Block Cement Robot Chemistry Cemetery

Image flash
Artificial learning
No question
No you
Self ignored
Factories shoot out
Send off
Selves recipe
Assembly line education

Reverse line
Ignore factory
Self shoots out
Questions learning
Flash mob
I flash mob
We’ll flash mob
Break thought

I am not a robot.


Math is taught now the same way it was 100 years ago. There is a world outside of the template. Cut me open from my navel – intestinal symmetry/ infinitesimally symmetrical. I am fractal (made up of myself). I answered an essay with a painting. Collaged my answer to literature – we turn class into art (which it should be). Break down hegemony. Doodle notes. Taught how to be robot; teach how to not be – that’s what I’m doing in class.

Brain opens. I work open mics and homework sessions. Lend laundry detergent and ears and arms and body and self. I am open. I am in. Amputate my schooling; rebuild the world to fit us. Never had a world designed for us – we special... and that’s absolutely beautiful.

Miami Beach poem # 1

1.
the young girls
over sexualized
wear their bikinis
flat against their chest

Pearly Whites

smile grin real wide
whole world can see
in store windows
window shop for reflections
find beauty in them
make pedestal of sidewalk
passing Macy's windows
gonna be so clean
gonna reflect the whole world
everything
but what's inside

Hegemon

Professor says art's something
Backpacking through Europe
Got to follow it to meet it
Somewhere, there's a grad student
With a backpack and a fanny-pack full of euros
They followed that train
Because it looked like art in that window

It's just a window

It is a window!

It is anything
Art

Somewhere, a mother cries
A son hit by a train
A grad student laughs and hops on
Pays the ticket with too large a bill

The earth is round
Unless you were lied to
Led to believe a circle is a square
Call it a square
Call your girlfriend
Call it the earth
You're both right
You're both wrong!

Believe me
My institution backpacked all through the Swiss-Franc border
We found some cattle
Art!?
That's not art!
We know,
Art wasn't there

I know a kid named Art
I wonder if he's ever been to Europe
What a wonderful following he'd gather

toothless

i feel toothless
useless
my family hands me a
plate to eat
my gums become raw
gnawing

i have no bones
everyone seems to be
barking at someone

it seems that art soothes
my gums
have teeth growing again

do you feel the barking?
there is a room full of people
we are barking

our gums are so raw
we have built teeth out of
each other and paint
and song and wood
and community
we are each others teeth

we want to make more teeth
we will continue to make teeth

TalkBoy

Little boy, people say, you talk too fast, they say, you go on and on and on and we don’t want ta hear you anymore, but Little kid keep talking ─ they told me since before I could talk, ya know?; people never want ta hear me talk, don’t believe I have anything ta tell them, but I do, no one believes me ─ I seen plenty of people and things those people do that’s worth talking about: The Colonel, my grandpa ─ I seen him do plenty of things people want ta know about ─ he yells at night, fights scariest people off in his sleep and he fought Grandma once, but Grandma strong strong strong, hugs like a bear times a Grandma times a million dollars, Grandma just picked The Colonel up and put him right back in bed, still sleeping, and said no more fighting, The Colonel, you done with all your fighting, we are at our home and you are going to wake up soon and clean the house and buy me a new necklace, then she looked at me and giggle and told me to keep it real quiet, not like The Colonel, who is not quiet at all and is as loud as a shotgun in night; and I saw my brother hide all the money he’s ever gotten from Grandma in a big suitcase with plenty of secret zippers, hid it right in the lowest zipper pouch he could find, but he don’t know that there is one place, even more secret than his, that’s a bit lower, all the way at the bottom of the inside, that’s where I hide all the money Grandma gives me, every single cent, but he don’t know that at all; my brother’s stupid, like all brothers, but he is good at making things with his hands, can take a dollar and make you an octopus, can make an octopus out of any type of paper you can find, give my brother a little square, smaller than any paper you could ever do anything with, he would make you a box or a sail boat or a gift, wrapped real nicely – still is stupid to me, but there is less stupid in parts of his brain; one time I saw a brother get punched by a big sister and so I punched my brother; one time I punched my brother after I saw him hit someone for no reason; Brother hit me back right in the lip; I got a scar on my lip, you can see it; I never punched someone who’s not my brother, I’m real glad that’s true; The Colonel, he punched some people and now he sleep fight ─ I don’t want to fight; don’t want to sleep fight; don’t want to awake fight; I seen all of these things with my own self ─ right there ─ and still, no one listen to me, Little Boy, they say, you got nothing to say, they say, nothing ever happened that I see worth telling, say, all those things I see not important, say I’ll never be a person just like them, just like those people I saw do things they did not want people to see, but I say that’s just as important as anything any fancy storyteller ever saw or told ─ that is for sure─ and one day someone’s gonna want to know what my The Colonel was like or how to hush him down, don’t know who, but someone; or my brother’s gonna forget where he hid all his Grandma money and I’ll walk right over and unzip that pocket from the suitcase and I’ll be the hero; and one day someone’s gonna want to know about me, and I’ll tell them.

Dick

My backpack is full of books
Their backpack is full of books

My backpack has better books

There is a feeling of elitism in writers
My book is better because I wrote it
I know who wrote your book
Textbooks aren’t poetry
Aren’t writing
Aren’t art
I am art
I art more than the people who wrote your textbooks
Writing is not art
My writing is art
This makes my backpack art
This makes me art
This makes my clothes art

Stay away from me
You are sick from not being art
If I touch you, you would get art

Art is for me and my shoes and the sidewalk that I walk on
And poles I hold on the train
Do not try cooking the train poles in a broth of sidewalk cement
That old recipe that your grandpa brought back from war
Will never make enough servings

I am a full serving

Short Story: a definition in essay format

Written stories that wish to be classified as a ‘short story’ must complete the following prerequisites: they must be no longer and no shorter than three and three quarters of a page, be published in at least seven academically recognized anthologies, be written on paper, be grammatically correct, have the first draft written in blue pen or grass-green Crayon, deal with issues of identity, reference two separate types of fabric, be a palindrome, make the reader feel belittled and insufficient, and finally, reference dogs.

Some “writers” believe that they have written short stories- wrong. Standards are high for short stories. There is a mentality among younger or newer writers that there is not a gate for writers to pass through. Those with formal training in writing from a university are the keepers of the gate into writing and all art forms. Anything perceived by the Gatekeepers of Art, an extremely old institution of sincerity, to not be art, should be excluded in all honest communities. Claims that non-gatekeeper-accepted art is art should be shunned and left to the minuscule youth movements, wherever they may be, if they do exist. The youth movement is where writers and works toil away; no one has ever stemmed from these communities.

Not everyone can write. A short story should be left to those who have the connections to get it published. Short stories are not novels; this is what makes them short. Short stories are not poems; poems are shorter than both novels and short stories. Poems are less than a page. Novels are over three hundred pages. Though length requirements are one of the most important aspects of what makes up a short story, there are several behind-the-scenes requirements that few but the brightest know of.

More extensive conditions that satisfy the Gatekeepers’ standards of a short story writer: must be a taxpayer, write in a coffee shop of a newly gentrified neighborhood, be prepared to hire someone to translate the story into English, if it is not already in English, must be upside down, must be within walking distance of a local library or a zoo, must be within a one mile radius of a Lands’ End catalogue, have a scar behind their left ear, have eaten penne pasta in the past thirty seven hours, have read all the works of a their favorite beat poet, have a liking of Charles Bukowski, be born on the 3rd, 17th, 11th, or 31st of any month in between August and January. These standards have been decided by a committee of people who represent the artists who have been allowed through the golden, ruby-studded gate of high art.

A short story must not contain the following: references to tigers, humor, Spanish, the letters C, J, K, U, and X, people of color, references to aristocracy or racquetball, aristocracy in the game of racquetball (negotiable), epigraphs, rhymes of any sort, rhythm of any sort, structural patterns, people named Annie (non-negotiable), and pictures. These standards have been decided by a similar committee to the committee of people who represent the artists who have been allowed through the golden, ruby-studded gate of high art.

A short story can only be read by the following people: a writer, who passes the previously mentioned conditions, a publisher, an agent, a manager, a printer, and an illiterate child or professor. These are the only people who could appreciate the writing to its fullest extent.

This is what a short story looks like. Only the writer who has satisfied all categories can possibly change their story and still classify it themselves as a short story. By the time their story fits all of the requirements they are, hopefully, too tired to want to change.

Regulations for short stories are not arbitrary. Definitions for short stories are not arbitrary. Rules created by anonymous committees are not arbitrary. These requirements are solely for short stories; essays, poems, novels, classical music, oil paintings, and royal portraits all have exceptionally necessary differences. This is hardly an essay.