THE MONO-SYLLABIC SPREE

THE WORLD DOESN'T KNOW ME YET, BUT IT WILL!

Name:
Location: Utica, NY

I AM the stein that's half empty, half full; I AM the white veins in the sky of a storm; I AM the ivory tusk on the wall; I AM the ants in your pants; I AM burning France; I AM a brooding coffee cup island; I AM fitter, happier, more productive; I AM the sun burning holes; I AM the wraith of long gone; I AM the artist in the television; I AM throwing down; I AM picking up; I AM iambic pentameter; I AM 100 IM; I AM the pox on your socks; I have chicken pox.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Spenzers

The Bitterman comic-strip which appeared in the February issue of Mad magazine shows a young girl named Zoe attempting to drag her uncle Joe into a Spenzers Gifts. The uncle protests entering the store by saying "Hell no!" and calling it a "cesspool" that "is no place for a girl of your age." He then goes on to say:

"These crappy novelty stores symbolize the decline of society. It's just a filthy display of cheap, perverted sex novelties and lame, 60s-inspired drug paraphernalia. Look around at the people in that place, Zoe--it's a congregation of Goth freaks and trailer trash, all stopping by to get a cheap laugh over phallic hand soap and battery-opperated fart machines. Every fake preteen "punk" can get a nipple ring while daddy ogles Carmen Electra posters. It's a den of illiteracy, immorality and ignorance."

The town in which I live is one giant Spenzers.

Friday, May 19, 2006

First blog (finally!)

My career as a writer has finally kicked off, and I haven't even graduated from college yet. I got my first rejection today from The New Yorker. I sent them a cartoon idea which I came up with and sloppily sketched out. If you want to get technical, this is actually my second rejection. My brother--a big freelance book critic living in NYC--has been peddling some of my poems for a while. He thought some guys he knows who publish a journal would be interested in three of my poems so he sent them along only to have them turned down. So, yes, this is my second rejection. But this means that I am officially a writer now. Even though I haven't had my work appear in any publication yet, I can now tell people that I am "struggling writer." It is just one more way to describe myself and if I were working now instead of going to school you could even say that I am holding down two careers.

Now a poem in Spanish.

Yo soy Teo
y no soy guapo, yo soy feo
me gusta comer mucho
si me quieres entonces tu eres puto

Mi gata siempre tiene miedo
siempre yo tengo sed
bebo mucho agua frio
ahora vamos a jugar en mi bed (cama).

That was a silly poem and its silliness cannot be translated in an unsilly way so I will leave it for you to chew on. I love to write silly poems in Spanish as well as in English. Here is a not so silly poem about my cat in Spanish.

Mi Gata

Mi gata no tiene un nombre
me dijo
no quiero que
me llamas nada
te conozco
de las abrazos que me das.

Here is the English translation.

My Cat

My cat goes without a name
she said
I don't want you
to call me anything
I recognize you
from your hugs alone.

Okay, it is still a silly poem. But there will be many more poems of a much more sillier caliber in the posts to come. Stay tuned.