1/20 - 2/23.2003 -

So I lost this disc and the actaully dates are forgotton.

I work shopped my prose poem. I don’t know if I should have done it. I like the poem; "At midnight what is red." But it was too different for this class. The best poets in the class are coincidentally the three best looking women, out of my opinion, probably not society’s, but that doesn’t matter to me. Jennifer wrote this great poem called "the South" about leaving the south. Aisha had two short very surrealist poems. And this red headed girl had a poem about doing laundry called "Laundry with Susan."

1/22.2003

Another literary reading at Roma. I’m the only one form 5P that shows up. I feel like I’m the only undergraduate in the room. Jodi Angel reads a great story about a mechanic who has to testify in court and deliver a baby even though he’s as slow as Forest Gump. Her voice always sounds like its trembling with nervousness even though she gives off the aura of confidence. I didn’t talk to anyone at the show. Another lonely evening for Rob.

Procrastination envelops days

All of the following are random memories of the quarter

I work shopped my poem "His Furniture" in a short group. There was some decent poems in the group but very little stood out. David Asen, this guy from New York had an okay poem. I see potential in this guy but he’s not there yet. But none of us. I’ll be honest and say that I’m a better poet than him but one day he’ll catch up and surpass me. Aisha was in my group and had a poem about birds. There are a shit load of birds in this town. One day I’m going to write a poem about the bird shit in this town. It won’t be as Hitchcockesque as Aisha’s poem but we’re two different poets. She did do one thing that irked me; she refereed to Poe as Edgar Allen and dropped the Poe. That’s not down, it isn’t how people refer to Poe. I gave her a hard time, but I’ll respect her if she ignores me because Edgar Allen does have some good assonance to it and we all can infer who it is because of the dark birds in the poem.

I emailed an old employee of mine, Keren, who is going to UCSC. She emails me back and we start catching up on the last few years. One day I call her on the phone and I talk to her as I walk around campus. At one point I told her about the Vagina room in North hall that was there because of valentine’s day. She wants me to go in and give her an auditory tour. So I do. I describe to her all of the red, and the pink, and the art that is in the room. The TV that has a VCR set on top of it, with a copy of the Vagina Monologues stuffed into it. At one point a woman walked into the room and asked if I needed anything. I think I looked out of place inside of a vagina.

Then while still on the phone with her I told her about the big posting board out in front of north hall. We were given a forum to write what we would do to end the violence in the world. I asked Keren if she had an idea. She said something about how she would stop bombing foreign countries so I wrote: On a personal level, I would stop bombing foreign countries. For my own quote I wrote: I would convince the world to stop worshiping and bickering over gods they can’t see, and just worship my penis.

Keren gave my email address to my old friend Anne. On Friday I called her up and then ended up driving to her apartment in San Francisco. We talked until 3 in the morning. At one point she said she wanted to go to a strip club. I asked her when the next time she would be in the Sacramento area would be. She next in two weeks for her little sister’s birthday. I said we would go then.

A few weeks later on a Thursday night after Write Club and the Alternative Film Club I went over to Chris’ house with Dan at 11:00 PM. We drank, smoked pot, and lamented about women until 5 AM. We were confused because we turned on the TV at 3 AM and it started showing the Tonight Show. Although it was actually a replaying of the show we didn’t realize that it couldn’t be 11:35. We had been talking for 4 hours and we thought it was only 35 minutes. When Conan was on we checked a clock and found out it was 4 something. Then we thought, maybe we should go to sleep. But at one point I was talking about going to the strip club the next night with my friend Anne, Chris seemed interested in going. He gave me his number to call him on Friday.

I spend the night on Dan’s coach because I was too drunk to drive home. I woke up and looked at Dan’s clock on the wall. It said 10 o’clock. Now, I once drunkenly crashed on Dan’s coach last quarter and that same clock said 10’clock then also. In fact it always says 10 o’clock. My car was pared at a 2-hour zone. It needed to be moved by 10. As I got up I looked at the clock. 11:30. I told Dan I would see him later and then walked out to my car and found a $30 parking ticket on the windshield.

I walked to campus and worked in the computer lab. Then I walked around and ran into Lisa and Vickie. And then Amy. Vickie said she wanted Ben & jerry’s, so eventually we started walking toward that direction. But Vickie was playing Frisbee and said she would catch up. Lisa said she wanted to stop by Dan’s to see if he wanted ice cream. So back I went to Dan’s. We went for ice cream then we went to Lisa’s apartment to find Vickie there doing her homework. I hung out there reading comic books and zoning out for a few hours. The previous night I had sworn that Thora Birch was 16 when she filmed the nude scene in American Beauty. I showed Dan that I was right by going to imdb.com on the web. I know my underage nudity.

At about six we went back to Dan’s place he said he was going to take a nap. I called up Chris. No answer. No answering machine. I was driving down B Street when I saw a reasonably attractive girl wearing a top hat walk into Delta Venus. I figured I go there to kill some time. And maybe talk to the girl. I parked on C Street and walked over. By the time I got there the girl was gone. There was a beautiful red head behind the counter singing along to Bob Marley. I ordered a Saturn’s Revenge coffee drink and sat down and started to read some 100F stories. I went to the bathroom and was intrigued by the graffiti on the walls. I went back to sit down and proceed to write 12 haikus that had something to do with bathrooms or genitals.

Piss caked on tike

Dried piss on porcelain

Piss left in the bowl

Urine like mustard

Drips and blooms from my penis

My bladder blossoms

Penis history:

Herpes, the clap, HPV,

And of course; syphilis

Two ply salvation

Toilet paper, like Jesus,

Wiping away sins

Alcoholism

A hobby and life style

Booze fuels all brilliance

Tofu full belly

Bladder overflowing beer

Mouth dripping vomit

Open your ass

Bowels bursting into buckets

Your soul is potent

Chlamydia, with

Its onomatopoeia

Makes a perfect word

Blood piss and semen

My penis speaks languages

Through its urethra

Hug the urinal

Because the toilet won’t flush

Smell vomit and mint

Piss is history

Every night is suicide

Flush the afterlife

Defecating prose

Urinating poetry

Flush words down the brain

I’m convinced that the contraction was invented for haikus and sonnets. At 8 PM I called Chris again. No answer. I decided to walk around. I walk and write on the only paper I have, the S N & R. I stop by Café Roma and just sit down. I start a poem that would later become "a lonely ode to my desire." I started to walk toward the dorms. I hadn’t been over there since last summer. On my way there a girl stopped me to see if I knew where Klieber hall was. I barely knew where I was at the moment but I took her to a map and gave her directions. I don’t know why she asked me. Some random guy wearing black and a Mohawk, when you’re all alone in the dark of the night. I guess I’m not as frightening looking as I thought. I walk by the doors and I’m inspired to write some more. I do this while I walk:

"College Town Friday Night"

I look through the dorm windows on a Friday night

and no one is home. Everybody’s out.

Everybody’s out to fuck.

Everybody’s trying to get fucked.

Everybody’s tring to fuck someone.

Everybody’s drinking.

Everybody’s trying to get drunk so they can fuck.

Everybody’s tring to get someone drunk so they can fuck them.

It’s the weekend,

Its time to die.

Condoms are being unrolled and livers are being destroyed.

It’s the weekend,

Its time to die so you can be reserected Monday morning

By your alarm clock,

Hung over – but fucked

And ready for more higher education.

As I’m writing I’m exploring the campus. My face is looking down and I hear my name. I look up and its Gus. Gus was in my 5F class in Fall and is in Write Club. He asks me where Klieber hall is. I say I’m going to find it with him. We walk around the corner and there it is. I walk in and Walt from 5P. I see Ashley from 5F. various people from AFC. I see Jennifer from 5p. At one point I see her get up and walk toward the door. So I go into the lobby to talk to Walt. And she walks by and looks at me like she kind of recognizes me. Then she comes up and says hello. And hello to Walt also. Then she goes out side to smoke. I but slice of plum pie, home made. I left my Walt on the table but Walt brings it into the show to give it to me. Then Jennifer walks up and yells in my ear to ask me if I want to hang out after to show. I tell sure. I can tell she has been drinking. She then asks if I want to go now. The bands haven’t been that good. One guy has a gimmick where he just flips off the audience as is if he is beckoning them to approach him, while he isn’t singing. And moshing in a lecture hall just looks dumb. I tell her that’ll leave when she wants to. I have a crush on her so I’ll spend any amount of time with her that she is willing. Plus she’s wearing a dress with massive amount of cleavage. So we go out to the cars with her and her friends. They want me to buy them booze. So we go to Safeway. I walk around the store with Jennifer and we both run into people we know. I but three 40 ounces and a fifth of tequila. All of these 19 and 20 year olds were handing me money in parking lot before hand. I think I made money out of the deal. So then we went to this apartment and everyone proceeded to do lover damage. I didn’t drink that much. I was more interested in talking to Jennifer. It turns out she has a boyfriend. That was actually there. But they didn’t seem that close. We talked for over four hours. About poetry, where we are from, magical realism, where we work, the holocaust, how tequila is made different movies. It was crazy. At one point she talked about punching people and getting punched. She pretty much said the words: I want you to hit me as hard as you can. I told her to hit me, she said she would – in the arm – as long as I would hit her back. So we did. Then we talked a few more minutes and I asked her to hit me again. This time we punched each other in the guts. I like the stinging sensation. She said she hit me as hard as she could but she knows I didn’t do the same. I’ve never hit a woman. It felt liberating.

Jennifer tried to insist on me sleeping at the apartment. I said I would consider it and then she went to sleep. I stayed up several more hours talking to her friend, Chelsea, about Broadway musicals, our mutual friend Mischa Pollack, and creative writing classes. We both decide that we aren’t going to tell Mischa that we talked about him because it would give the egotistical bastard too much satisfaction. I walk back to my car at 5 am. It takes 40 minutes to get back to C Street. I’m thinking of poems I’m going to write about the night. I go to my car and sleep in it. By far the craziest two nights I’ve had at college yet.

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