North Philly Shenanigans

…we’re still here.

Finals have come to an end

spring has reached its bend

breezing through screen window

squares

staring at the pixel light

happy to be edgy

W.E. McCall

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Cranky Couplet

I know I want tea, but I don’t know what kind

Goddammit to hell, this beleaguered mind.

—- Lovingly, W.V. McCall

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T-T-T-Trance

Sometimes it’s a little grating,

feels a little baiting,

waiting,

for the form to find its fill.

Just like rhythm, rhyme,

in time I tire of the shtick and gripe

my mind until it’s sick a-wondering why

this it it, my hit, my box

of broken shit compounding

down my head and throat and

forcing out the lines

no mind to passion, feeling

thrust just pulled to

sate the lingerlust

what scratches gainst my

eyelids skull and makes

my tummy feel too full

- W.V. McCall

WM + CR

CR: a disography

I am not sleepy; I wish to berate the audience at large.

Before you is a comprehensive list of the albums that, for better or worse, I really glommed onto throughout my short existence here. This is not some list of monumental music — oh no — only some kid’s CD collection. These are the tracks I listened to over and again on a Walkman, a 128mb mp3, and then in the car or on the iPod, in chronological order.

1. the Garden State Soundtrack
My syrupy sad introduction to folk… 9th grade robotics misery. Just tryina fit in. Failing because I’m 14.

2. Tapestry, Carole King
I learn to relax, just a little bit.

3. Light Grenades, Incubus
An album that my brother and I could agree on for our weekly jaunt with the car — driving home from a ski trip past curfew in the FREEZING cold.

4. Hot Fuss, The Killers
Need I say more?

5. Challengers, The New Pornographers
I share this album with people all the time and they claim to not “get it.” “There aren’t many hooks,” my boss said. True, but the dissociative lyrics and upbeat instrumentals are my favorite things about these New Pornographers. I still listen to this one frequently.

6. Under the Table and Dreaming, the Dave Matthews Band
Say what you will; it’s how I survived Goucher College. Beautiful spring days if nothing else. Teaching yourself to be happy.

7. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West et al
Just killed another career — it’s a mild day.

Thanks for the indulgence,
CR

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Birds
fold their wings ten thousand ways
All this time I’m far from home

Xue Di, Zone
http://www.webdelsol.com/Lost_Roads/di3.htm

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I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/supermarket.html

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There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

Carl Sandburg, Wilderness
http://www.bartleby.com/134/22.html

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Morning Word

“It’s harder to stand around and try to figure out how you’re going to half-ass something.”

- CR

The moral of the story? Just do it, and do it the best you can. Easier through than around or over, under.

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plastered valves pinch at
Philadelphia and other
common conjugations

CR

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tiled-letter yelps
arched arcade blight
riverbed soul lips
sniffing for a human scent
to lay my loneliness down

sated until
squawking alarm box
loose gasket blast

CR

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