Love and Squalor: Lovebugs

From the mind of J.M. jr (or any other of those pseudonyms by which he might prefer to be called): Love and Squalor: Lovebugs.

Just read this. Please.

Live from Mid-Air

Posting on the go: I thought I should inform that, although I had the best of intentions to quit smoking (cigarettes, for clarification), I started again a few hours after the post. Miraculously, as if the Lord of the Blogs willed it so, the very next day I found myself oddly repulsed by the pungent odor of carcinogens and fire mingling; so, yet again, my body is forcing me to quit. I tried to fight it, but every time I tried I couldn't get past two puffs. Thank God there were only five or six left in the pack, and they were all wrinkly and withered from so much handling on the shoot Saturday. I still haven't thrown them away but I can't imagine what else i'd do with them.

Ah, the shoot on Saturday. I still don't have the inspiration to write about it, i'm still too giddy. Soon.

I just got out of Shakespeare class, found out I got an A on an assignment I completed earlier in the semester on Midsummer (yay). I was also given a grace period in which to write a critical paper (on Titus Andronicus) and very little time to study for the exam which is this Thursday morning. I plan on staying up all night studying and writing.

Coffee? But no cigarettes. Damn. Maybe...

I'm particularly excited about the Titus Andronicus paper. It left a lot to be written once read; it's been lolling around in my cabeza for awhile now. I've even had a theme going; i've been using as my MSN handle "Lavinia's Treasury" -- or more concretely-- Lavinia's virginity. Lavinia is the daughter to the former emperor of Rome-- and is "enforc'd, stain'd and deflower'd" by the two son's of Tamora, Queen of the Goths. They cut out her tongue and cut off her hands so she can never disclose who it was that raped her. In the end, Titus (her father) kills her "for whom tears have made me blind" so as to end not only her own misery (because this sort of stain just doesn't come out)... but his own. Also, revenge is had upon the goth boys.

Vengeance! What a peculiar theme. Balance of loss and restoration. The Book of Job was brought up on class as a reference piece. To restore equilibrium to the State of Things... there needs to be an evening out (and by this I don't mean a night out on the down, what is it with me and those double entendres?). Loss must be replenished. Sin must be paid for in blood (very biblical). "All the rivers flow into the sea yet the sea is not full. Unto the place from where the rivers came, there they return again". I love this idea of circularity, of everything coming back--- every beggining having an end that is just another beginning for another end... round and round...

I don't wonder why I get so dizzy.

Strawberry Malts in Late April

Where do they sell strawberry malts
in late April,
when it always rains?
When the ice-cream stores close down
and plexiglass and pine-boards
greet the ghosts of children
in the evening, skipping
in the salt-breeze along the sidewalks.
The ocean isn't far
but it's late April,
and it rains often.
In summer,
napkins stained with
pistacio and fudge
line the gutters
mixed with gum wrappers
strewn with forgetfulness
like lost love letters,
sometimes sticking
like soggy,
sugar-smeared flags of surrender
to the soles
of contented girl's and boy's sandles,
waving below brightly colored pails
and shovels
spackled with sand and sea-water.
But now it is April,
and every day it rains
it's a wonder
the ocean doesn't engorge and swell
like a blue napkin
dripping with tears
washing away
the entrenched waste
of last August.

Though this silence,
one afternoon,
today
like any day of late April
there are
footsteps resonating
against the brick-lined apartment
complex facades
in empty echoes
and calling girls to their windows
to see what life
bears this sound to ricochet
in their air
like blue sparks
lighting up a storm-ready sky.

They see a boy
like an apparition
with a strawberry-malt
straw to his lips
smile turned to the sky
as though it bore sunbeams
on him alone

The girls watch him
through half-curtains
with wide enchanted eyes
They open their windows
to a surprising salt wind.
They think of the ocean
and the ice-cream shops
but watch the sky in fear
of what they know will come
yet cannot break the spell,
the wonder of the boy
with the Strawberry malt
and they want to ask him...

Where do they sell strawberry malts in late April?

-K.A.E.

(Para mi amigo, Felipe: el unico que conoce la respuesta.)