Stories I Only Tell My Friends

I feel you swallow my soul with your stare
And when your fingers of aspen trees slip over my face like time from my grip, 
I smile with everything i've got

but then my mind swells into flitting grey puffs
flashing and burning, I reach for you, for your lightning  
i sit down in the darkness and feel for you
i'm afraid
i wait for days
but I still can't find you

Then I see you
Your hair is wet
And your face is tye-dyed with strangeness

And it's not the same

I feel lost

Your indigo grass of today somehow grows on the ground of yesterday
I realize I must go back the way I came

I set you down and thank you, thanking you with all of my heart 

and I am thankful 

that that's the gift-wrapped end-feeling you receive from me 

Stoop Kid's Afraid To Leave His Stoop

DAY 3. (YES. I am keeping track of these 40 days.) 

Of course, my beloved english professor, who accessories her mousey personality with fur crocs, lectured the other day about how mary jane should actually be legal because of all of the health benefits and because no one has ever died from it, blah, blah, blah, WEED. But it's okay, I'm not going through "withdrawals" or anything. 

Actually, it's been kind of nice (in some aspects). I like waking up in the morning for class/work not fucking OUT OF IT like I almost always do because of an obese good-night bowl I chanced upon the night before. It's nice. I feel like, for the better part of the last 6 months of my professional, varsity, gold-medal

 winning, smoking lifestyle, I've preached over and over again how I could quit at anytime, but smoking just opens up my eyes to so many more beautiful happenings and opportunities in the world that I can appreciate. I didn't just preach, I was the preacher. But I never actually went a day or two without it (unless for speech). I'm sick of talking big talk and never actually DOING anything I say. Yes, I can bullshit my way through almost any tight situation and yes, it's fun, but what's the point? I doubt myself, a lot, that's why. I know I have potential and it's been recognized, but right now, that's about all it is. 

SO, going off of my baby blog's birthname, I officially declare to GET BORN. This challenge is a true test of my character, and, yeah, I'm saying it's for Lent, but who actually keeps their Lenten promises? I'm giving up a drug, and although it may be a big deal to me, that's just not enough in the big picture. In the big picture, I'm turning 21 at the end of this school year, and what do I have to say for myself? Really, a whole lot of nothing. Below, there is a link. It is my gift to you. So listen to the whole thing, by yourself, in a dark room, with eyes closed. 

http://c4.libsyn.com/media/794/indiefeed_derrickbrown_afingerandtwo.mp3?nvb=20100218215329&nva=20100219220329&t=05608d33f7cbf24910384

Duino Elegies

This is probably my favorite poem. It's composed by Rainer Maria Rilke, and translated by Stephen Mitchell. Out of all of the poems in Mitchell's "Selected Poetry" book, this one stayed with me for awhile. So long, in fact, that I memorized the whole thing and used it for my poetry program last year when I forgot a poem. 

Angel--If there were a place that we didn't know of, and there, 

on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed 
what they never could bring to mastery here – the bold 
exploits of their high-flying hearts, 
their towers of pleasure, their ladders 
that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning 
just on each other, trembling,

 - and could master all this, 
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead: 
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up, 
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid 
coins of happiness 

before the at-last genuinely smiling pair 

on the gratified carpet?