3-31-06

Hey y’all,

I’ve been busy with school and all, little too busy for IRF’n. I’ve been IRF-reading, though. Elias: I love your posts. I like your writing as much as your drawing and painting.

I’m kinda caught up w/schoolwork for a day or two and thought I’d post some poems. Would anyone be interested in reading excerpts from papers I’m writing for school? I know SOL had mentioned it. I’m studying some interesting stuff and most of my professors are more interested in what I’m thinking than how proper I’m writing. I can’t write in IM speak (lol; btw; bfd) or in mothafuckin’ street slang yo! But I get away with the occasional dangling participle or sentence-starting preposition when it sounds right. It helps give me a voice in my papers and essays. Anyhoo, here’s a poem from 2004. Pre-going back to school, Pre-marriage, pre-home-ownership, still living over on 35th street:

Rainfall in the Baltimore alley I call my home.
The pigeons must be huddled under eaves
The rats under porches and trash
The homeless in shelters or doorways.
The hookers, too, must be under doorways
dirty sweatsuits under raincoats.

I want the rain to wash away our sins
The hatred and the animosity
The broken glass and the cigarette butts
The dead bodies on the TV
in our hearts and minds
on our conscience.
I want the rain to wash away our sins
To form rivers and deliver us from greed
Take away the emptiness we create everyday
and the hurt and pain.
When the sun shines I want to love my neighbor
I want my neighbor to love me.


Here’s another one, two pages earlier in the same notebook, dated 4/25/04:

We move gracelessly thru time
past time
in and around time
about time
Our minds cry
and try to hold on
fumbling and bumbling
for concepts and (with) perspective

Time smiles
static and eternal
infinite patience
Time waits for nothing
-------------------------
(then, under a line not unlike this one)

Enter God

Enter God
for Peace
of mind on Earth


The rest of that notebook is notes.
Notes on homeowners insurance and mortgage rates … we bought our house in May.
Notes on caterers and banquet halls … we got married in August.

Closing costs- $money minus money$
Wedding license- You will need: birth certificate/drivers license/witness.

I actually don’t remember who the witness is. We have pictures of the whole thing if anyone needs proof. Ron signed, we signed, and the witness signed - it was probably SOL, up from the deep, barely clothed in a bathing suit. Half of us soaking wet, none of us capable of writing our names, much less writing them on a line. When we brought the license to the courthouse it looked like it’d been signed by 3rd graders and carried in the saddle bags of a pony express rider across three states in the rain. Eh … did the trick.