On Sideburns

I've been giving this some thought and I've decided I am not going to attempt sideburns, as I don't think I will ever be able to manufacture the attitude with which to keep them company. This is not to say that I am without attitude. Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago:

Honey Bees Anticipating Honey Theft

Oh, so you’ve met my double, an unsavage nightmare of a man, before?
And he promised you privately the varied clockworks of this,
our gin-soaked, despicable gender

you have become something I can be proud of, an eventually useful invention
you’re awake to even my undreamt of lies, you can name them before I do
There’s something virtue-affirming in being found out: a bastard
Before any of my shoeless, gap-toothed children make it plaintively into the world

It’s a shame he had to leave you
The only evidence of his exceptional sensitivity
This wound in you that blossoms angrily out at the ruins of me
With every bloodthirsty twitch of my suspect hips

When I wrote this, I was positive that it comprised a statement of attitude. I mean, it talks about hips, and bastard children, and refers sneeringly to sensitivity all the while being, really, quite sensitive. But ultimately I was forced to admit that this poem is, in fact, too sensitive for it's own good. It is, in fact, more of a whine than a statement of badassness.

So I tried hitching my spiritual wagon to this asshole star:

Erotic Fictions

No longer sponge enough for the warmed up winter still
My less than heroic attentions more than make up
For my few and fewer still faults
I’ve given up the cold candle of decency; it’s thawing in little rivers
Down my clenched up aqueduct back

If I believed them, and I accepted that there were gods of small things
I would be grateful, but ask to be made smaller still
To fit in even tighter panted pockets
To slip uneventfully out from under even the best designed cellar door

So you’re witnessing, of sorts, a flame-drenched renewal
A small newly-formed god of rhythmic, pleasurable pettiness
I’m not a concept man any more; I’m into eyes and thighs
I’ll call your number late from some summer night you have no claim on
And tell you your mother’s fortune
And how mine has little to no part in the same

Unfortunately, this poem blows far too hard to serve as a proclamation of any sort, let alone one of the importance my debut as hardcore attitude-haver requires. Nice use of alliteration, though, dick.

So I moved on to this one:

stitch these on your pillow, sister:
it's ridiculously, gravely important
that you have a good time living in parentheses
take from every insulated moment as many insulated thrills
fit, fold heaps of sunlight and energy into your absorbent sheets
travel light, but don't forget to look around the train's station as it goes

and when God finds your bitter friend out there in the country
and speaks to him convincingly of the star vaulted sky
I’ll still be there, taking notes, unbelieving still
Because not even for the ancient of days
Can I surrender astronomy to the stars that authored it
Science, stupider than faith but less ethnic, will stick-figure me,
Will place me flickering into its liquid sky, and all you’ll be is cut in half
Only geometric in crude slices, sin’s sister, all flesh and no heart

Oh please, please, please be happy:

something isn't just better than nothing
it's immeasurably better - you can't even conceive!
oh he's knock-kneed, silver-eyed; he eats chalk
but you can't, you can't, you can't deny
that he lives and breathes, he walks upright
he's a semi-colon - sponge enough
for the wet slice of night to follow

Which I now realize is plagiarized dually from a) this awesome craigs-list debate I read and a really, really famous e.e. cummings poem. I will tell you about the awesome craigslist debate now:

I was surfing the "for free" list, as is my wont as a cheapskate/keen chronicler of the disastrous fates of Boston-area relationships (free: his and her towel set. Free: wedding ring. Free: MY HEART, MY HEART, MY FUCKING HEART!) when I came across an entry that had prompted a lot of debate. I forget the exact content of the posting, but it was a slap at the New York Yankees, who had just been swept in a series against the Red Sox. A string of craigs-list posters had congratulated the Sox fan on his wit by the time Greg_G., presumably a Yankees fan, chimed in:

something something something not pertaining to Jeremy's life

have fun living in patheticness.

Which I misread as saying: "have fun living in parentheses." I thought that was a pretty awesome thing to say, very poetic and badass. But he had said the other thing, which was lame.

In any event - soul patch? Yes. A soul patch.