In Burien (Draft)

I’m driving on a thin highway in Seattle
Wearing an expensive black overcoat
And a Hawaiian shirt that’s blue, with white plumerias
I look into the black and yellow of a strip mall at night

There I imagine a young man pushing a grocery cart, a miniature one
He looks and talks like me, but we’re different people
A kindly but large black man asks him for the sixteen cents
Given on the way into the 24-hour Supermarket

From behind, the voice bounces off the black of his heavy overcoat
Then dies as the young man walks away, armored like a tank
A stout woman his age walks a meandering path toward him
As he slips the key into the trunk’s keyhole

He never once looks her in the eye
“This is… weird. I realize this. Look…”
Pop goes the trunk, and the rustle of thin white plastic
“…two kids and we’re living out of the back of my car…”
The expensive shampoo is inside, as are the ice cream sandwiches
“…just twenty-five dollars from having a room for two weeks…”
The bottles of good wine, for the first time in his life
“…this is the most embarrassed I’ve ever been in my life…”

“Don’t be.” He is authority, in heavy black fabric
He gives the dollar that the black man saw
But she sees the twenty
Triads of regret, apprehension, responsibility

Now we all wear black armor
She shivers
He looks away
I drive

I Saw That (Draft)

I’ve seen your poetry
Long vines hanging from eves
I’ve never been able to read it in eyes
Transplant from more arid climes
Glare overwhelms like emerald and ruby
Oversoled in all directions but mine
Rather than grate my eyes or heart, aspirations are picked apart
One of us knows why I am, one knows who
Vines move slow, I stop the follow
I’m well watered while you strangle and dissect, and you are air, and how I’ve slumbered
Can hibernation stretch too long?
Loose the heart as we write along? Pick it up again, in our own prose?
There may be no waking of mind and souls
And what relief

In your eyes I water
The water of life that drowns you
You see the blue distending
You might know I drowned, but not when
Sap the water
But be warned
I may never wake
I may never learn
Your coffee aroma softness in my eyes

And then what would you do?

How would I know?

Except the trail that we all leave
I may love rough brown on canvas
Your petals glisten crimson, long loped vines
Around my neck as I gaze into a you, of, unknown to me:
• Time
• Place
• Context
But it stirs me, like a dreamer on the cusp of waking
Prickle of anticipation for a lifetime changed
I would wake into that you alight
At least I might
So what am I to do with you?
As I cry for the first time in a year (but not much)
As I slide through the wash and tide (but less)
Are your tendrils hailing from dry land?
What can their brail insistence see?
It’s why this poem is really about me
When soil moves round the plant estranged
How it grows when all is rearranged?
Ever temporarily trying to grow arraigning
Storms long gone but the water undraining
So perhaps this is all it ever could be
Your twisting scourge of petals
My limp patch of weeds

And never a moment I’d coax you to my reality.

Banana Mischief

Today, a student stealthily made my banana a happy banana.



I couldn't bear to eat him.

My Bookbag Seems To Be Missing

Hello. If you've recently found some odd books in a blue backpack, and then also spotted my name, and then found this website, then email me. I shall reward you handsomely. And of course pick up the books.

These Songs Be Stolen

I do so love music. In highschool, me and this guy messed around making wonderfully exotic electronic music. I did toy with the idea of linking the ancient website that still somehow has our music posted, but as it involves me rapping that shall never happen. The world is better without it.

My tastes have always been eclectic. Never good, for Chrissakes I started off with Mix Alot and MC Hammer. I actually wore hammer pants in the 90s. No joke. So not good, just eclectic. And I did enjoy the occasional 'phat beat,' so electro was never much a stretch.

But I've only just now been able to re-open my many treasure troves of ill-begot pirate booty. That is to say, my own respective gigabytes. Pining and heartbreak made me allergic. Awe. While I was away from my normal genres, I plugged away at the roots of rock 'n' roll, old soul music, a lot of 80's synthpop, David Bowie, that sort of thing. I made some interesting discoveries. Ok, maybe just interesting to me, because (in no small part thanks to Sex Dwarf) I'm a pretty big fan of Soft Cell.

The first of these 1960's crash and carries was from Diana Ross. Having only heard the Soft Cell version of "Where Did Our Love Go," it was pretty damned neat to see a B&W version broadcast on PBS. The actual youtube is fantastic.



I would later find that wasn't the only black soul singer Soft Cell had covered. Of all things, the very risque 'Tainted Love,' which I felt epitomized the leather-clad icons of novel debauched imagery, was a 1964 original by Gloria Jones.



I have yet to find a 1960's soul singer do an original for 'Sex Dwarf,' though it would be a bit ironic to see it covered by a modern-day black soul singer. I have absolutely, positively, no idea how you'd arrange something like that. And I mean musical arrangement, not emailing Aretha Franklin.

What ultimately spurred a post was realizing that one of my favorite rare Wailers tracks (~1964), which shares a name with my favorite Hawaiian ska band, "Go Jimmy Go," was actually a cover from a 1959 white teen pop star. Having heard the Wailers version...



I'm actually quite partial to the Jimmy Clanton original.

Kids and Gaming Article Live

This morning the Escapist published issue 230, which included a piece I've been working on for them on Kids and Gaming. When I'm not swimming in a sea of deadlines I'd like to say more, and include some notes on my interviews that couldn't make it into the half-dozen drafts I went through to pound that much information into that tight a piece (I've got to thank Jordan Deam at the Escapist for his keen editing).

Particularly, interviews with the ESA's Rich Taylor and my local dungeonmaster both yielded some great quotes, and there were certain issues that wouldn't fit, but the piece seems to do what it should.

Dogstorm!

Just took my dog out into the year's best windstorm yet. Now he's curled on on the bed next to me, all semi-toweled and smelly. Rudy's his name, and he may well be the greatest canine in existence.

I've been meaning to blog it up on a couple counts. Writing has been interesting. I've gone few three casual drafts of this kids-and-gaming piece, doing what I can to add to the conversation while keeping my sanity. To that end I've interviewed a couple folks on opposite ends, the ESA and a games clinician, and have more to work with than I've got room for.

Grandma's getting better at the games. Still beating me at Smash, and still the handicap rating between her and I shrinks. We played a little guitar hero one, and with a little teamwork managed to get her through a song! It might have been "I wanna be sedated," though don't hold me to that. Katamari is what I'm most excited to show 'er, now that I've unlocked the no-time-limits. I also showed her Resident Evil 4, which was a uniquely interesting experience.

Grandma watches TV, so she's seen gore before. Now bear with me, because it's one thing to say that. It's entirely something else to hold the controller and converse with her as Salazar proclaims the might of his "insect friends." I jump my character into the sewer, while bemoaning the writing in games made four years ago. Grandma's hand goes up to her chest as she gasps -- there's the sound of some insect running right up to my character. It has become our character. Calmly, I explain that for close-quarters combat, I may want to equip my shotgun. She watches intently, and jumps when the insects finally strike from on high. Handily, I dispatch them, with excellent banter all along the way. Then I explain some videogame concepts to her.

She's curious to see how this story begins. We restart it, and the intro to the game gives me more opportunities to verbally cringe at the quality of the writing. I offer to show her a little bit of the beginning of the game. Leon, my character in the world, comes across a man speaking in some foreign language. He picks up an axe, then swings, giving me a decision. Do I shoot this man in front of her?

Yes, just not in the head.

Of course, I explain to her later that to do so would have conserved ammo.

Me and my dog say hello to you, whoever you are. For the night is young, and I must now venture forth into the most miserable weather of the year.