2004

two zero zero four
b. r. crandall

i.
everyday, i
rack my brain to ask if
i’ve been half the man i should be,
knowing that sacrifices were made for me
along roads of historical hardships which others endured.

bryan, i say, how
on top of your world are
you? And if i feel successful, i
dive, headfirst into sleep, rewarding myself for a life well lived.

ii.
before i learned to learn i
read books.
i read my family,
dissected them like
green frogs in biology labs.
eventually, though,
the scalpel became my mind and i
tore into my soul with too much imagination. now, a

bwidge is necessary to get
you, me, humanity over siddhartha’s troubled waters.
every step i take forward, another drowns by the
racing, rancid river. i turn another page, and another
story is told, but still, but still, staying blind as the fool i am.

iii.
krap. i’m running out of time -
evolving into history, a
visionary who can’t see:
i need goggles. i
need binoculars to

capture
another sighting of sasquatch.
i need laser surgery and i
need to believe in the mitt.












iv.
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
each day we idiots are wide awake in
narcolepsy. are we snoring? are we
entertaining fellow fools in
sonnets of shady songs? story?
how are we doing
as compared to yesterday? today,

curtis came and wrote a poem, an
unbelievable poem,
reaching beyond the dark -
tightly, she lasso’d my writer’s soul, and
i am yanked alive by her words,
secretly sold into her magic. such a witch, you know?

v.
just when i thought i had an
answer, they threw me a trickier question.
my mind was given their virus and i
emitted spam to whomever would listen. i know, i know,
shut up, already. my hard

drive is on, but i can’t shut it off. it’s
running all my programs at once, and like an
umbilical chord, i’m attached to the
ridiculousness of being small. so are
you, James....so are we all.

vi.
the dad can
only do so much,
my father taught me. i endured
anger, his
rages of how stupid i was being, and he forced me to
question my world -- my stupid, selfish,
unbelievable drive for
self destruction.

everyday i think about this. his
very strict fists
and words aimed to ruin my life.
now, i
see, though. i see an ass for what an ass is. what an ass i was.












vii.
tiny we were
in westmoreland...
five year olds
folding our
arms in
newly learned respect.
you go to school to learn from ms. saladino.

for the first time, we were all
away from home, mom’s lunch -- the
young getting older every day. the garden open-never the same again.

viii.
ask my sister about me and she’ll say i
love the guy, but he’s a jerk. he
loves being a jerk
in his quest to make
everyone around him their best.

friendship is what we have now, she’d say,
in a sure, secure song, but when we were
neophytes, i hated his standards, his
lust of making everyone think too hard.
existing with bryan, she’d say, is like
yakking. it’s awful while it happens, but it rids you of illness.

ix.
andrew is driven. there
needs to be nothing else said. he
desires goodness, fairness and wrongs to be made
right.
each of us can learn this from him. in fact,
we need to study how hard he works before it’s

gone. memories. yesterdays. the
reality that time trickles downward .
and, perhaps, before any of
you know it, the drive will be over (like this poem).

















x.
running. that’s what i seem to be doing all the time -
over grass trails, paved dreams and
by polluted, forgotten rivers,
eternally flowing,
racing, moving, being, living,
taking my breath away.

he sprints, too,
arrives to the finish line, quicker,
laughs louder and
stays on the path of his own drum and band, while
entertaining the thongs sung loud, like chickens, in his head.
love to run. run to
love. live. that’s what i seem to be doing all the time.

xi.
at the basketball game, i sat
under the scoreboard,
scratching thoughts into a
hollow journal while
ausha made another rebound.

how much is life like this court? i thought.
it can be a losing battle, game after game, where
learning the better pass, the better block, more finesse with a
lay up, bird like, swan-swish, really matters?
i wonder such things in my poetic
madness as
ausha shoots again ...
now, who knows who will win?

xii.
ask me once why i do anything
like i do and i’ll tell you
it’s all premeditated and for a reason.
serendipitously, i am always
on my toes of tiptoed tulips in
need of the better lesson, glistening on a pond.

how else is there to live? with all
of us as dust upon this marble, except to be aware.














xiii.
Please.
he simply asked/stated/said/wondered/
understood -- please, let me
open your soul. i
need to see what’s within.
go ahead, she said, but i’m watching.

He went ahead and began to write,
unleashing her worries/fears/dreams/hopes/
yesterdays. please, she said,
no more. that’s enough. and
he closed his journal and called it a day.

xiv.
knowledge is more than
all that crap we tell you because
the experiences of your
road, your journey, is the surest
intelligence of truth - it
narrows you into perspective
and whips you, whap, with wisdom, wiping the buttocks of lies.

how one succeeds,
over and beyond the
ludicrousness of school,
college and job - is how they carry their hearts
over and beyond the mundane routine of life.
my surest truth, katrina, is you,
bitten by the bug to work hard, will
evolve, immensely, beyond us all. -- passion and drive, your key.

xv.
knowledge? what? screw
each of you ... and the horses you road
in on. don’t tell me how you
think. don’t measure me by your
hierarchy of intellectual blabbering.

be black, i say. be you.
love knowing that i
already know how to make the
cause for a new generation come alive.
knowledge? what? screw that. it’s a

joke where the punch line is on how
ordinary their common thinking is.
he can go further. i can go further,
needing nothing but
soul to succeed in the
orchestration of their so called intelligent life.
no. knowledge. that and that alone belongs to me.




xvi.
madness brought me
amongst the streets and skies of
creative chaos --- (and i’m supposed to be the
knowledgeable one: yet the more i know, the less i seem to
exist). So, how do i resist the every day for its
nectar and flavor, without getting overwhelmed and nauseous? i
need the challenge of ingredients, but drown
along the river of its flavor. just

joking. i try to laugh and
occasionally shed a million tears from the
humor of it all. the emotions are
necessary, after all, aren’t they? i’m
sick, though, right?. -- torn down the middle of the page:
occasionally tip toeing with zest, but
narcissistically needing to hide.

xvii.
knitted within my expectations,
i weave glimmers of gold --
my intentions are always stronger than my

need to teach a lesson. no, the world doesn’t
get easier, but
onward, you must hope.

xviii..
driving here, then there,
everywhere, i see the
violence of how we exist. yes,
i splatter bugs on my windshield, too, and it’s
never-ending (like that dream of a vietnamese flower).

life is roadkill, though,
and we’re guilty until proven innocent.
man, my truck needs a good washing these days, so thanks, devin, for
bringing me your windex.

xix.
jokes on us, josh -- especially
on the ones who misplace their
senses, their humor....i guess
he who laughs little, lives not, but

leaving is a difficult thing. see, i used to leave
all the time, walking beyond my egotistical
zoning, honing in only on me. yet,
all that comes around, goes around...siddhartha sees how the
river flows. it goes beyond all of
us. you will leave, too. religion calls. i finally know how
sam wise feels.




xx.
the other day, i saw
him, this kid, i used to know
and we said hello.
now i can’t sleep. he keeps
going over and over my thoughts.

last year, he was alive with magic. now, he
exists as a ghost --- blank to everything he meets.

xxi.
a penguin knows how to bite. they can be
nasty, feathered boogers,
going slip slap slup on the ice. they
eat herring, you know, and they
laugh at the seals for balancing balls
along their nose.

look. see that penguin. it bites.
ouch. it bit me and
my life will never be the same,
asinine ... i need a doctor quick.
xray my wound before i........croak (ribbit ribbit)

xxii.
nourished. the poet
goes after words like they’re
unusual vietnamese soup.
you’ve got to slurp it up
eating the spices and herbs until going
numb. you must taste every syllable,

licking your teeth and lips.
u must know life’s delicious.
u must know the flavors are infinite.

xxiii.
rain, if cold, becomes snow,
and blankets hibernal minds,
and covers a thinking soul.
my fingers tap across white keys,
yelling to the world, ‘i
need your poems...’

my soul craves
all the seasons, all the
love of how
one drop
now
exists -- changed for the better, perhaps, later.






xxiv.
leiz left me a popsicle in the fridge. she was
eating it earlier, when
i didn’t see her. it dripped down her cheek like a
zillion random thoughts in my brain.

man, i’m glad she told me it was hers, especially
after i pulled it from the fridge to
satiate my own exhausted appetite.
‘oh, bry, that was mine,’ she said. ‘i
licked it and put it back.’
oi vay --- these kids with their good intentions.

xxv.
poetry, a religion with words where
heaven finds its a way upon earth.
i need to believe this,
loving language -- how it can
lift a spirit by twisting them
in perplexed cocoons.
poetry spindles hope, i hope.

music comes from our
creation, and how
people: you, me, we
have the spirit within to play:
eternity
epiphany
testimony that (when we remember the words)
everything is possible along the
rivers of the journey. the
secret, of course, is to sing. simply sing. to find a song.

xxvi.
daily, we go through the motions,
awakening only to depart from
nocturnal dreams once again.
he is somewhere between these phases. at

night, the knuckles bleed so he
get another cigarette. it’s
useless to inhale and exhale all the
young worry about.
enlightenment and truth aren’t as complicated as the
nights make them. sleep, friend, but don’t forget to wake up, too.











xxvii.
did you hear about the
one where the boy goes into a
nudie bar? neah, I didn’t
get to hear it either.

the wax in my ear built up,
on top of the fact that i’m
not a good listener, anyway....and
you?

no. i don’t know the one about the
girl, the gynecologist and a sushi bar.
u don’t either? then why are
you wasting my time.
existing is about laughing. god i
need to laugh.

xxviii.
pear?
apple wine? a
tablecloth of poetics.
i am in love with the idea of
entertaining words at the edge of a
naked forest, where the basket opens to
chardonay, and i can not say a word - the feast
entertains my palette instead.

pear. apple wine. table cloth of poetics lying
elliptical on an orb of green grass, growing
and knowing that it is within the simplicity,
complex realities arise. so, i take an
ornamental bite with my silver,
cut my chances with a
knife, and enjoy.

xxix
next to every sunset
is a dream for it to rise again.
now, it must rise again
and we must follow its lead.

pride. ethics. culture. drive. the
horizon is a listing of what’s to be done
and how a good life is lived. the sun, like you,
must fall, only to rise again.










xxx.
all our thoughts are a blink of an eye.
newborns only be reborn,
neophytes, vulnerable and
awkward.

rare, the right words to say
in callous contemplation of
going ahead as planned, but
going backwards, we trudge on.
such is life and so must it always be.

xxxi.
every time i drive home,
my mind wanders over the pages
i’ve written in black ink.
leaving, and driving back, i
yearn to return home.

such is growing up and leaving the
cave. the safety of shackles
oscillates against the freedom of
being alive with truth.
boy, i’m not sure if i like being
an adult. does anyone have any candy?

xxxii.
kryptonite. they need to market
enormous buckets of the stuff so
i can bring people down. no, not the
tiny people....they’re insignificant, but
hubris. i want the egotistical to fall...

to wallow in insecurities for
a while to see how it feels to be
living beneath their nostrils,
living underneath their feet.
erroneously, i am under a rock --
yet superman flies away with my vision.

















xxxiii.
children are temporary and age will have them
older before another moon goes full and
rotund in its midnite illumination..
days are like this. they offer hope but
i long for them to return, slow down,
and bring me back to simpler times.

these children i teach, each sliding along their
horizons with optimistic steps and
omnipotent doubt.
my role, on this moon is,
perhaps, to simple to be
knowing how transient it all is and
i’m only a fly-by in the mirror of life, anyway.
new. old. and new again,
sun rises only to set us all aside.

xxxiv.
krazy.
i am krazy. a
ripley wrapped by his zaniness
and hysterics of living life where the jokes on me.

tell me a story and make me laugh. tell me the
one about the chicken and his thong, because i
need the sparkle in my
eye again.
you’ve got to steal glitter -- throw it at me. make me blind with hope.

xxxv.
last but not least, she’d like to
accept the title, ms. brown school,
under the guise that she’s not the
raver, smoker, lover, swearer and
eternal do everything girl.
naw, she is only lauren.

passing the ball, while
finishing the stand
and popping corn for
nerdy losers on saturday nights and
needing an ocean front talk, while
entertaining friends,
running laps to stay fit, and
sitting close to death on couches of b.s.
tired/exhausted/frosted and SADD.
i have eyes,
lauren, and i’ve seen how your tongue
licked the icy pole, and laugh at you, cuz you’re stuck, but happy.






xxxvi.
january is coming, and will go as fast as my
existence. resistance is pointless.
so, i’m choosing to sing the
songs...to find the hope
i know i need to move on.
call it faith, if you will,
and sing with me, if you want.

purpose is hard to explain,
really.
i know i have one and it is
emitted by my word choice,
stolen from poets before me and
twisted to make sense to me.
each of us, jessica, are such poems,
ready to be captured by your spirit and pen.

xxxvii.
the sun is a simile
each ray of its arms like
rumors which make you laugh -
riddles which can be solved -
ice cream, fudged with chocolate -
children being silly -
and a smile....the sun is like a smile.

terrica smiles,
and she’s like the sun.
you can feel her harmless hugs from the
love she laughs with
or the kindness she carries, selflessly,
ray-like, with warmth.

xxxviii.
hues. the colors of you, me,
us in this american goulash
on a stove always heated,
needing monitors and timers to keep us
going, cooking, in the right direction, for the right

taste. more salt? pepper? garlic? are we
ready yet? cooked? baked? done?
alive as we once were? does the boat
need any more flavor? i’m ready to leave.











xxxix
clay, new york, taught me that
adolescents are stupid --
ridiculously caught up in the
awkward game of youth.

u, too, are caught in the game, but
coming out of it soon. the
cocoon always hatches (sooner or later) and
enlightenment will arise from the phoenix’s
life of ashes...dust to dust....and fire.
little did i know back then and
i regret how much i thought i did.
needless to say, i am human. damn it,
i am human and here i sit, cursed, seeking forgiveness.

xxxx.
teats? tarts?
oh, that...
my hand writing’s just bad.

vat, vat are you saying?
i’m saying that
creativity is the ooze of a
krispi creme donut and that
everything is a poem
ready to be written.
you, tom, are a poem, too.

xxxxi.
too bad youth is wasted on the young,
u don’t know, exactly, what’s about to happen
and how it’ll never be the same again.
now will not be tomorrow.

vietnam of yesterday
under the guise of american lies, trying to set you free, today......



















xxxxii.

last year, i
almost threw in the towel.
u know how it gets when
reality doesn’t meet expectations
and the disappointments somehow do.

well, i came back.
i decided to war once again:
learning with its struggle,
laughing from the accusations,
i teach another day
among the good, the bad and the ugly.
moonbeams, trying to taste their new wings in a
song only beginning to be heard.
oh, if only i could know them later on,
not now, where they’re stuck in the metamorphosis.

xxxxiii.
clouds are supposed to part, but
ours are here, forever, it seems.
reality -
your performance on stage, so young

always trying to remember,
needing meaning,
despite the sickness we are -
raving lunatics, I guess,
egotistically
walking in the shadows of our own conceit.

such is life...
tedious, mundane, repetitious
and akward.
ultimately, though, our
beings are still here:
living, loving, believing and awake...
eternally, with your candle light in our hearts.


xxxiv.
dancing, that’s
all we have, and music, memory,
nirvana starlit skies...
i hope we’re
earning this: daniel,
living, loving, learning,

joining
one another to strut and fret our
hour upon the stage until
none of us are heard no more.
star light, star bright, first star
out there tonight; it’ll
never be forgotten. never.