My Confession Draws You Near

Hey there...

This weekend was pretty interesting. I was all set up to go to Kansas City for a shindig get-together that Rozberk was throwing for folks from all over Missouri, northwest Arkansas, and even as far away as Illinois...but then a rash popped up somewhere, and I panicked. All the symptoms pointed to a fairly common, but bastardly little medical condition, and I wasn't about to hop to KC anyway and let folks catch the bug. :P So, I begged off the trip, got rushed and hassled by my ride back home, and spent most of Friday afternoon waiting in some doctor's office for him to look at me for 10 minutes and tell me he doesn't think it is what I think it is. So...either it's something completely benign (which it's looking more and more like now) or it's even worse than my previous prognosis (*extremely* unlikely). I had Arlekin drag me around all over the place, so in gratitude I bought him dinner at Fazoli's. Small recompense for hearing all the grisly, nasty (but fascinating!) details about the nature of my illness, but hopefully it was something.

Oh, and we stopped by this weird garage sale that had the coolest shirt ever. I'll have to rock that one at a con sometime. :)

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday with 2 and Flying Fox, where we watched a bunch of movies and generally bsed around. We had decided to drink the worst whiskey we could find for the night's festivities, and *boy* was that a mistake...we all got our collective asses kicked (with the exception of Bigpaws, who took his Evan Williams rather well). By the way, if you're looking for good, cheap whiskey...it's *not* Old Crow. Literally, with the exception of Shine On Georgia Moon, it's the worst alcohol I've set lips on. I have more than 3/4 of the bottle left to go through. It should curb my taste for alcohol for a little while, and I'll really appreciate the good stuff when I come back to it. :)

As for movies, we rented quite a few good ones. Finally picked up "The Red Violin," which was a pretty good movie. Huge, sprawling, mostly in subtitles (one scene had characters rolling between French and German like they were the same language *whirrr!*) and definitely a great story. Also saw "The Straight Story," which was still very much a David Lynch movie despite the un-David Lynch subject matter. It's probably the lightest (and thus, the most beautiful) Lynch movie I've ever seen...up until now, one had never made me cry, though Mulholland Drive comes close. :)

Let's see...what else...saw this movie called "Series 7: The Contenders," which if you haven't seen, you *should*. A fake reality show, it's one of the best, scathing, fucked-up movies I've seen in a really long time. I will own that movie. :)

On Sunday, we watched football. Tennessee was getting their asses handed to them by Oakland (sorry Rama!) and I couldn't help but laugh...for a team that was making threats to the Ravens a couple years ago, they sure do suck.

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Five Important Poems: Road Trip

Hey there, all...

As a slight ego boost to myself, I guess, and to kind of explain my poetry better, I decided to write down and repost the five most personal poems that I've ever written...and in my opinion, the best. If I have to write a chapbook or make some kind of portfolio or something, these five poems will invariably go there.

The first one, and the best poem I've ever written, is called "Road Trip". It was the first really long poem that I had ever written, and the first one that really, *really* featured any kind of symbological references. I dipped into religious, Freudian, Jungian and personal imagery to create the images and landscape around. There was quite a bit of repitition in it, and some of it worked and some of it didn't...I think I could have done without the repeating of a lot of things in Freedom.

It was written when I was coming out to my mother and the Jehovah's Witnesses in my congregation, and what was the inevitable result. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, quite honestly, but even still it was one of those things that I probably would do all over again if I had the chance to change anything. The poem, I think, captures the feeling of the great discovery of figuring things out and forging ahead on my own path, the rising sense of collision and worry, and the feeling of weariness after the conflict.

Erm...I really like the way it turned out.

Man, I'm really turning this into a dick-stroking thing. Blah. So here it is.

( Road Trip )