, but the point is, if we don't share our memories and stories and invest in our collective memory banks, then really our memories remain buried in boxes and attics and closets full of other forgotten parts of our lives. Bring those babies out and release their souls while cremating the bodies that imprison them! Keep your memories, burn your stuff. You get it.

So we committed a few belongings to the ashes and shared a word or two. Among the possessions I relinquished:

1. A book that a friend gave me that served its purpose and is no longer useful apart from the association with that person.
2. A New Scientist magazine from days gone by when I was speed-learning some science to make up for lost time with my head buried in the Bible
3. Cards from a game a bought in college which I was no longer interested in anymore
4. A plastic-wrapped memorization card from my UPS days
5. Guitar pick
6. Magic trick cards
7. A shirt
8. A beer bottle we finished while burning stuff.

A moment of silence in honor of burning trash please. They're going to a better place. Today's mud is tomorrow's Bud.

Matt:

As we approached the end of the year, this mission served as a nice way to relax, sit around a warm fire, and share some stories. It was one of our least active missions, but sometimes you don't have to go far to avoid rotting.The idea was pretty simple... find some items that we'd been holding onto for some reason, but maybe we forgot what that reason was, or maybe the reason wasn't so important after all. I didn't really have anything in mind when we planned this mission, but I was able to find a few things that fit our description. Here's what I brought to burn:

1. A board game from the TV show "24". Awful, awful game. I really like games, and I really like 24, but this game I really didn't like. I chose to burn it as a reminder that it's okay to get rid of something you'll never use, even if you're supposed to like it.
2. A couple of magazines I bought as a younger man, Sex sells, and in this case I guess that's what I was trying to buy. Easy to burn these when you realize you've been duped into a useless purchase.
3. An action figure that I bought as an adult. We all try to recapture our childhood from time to time. The important part here is the assumption that you've moved on from your childhood before you try and recapture it. 
4. T-shirt from when I worked at UPS. I have some fond memories of UPS; I worked there for 8 years. Part of this mission was to revisit those memories, but then disposing of the item(s) that we were holding onto to remember. The memories are still there, but I am free of one more raggedy shirt

I liked sharing the meaning behind each item, while drinking a beer and just chilling. This feels like something that should be done each year.

October Mission: Display Art and Perform Poetry at The Haunting Muse

Part 2 of our September-October Missions.

Chris:

I submitted the following poems for the poetry slam (see September mission).  50 people from the church and the community showed up. My first poem, Halloween Lament, was literally one of the worst performances of anything in my life. It was supposed to have a fast rhythm, almost like a rap. I had a suspicion that I was going to have trouble with it during the actual performance, because every time I practiced I missed a word or a line. The moment of truth came. I started well enough, though I missed a couple words that I hadn’t missed yet in practice. Tip of the bloody iceberg. I totally blanked about three times. The last time I blanked, it was probably a solid 15 seconds of me standing up there trying for the life of me to think of anything but the bright lights (never noticed them before) and the confused looks that met my gaze in the audience.  I didn’t have my manuscript with me, so I was “S.O.-friggin’-L”. At the beginning I had dedicated the poem to myself as a joke, ‘cept now it wasn’t funny. I reached up to the mic and softly declared, “Now you see why I dedicated it to myself.” Made sense at the time. But it did the trick, and reset my thoughts long enough to remember my lines. I finished strong, but the poem was designed to end abruptly, and apparently many in the audience just thought I forgot the words again. Ah well…you win some, I lose some.

The second poem was a blast and was well liked. I introduced it by holding up my manuscript and saying, “This one is dedicated to my wife, who warned me that I needed to bring my script with me just in case I forgot the words. I love you honey!” That loosened people up, and everyone was laughing the rest of the time. I brought an old, gnarled stick up with me—the kind that you feel might give you a disease if someone hit you with it—and wielded it through the air as I read. Many compliments followed after the event. One guy said he was an artist and it inspired him to create again. Really? A zombie-killer poem? But art inspires art.

Overall, I had a great time and was glad I took the risk. Even the failure of the first poem is fun to look back on as horror-story to tell others (Matt gave me comfort by saying, “Don’t worry, we didn’t feel sorry for you”). The poems were fun to write, practice, and perform (mostly). I believe art is history in one of its most authentic and unfiltered forms. The art and the poems are now relics of ourselves that we can look back on and understand who we are at this time in our lives. And being forced to display and perform our creations helped us to take our projects seriously, because we knew that we would be judged by the display/performance of our art—ourselves—in the span of a few brief moments by our audience. It took courage and hard work, and it was worth it.

Halloween Lament

/Tell me that you’ve /seen it, /tell me that you /noticed.

It’s /following-you-a/round wrapping-you- /up in cold /mist.

Yeah /something in the /heavy air is /changing /quick

Dropping /down, moving /in, mantling /mortar and /brick.

See, I /know what this /is, I’ve /heard it be/fore

Sounds-like /moaning winds and /groaning limbs and /creaking of /doors.

It /smells like the /rain, the leaves, and /muggy /graveyards

And /wakes a thousand, /should-be-sleeping, /still-warm /war scars.

It’s that /autumn weather /air, those /Halloween /scares;

Makes you /want to howl at /moons, makes you /want to /dare.

But now /one thing’s /missing that I /can’t ig/nore

Nothing’s /haunting me like /yesterday; no /ghosts, no /more.

And /I can’t help but /feel the loss; no /ghosts, no /more.

And /maybe this might /be my cross; no /ghosts no /more.

I re/member when things /freaked me out, and it /didn’t take /much,

Stories /that my friends made /up…would /exorcise my /lunch,

/Stories ‘bout some /lost demon playing /tricks to pass his /time,

/Stories in mud, /dripping with blood, /crawling-all-over-with-/Devil-knows-what.

And I’d /always see these /monsters staring /back at /me

Safely /on the other /side of /my t/v,

From be/hind the /glass, they’re not /all that /bad;

Making /friendly with “what /lurks beneath” was /all I /had.

But /they’re not /here, those /spirits /legion,

And /wanting them more /here than there might /be my /sin.

‘Cause now-I-/know there’s nothing/ spiritual be/hind the/ door

And nothing /lives beneath the /floor; No /ghosts, no /more.

The /closet’s full of /empty-clothes; No /ghosts, no /more

Just-a-/hollow moon, and /quiet room; No /Ghosts, no /more.

You /know what’s /worse than /thinking you’re a/lone

And /finding out there’s /someone else be/hind you in your /home?--

It’s /thinking that a/nother soul is /so close /by

But /finding out there’s /nothing real but-the/ tears that you /cry.

And the /more you grow, the/ more you know, the /spells are /broke

Hallo/ween, Christmas/Easter and the /mirror become a /joke

‘Cause there’s /nothing hidden /there that can’t/ float in-a-bowl of /cereal

(They say your /stomach and the /food you eat are /build-a-god /material.)

Have you /ever wished for /something strange to /turn out /true

Even /though-it-was danger/ous and might end /turning on /you?

We /want a story that /thrills us, be it /fiction or /lore;

But /all we hear is /history; no /ghosts, no /more.

Our /own voices /echoing; no /ghosts, no /more.

Our /own breath is /smothering; no /ghosts no /more.

/All the smart /people, say they /don’t believe in /ghosts.

They bray, “I /don’t believe, I /don’t believe, I /don’t believe in /ghosts, I…

/Can’t believe, I /can’t believe, I /can’t believe in /jokes, (Be…

/Near me God, be /near me God, be /near me when I /croak.)”

So /bring it on, your /Christmas songs; /Bring it on, your /Easter throngs,

Bring on all the /faith-and-science that /proves your skeleton /wrong

But /all I see is /our great need that /more than us is /true

All your /“hows” are just /hoaxes, hiding /places for /you.

/Give-me an unknown /something… /next to your known /nothing.

Man, the /things we sell our /souls to!—We barter /blood for straw-/stuffing .

Hark, /who’s goes /there? Oh, /you’re just /me, …you’re

/Just my shadow, /just my shape; No /Ghosts, no /more             

Just /me the biggest /fake; No /Ghosts, no /more

Just my /own flimsy /life at stake; No /Ghosts, no /more.

And /I don’t think I /want to face…

Just Get a Stick

You know, I never really understood how a zombie epidemic could get started

Because the first converts would be summarily dispatched.

But let’s suppose their efforts at evangelizing

Were better than ours,

And the whole world became zombie-infested.

What would you do?

What would you do?

That was totally rhetorical.

Please don’t ruin my moment.

I’ll tell you what to do!

Get a stick.

Get a big stick.

That’s all you need.

I’m serious.

Just a stick.

Wipe that smirk off your face.

See, I don’t care if it’s just me

Against a whole gaggle of zombies.

‘Cause zombies are stupid, man.

As stupid as all-get-out.

They can barely walk—most of the time one foot is COMPLETELY worthless.

They can’t see very well because the cataracts are starting to set in.

And….they have terrible hygiene.

But that last one’s beside the point.

Just walk up to ‘em,

With that big stick firmly in both hands

and just kindly…

[Pop!]

Or

[Pcchht!]

“Rest in pieces.”

Now, you’ll want to wrap some good padded tape around the handle of your stick.

Blisters are not a joke during a zomb-pocolypse.

Get something for comfort AND style.

You want a good grip.

Get some of that tennis racket tape.

It comes in a variety of colors.

Preferably pick a different color than your living allies

So you know which stick is yours.

Like those charms you put on wine glasses.

It’s just common courtesy.

One of those strings to loop from your stick to your wrist

Might also be nice

Just in case you go berserk and lose your grip.

See, if you drop it,

Just reach down,

Get a good hold of it again,

And get back to doing what you love most.

I mean, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.

Back in the olden days,

I imagine people without this technology

Lost their weapons all the time.

That little loop…

A handy little invention

That takes just a second to put on,

And you’re saved

From having to go and pick up your stick.

I learned this from playing racquetball,

They have those little loops at the end of the racquets.

Saves lives.

Now, when you’re swinging that stick around

And the bodily fluids are flying everywhere

Do not, DO NOT

Get that stuff in your mouth.

I see this all the time in shows like The Walking Dead.

I’m going to be honest with you

…it’s disgusting.

There’s no sense in that.

Look, you have to retain some sense of dignity

In these turbulent times.

You can’t just splash around in another man’s bile!

Don’t do that.

Why would you do that?

You some kind of Philistine or something?

Please don’t do that.

So, when everyone’s found a stick

And bagged themselves a few zombies

Put ‘em up.

Put the sticks up.

Cause, man, we want to get things back to normal.

And I don’t care what you do with them.

Get a museum for the sticks with the most notches—

I mean, I don’t care what you do with them.

But, man, put ‘em up.

Cause the last thing we need is another war on our hands.

Matt:

From the start of the show until it was my turn to read, I was on a roller coaster of emotion, nauseousness, and uncontrollably fast heart beats. I've read in public before and haven't been half as nervous. I can only guess that the extra pressure existed because I was revealing something that I created to a group of 99% strangers. 

I had decided before the night of the reading that the whole thing was really pretty silly... adults reading poetry to each other, and I had come up with a way to show that I wasn't taking the thing too seriously. Unfortunately, I had underestimated the seriousness of everyone else. So I started out by saying, "I'd like everyone to know, that before tonight... this poem... resided... in my soul." Feeling nervous didn't help me deliver this in a whimsical way... in fact, it was taken as though I truly believed what I just said. To my relief, my wife knows my humor and from the back of the audience gave a hearty laugh. For some reason, though, I responded with, "That wasn't a joke", even though it clearly was. Oh well, I went on to tell another joke, ("If you're not accustomed to pure... unadulterated... BEAUTIFUL poetry... then I suggest you cover you ears or leave the room") , that people got this time, and went on with my reading. 

I think the reading went well, as it was just a reading from my paper, and afterwards I got a few compliments on the poem. One of the readers came and told me that in my intro, he had believed me. That made me laugh. On a side note, I really wish Chris had done his "Big stick" poem first, because it turns out that laughing did a lot to loosen me up and make me less nervous. In the end it was a fun event, and what actually stuck with me the most was that many of the readers had taken it seriously, and had put their hearts into their works. It was a pretty moving experience at parts. Here is my poem, below, which I wrote over a couple of days. As you'll see, I did this sort of back and forth pattern, describing the actions of two children on the first line, and then alternating with a description of a ruined castle. Enjoy!

Ethereal Hide-and-Seek

Laughter off stone walls
A kingdom lost to countless years

Light footfalls on granite steps
A fortress once but now a playground

Smiles on bright young faces
This dilapidated keep sits almost alone

Vestments untouched by time
Long echoing corridors end in darkness

Siblings hard at play
Portals lined with crumbling arches

Stalking along the battlements
Hundreds of rooms left with no care

Brother knows she is near
Tables and chairs with no earthly keepers

Sister stays very quiet
Tall columns still bearing their weight

He sees a glowing foot
Ancient tapestries hang ruined and torn

She knows it’s soon
Moss creeps down the wasted dungeon’s walls

Brother jumps to her
Brick and mortar lose to time and weather

Sister shrieks with joy
The drawbridge has only its skeleton intact

The game starts anew
The sun falls behind old hills again and again and again