Blackacid Turns

6/29/08 - 3 days

2008-06-29T14:27:00.002-04:00

Wow. 374 days since i've updated. Surreal. My second child is coming in 3 days.

Digitz

2007-06-21T09:11:00.001-04:00

The tips of my fingers are wrath

spotted in the blood and bile of my enemies

running and dripping and pooling,

these coils of red, they are the lubricant of my battle,

Malice are my hands, my tools of war

my destruction, my hatred personified in flesh

they are my black hammers of retribution,

I am their wielder as they call me to war.

Father's Day and the Beatles

2007-06-18T15:46:00.000-04:00

This is my second father’s day without my dad. I’ve made it a tradition now to do the hour plus drive out to his gravesite to see him, the whole subjecting myself all the songs and memories I can associate with him, his life, and his death. The soundtrack of this trip is the Beatles collection ‘One.

This is a time when I want to be cut off, if just for a few hours. It makes me nervous that my cell might ring. I leave it on just in case something goes wrong, but I wish it was off and out the window. I call my wife about ten minutes into it to tell her I’m going to stop by my grandmothers for some coffee before I come home. I hate talking to my wife right now, which is strange to me because I love her very much; but right now I’d be pissed if even God wanted to stop in for a chat.

I skip over “Yellow Submarine” because this morning it just doesn’t seem appropriate. I hit the turn to Clermont and think that Dad would have said this was the slow way to go. “Penny Lane” gets skipped too. No in the mood for the cheerful John and Paul. “All you need is love” isn’t a bad song for the moment. It stays on. The tears, just a few start halfway through the song. Not uncontrollable, but there nonetheless. This time going down I have some big fighter pilot type sunglasses so it’s easier. “Lady Madonna” kicks up and my chest feels heavy. I play it twice for good measure, just to make sure.

“Hey Jude” has to wait for awhile, that one and one other are the heartrippers. In my idyllic world I’m like Gore Vidal, Vonnegut, or Lear and someone reads this and cares about the detail that my mother in law has a chair on her front porch painted with all the titles of the Beatles songs, and little illustrations for most of them. A tall lanky John, a blue meanie, and so forth. When I see sometimes I think what my father would thought of it. He would have loved it, he would have smiled, studied it, and commented on how neat it was.

I’m twenty six and Beatle mania is long gone for me, Lennon died the year I was born, and I don’t get how influential the White Album was. However their songs are a part of my life, little stitches in the tapestry of my days. When I first started to date the woman who would become my wife I remember she had a painted stencil of ‘Imagine’ on her wall. The connection I have with these English fellows is odd, but real. I’m not going to say ‘they’ve been there when I need them’ or some other trite analog, but to be true, they’ve been a part of my journey for sure. Not just on this June 17^th, but my whole journey. I don’t know what a ju-ju eyeball is, but I’ve know that phrase since I played with transformers. It’s a legacy I must pass down to my daughter. At one and a half she’s a smart, clever girl, so I know she’ll get it.

I have to listen to one of the two now. ‘Let it be’ hurts me. When my uncle rotted away of cancer when I was in high school I played that song until it was Pavlovian for me. When I hear it, the man defenses come crashing down and I cry. It is my pain song. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I have to hear it today. The opening piano is like a gunshot. The Phil Spector wall of sound is like a vice around my temples. I cry like a madman. I cry like a hysterical madman. My jaw clenches and unclenches, by reflex I fight it like it was trying to strangle me. I fight it and part of me hates it, but those piano notes and the line about ‘being parted’ murder me. Alone in my car I let out the stored anger I have. I don’t buy into that macho horse shit that men don’t, or can’t cry. My father taught me better.

I play the song six times, enough to get messed up on it like some drug. I skip over to ‘Hey Jude’. By the time it goes into four minutes of ‘na-na-na-na’, I’m gone. This is the wet works. I see him, I see me. I think about bagpipes on a rainy day in January, I think about seeing his coffin above the earth. I think about my friends so ripped up by the ordeal you would think their fathers died. It’s touching and it’s what today is about. Like some madman I scream. I laugh. Oh lord I laugh.

I don’t spend long at his grave. What I had to say, I said on the way down. I stay long enough to pull weeds, clean it off, and mumble a few words. Dad wasn’t big on visiting graves, coming down here is something I inherited from my mother. I don’t know if my father looks down from some heaven. I don’t know if he appreciates me coming. I want to think he does. Most of all though, I come down here for me. Me, John, Paul, George, and even Ringo make this trip. It’s good, it clears the pipes in a way, freshens up the insides. Things like this fathers day on a hot morning remind me of good days in the past.

The waterworks are locked down when I walk out of Holy Cross Cemetery. I still miss him, but life seems to be a collection of speed up and slow down. Today is no different. I play ‘Help’ when I driver off. Not because I’m hurt anymore, just because I like the idea of being ‘not so self assured’. It reminds me why we need fathers. My daughter will never want for that, I’ll stand beside her and behind when the time is right. Maybe one day when I’m gone, she’ll make a journey like this, and it will renew her idea of parenting. She’ll leave some cemetery not with tears, but with a focus on doing the very best she can in loving her children. I can only hope so. Somewhere I know my father agrees.

Debutant

2007-06-04T14:04:00.000-04:00

nasty princess groans

juicily, bumblingly, hate

quivering, screaming

Perforated

2007-06-04T14:00:00.001-04:00

madman sinks, unchained

men screaming, screaming

catapults destroy.

Nighttime

2007-06-04T13:30:00.000-04:00

fuming baby grieves

agonizes, saxophones

calls forth its mother.

Motion Emotion

2007-06-04T13:04:00.001-04:00

Broken eyes came in hate
Your scythe lips tossed thinking to the hills
Light not quite clean wanting darkness
Revealed through broken clouds
You realized sadness suddenly
Half-uttered
In the impartiality of my face.

Glory Mire

2007-06-04T12:18:00.000-04:00

I stand with dignity, my will not to submit,
I am malignant in my disposition,
Some small cancer of disposed greed,
I am excelsior, I am competent.

My honor is my crutch,
A broken metaphor or obligation of some corrupt idea,
A code by which I raise, I ride, I abide
I am exquisite, I am ideal.

Thoughts of expressive guilt,
And unfinished business of razor clawed angst
Is an explosive storm of toothless madness,
I am the sum of my faults, I am real.

Boast inside my chest, pits of my cockles
Braggart and bloodthirsty, a loaded cannon primed
Flash-pan written collection in ensorcelled tempest,
I am a blurb, I am bona fide.

In my pit, pitted against, pitied against,
Fishbowl menagerie of collated philosophy
Running with scissors stepped down in anxiety ridden abuse
I am unfeigned brutality, I am genuine.

In my mirror I have an image of mythic man,
Deep bearded, peppered with age experience, compassion, and stain
Skin that is smoked with too many problems, tinged with unbelievable pall
I am stained glass wishes, I am honest.

I am the collective pool of other’s ideas
I am the synthesis of my own creative ignorance
I am the rave reviewed rape in madness smiling
I am an ethical fallen angel.

GlockTeeth

2007-06-04T11:32:00.000-04:00

I can feel ideas boiling in my head like lead
ready to be cast into bullets
They filter down, still hot into my mouth
and I load them.

Click-click.

I load those mean little guysI check to make sure my safety is off,
and that lead, that thoughtless lead gets ready to let looseout of my head, my tongue is the fucking trigger.

Boom-boom.

eruption, cut out of the barrel of my face
directed at you, snide, smarmy selfish
take it on the chin and i hope for a big exit wound,my heavy caliber words.

Splat.

Somewhere

2007-06-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

Somewhere there is war, there is suffering and hardship
somewhere your problems are insignificant
somewhere there are battles of righteousness
somewhere men are being made gems in trials
somewhere romantisized visions become horrible realities
somwhere.

Kip C. Pieces......

2007-06-04T08:45:00.000-04:00

This section contains poetry pieces written by a friend of mine, Kip C. He wanted to throw them out there and see what people thought. Hopefully, we can get some more people up on Blackacid Turns as well, and get some dialogue going on about people's work. Enjoy....

Graduation

2007-06-04T08:34:00.002-04:00

What a rollercoaster ride of excitement and fear
The culmination of your early career
The beginning of your lifelong adventure
The ending of dependable structure

Excitement is all around
Possibilities for your life abound
Expectations of a tranquil peace
Giddiness from your worldly release

Temptation is your intrigue
Grab hold of it and you may bleed
Push it away and you may regret
Fear builds and your stomachs upset

Your world of options has no bound
You pick yourself up when you hit the ground
You’re a leader with a sense of self
In this direction you find your wealth

The Boys

2007-06-04T08:34:00.001-04:00

Play
Have Fun
Enjoy
Run

Push-Ups
Pop
Sit-Ups
Stop

Race
Go Pee
Tie Lace
Wrestle Me

Stance
Shoot
Balance
Scoot

Half
Pin
Look Up
Win

Draussen
Lifting
Spielen
Whining

Wash
Dry
Brush
Cry

Pray
Creep
Lay
Sleep

Transformation

2007-06-04T08:32:00.001-04:00

You do not look. You cannot see. I am in you and you in me.
You should not go. You do not stay. You do not know me anyway.
I am your love. I am your strife. I touch your soul. I breathe your life.
You know me now? You still can’t see. You think you can live without me.

The anger builds. Contempt’s release. You cannot live with this disease.
Eradicating living things. It’s in your thoughts. It’s in your dreams.
You don’t know why. You feel ashamed. It is not you but you are blamed.
In the mirror you cannot see a reflection of who you used to be.

You fall down a wounded man unable to speak, unable to stand.
You look with wonder, and then you see. Because I am, you will be.
Now you know. Your life is changed. You gain in love. Your thoughts, re-arrange.
You stand with new adoring eyes. When you speak my name you obtain repli

AngerLove

2007-06-04T08:31:00.000-04:00

Born of the Portuguese King, one fine day,
were identical twin daughters – hip, hip, hurray.

Amor and Raiva were the twins’ given names.
With wealth, beauty, and glamour they seemed impossible to claim.

These two were identical, the way they looked, acted, and played.
Identical even were the sculptures they made.

Separation seemed impossible, but inevitable it remained.
Amor fell in love with a man by the name of Cain.

Raiva was not jealous, not even upset.
She was happy for Amor from the moment they met.

The two were in love, but Raiva made three.
Cain finally told her, alone they must be.

Continued happiness was not long for their fate.
Raiva’s love loss bred depression, anger, and hate.

As time passed by, Amor’s love grew and grew.
It seemed, by twin’s link, Raiva’s anger grew too.

Time has a way of letting us know.
Soon it would be time that Raiva would blow.

Cain, like a good man, was out tending the fields.
Counting and figuring the crops and their yields.

Raiva dressed faintly and called upon Cain.
It was in this field that his love, Raiva slain.

Acting as her sister, a horrible deception.
Raiva conceived her insane redemption.

In time, bearing child, can be seen by all.
Amor, not clueless, Cain she did call.

Questions asked and answered, Cain’s ignorance caught.
Amor is now loveless, although love’s all she sought.

Love and anger, not just emotion.
Identical twins, split by a notion.

Raiva and Amor were together again.
This time lost love replaced with anger and sin.

Amor is now love in Portuguese, Raiva means anger.
Don’t put your relationship in danger.

Smokers

2007-06-04T08:27:00.000-04:00

You huff and you puff and you take down a drag.
You hack and you cough and the mucus makes you gag.

Forever surrounded by the toilet smells of smoke.
Why should you care what's healthy? You're cool because you toke.

The future is not here. It is something you cannot see.
What should you be afraid of? Something that only might be?

Let me paint you a picture of crevices and crinkles.
Lifelong tattoos called early age wrinkles.

Arteries filling, lungs turning black.
A rising chance of a heart attack.

Maybe you're right. It won't happen to you.
Instead there's emphysema and coughing a nasty green gue

The inside of your home, peppered with a dust of ashes.
But you just keep inhaling those fatal gasses.

Your walls turn from white to an ugly brown-yellow.
But the cigarette high is keeping you mellow.

Your children, if born, have allergies and asthma.
No sports due to birth defects and they wheeze like your grandma.

Don't listen to me, you've heard this before.
Go on, keep smoking. Is your throat getting sore?

It cannot be because you smoke.
Tobacco is cheap, you cannot go broke.

The cigarette costs and medical bills.
Addicted children that the tobacco now kills.

Let us make the statement together. "I will never quit!"
So what of the cost. Let my children pay for it!

By: A Smoker.

G.D Tobacco

2007-06-01T09:33:00.001-04:00

My fingers tremble as my attitude worsens
I can feel my fingernails, the sides of my face
my cheeks are hot flushed, oily
I can smell again, and I don't like what I smell like
food is differant it has flavor
fuck me I need to smoke
I want to curl the camel around my tongue
spit it out and watch is dissapate
taste the marlboro man shoved in my mouth
goddamnit I want him.
Fuck I need a cigarette,
my damn fingernails hurt and my eyes tinkle,
as if tinkle was a feeling
right now it is,
my skin is crawling and I need to smoke.

Fallen

2007-05-29T10:04:00.000-04:00

Woe is my calling, tattooed in my throat
In ink kissed with the blood of the rotten
Black is too light a color for my disposition

Agony is a good emotion for those around me
The wicked few that have called me brother and friend
The wretched few that saw some seed un-germinated
Light in my pain

I am the anger, the sainted, knightly
Anger in words and actions that shock and awe
I am that anger that civilized folk
Push to the depths of their personal abyss
And pray never to see the light of cultured minds

I am the hammer that drives the nail in my coffin
Everyday I drive them deeper
I am a charcoal smoked falsehood
A mirror of dated times
With ethics that don’t apply

Broken are my decisions
Broken are all the promises lied
Broken are my thoughts
Broken is my body

I am condemned to hell
Awaiting my arrival with room prepared
Sheets turned down
A nice mint on my pillow.

Backyard Genocide

2007-05-29T09:56:00.001-04:00

One blade of grass stands in my way
But behind it are ten thousand more to defy me
They have allies among them
Tall leafy allies, I don’t care their name
I don’t want them here
The weeds are the artillery
Poison sumac their heavy infantry
I stand against them
My defoliant, chemical warfare in hand
I will cleanse them.

In my Room

2007-05-29T09:50:00.000-04:00

My muscles twitch and spasm
My veins are full of blood
The agony of my predicament is ever present,
ever crushing
As the weights, pounds and pounds of iron
Beckon me to a time of war
Makes the Viking of my soul awaken
The Mongol come forward
The barbarian set fire to the village of my weakness
My veins, eyes, arms, legs, body all bulge
I want to vomit out all my hatred
Hatred of my gross form
I am dysmorphic, I am fanatic
I will become righteous strength
When the acid in my body burns
And the taste leaves my mouth
My heart becomes a shotgun
I am a warrior, a chain bound warrior
Set to battle my inside fear.

Instrument of Mine

2007-05-29T09:38:00.001-04:00

I will play on your body as if it was a Steinway
My fingers to run over the ivory of your skin,
My hands will hold you in delicate grace
As you are the bass on which I will make great accompaniment
To the soft drumming I will have, rhythmic, resonating, deep
I will caress you not as a lover,
But as my muse, my instrument,
My Stradivarius gifted to me from some far off patron,
As I touch the voice that is your skin,I will pray that I can complement it,
my hands to pluck your violin.

Gas Prices

2007-05-27T10:59:00.001-04:00

3.40 a gallon. At what point am I supposed to feel like I’m being tied to a wall and hit in the spine with a sledgehammer? I do not understand how gas is so expensive. I read the paper, the net, the blogs, the op-ed, magazines, watch TV, ask my co workers, and I can’t find a consistent answer. It’s Bush. It’s big oil. It’s a plot by the democrats to drive the elephants completely out of office. It’s Al-Qaeda. It’s your local station gouging you. I can’t get a consistent answer. I’m sure it’s a combination of most of those factors and a great of one’s I haven’t listed. Like most Americans, I am not to interested in why gas is so high, I am interested in it not being so high.

Three forty a gallon is ridiculous. It kills most of our wallets. It demoralizes people. Makes them lack faith in the government. For me, it pisses me off every time I go to Super America or BP. I see the cost and just get angry. Some sort of visceral reaction, a turning in my guts makes my face hot, and the veins on my forearms bulge. I think about ‘Hulk smash’ and for a second I wonder who to smash. Can’t think of anyone right away. What makes me even hotter, is that it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.

Organize. Mass demonstrations and protest. Worked for Civil Rights. People listened. Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not equating gas prices to the struggle for Civil Rights, but I am saying that a nice strong sit in, massive protest, or march might get some people’s attention. I don’t think our politicians are doing anything about because I believe that they feel that we’re just going to take it on the chin and move on. I for one, can’t really afford to take it on the chin, and before anyone suggests ‘get a hybrid’ I can’t afford that either. It’s be nice if we were all west coast Sierra Club members, but the majority of us are just working class, disappearing middle class. Sometimes a new car payment just isn’t feasible.

So let’s organize. Pick a politicians office, some senator and all show up with our signs. Maybe wear some gas station attendant clothes. Maybe explain to our senator exactly how much it cost us to drive down to his office. Maybe we do a sit in at a gas station. Imagine CNN picking that up (sic). A group of people all chained to gas pumps. Chanting some catchy slogan. It might make a difference. It might not, but then maybe me, for one wouldn’t feel like I was being completely shafted.

Labyrinth Lock

2007-05-27T10:33:00.001-04:00

The labyrinth begins to turn as you stand at it's center
the maze becomes fluid and alive,
it's coiling, serpentine around you
the restriction and control is stifling, misting
obscuring, you spend so long lost
until you found it's center, it's eye, it's command
and now it losses you again, and you are forgotten
you are 'past', history, a chronicle
the puzzle box closes down tight, and it's
the manhole of your life.

High School Wrestling

2007-05-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

Wrestling is tough. There is no other way to put it. Wrestling demands all the physical tools of football, basketball, martial arts mixed together. It demands strength, flexibility, speed, aggression, and grit. Of all sports available to the High School athlete, it is the hardest, most grueling, demanding endeavor they can attempt. On the team I coach, we had probably a dozen or more come out for the team, and they quit during preseason training. This is typical. Wrestling is tough.

For my wrestlers we start the second day of school with preseason conditioning. Usually three days a week, about two hours a day. They do four or five hundred push ups. Maybe six hundred sit ups. Some pull ups, usually on the bleachers or on a chain linked fence. We run. Wind sprints, long distance, Indian runs, hills, high knees, side by sides, up the bleachers, down the bleachers, all of the above. They run, sometimes they carry each other on their backs; sometimes I have them carry large rocks. We’ll do all of this until they’re gassed, and then we lift some weights. Squats, dead lifts, bench presses, all in rapid fire succession, beating their bodies into the minimum shape they need to be competitive. Some of the parents say its torture, but their kids, the one’s that don’t quit, eat it up. They ask for more. I know we’re tougher than some schools, easier than others, but these guys thrive on this kind of stuff. It’s what makes them wrestlers.

Then come late October, the practices begin. For us, it’s a maelstrom of technique, conditioning, live wrestling, and mental preparation. I won’t get into the specifics, but the average practice usually two, three hours will leave them drained completely. We’ve had some guys so dog tired by the end of it all, the begged to quit. Their teammates wouldn’t let them. They returned the next day, you guessed it, hungry for more. It’s not that we push them to extremes. We push them to their limits, and the limits get higher and higher. Wrestling is a complete, total body workout. You use every muscle and you’ve got to have stamina and speed all molded together. These kids know this and the thrive on putting it all together, and hammering out more and more time on the mat until they get it right. Practice after practice, day after day, all leading up to the reason why they do it.

The meets. Marathon sessions on Saturdays lasting sometimes from four in the morning to nine at night. That’s not an exaggeration, and a lot of times it’s the norm. they sit and wait, until they wrestle, up to five matches in a day. Are there a lot of fans? No. it’s their friends, girlfriends, family, and that’s about it, if they’re lucky. Not many gyms get packed for the wrestling. They don’t care. They draw solidarity from each other. Wrestling is an individual sport, but you won’t find many teams stronger. It’s because these guys all sleep on the same bed of nails. They draw strength in that. They look at the guy next to him and see a solidarity, a brotherhood that didn’t exist before. It’s the shared burden of the drills, the conditioning, and the practices. Mold that together and you have a team, a team that thrives on each other’s successes, and bolsters each other in failure.

It’s a brutal sport. Injury wise it’s nowhere near as bad as football, soccer, or some of the others. These guys train with an intensity that most sports can’t. I talked to a few basketball coach friends of mine and we compared notes. They’re eyes bulged when they realized what we did. The standard response was, ‘my kids would quit’ or ‘the parent’s wouldn’t go for that’. The wrestlers smile at all this when I tell them. They take pride in what they do. They know they don’t get much recognition, but they realize what they put into it all. When they win, beat someone else who has gone through the same thing they have, it means something. They have tested themselves and passed. They have polished the stone and made a gem. Besides the competitive aspect, they thrive on the camaraderie. These guys look at their fellow wrestlers as an extended family, and it goes on well past High School. I still know guys that keep in contact years after their time on the mat is done.

When it’s late November, and the matches start, I want all of you to take a moment one Wednesday night or Saturday and go support your local wrestlers. They’ll appreciate it. As you sit in the stands, the rules may be a little hard to get at first, but the main point is pin the other guy. Watch them and see what they do, the sacrifices they make to be the best at a sport that drains so much from them. Appreciate it for a moment, and see for yourself what this wonderful sport is all about.

To Vote or Not to Vote

2007-05-25T11:32:00.000-04:00

Various media in my town has reported, covered, and pointed out that American Idol got some 600 million votes, and this is tragic in comparison to voter turn out rates. This is a round peg being shoved into the square hole. I do not see a comparison other in the nominal sense that both are voting practices, and both had voters. Secondly, I cannot see it as a indictment on voter turnout in the United States. The two are apples and oranges. People vote for American Idol because a) they like the show b) it’s easy, either a text or a phone call. Modern political voting practices in America involve a) registering b) going somewhere to vote c) having an opinion. We don’t compare the physical strength of a baby to a Colt’s linebacker, so let’s stop with the blurbed media about the voting practices of American Idol and our recent political races.

It is a shame that few people in comparison to the population effected actually vote? Yes, in many ways it is. I want to have faith in the political system, I want to believe that it is me and you that makes decisions in the United States. I teach this to my students, and pray that they buy into it. Sad truth is, and maybe I’m jaded, but the socio-political monster parties don’t give me any hope that I and you have anything to do with how our country is run. This may be a slap of ‘duh, I knew that’, but it hammers me every time I think about.

America was founded by supremely intelligent, guardians of the philosophy of democratic government. Say what you will about slave holding, and womanizing, and anything else the founding fathers may have done wrong, but they were the reason our nation has the flexibility to be a great nation for many years to come. The system they created has infinite possibilities, and assures that checks/balances give no one person tyranny. What galls me is that we continually misuse and misrepresent ourselves by not going to the polls, and believing in the system far superior minded people passed down to us.

Bottom line is, we can debate partisan politics forever. I can rail against the big two parties. You can be frustrated with Bush, or Fletcher, or whoever, but the simple and fundamental truth that apparently a massive majority of us forgot is that none of it will change, will matter, or will mean anything to us; unless our voice is heard. For all our sake’s, speak up.