kitchen poems

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

 
there's something new here, for once. our memento polariods are up.

let me give something for u all to ponder...

from metafilter:

He's won a Pulitzer Prize. He teaches a creative writing class at Florida State University. And now Robert Olen Butler intends to write a novel, starting at 9 p.m. EST, live on the Internet -- by picking an old postcard at random and developing what's written on the back into a full-fledged narrative. And, taking Saturdays off, he'll do it in the 17 days between today and November 20th.

check it out.

misery chick 12:00 PM

Friday, October 26, 2001

 
Kitchen poems, exquisite corpse freewrite

There was a monster lurking in the dark. It stood scared and naked shivering and whispering something to itself. undecipherable. i lurched closer to it. i was sacred too. I decided to extend my hand into the dark on the off chance something friendly would carry me away. you see, i believe that when the end is inevitable, one should choose the softest death. Yes, I believe this, soft, like a feather,like the moonlight weeping from the window, like my father coming home. it was enfuriating, i'd hear his car roll up infront of our house. the way he would jingle his key. keys to nowhere. A monster. Running. there was always something or someone to run to. until now the corners are barren. but along the corner an ant makes its journey home sweet home to its web of inequity (but it is nice). and in the other corner, there sits a giant rabbit waiting to be fed.

anida esguerra 2:54 PM

 
(I'm not sure if we're expected to post these here but this blog needs more traffic so...there).

Polaroid of Ann with head in hands, eyes peeking thorugh fingers.
.
Caption: SNEAKY GESTURES
CREEPY WEEPING

Oh, my ever-loving GOD! Where did I put my hair gel? This can't be happening to me. I'm usually more careful and prepared than that. I would never intentionally let down the community by introducing such an aesthetic and emotional hazard such as my untendered coif into its neighborhoods. Maybe there is an agency that can meet this need for the good of the greater good. Perhaps there is some FEMA or American Red Cross gran that I am eligible for so that I can replenish my supply of hair gel or --if unavailable -- some form of styling mousse or some other hair care product that provides volume, body and shine and won't cause split ends.

And WHERE IS MY PEN?!? The one that enables me to write on black paper! It was right here in my...oh, here it is. My bad.

But let me get back to the ongoing tragedy of my hair. I curse the evil genius who developed alcohol-free styling products. (Gestures a crusing gesture). They doom us mortals into thinking we can have hair like the gods only to hurl us back down to earth with not even our frizzied mortality to break our fall. (Shakes fist in the air).

Damn you, Vidal Sassoon!

To Hells with you, Jheri Redding (or however you spell your gay name)!!

Piss off, Dep!!!

GO BACK INTO THE TUBE YOU WERE SQEEZED OUT OF!!!


Sam del Rosario 2:04 AM

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

 
freewrite while listening to some local alternative indy rock band:
they play looney tunes to the drum of lunacy
a twisted kind of reality
that exists in musicals and magical kingdoms
of chocolate factories and altoids
mint tablets consummable to a point until
the mint stings yr tongue and all ya want to do is
spit it out--too minty for my taste buds.
so i'm stuck too on this whole war thing
except i've been freewriting a lot about the war
perhaps just got too much info to shift through
to make any sense of the fragments
perhaps thats the point of all this
dunno.

anida esguerra 3:21 PM

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

 
anybody else having a writer's block?

fuck.

misery chick 10:17 PM

Thursday, October 18, 2001

 
office sitting at atomic kitchen
watching the electric poles through the window
listening to some random underground music
waiting for the phone to ring
time is slipping by like water

i haven't done anything today.
what else is new?

misery chick 4:30 PM

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

 
INCENSED by Sam del Rosario

A one-act play that takes place in present day Asian America.

Enter SAM.

SAM
(clears throat)

AUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

(sighs in relief)

CURTAIN

Made possible with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sam del Rosario 11:59 PM

Thursday, October 11, 2001

 
i was waiting at the yellow corner for the ashland bus. the street seemed quiet today despite the traffic. the yellow corner was oddly peaceful. the sewer drains spoke to me -- the water flowed in patterns. i stepped onto the bus. it lurched into the intersection. my eyes wandered into an alley. and there she was, hanging a sheet onto a clothesline, strung between two windows on the third floor across the alley. she was beautiful, in a strange way. her face half covered by the shadows of a hanging shirt is dark. i wanted to kiss her then. she pulled me close to her. i looked down. she looked down, then stepped away. her fragrance still in the air. why did she dance? did she always disrupt the dust? was she the keeper of passion. all of it was hers and she tried to save others from it.

*mental note for future reference: this wasn't all me. i'm still sane.

misery chick 2:40 AM

 
Past the clock, over the hill, across from the bookstore under the cherry tree our hero sat and pondered his next move. Would he go home to find out his wife was dead? Or would he just sit there without thinking, not knowing, not caring, not exactly there, calculating the next move anticipating emotions buried deep in his gut -- buried wounds -- and scars kept in the silence. The quiet was thicker than death as he nudged the door open in his imagination -- he envisioned eight different ways she could have been murdered. He wondered why he had done it. He remembered the small things just then. The things that didn't seem to matter in the beginning. The way she would call in the middle of the night. There were days we would talk for hours on the phone. I didn't understand what had changed. She hadn't changed, it was I. Once I saw a tear fall on a dust ball. What a disease it is to cleanse and want to be.

Sam del Rosario 12:59 AM

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

 
a therapy write:
BECAUSE IT?S WRONG FOR ME TO LOVE YOU!
BECAUSE IT?S WRONG FOR ME TO LOVE YOU!
BECAUSE IT?S WRONG FOR ME TO LOVE YOU!
that my limbs are twisted as i wake up in bed still choking
on tears sublimating across dreams to naked pillow
arms distorted
legs kicking in pain
wet snot and tears
a piece of twisted metal in my heart
burrowing deeper down
exhaustion.
slow, asthmatic breathing
numb and pain together, and deeper than words
like the grey of a stillborn baby

john park 8:00 AM

Tuesday, October 09, 2001

 
hey blogger is free
expect it to break some times
just like computers

nothing is magic
we live in a society
where things fall apart

like buildings, like planes
then we bomb those poor people
out of their own homes

the starving children
women and the elderly
those innocent ones

caught in the middle
and got punished for nothing
like the computer

like blamming machines
when in the reality
it is our own fault

misery chick 2:10 PM

 
10.09.01
fragmented thoughts:
there are women who wake up next to shadows
and magical blankets that help them through the night.
there are days that become nights too quickly
and nights that slip away too easily.
there are slips of stories behind my lashes
and tears that sit--waiting to be tipped
there are secrets stashed completely out of sight
and last nite, i needed to sleep
next to shadows and magical blankets.

anida esguerra 10:57 AM

Monday, October 08, 2001

 
I.
i lost a good poem i was typing
i don't like blogger

II.
blogger ate my homework

III.
the compter chat rooms stole
my wife's work

marlon esguerra 8:08 PM

 
and so he wonders...

but when testing for an output, rarely do we look for the ability of something to create output, as if it's a boolean function of "output = true or false." we want to test if the output is correct, if the algorithm or function is actually manipulating the data correctly so that we have an answer like that's appropriate, like "99 bottles of beer on the wall' rather than ".0039 bottles of beer on the wall" it's true that web projects can be accessed by anyone, but so so am i. i don't leave 'hello world' on my answering machine...or should i?

thoughts on the 'war'

john's diatribe/prediction: we (u.s. and britain, more specifically, bush and blair) are looking for an excuse to overthrow the taliban so we can 'rebuild' afghanistan's commercial and economic system and model it after our own...like we did with japan and so many other countries. this may already seem too obvious. but even when we overthrow the taliban, a foreign military coup, the leaders will have dispersed and will reorganize. religion often trascends and has primacy over nation. we will one day be defending afghanistan, the western christian foreign devils who are always trying to steal more of the holy lands. this war is not a traditional war. we must expunge massive amounts of resources to make little progress, like fighting in the mountains, especially with the upcoming winter. against our national pride and anger, is unity through national oppression and religious fervor. which passions will prevail? for US, to die in glory is not so glorious as it once seemed. on this scale, we are disadvantaged.

colonialism, as i see it, has altered its modus vivdendi. we understand that culture is not biologically rooted, but linguistically, systemically. we no longer appropriate physical bodies of 'americans' in order to create colonies; rather, we recreate/export in whatever new geographical region our own social, economic, and commercial systems of living. the spoils of war seem not to be about the people of democracy or liberty, but about trade concessions and which countries get what cut. colonialism is still full-on and penetrating the Others, but rather than sending us to them, we make them us. and our trojan horse for exercising this cultural colonialism is capitalism. that's right, the draw of the US dollar. turning each country into a faust, bidding for the souls of nations. as p-ditty said so deftly, "it's all about the benjamins, baby."

we're in for a guerilla war in the highlands that will go on for a while. not quite a veitnam war, but close and this will be longer than expected. i don't know if people realize that the real war is in public relations, how the machinery of the media, the political rhetoric on both sides are moulding the thoughts of the public, planting strategic seeds. as macarthur said during wwii, 'public opinion wins wars.' animals are most ferocious when cornered, when defending their home. the rhetoric is leading all of us to feel cornered so that we will fight tooth and nail to protect our home. we are cornered and "should therefore attack them on their land." if the pr is done wrong, we may very well have an armageddon on our hands. the worst evil has always been committed under the name of religion and it's slowly resurfacing. hitler was limited because his war was racial and political. this is deeper than a political war, like veitnam or nazi germany, and therefore has a much graver potential. the rhetoric i hear is trying to split the world apart, where both sides are terrorists, both sides are splitting the world into the 'good vs. the evil.' both sides are infringing on the security of our homes, families, and innocent children. i hope to GOD that Bush or Blair doesn't fuck this up, because there are too many people i love who are living in our time.

i'm thinking that wwiii will be waged here. the oceans no longer serve as protective buffers against our increasing technology, making distance moot. the US is the main target, the nail that sticks out, the sore thumb, the tallest buildings. Will my children--if i ever have any--die? if bin laden had nuclear arms, would he have used them against the US? certainly. Will another man like bin laden emerge in the next century. certainly. will nuclear technology be developed by many more people? certainly. the mixture is rejected already in my mind. i can't live like this, but should i think about this?

fuck it. if we get another bush in office i'm moving to canada.

john park 7:37 PM

 
peace family.

wow...this blogger thing is really cool. nice simple design interface as well.
so we can swear on here, right...like there's no fucking way that they will censor this shit, right?

i hope everyone and their writing buddy are well.
pat and i have been communicating and we will be damned if we pitch $5 into the bucket of woe.

talk to you all soon.
luv,
anida

anida esguerra 7:25 PM

 
so john park wonders.

hello world is conventionally used in programming when you're testing for output. in a way, it's kind of like making the computer communicate back to us. it's not only used for web projects, but considering the world can access this from anywhere, "hello world" seems appropriate.

by the way, don't forget to "publish" the post, otherwise they wouldn't show up.

anyhoo. this blog is going really slow. and there's nothing to write home about.

guilty for not doing my morning pages today. i woke up and was disrupted by more news on "america strikes back". i worry about the afghan women in their veils. women who were abandoned by their husband, who are left to take care of several starving children, who live in ruins of the war from a decade earlier, who have to feed their children with dried bread crumbs that is used for feeding animal, who still have the strength to live and love despite all that happens. i wonder if those high tech B-2 bombers hit any of those women and children. i wonder if the food and aid supplies would get to them. i wonder if it will be enough.

misery chick 11:04 AM

Friday, October 05, 2001

 
guten tag weld. i'm wondering why everyone begins web projects with the generic 'hello world.' as if the world is listening (in lieu of sam, i mean). that's a sad statement. at this point, the equivalent of hello world is hello sam and ann.

hello sam and ann.
hello annsam
hello samann
just more samanntics
semantics
some antics

there's something deeply paradoxical about the mock statement: the only rule of UNCENSORED is you don't talk about UNCENSORED. another chuck palahniuk trip. i don't know what the hell i'm tallking about, so don't ask. but as the genius writers say: a good writer borrow's another's ideas, a great writer steals them. ahem...so, what's foul's fair and fair is foul, and all's fair in love and war. i think i'm on my to becoming a great writer already!


john park 7:46 PM

 
(as world) Hello.

Sam del Rosario 4:38 PM

 
ok, so i guess i'll start the first post.

rule # 1 about UNCENSORED is you don't talk about UNCENSORED...
rule # 2 ....

nevermind. stupid chuck palahniuk mind trip.

there is no rule. write a word, a sentence, a paragraph of brain farts, a haiku about life, or post some master piece poems -- whatever you want. it will always be here. you'll be surprised how fun and addicting this can get. oh yeah, visit my daily blog on miserychick.net (shamless plug).

so let me start with a writing prompt, our tradition: "Today is the day before... "

misery chick 1:10 PM