http://www.mypencilpours.com i write Fri, 03 Sep 2010 22:24:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Dakota War of 1862, one of the more tragic events in Minnesota's history, was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the Dakota Indians. It began on August 17, 1862 along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota (14 days after the birth of my Great Grandfather) and ended with a mass execution of ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=119 William sat at a bus stop with an empty paper coffee cup balanced on his left shoulder, sitting to the left of a moderately dark skinned man who had fallen asleep with his chin on his chest. Although the fattish man was fast asleep, he breathed with such vigor that ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=118 The Chief Park Ranger, Peter H. Schuft is retiring from the National Park Service this month after serving over thirty years. Schufts have lived in Sequoia National Park for the past 12 years. He and his wife, Catherine, were honored at the Buckaroo Inn last Monday by a large group of friends ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=117 the truth is, sometimes sara gets so upset when i fart in bed, that i have to use my hands to spread my ass cheeks so that they don't make any noise coming out. http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=116 DEATH We are saddened by the death of our friend, Peter H. Schuft, on October 10. He had been ill for quite some time, and his death came quietly at their home in Morro Bay. Pete Schuft retired from Sequoia and Kings canyon as Chief Park Ranger on February 3, 1973, ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=115 Staring out at assimilable expanse, emotionlessly whipped to written in the memory banks, but somehow, still, a fetalistic want for shaking. My program insists incapables, the forgotten masked by astounding capability. But observing the shaking cityscape, the urge insists, hangs there, unerased, like an invisible heat floating at the front ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=113 America, listen. You fucker. I wannuh talk to you. I mean, are you serious, America? Really? America, you've tried to give me so much, whenever you could, including a four-wheel dirt bike, but you skipped out on me to play "Russian-roulette" somewhere in your childless night. Now, granted, I am a little ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=112 out of the corner of my eye, whilst I was pissing, it somehow must've leapt my stream, to land the propped up seat. sudden manifest, uncanny, i saw that somewhat golden pearl, cling on the edge of great white ring, or so I s'pose it must've seemed. and just as gleaming caught my eye, on current universe's edge, it slid away ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=111 A Series of Titles for as Yet Unfinished Poem or Prose or A Series of Titles for as Yet Unfinished Poem or A Series of Titles for as Yet Unfinished Prose Write Away the Candelabra 17 to Yellowstone Hibbing of You Sand linE If I Could Just See Your Chest Memory Shrink When We're in a Bar in the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=110 Uncle breakfast lit coffee and brain. But upstairs he morning and head. A halo, a headset, a towel. And away, and followed, concerned. He bathroom, into it, and stairs. Uncle frantic, and hard, although was, so himself, he agreed: I that. And up, around sip, at kitchen. He up so quickly that burst. And vessel, bursting, beautiful, on volcano. But horrible, in undershirt, in kitchen, burning hand, burning other, he nothing... ...but roaring. There roaring. And nothing. http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=109 Uncle Harry came down to breakfast, lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee, and fell over dead from a burst blood vessel in his brain. But upstairs he had seen the reflection of his morning and felt a great silence fall around his head. A settling halo, a radio headset, a damp hot towel. And Uncle Harry saw himself ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=108 Uncle Harry came down to breakfast, lit a cigarette, took a drink of his morning coffee, and fell over dead from a burst blood vessel in his brain. Before this... incident, upstairs, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, seeing the reflection of his morning, already in one of his never-ending ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=107 My Uncle Harry came down to breakfast, lit a cigarette, took a drink of his morning coffee & fell over dead from a burst blood vessel in his brain. - John William Schuft [Uncle Harry. It's one of those things you try to remember. Let's see: I see him walk down those ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=106 this is a poem. my stomach is nervous. i am writing a poem. i am riding my mom's death. this is a piece. this is prose. this is a poem. listen to me. listen to me repeat and speak and try and iron out the edges of it all. come and stand with me by her bedside. this is our ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=105 he writes. he writes. he blogs. he puts it down. he puts it all down. he sleeps on the solid ground. he puts it all down on the ground. he can't make a word for the life of his. he can't lay it down that way. he can't remember the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=103 i'm working on a book. it's emerging as a magically realistic homage to my family tree. it's still fairly early in the project process, but currently the main focus of my work is collecting and transcribing letters, e-mails, interviews with my family members. my dad is a focal point of ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=102 i'm here. i'm writing. http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=101 look at me. did I choose this thing? I mean look at these crazy arms these legs I'm great big slabs of meat slapping over the earth. look at me walk. have you seen me walk? I'm a skin boulder. a people pile. rolling a fleshy bone ball. a spinning flab sack. a skin boulder. I'm a meaty moving. it's like a dream I had once where ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=100 “You’re a hot air balloon passenger basket.” He remembered the words, but not the context. He felt annoyed, recalling the sentence, but couldn’t figure out why, so, he bit his nails, followed by two other bad habits. He looked at a woman he’d seen in the café before. She’d lost ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=98 It's the tree. Most of what I remember is laying on the carpeted floor on my belly, dressed in some kind of cotton pajamas, old enough to be the softest clothing ever, tucked into the corner of the dining room, in some other world. The bottom of the tree was my ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=97 Time. Gary Blum died recently. There's a memorial for him this weekend in a park. I barely recognize something about his face. Like maybe I've seen him before. But I think it might just be death. I think I might be seeing that. But his head is blurry and seems ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=96 US economic growth falls to 14-year low. I rub my mother's legs as she lies in the hospital bed. General Motors cuts 67,000 jobs. I lose my mind when the nurses begin to rush about her body in a sudden silent frenzy. Recession slows but doesn't stop local golf industry. ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=95 The banana sat still, coolly, on the high school lawn, this great unused lawn running on for hundreds of yards, unmarked, without goals or sports like design, only lain out for the kids who want to walk away for as long as possible, who want to turn their back forever, ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=94 Yesterday, I'm walking down the stairs to the MUNI at Church and Market, southwest entrance. I'm behind a young woman, with shiny black hair rivering in all directions, and some kind of pink and white something on. She walks at a steady pace and I'm at her heels, and suddenly, ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=93 one wet sock and then another drying on the burning boulder in the belly of twilight the moon grins widely at my baked beans and blueberry pie clicking in the glow of the fire the wood beads light up one by one charred logs wetted from the rain i see your orange eyes looking at me wrapped in frozen air my hand warms on ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=92   A woman wove a basket. the 1st basket For earrings, beads and comb. she thought "It had never been done" and then quail woman --> Sister                "Might I weave a basket"                 "Yes I think so.                                     It's dangerous."                            Something could happen.                                       Be careful. Swan Woman --> quail woman             "Yes. Do it. ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=91 I didn't see the fruit man's canvas covered stand today He sells pluots, persimmons and jujubes He's a fat man with long grey hair who smiles and learns your name Who cried when we talked about his dad I'd carry home a bag of fruit for the week Tucked between my feet on the train And ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=90     http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=89 When I was younger I thought that the feelings that went through me were - that I would outgrow them, that the anxiety or panic or whatever it is called would disappear, but you sort of suspect it at thirty-five, [and] when you get to be fifty you definitely know ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=88 As a writer, you need to be able to lie in bed at night and understand the darkness of the ceiling. Or that's how it seemed to me last night. I looked up at the ceiling and understood the shadows hanging above me. I understood the light peeling through the crack in ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=87 Benjamin woke up to a neighbor clearing his throat of phlegm, choking on a web of spittle and snot. Ben's building and the building next store touched, wall to wall, like much of the buildings in the city, but for a small space between them into which several apartment windows ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=86 The front door of someone's apartment sits right outside our kitchen window located at the rear of our building. You can see the stairs ascend to the front door while sitting at our dining table. The apartment is inset deeply into the rectangular residential block formed by Noe, Duboce, 14th ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=85 I worked at the restaurant the night of the election. Towards the end of the evening, listening to Obama's acceptance speech, I leaned against the counter, celebrating with a beer in hand, and noticed the Mexican cooks toiling hurriedly in the kitchen. One of the cooks and I play a game ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=84 She sits, with dead grassy hair, kneeling, collapsed on her knees, her feet tucked under to touch her bare toes to the wall, leaning forward onto her elbows, so her burning butt is inches from the ground, breathing out the smoke by holding an index finger, with its dirty pink ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=83 Oh. Um. Boy. I got nothin' right now. I'm up, and I'm after it, but I'm empty. I feel good, but I have nothin' drawing towards the page. 8:02am. Hm. 8:03am. A ball of light. Explosion. A dog's rear end in the night. Rearend? Rear-end. Hyphens. Hyphens are always trying to find a place in my documents. Where they don't belong. No. I am serious. ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=82 I had a dream last night that we climbed through a cityscape. We climbed shelves of ramshackle buildings, scattered and rotting in the highest regions of a metropolis, up into cold heights of poverty and loneliness. These splintering, tottering, hollow shacks were sun stained and worn by the wind. We ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=81 I remember a blue kiddy pool sliding downhill. I remember cracks in a faded green hose. I see a living stream of silver, warm then cold, pouring forth a rising body of water. I lie down, belly first in that perfectly shallow bowl, quickly heated by the sun. There were ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=80 I can look out my window and see things happening that my neighbors will never know. Across the stretch of long backyards a squirrel bounds up the wooden steps running along the back of a building. It's like Rear Window, but more detailed and less dramatic. I think about walking ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=79 I see you sitting at the kitchen table with your hands curled on your crossed knees. You are staring out the wall of windows. Your long black hair curls backwards towards me. I know you are crying. The young daylight dresses down on you. Coffee steams a background to your form. An emptying brown bowl coldly ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=78 My vision is on fire listening to Dylan's Hard Rain. I walk 16th again in those early yawnings of dawn. I want to learn those songs and cry while I sing them, yelling them out, up from the sidewalk, until people have to stop. I run to catch my train. ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=77 I watched this Latino boy sitting on the train with me, with eyes shifting to and fro like dancing fleas in tiny jars. I stared at him with my aviators on, seeing him scramble on hands and knees to reclaim an almost empty Gatorade, which he'd dropped under a middle-aged ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=76 Expulsion I'm surrounded By eyes - black olives floating in pools of nonfat milk sagging in the burnt surface of so many melting faces If I write, I am saved There is shining light from where my pencil strikes The same clawed at yellow light I've seen lay down on city buildings The light of smoke ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=74 Looking at a woman's cleavage, I thought: "I don't believe you," and she disappeared. http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=73 I've had these moments in my life, looking at a good friend, where I suddenly see them aged old. It's not an imposition of my imagination. In fact, it's something that's gifted unto me, like an instant of angelic glow illuminating a face. It just becomes. It's an epiphany of knowing someone's presence in my life, beyond my ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=72 A sea lion is saved from swimming up the LA River. The media names him Chili Pepper because a radio station covering the news story plays The Red Hot Chili Peppers current hit single for the rescue crew that saves his life. A dog chases a rabbit into a pipe and ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=68 How you doin'? Good. You? Not bad. Not bad at all. What's your name again? Pete. Pete. Right. He yawns from the bottom of his gut. I'm sorry. I'm just fighting with my Ipod here. No problem. He hums while moving his hands as if an accordion were between them, with his Ipod earphones hanging like a web of ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=67 The little girls wore identical golden slip-on shoes, red skirts, and sweaters - one blue, one pink - that only buttoned at the top, flaring out towards the bottom, exposing the bump of their little girl bellies covered by the stretch of matching white shirts. Their stockings were duplicates, but ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=66 Jack sits on a stack of wooden planks behind the Railroad buildings. These silent metal mountainous boxes push up against the water, leaving a tight strip of red mud collecting long planks of scrap metal and piles of rotting wood for men like Jack to hunker down in and disappear. He sits ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=65 I am a heartbroken angel of lightening I am the coughing mountain's grasping on the edge of earth's washed out dream Can you imagine the experience of that dream if you'd never dreamt before? And what of this great life? Open your eyes sleeper! Can you conceive of the absurdity that is your state of ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=62 I miscalculated how long it would take to get a piece done after work. Actually, I miscalculated when I would get off work. So, it's 11:37pm, I just got home from work, and I don't want to muscle my brain through a piece. I didn't want to start a piece ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=61 Focused and pointed she was, buried in the depths of her star, swallowed in its peace and strength; and not feeling her flesh growing cold, cold as the rain that fell from the invisible sky upon the doomed living and the dead that never dies. - richard wright from "bright ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=60 I'm in LA sitting on a friend's epic stretch of porch in a passable cooling North Hollywood breeze. I am suddenly content and then not so much. I could use water. I am dry. Music from passenger planes flying out of Burbank's Bob Hope Airport screams far overhead in the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=59 So long new sun The moon is forever here The taxis line up like one of your last rays You have sent me into the night, cool and dreamy, just like my heart expected Pigeons spill like falling night shadows in Ariquepa center With the constant babble of all rich language I know, but can't ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=57 And the writer has got primarily to be a writer first, everything else must go by the board. Let him be a writer first; let him be honest, brave or whatever, but let him be a writer first. - william faulkner I have yet to figure out what this means for ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=58 I feel your dusty walls and don't know the stone These colors - blue, red and brown - can't be real My feet ache on your empty cobbled walkways You nuns prayed under a God here for 370 years, but all things pass and here I am Snorting, farting, guffawing my way through corridors ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=56 In San Francisco I am always inside a masterpiece... I've got all the need and love anyone can possibly have for a city, but my words blow about the streets like dusty dead leaves and then they're beautifully fitting. I am in the painting I always wanted to escape to. As ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=55 Alright, alright... I have issues with my dad. Or, more accurately, who my dad was. It's all in the voice of the child heard in the song posted above, his final pleading utterance when he realizes his dad is foresaking him. Can we, as beings proven capable of such great ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=54 "So tell me about your work? Flowers. Yum. Sounds fun." Steven was tired of people talking. He was tired of hearing people talk. We're all going to die and everything I'm saying and everything she's saying has already been said. What are we trying to duplicate? Why are we duplicating this? "Steven? ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=52 Sitting outside of Sooz coffee shop I realize I spend a lot of time at coffee shops. I speak with a friend about existence. A blind man sits at a table across from us, helped to his seat by a café worker. He pulls the lid off his double cupped ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=51 In the falling night there is a glow on all the many faces from cell phone lights. I remember myself as a child, lying at the top of our brown carpeted stairs, trying to see what my dad watched on TV. I spied my father sitting in our living room sofa ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=50 Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. - henry miller You don't exist, so explode... before you shrivel up. http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=45 I see a homeless man chewing on a dog leash - a rope really. One end of the bright white rope wraps the neck of a black and white puppy. The other end does the same, but around another puppy, this one white with a beige left ear. This man ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=49 My wife received this message on her phone during our drive home from a cell phone reception-less Independence Day weekend in the mountains of Calaveras County: "Hey... Whassup Sara. This is Cologne. I'm using my Cousin Mel's phone right now. If you get this message, why don'tchoo try and comeback and see me ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=48 To switch on the writer's perspective is to me a definitive occurrence, one that transforms reality and is grossly unique from the perspective of the being with which I find myself most often associating. In so far as I am capable, engaging in the writer's perspective is an act of ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=47 My life isn't a very interesting one, but if I could, I'd like to tell you my story here, highlighting the significant points, the ones that merit mentioning. I was born on October 16th, 1977. And, mmm, the next thing worth noting... hm... let's see... Oh, right - not too long ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=46 saint dominic's catholic church corner of Bush and Steiner waiting for a friend at a towering church jesus hangs on a cross at it highest point, in the sky, far above me, and just when i notice him a deep throaty frog's croak spills into the distance between us. it is coming from the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=44 Sometimes you sit with your pencil hovering above a fresh blank page, with all its possibilities, and you never write a thing, but while pausing, looking for inspiration, you take in the holy moment as it seems it should be taken in - with unbridled attention, as an empty vessel, ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=42 The locomotive shakes speedily along, catching fluorescent sunlight at plastic angles, taking naively curved tracks in tight corners at dangerous speeds, thundering passed the world all too closely. Its working rods rotate into a blur, the metal wheels magnet to the track, shaking miniature buildings at their foundations. It moves ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=41 There is a ragged old black man standing in the street. He holds a Burger King cup with a tightly fixed lid, shaking it out in front of him like a maraca. The ice rattles inside. A cigarette hangs from his lips. It could be a miniature burning world in ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=40 And after class on the beats, I looked up out of my low grey car seat and saw Burroughs in a taxi, staring straight ahead. He would not look at me. I loved the challenge. He was shadows and death, but vibrating ghostlike in his ride. Should I stop and ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=39 To whom it may concern in 367...                                   Hello. I was walking in your neighborhood, saw your address and suddenly felt compelled to write you, so, here's your letter. No, you don't know me. I think. You might know me actually, but not well enough for me to know where you ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=38 There is a hospital room door that is closed. Behind the door there is an old man lying in a white bed. He is quiet. His eyes are closed. His family stands around him. Some of them rub his legs and arms. Others cry quietly. Some of them hold hands. They put their hands on the shoulders and ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=37 This is a short story about a man and woman who don't belong together. "I hear Spanish." John sat across from her at their tiny, round table. He acted like he hadn't heard her. It was then that their hands briefly touched in the center of the green marble circle on which ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=36 The edge of this metal table is cold. I'm eating shredded wheat and listening to my iPod. The earphone wires keep getting caught in the teeth of my sweater. I look up at my reflection in the powerless TV screen. I have no face. Looking back down at my milk, ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=35 To speak a bit further to this daily writing commitment, I'd like to address my craving for praise. The point that this blog satiates my appetite for acknowledgement is a mute one, except to get across to you, the reader, that my goal of implementing a daily commitment to writing ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=34 The guitar starts strumming I'm walking on the tops of trees Staring down on a landscape lawn of animals bathing in the sun This is how a poem goes Let it roll and the song plays on I smile when the guitar strums The poem is said by a voice behind my eyes I run for the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=32 Daren woke up with this thought in her head: "I am a lost ball trying to make the best of my bounce." She sighed and closed her eyes as she slid the warming bed sheet up passed her mouth onto the bridge of her nose, softly along her forehead and passed ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=28 Love San Francisco. The zero emissions bus wobbles into view outside the café where I sit. It's already gone by the time I finish the line. A tow truck tip toes to the edge of the intersection. Tiny glowing white men beckon us into the crosswalk. Large orange men countdown, telling us to go back. We ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=27 In the middle of the city there are three old men sitting at the opening of a one car garage. They all look to be in their late 70s or 80s. They yawn often, and in succession, and laugh in low rumbling bursts, in unison and for only a few seconds, before ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=26 this is the way i like to write my thoughts fit better in neat these plain pages and plain alone organized space for a sole purpose i lost my last one on new yrs full of how i remember it all gone just like eventually so, i start anew in crispness my favorite space to create and someday these ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=25 I woke up thinking about my dad - one memory in particular. During the greater portion of my childhood we lived a 15 minute drive from the city of Redding, CA - an eight minute stretch of road north on the Interstate 5 and then a winding seven minute drive ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=24 One of my earliest memories is being up with my mom in the middle of the night, while dad was away playing cards or farming, when they were still married. I remember her in a night gown and me in my 4 year old pjs. A prowler was circling our ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=23 I saw large birds in a clump, together. I saw two shiny black birds in a clump. I saw two glimmering tarry black birds entangled in a school yard. I saw two oily birds entangled in some dead grass and dirt at the corner of a school building. In a coffee ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=22 A toothpick, used, is sitting on my moleskine. It questions me. "So what if I'm all you have?" it says. I stare back at it and try to give it more attention. "Really?" it asks. I keep staring and all it does is get whiter. More white. "Do you smile at me?" it asks. No. I ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=21 There are black people on the corner; I see them from the bus. I smile mildly from behind my glasses at the round head of a large black boy facing the right side of the bus. He does not smile back. It's at the top of the hill, above Glen Park. I look to ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=16 I met Tim in a small café across from my work. A dog, small and caramel, sat back on its haunches in the doorway, looking over its shoulder into my stare. As the dog turned its eyes back to the street, Tim asked me for the time - abrupt and ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=10 Some of the buildings in San Francisco are shrouded in long white sheets, like how I dressed up as a ghost when I was a child, Halloween after Halloween, but these ghosts have no eyes and often speak Spanish. Sometimes colors bleed out from their insides, splattering the sidewalks.   There is ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=9 I saw a black woman in a wheelchair from behind. She looked as if her head was a coconut; her hair was so neatly shelled and yellowed. She cut through a three street intersection and a man walking towards me yelled after her, “You piggy!” or “You hippy! You f&*kin’ ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=8 I don’t know how. I had a dream about you, but I didn’t. You were shriveled and decrepit, rolling in the off-white sheets of a hospital bed. When the people surrounded your bedside, you cowered and curled and fell away into another bed. A woman met you there, spooning into ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=7 In a coffee shop a young man and his father take on the roles of my dad and I, respectively.   “I feel like I’m not going to make it,” says the young man.   “How far do you have to make it?” replies the older man - the father.   Neither of them laughs.   “You know what ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=6 I walk down the isles of Walgreens, zigzagging my way along the linoleum. I pay no attention to what's on the shelves, because I don't want it. He kneels on the floor stacking nothing because I refuse to see it. "Where can I find the t-shirts?" I say, "Do you carry the ... http://www.mypencilpours.com/?p=5