Raccoon

Raton Laveur

Quelle pauvre bête, car la vie qu'il a choisi,

reste couincé dans les gouttières et les déchets moisis.

Ce bandit, si maudit,

qui doit voler sans un bruit.

Est-ce qu'il a vraiment choisi ce malheur:

de sortir dans les ténèbres et l'absence de chaleur?

A-t-il demandé de vivre

dans sa fourrure sans valeur?

Oui, bien sûr. Car quelle exsitence pourra

lui offrir autant que cette libèrté lui donnera?

Quand il sera connu partout en notoriété,

mais en solitude il vivra.

TRANSLATION:

Raccoon

What a poor beast, for the life he has chosen

remains stuck in the gutters and molding waste.

This bandit, so cursed

Who must steal without a sound.

Did he really choose this misfortune:

to emerge in the darkness and the absence of warmth?

Did he ask to live

in his worthless fur?

Yes, of course. For what existence could

grant him as much as that freedom could give?

When he will be known everywhere in notoriety,

but live in solitude.

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French conjugation can make rhyming really hard >_< This ran through 6 drafts before it started making grammatical sense, but now I'm quite proud of it and it's a ton of fun to read aloud.

On the process of creation:

Brain Juice

Distilled thoughts which slop
down on paper like black mud
gritty and viscous
The wade through them
Delicious or sickening, I can't decide
Slats of silt so dark and sweet,
and wide across my vast insides.
Coalescent conceptions wait for their final sauté
A steamy ballet or melting sorbet of the
blind writings of my future protégé
A me which can wipe the left overs away

Brain juices unrefined
break free often from my mind
Tart, bitter, perverse.
Greasy confusion which in the foam rises
through the whirling mentalities of which they're comprised
Spit out on your face, on your hands
and your ego: the frosting of obscene indignation
Stripping my muses of fresh contraband
But everyone yells out false appreciation
for my cognitive custards
As I vomit a slurry of dream elementals
That no one's supposed to understand.

Noise

__________________________________

       As I walked one dreary evening,

       Trundling though a wooded glen,

       I felt a strange and awkward presence

       Mumbling each now and then.

       This mumbling soon grew into

       A deeply bodied growl,

       Coming from a place nearby,

       Put forth by something foul.

       "Stop!" I said so loudly

       I could see my voice appear

       Wavering in the pitch black,

       I spoke again as it drew near.

       "What are you fiend? Why bother me

       With constant vicious groans?

       Have you come to prey on me

       And pick clean all my bones?

       Why do you growl so?

       Are you a ghoul with skin of gray,

       Or perhaps a succubus

       Here to drink my soul away?

       Stop grumbling you unknown brute,

       You ruthless carnivore!

       Be you changing lycanthrope

       Or twice mouthed manticore?

       What mythic beast could roar as such,

       To shake my very person?

       And since I can not see you,

       My confusion only worsens."

       "Well what are you?" the voice then said,

       "Have you claw or hand?"

       "I," I said, "Am hungry . . .

       Oh now I understand."

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Deep-fried alligator on a stick

I have eaten said food, and it has been deemed delicious.

I made a trip out to the Arkansas State Fair. My arteries are now rock solid, but I tried some very interesting food, and learned a lot about alligators and how to effectively frighten small children with alligators. It's been a good week, I'll try to update a little more regularly.

Here is another poem crafted during my trip to Guatemala. It was inspired by maggots, and thus, as an entomologist, it is very close to my heart. The way maggots will literally be when I expire. =D
Enjoy:

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Fly

Fly so kindly, fly so dainty,
Sculler silver winged,
Casting hums across the void,
With lutes both silver stringed.

Fly so hollow, fly so ugly,
Costume made of bones,
Your music only plays,
for weathered kings on rotting thrones.

Mourning jester, frantic dervish,
Wailing to and fro,
Playing when the banquet ends,
Where few else dare to go.

Fly who glistens, fly who shines,
The last light there for them,
Cry forth to all as you let fall,
Your pale requiem.

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Some poetry from one of those pesky existential crises:

Fault of Empathy

Could you ever see what I see?
If I put your eyes inside my head,
Perhaps I'd see bitter instead of red.
There are no echoes for sight, visions will never stay the same
So how does one claim that their physical nature is truth,
When your reality is only really a collection of light?
PERCEPTION . . . not just a question
About your state of being
or if what you're seeing is real, but how.
How is now the question of your own connection
to all that's around you, the effect of that blue which
hides in the sky's reflection.
Does it actually touch where your feelings and such reside?
And when it makes that impression, can you honestly say that you've felt exactly that way before?
What more, have you tried to remember every way you've felt while seeing that blue upon prior inspection?
As those recollections fade, we create new inventions of understanding, it's how we grow.
Can you ever know what I know?

Moving right along

Because I have yet to post anything text-based, I thought I'd put up a poem. Here's one that I concocted in a Texas airport on my way down to Guatemala last summer (2009). I was inspired by a man I saw who seemed to be . . . bitterly uninspired.

_______________________

Lump

Oh here comes Mr. Toad.

Gullet drooped like dripping tallow,

Little leering nodes,

And skin like soap eroded—shallow pits of sickly pallor—

And his knuckles knots of rope.

His eyes spit mist of swollen sorrow

All across your toes.

No taller than your feet he grows.

No innocence he knows.

Slack-jawed staring, hardly caring

What bones he cracks or brains he lacks.

His smugness stays intact

As he waddles through his woes,

Bottled in his mottled clothes

Of slimy sin and salty grins.

Oh why so bitter, grim Sir Toad?

The loads you bear are paltry, hardly fair

To call them grandiose.

They’re composed of your own shyness,

Squinting faces of the self you loathe.

How can you dare to hate us so when you were born a fetid soul?

Redemption thrown through pleading windows, that’s the fate you chose.

__________________________

I'm going to go get a glass of juice. Cheers.

-T