I just needed to get away for a bit from the blogging, but now I’m back. I’ve trimmed things down, organized some clutter, and changed clothes.

Since I last wrote an entry two months ago, I’ve been to Alaska for work, been given permission to read any magazine I want at my desk (all in the name of “researching”) and thought a lot about co-creation in today’s world.

My company has overtaken the co-creation bandwagon, and I wouldn’t mind making this a co-created blog. Maybe I can get Long Division to contribute to this site. We could write maddening prose on the day-to-day life of desk jockeying.  Wait. Oh, who cares? You haven’t seen the way we can jockey a desk.

One of the ways to get people to buy actual CDs again is to create a unique package that the buyer is unable to recreate on his or her own home computer.

Even though I already have the latest Bright Eyes album through “illegal” downloading, I’m still going to purchase the CD. Not because of any guilt or moral beliefs, but because of the awesome album artwork.

“The Calendar Hung Itself”
by Conor Oberst

Does he kiss your eyelids in the morning when you start to raise your head?
And does he sing to you incessantly from the space between your bed and wall?
Does he walk around all day at school with his feet inside your shoes?
Looking down every few steps to pretend he walks with you.
Does he know that place below your neck that is your favorite to be touched
and does he cry through broken sentences like I love you far too much?
Does he lay awake listening to your breath?
Worried that you smoke too many cigarettes.
Is he coughing now on a bathroom floor?
For every speck of tile there’s a thousand more
you won’t ever see but most hold inside yourself eternally

Well, I drug your ghost across the country and we plotted out my death.
In every city, memories would whisper: “Here is where you rest.”
I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
and I settled for a telephone and sang into your machine.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

I kissed a girl with a broken jaw that her father gave to her.
She had eyes bright enough to burn me. They reminded me of yours.
In a story told she was a little girl in a red-rouge,
sun-bruised field and there were rows of ripe tomatoes where a secret was concealed.
And it rose like thunder, clapped under our hands.
And it stretched for centuries to a diary entry’s end where I wrote,
You make me happy oh!! when skies are gray
You make me happy oh!! when skies are gray and gray and gray.

Well the clock’s heart it hangs inside its open chest with its hands
stretched towards the calendar hanging itself but I will not weep for those dying days.
For all the ones who have left there are a few that stayed.
And they found me here and pulled me from the grass where I was laid.

“Rain”
by Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.

I’m writing a play, a verse drama. It’s true. I plan on finishing it by the end of April, then using the whole month of May to revise it. By June, it will be ready for production. I’m serious about this.

Sonnet 4
by William Shakespeare

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which usèd, lives th’ executor to be.

I predict this will be the biggest fashion trend of 2007: Nude Suits. Stop letting your friends and co-workers imagine you naked and just give them what they want. This year is the year of total exposure. For realz.

“Nude as the News”
by Cat Power

I still have a flame gun
For the cute cute cute ones

And I saw your hand
With a loose grip
On a tight ship

I still have a flame gun
For the cute ones
To burn out all your tricks
And I saw your hand
With a loose grip
On a very tight ship

And I know
That in the cold light
There’s a very big man
There’s a very big man
Leading us into
Temptation

Jackson, Jesse, I’ve got a son in me
Jackson, Jesse, I’vee got a son in me

And he’s related to you
He’s related to you
He is waiting to meet you

He’s related to you
He’s related to you
He is dying to meet you

Backhand, role reversal
Where is someone
Backhand, reversable roles
I know there’s someone

I still have a flame gun
For the cute ones
To burn out all your tricks
And I saw your hand
With a loose grip
On such a tight ship

And I know that in the cold light
Is a very big man
Leading us into
Temptation

Jackson, Jesse, I’ve got a son in me
Jackson, Jesse, I’ve got the son in me

And he’s related to you
He’s related to you
He is waiting to meet you

He’s related to you
He’s related to you
He is dying to meet you

He’s related to you, he’s related to you
He’s related to you, he’s nude as the news

Nude as the news, nude as the news, nude as the news
All over, all over, all over, all over, all over, all over, all over you

“New York”
by Valzhyna Mort

new york, madame,
is a monument to a city

it is
TA-DA
a gigantic pike
whose scales
bristled up stunned

and what used to be just smoke
found a fire that gave it birth

champagne foam
melted into metal
glass rivers
flowing upwards
and things you won’t tell to a priest
you reveal to a cabdriver

even time is sold out
when to the public’s “wow” and “shhh”
out of a black top hat
a tailed magician
is pulling new york out
by the ears of skyscrapers

Translated from the Belarusian by Franz Wright & Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright

So, this girl the other night was talking about how she hooked up (you know, slang for had sex) with Justin Timberlake in Arizona a few weeks ago and had to sign papers saying she wouldn’t go to press or sue or something like that, but there’s something more important than celebrity/local gossip, and that’s National Poetry Month.

It’s that time of year, when you all get your daily (except weekends) dose of poetry bliss. Hang on kids, because you’re about to hook up with some powerful poems. I hope you brought protection.

“This Be the Verse”
by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Sure, this poem is Larkin 101, but I thought I start easy on you, let you get comfortable with the groove, before it starts getting rough. Pleasurably rough.

“… there are mansions almost as fine as any on Dallas’s tony Swift Avenue …”

That would be Swiss Avenue, Ms. Swartz.

Dallas Does Dallas

For the longest time, I’ve felt guilty for not reading certain books considered classics or starting books and never finishing them. According to Lennard J. Davis’ article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I shouldn’t feel this way.

In Davis’ well-written and short piece, he really caught my attention with these lines:

I like to read four or five books at once. It’s like being at a horse race–only one or two of the books might win. I don’t feel committed to finishing every book I start, and, in a way, isn’t it the writer’s fault if I’m not pulled along? I’m an inveterate book buyer, but like many collectors I don’t always think the proof of the pudding is in the reading. I’ve got some beautiful volumes that I will probably never read.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Blooker prize honours best blogs

Book on women’s sex ‘hookups’ draws fire

Literary Feud! NYTBR Smacks Up The New Yorker On…Poetry

Sex sells, and now tourism bureaus are embracing the ages-old marketing concept.

Two examples:

The Downtown Dallas Association “Where’s Your D Spot?” campaign, and the Tourism Victoria (Canada) “Your Search For The Perfect Orgasm Is Over” ad. Apparently, the Victoria ad is to market their quality food & beverage offerings.

Yes, food is exactly what I think of when I see the word orgasm. Okay…maybe I do think of food…steak…pie…