NEW POEM! wow.

finally, right?  the guy finally sent me a new po–i mean i finally wrote a new one!

INTERLUDE

When i close my eyes I see a big room,

gilded and glowing yellow-gold from

the sun outside, fighting through ornate curtains

to illuminate the space inside.

She’s there, and so am I; we look radiant.

Reverb-laced music fills the room all the way

to the ceiling, where our hearts and aspirations

mingle and contort themselves together.

It’s muskier than you would think.  the air is heavy

with the whispers of foreign tongues telling

stories about revolutions and dead authors

exploring that part of the world where jungles

become deserts filled with eroded monoliths.

poor

hungry

tired

no poem today

Poem time!

Hey guys–

sorry about the delay; i have been pretty busy getting all moved in and squared away for school.  My new place is awesome and I can’t wait for the new semester.

Anyway, I found these two poems in my folder and I hadn’t posted them yet.  I think they were modeled after a William Carlos Williams poem, which means they are awesome.

NANTUCKET

The cabin tilts to the left

so all the beds have

longer legs on the left side—

the paint is peeling on the shutters

where the salt water

splashes up—

I am four years old

and my legs dangle off the dock.

TREASURE CAY

The sand is pure white

and there are no clouds.

the smell of the salt hangs—

the tide is coming in—

and a woman sits

at the edge of the sea

and lets the water

climb up her legs

currently listening to: International Superheroes of Hardcore

currently reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Batman: Dark Victory

back to normal

hey all–

so i’m back from berlin, and even back up to school, so no more travel news.  I had a life-changing blast in germany and i cannot wait to go back.  its amazing what little daily things trigger my memories of my time there and make me yearn to return.

anyway, I hope to return to semi-regular poetry and various ‘other’ postings, so keep reading!

here’s a quick little thing i came up with today, just to get the ball rolling.  very unrefined, very brief–deal with it.

untitled

The female form

in all of its elegant simplicity

is so infinitely complex

that us men are more often than

not left simply helpless.

Its the eyes,

the neck,

the hint of an exposed shoulder.

those are the things about which

we truly spend our time imagining.

currently listening to: Animal Collectve

currently reading: Batman: Year One and Goodbye, Colombus by Philip Roth

cheers

Sean

yet another video!

48 hours till i leave for the States!

more vids!

New video!

hey all–

this vid is from sunday but only now has the internet been consistent enough to post it.  Me and Jess also made videos together (pretty awesome) so they will hopefully also be up.

hey!

ok so i made a video on sunday to put up but the internet was being insolent so that kinda failed.  I will try to post it again this afternoon.

one more week!?

hey all–

so i only have one week left here, which is crazy and time has really flown by.  Am I excited to go home? Yes, I realized last night that I’m probably ready to, you know, sleep in my own bed, get free refills, and eat ranch dressing.  Am I excited to not be in Berlin? Well, not really.  This place is pretty awesome and objectively more interesting than, say, Omaha.  But either way I will both be happy to be back in the States and yearning to come back, which I think is the appropriate mix of emotions.

Nothing really all that new to report for this week, really.  We’ve just been exploring ever more parts of Berlin (I think we found the actual non-tourist cool area of Berlin–think of it as a more developed Seward in Minneapolis or Benson in Omaha) and stuff like that.  Yesterday was Christopher Street Day, which is the day of the Pride Parade.  Apparently Berlin’s parade is gigantic (I agree) and there were tons of people.  We hung out in Kurfurstendamm and watched all the people and parade vehicles pass.  It was really great to see the city itself come together in support of equal rights.  All of the major political parties had a supportive presence, and some of the major city systems also lent their support–the transportation concern donated busses, the police presence was extremely supportive (there was even a parade of openly gay cops!) and out teachers also joined the parade.  Our friend Shannon summed it up perfectly in her facebook status, which was something like “Shannon really enjoyed the Pride Parade, but saw one too many pairs of ass-less chaps.”

today we are visiting a STASI prison in the east of Berlin.  I think they were like the East German secret police and were in charge of the vast network of civilian informants that kept the people under constant watch.  Hopefully it wont be boring.

Running out of clever titles…

Man, time is absolutely flying by: I can’t believe that I’m in my third week of the program already!  I felt really sophisticated yesterday because I was talking on the U-Bahn with a family from florida that was only going to be in Berlin for two days.  Not enough time to do anything.  But I was able to tell them about some of the food they should eat and some of the places they should go, so I felt like a seasoned Berlin veteran.  I think me and my group are really starting to feel at home, some of us not with our host families (not me, i feel fine here) but with being in the city and mastering the public transport and developing some sense of direction.

Yesterday we went to the Aliiertenmuseen, which is a museum in the former American sector (where i live) and focuses currently on the story of the Berlin Airlift (go to Wikipedia and read about if you don’t know, it’s a really cool story), the post-war Allied presence, and some of the espionage that was happening in the city during the Cold War.  It was funny because it took me like 15 minutes to get there, but it took Matt about 3 hours because he lives on the opposite end of the Berlin metro area (it takes him forever to get anywhere, he is living as a mountain man in the Ostberlinwald, as I will now call it).  I had already been to the museum earlier with my host family, but it was fun to go back with the group and get a real tour of the place.  Our tour guide was an american that was a soldier/spy here in Berlin in the 70s and probably just decided to stick around.  He was really loud and a little crazy, but it was the good kind of crazy and the perfect foul to our moderately dour and certainly unpopular hosts with the Stiftung (German for institute or organization or something–it’s how we not-so-affectionately refer to our program [more on that later]).  Also, for me the history of Cold War politics and culture is something that I find really entertaining, so it’s always nice to spend the afternoon nerding out over spy tunnels (cool!) or the Wall or something like that.  okayihavetogotoschoolnowsobye!