Split Needles

Let me start off by saying how much I adore plinky. As my last four posts in this particular corner of the internet should advocate, I am a big fan. The daily prompts offer inspiration and direction for those without, but also give glimpses of identity and how one question (with an often limited number of possible responses) can spurn so many directions of thought.

Regardless, as I've recently found that I have enough time to scribble incoherent thoughts and completed prose alike into my beloved hardbound, I tend to write in this less often (aside from the Plinkies, which are automatically posted here). I've also discovered the ocassional wayward blog peruser will find themselves running across this and feel as if I owe these casual contemporaries a lil' bit of time and English.


scribbled on a napkin when i'm parked down your street

you can't be home.
you can't feel like home.
and you're not there.
regardless.

i saw you last night.
i don't know why i'm here.
i'm not sure what i expected.
hopeless.

maybe there would be words.
words can start something.
i don't want to fight anymore.
spineless.

should i have held on.
you should'nt have left so.
i loved you but you're wrong.
tactless.

i'm leaving.
you can't stop me.
find this napkin.
i know you saw me.

The Freest Man

Prompt: Where was your first kiss?

The swings.The playground. Down the street from her house.

13 years old and trying to talk to girls is all of the world's awkwardness wrapped into one unkempt prepubescent body.

That statement probably embodies the sentiment in many first kisses. Luckily, I shared mine with a girl I'd known for years. We were good enough friends and some schoolyard chatter had uncovered that there might be some grade school crush brewing beneath the surface.

Late on an after school afternoon, I remember going to her house for one reason or another with a few more of my classmates or friends or what-have-you. We had managed to find ourselves alone on the swing set down the street from her house. I can't remember how or why, I just knew that something was going to happen at this point.

I knew it would happen tonight. I had built up in my mind for weeks. Imagined day after day what I would think and feel at those very moments when my lips would mesh with another pair. It had to be magical right? My first kiss...

She leaned in, as if to beckon me forward so that she could whisper something in my ear. As agreeable as a I was at this age (and especially around her), I did exactly that. In one swift move she took one hand to my face and turned it towards hers while simultaneously planting her lips on mine.

Needless to say, I don't think it turned out quite as she had planned. As she moved into the kiss, I retreated for a brief moment before succumbing and actually kissing her back. If I had known that kissing was this clumsy, uneasy, mess of saliva and bumping foreheads, I may have put it off a bit longer.

The end of this graceless and inept attempt of juvenile romance came when I leaned a bit to far and fell clear off the swings and into the mulch and dirt below. I looked up at her with a curious smile as she looked coyly away from me. We both got up and crept quietly back to her house before more awkwardness ensued. I remember thinking:"This was a practice run. My next kiss is going to be great..."

Parade

Prompt: Hybrid Prius or Escalade with gold rims?
A classic battle: sensible vs. indulgent. Which one wins this time?

When 'Pimp my Ride' goes bad you get an Escalade on gold rims.

Its hardly a choice...

An Escalade with gold rims is not indulgent. It's ugly.

First off,let me preface this by saying that I'm not into larger cars. This is especially true for those of the SUV variety.

Secondly, I don't like American built vehicles. The Japanese product is so much more evolved than its American counterpart.

Thirdly, you can easily buy two midsized vehicles for the same price as an over-accessorized Escalade.

But back to my original point. An Escalade with gold rims is simply hideous. I can't even picture how that would look like it belonged on a car (without a ridiculous paint job). If said paint job existed, the car would already be ugly. Ugly is not indulgence.

Indulgence would be spending money to put a 52-inch flat screen TV in the back of the trunk. Or velvet and cashmere interiors. Or full body massage chairs in-place of the traditional passenger seating.

Basically when faced with the choice of neither practicality or attractiveness versus at least some sensibility...well you get the idea.

Time is Running Out

Prompt: Name three songs to help you get over a breakup.

Breaking-up is never easy. At least Music is always my girlfriend...

I cannot possibly choose just three songs that help me get over breakups. It's just not going to happen. What I can do is pick the first three that come to mind from each stage of a breakup. I think I'll go in reverse order...

Good Life by Francis Dunnery

First is the moving on, since generally this is the last step:

Francis Dunnery has perfectly captured what it means to loose what feels like love at the time and then still feel good about it. The song walks through the breakdown of a relationship, the feeling of loss, and ultimately concedes that it just wasn't meant to be and that there is someone else out there. The lyrics conclude that everyone deserves to be happy, even if that sentiment isn't achieved with the person you thought you would end up with.

The Wrong Girl by Belle & Sebastian

If the last step is moving on, the second step must be accepting that the breakup happened with good reason:

This songs title says it all. While you thought you found her, it was simply "the wrong girl, the wrong kind, the wrong hand to be holding". And at the end of a break-up, don't we sometimes need reassurance that it was, in fact, the wrong person?

Left and Leaving by The Weakerthans

The first step of any breakup is clearly the actual leaving and being left. The most painful part of the process:

This song deviates a bit from my other two. Instead of focusing on moving on, this one focuses on the pain and loneliness that we all go through in a post-breakup phase. It reminds us that someone has felt this way before and someone will feel this way again. A clear indicator that our emotions are distinct but not unique and that if the singers can get through it, so can we.

"Wait for the year to drown.
Spring forward, fall back down.
I'm trying not to wonder where you are."

This song captures that perfectly and amplifies that human connection that music serves. It also reminds us that time is the ultimate factor in getting over it.

Fast Blood

Prompt: Paul Simon was going to Graceland, Toto blessed the rains down in Africa – what place would you write a song about?

My song about Atlantic City, New Jersey? Hardly...

So it's the most recent trip I've taken and therefore the first destination that came to mind. Perhaps hardly worth a song as it's the younger, uglier, mentally deficient brother of Vegas. It is however, a temporary escape from the average and normal for thousands of East Coast, 9 to 5, corporate refugees who just want a taste of a different life.

Plus it's one hell of a road trip...

New Jersey smells like garbage,
that is, until you hit the 322.
because when you're Atlantic City bound
you've only got gambling and boozing to do.

If you hit the tables and bleed clay
you become slightly less stoked
to paraphrase James Murphy:
AC i love you, but you're making me broke.

Shag Ball

I don't know if anyone actually reads this, or if they did would I ever know? Regardless I've been lying in bed for the last few nights writing bits and pieces on scraps of paper. In all honesty it started as just breaking in the new Copic but now its gotten to restless emission of words that hardly fit together. I get through phrases or stanzas, even paragraphs, but I can't come full circle unless I keep succinct. This plays to the restlessness all to well. In case, here is a sample for those sympathizers both real and imaginary...

the hardest part is yet to come

looking into your heart
knowing whats done is done
standing on the street corner
thinking solely about the weather
the rain that never falls
on the open umbrella
until the day i forget it at home
and you are the suppressed memory
that floods back to me in the storm.

Infinity ytinifnI

your name on the radio
the song youve heard before
the answers are questions
that wont love you back

coming home to
your unfinished lessons
relearn your chemistry
for all the empty equations

the presets and programs
mass production and
the fabricated romance
all of poor quality

the mentions of him
lingering phrases and old scents
a fragrance in the wind
shattering facades are open

Woodland National Anthem

Inanimate objects that I love and always love me back:

• Breyer's Peach Fruit-on-the-Bottom yogurt
• Black Copic Multiliner SP Pens
• Unruled, hard-bound, 50 page, composition journals
• Simply Orange Juice
• Levi's 501 jeans
  
• Bolthouse Farms Mango Lemonade
• Sony MDR-J20 h.ear Headphones
• Brown leather, full-zip, dress half-boots
• Kettle One Martinis
• Dark British-Style Lager Beers
• Collar-points
• Nivea for Men Energizing Face Scrub and Double Action Face Wash
• MLB Officially Licensed 59-Fifty Fitted Cubs Home cap
• Any Canary Yellow cloths (see bedsheets, drapes, shirts, wallpaper, etc.)
•