Well, then.  I’m going to the Poet’s Loft tonight.  I wished I could have some company there but that fell through.  What a shame!  Perhaps next Wednesday things will be different.  You know what I really wish?  I wish I had a girlfriend right now.  It’s not because I feel obligated to have one, its just that I want to be able to share things with someone and take them places and treat them special.  Go to the lake and just sit on the shore and watch the sun relinquish its flame for the day while the moon hovers over us, entangling the twigs in the night sky.  I want to stay up all night with her on the phone, not talking about shit, just what we’re doing at that moment, and then wake up in the morning lying next to her.  I want the kind of love that makes me want to change my cellphone plan just so I can talk to her longer because, I want a love that don’t cost me an arm and leg on my phone bill type of love.  I want to hold her, and have her know that as long as I’m holding her in my mind, nothing can come between us.  I want to love this girl like I love my Mom.  I want her to be my drug.  I want to be an addict of her.  Hopefully though she’ll find me, and I’ll find her, and hopefully that implies that we find eachother in the process, but if it doesn’t, atleast she’s happy.

---

So these are possibilties for next week at The Poet’s Loft.  Please read all of them and tell me which ones would be the best.  I can read up to four (one in the first round and 3 in the second).

“Remember”   © Caleb Cooley 2005 

This place is peaceful
A sanctuary
between
Central and Exchange.
How appropriate named
actually.
A central exchange
of thoughts and theories
between my peers.
A place where the
pupils of my eyes –
the pupils that see–
become pupils
that teach me
to
live,
see,
breathe.
And hopefully
when I look back
on my journey
The course that I study –
The course of life –
I’ll make an A.
But even if I make a C
and die knowing
I tried my best
I’ll be happy.
Because I’ll know
that all that I failed in life
is what my eyes
did not see,
and thus,
did not teach me.
But I guess
it’s all just a learning phase.
What a maze.
this amazing journey.
Because you never walk
through existance.
At least you never should.
Remember to crawl
and feel the roots and rocks
in your hands.
It keeps you from stumbling
in shadows –
the dark places where
feet alone cannot guide.
Young man,
remember that
the dirt under your fingernails
does not blemish your existance.
It makes it.
Whoever said that
life is beautiful
did not live life,
Because life is not beautiful.
Life is ugly and scarred,
twisted and blinded,
and so
Life is not beautiful.
But the experience is.
So live life
knowing that life
is to be lived,
not wasted
on petty things
that will not make
a difference
when all has been done.
Remember that
life is…
and even the sun
will die
and the moon will shatter –
and the painted stars
on the canvas sky
will run.
Remember that
the ink blots that
are scattered in this universe
are what makes it so beautiful.
But above all
Son,
remember that
your life
has just
begun.

---

“Penny for your Thoughts”

Can I offer you a penny
for your thoughts?
As a matter of fact how about three:
one penny for you
one penny for me
and one penny for our minds engaged
not so sexually
Getting intimately closer as we approach the
climactic altitude of nudimental sensational conversation
Because I’m trying to get to know everything about you
From the neck
UP.
You see,
these are not your typical sexual poetical prose
I’m trying to close the door on an
all too familiar freaky foreplay game with which
most people have chose to approach you
While they’re
trying to get deeply embedded in the fine fibers of your bedsheets.
I’m trying to
find and define the fibers through which your mind speaks.
I wanna engage you
by  putting a two Karat solitaire diamond on your mind
and marrying your every thought.
I wanna lick every inch of every crevice
so I can get an oral fix
and taste your passionate imagination.
I’d rather
be naked and exposed holding you
as we’re lying and your crying
walking, fighting, and describing
the tough times you’ve had in life
and how you don’t know if you
can keep a relationship long enough
to be somebody’s wife.
I wanna feel your heartbeat
and all your inner rhythyms
as they lead me toward
your warm wet waterfalls of feminine thoughts.
And I’ll
swim within em’
from backstrokes to breaststrokes
I’m penetrating every entrance
to your mind
Taking the time to find out everything about you.
Did I ever tell you about how you
fell asleep in my presence
and your mere essence
kept me up for hours as I
cowered with this feeling of a
sexually and adulterated mental connection.
And as you laid by my side
I pushed my blinds aside
and took the time in the moonlight of that night
to count seventy two eyelashes on the upper eyelid
of your right eye.
Because
as you sleep they remain open,
slightly,
and while we probably move too quickly
into some sexual stuff
I’ve always cared more about the
explicitly illicitness that came from between your lips, meaning,
your voice.
So now I’m
standing here ready
to trade in all the sexual acts that we’ve performed
for the chance to reform
the very foundation and basis of our relationship
and I
reinterate my opening statement
and I offer you another penny
for your thoughts.

---

A girl in red
Curls separated between fingers
We dance through darkness

---

A rose in a vase
Doomed forever by
The knife that cut it

---

She brought her love
He brought his flowers
They were both allergic.

---

A square looked up
From his paper prison
Dreaming of six faces.

---

Pick a band and then answer the questions using only songs from the band.

[))))))))))INCUBUS((((((((((]

*Are you male or female? Shaft
*Describe yourself: Still Not a Player / Idiot Box
*How do some people feel about you? Smokin’ the Herb Again
*How do you feel about yourself? Clean
*Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Bathe in my Snot
*Describe your current boyfriend/girlfriend: Southern Girl / You Will Be a Hot Dancer
*Describe where you want to be:  Deep Inside / Mexico / Nowhere Fast
*Describe how you live: Just A Phase / Under My Umbrella
*Describe how you love: Stellar
*Share a few words of wisdom: Make Yourself / Make up Your Mind
*What/ who do you miss? I Miss You
*Where do you wish your boyfriend/girlfriend would do/be? Wish you were — Here — in my room

---

Thanks for reading…oh!

Kelly, we should talk about going out sometime in the future (perhaps next Wednesday @ the Poet’s Loft).  Do you have a new phone number?  Call me @ 520.7979.

Later
Caleb

Last night, while everyone else was asleep, I went outside.  It was a clear, calm night.  There was no wind, only the sound of the highway roaring in the distance.  Ten thousand stars were alive and so vividly watching over every move I made.  I realized, those are ten thousand places that I would never see, never touch, and never be.  It reminded me of something.  I don’t really understand what it was, nor do I know.  However, I did feel the loneliness overwhelm me as I looked up at the heavens.  I thought, if she isn’t here on Earth for me to find, how will I ever reach or find her out there? 

Sometimes though, the best things are right under your nose, i.e. your mouth.  So, I’ll just watch what I say.  I talk too much.  It’s not the type of talking that never ends.  It’s just the kind of talking where even the smallest of words just says too much.  Sometimes things should just be left unsaid, because if we all just learn to close our mouths, and listen to our breath, we will hear life speak for itself.

I hope you hear my prayers God. 

No, I may not know why I’m alive, nor my purpose in life yet. 

No, I may not know why the stars spins, and the universe expands and contracts.

But I do know the reason.

So, I haven’t been on in A WHILE!  I’ve been grounded for alot of things I don’t care to mention here and that I’m not too awfully proud of in the first place.  However, I DID continue my poetry in my oldschool poetry journal and, just to moisten your mouths and open your ears and minds, I’ll post something I wrote two days ago.

Freedom of Choice

Where is democracy?
“Democracy” is advertised every day.
Propaganda about our “Freedom of Choice”
All-American broadcasts of
those movie stars and strippers
fed to this society
whose brainstem is
somehow directly connected to a
cable television.
According to officials atleast
but I ain’t got the time in the day
to listen to what they say
so…
what the hay, eh?
It’s a freedom where
the “Monopoly Man”
sits in his house on The Hill
eating a juicy T-Bone steak
while people live in street alleyways
eating gourmet meals from dumpsters everyday.
The banker’s broke
Yeah that’s no joke
And the “ghetto”
Is just another rundown street
Because the truth is:
Everyone’s givin’ up something they love
just to make ends-meet.
Those silky green Bens
Those were so last week
Haven’t you heard?
Oil is the new currency.
Nothin’s the same in this city now
Gas prices hit three dollars and nineteen cents
In even the smallest town.
While corporate conglomerates
Keep gettin’ rich
The poor keep gettin’ poor.
Ain’t that a bitch?!?
Those tobacco companies
telling us to keep smokin’
Smoke our lives away
Even when we’re broke
and
The Man tells us
“You should really stop tokin’.”
Because
Drugs Kill
And Sammy Boy has done his math
Done some long division calculations real fast
And knows that
Less ignorance
equals
Less cash.
People follow a pattern
Like moths into a bug zapper.
Attracted to the next big thing.
“Oooo!  Thats so purty!
I wish I could touch it
but just can’t get through that
T.V. screen.”
They’ll feed off of our
primal impulses of naivety.
I think I’ll take a stand
Against that “moneybag”– The Man.
All your propaganda
And bullshit
Save it, you can have it.
Don’t mind me while I raise my voice
But damn that Uncle Sam
and Fuck his “Freedom of Choice”!

So I “Day-ed Out” of school…
So I’ve smoked pot a couple of times…
So I’ve liked girls that weren’t beautiful…
So I am a hopeless romantic…
So I respect girls more than most guys I know…
So I’m too nice to get a girl…
So I don’t play my French Horn much these days…
So I have friends that aren’t really my friends…
So I have friends that really are my friends…
So I read my poetry downtown…
So Ryan Simmons is mad at me and I don’t know why (and don’t really care either)…
So Alex is in rehab…
So I honestly believe I could say that Ryan Jolly is the best friend I have…
So I lost my parents’ credit card…
So I’ve borrowed things without asking…
So I hunt…
So I’m going to Lakeside at Christmas…
So I might not be what I really want to be in life…
So I might not be what you want me to be in life…

So WHAT?

“I’ve lived here all my life.”
…his convincing words vibrated
the now empty stage.
A certain raspiness
in his tone had a
seemingly perfect resonance
with the wooden seat backs
in that particular auditorium.
“Do you hear that?
That’s the sound of my life.”
…all was silent
except
the sound of a
key chain dangling from his belt loop
and straw brushing against a wooden floor.
He had graduated high school,
high marks in English and Fine Arts
in 1943,
the year after his father died
for a country who still recognizes
political corruption as a form of currency.
“I’ve always had a talent for poetry.”
…he takes another sip of the cold coffee.
“It’s in my blood, I guess.”
…he absorbs the reflection of
his youthful self through years
of wear in the wooden stage.
“When I was young, he would sing for me
the lines from that old journal of his.”
…he hums an impromptu solo.
“It was his, the trumpet.
I picked it up after he had left.”
One more sweep topped off the pile
of dust and paper
in the center of the stage.
“I taught myself everything
I could learn about that piece of brass.
Never did do anything with it though.”
…he scoops the dust up
and empties it in the dull gray trash bin.
“I’ve seen people come,
and I’ve seen people go,
but they never stay.
You can’t stay.
But I sort of like it here.
I carry the dust they leave
over my shoulder everyday.
Never did anything else
with my time spent in this room.
Never really had the time, actually!”
…he puts the broom in the closet
and shuts the door,
briskly brushing his hands off
in satisfaction.
“There was always work to do,
but no people to see.
Nope, never did nothing with my time
but waste it on these floors!
I guess I’ve died here
all my life
as well.”

---

If I could deal with pain like I can heartbreak
I would be the most fragile pine needle,
feeble and insecure with the slightest waiver
of the wind.

If I could deal with heartbreak like I can pain
I would be the mightiest oak tree,
stalwart and enduring even in the most ferocious
of hurricanes.

---

I really need a hobby.  I’ve decided that playing bass is great, and writing is fine and dandy, but to tell the truth, I do these things purely for material indulgence.  I need something that the only satisfaction I get out of is a personal gain.  Perhaps fishing or coin collecting. 

…no

…too boring and trivial for my mind

I think this leads me to needing estrogen in my life.  My supply base as become stagnant and requires a new taste.  I know this may seem a bit stereotypical of male needs, but what can I say, I’m just a guy.  No guy can live, no, “live” is a word that is taken for granted in how it is meant these days and now only means that it would be really hard to make the day go by without something.  Let me rephrase this:  No man can SURVIVE without some form of estrogen in their day-to-day lives.  Unfortunately, the more grotesque form of man has to resort to dirty magazines and late-night satellite channels to find his fill of this “golden hormone of joy”. 

Of course, now I get the notion that perhaps it is not the mere presence of estrogen that I crave, but perhaps a relationship with an estrogen star-cruiser.  No kiddos, I’m not talking about the Girls Gone Wild Tour Bus.  God knows, I would never caress an automobile…or would I?

No, I probably wouldn’t while sober.  That is the only answer I can give to that question.  Moving on…

…and on

…and on

…and on

I guess it all boils down to the one question that drives my voyage:  Is there an estrogen star-cruiser out there that has an equal need to find its complimentary testosterone fueled docking station?

Okay, that sounded a little too subliminal for even me.  It had a reversal of cliche metaphors and all their inner workings.  Thats just….weird. 

I’ll probably meditate on this, forget what I was talking about, go back to watching those late-night satellite broadcasts of Touched by an Angel (*right*), pass out on the livingroom floor like I do every other night.  Wake up, remember around 3rd Period that it isn’t Sunday, and get in a car crash on the way to school.  Yep, I have my future all planned out…unfortunately.

---

Homecoming is tonight.  I won’t have my digital camera, but I’ll have the regular one, so it’ll take a bit to get any “After-party” pics up…probably about a month.  I’ve got my Mom’s turbocharged Nissan, capable of kicking Stephen Saracini AKA Keith Urban’s Bluegrass Blasting Jeep’s ass anyday (I can hear that steel guitar twangin’ from a block away), so I’ll be riding 5 on 18′s at 160 in a tux bitches!  I’m out…gotta meditate.

-(buff)MUFF-

     My goal in life has never been to have my words read and analyzed by a college English class, or even a high school English class for that matter.  My goal has never even manifested the slightest idea of having scholars debate the meanings of my metaphors and ponder the endings to my unfinished works.  Until recently, no one person should have ever heard my works spoken by its author.  I do not endorse force feeding my concepts down any ones’ throats, nor do I believe in it.  However, morals change.  People change.  Things just change.
     To me at least, my words are important in their own.  Rearrange any word in my works, replace them with even the strongest synonym, and I firmly believe that the effect of the piece would not be the same.  If Van Gogh traded blues with reds in his “Starry Night”, would it be as grand?  My canvas is words.  They are my colors.  My tongue is a brush.  I might make a mistake here and there, but will never admit it.  These are my masterpieces after all.  I find it hard to believe that they were anyone else’s before me.  Some may call me a fake, but that is only in their minds after all.  I see myself as me.  How would even God allow me to lie about who I am to myself?  My words are from God.  Not prophesy or the likes, but an art.  I have been blessed by Him to do such with these words.  Mold, shape, crimp, shave, and stretch these words into something beautiful.  And so…

I needed some time to reflect
on myself
and found the perfect opportunity
in a sunset.
I walk on a mirrored shoreline.
Moonlight my only friend in
the night sky.
You are my North Star.
Guide me.
Help me find the light
in the darkness.
Guide me.
Hold me tight when night falls
Guide me.
Lead me to the daylight.
Guide me.
Help me find the Son.
You are my North Star.
Guide me.

---

     Well, I got back from school.  Playing Nora Jones for our homecoming song during the ceremony at the game against Magnolia this coming Friday.  Despite the fact that our team is going to lose, which is always a downer (not!), I know it will be a decent night.  Going with Amber Rogers and we get along really well.  I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to her much lately because I’ve had a lot of things going on in my life recently that I don’t care to talk about at the moment.  Maybe some other time, in some other post in the far or near future. 
     I got my tux for the dance a week ago.  It’s black with silver silk lining and a mallard green vest and matching long tie with a black undershirt.  Yeah its gonna look pretty sharp I guess.  Heh, I just said “sharp”.  My Dad always says that when I dress nice.  “Your looking sharp Son!”.  I don’t know why, but he always has a way with making me feel better than I really am.  I love him so much.  He’ll never realize how much I really do.  Despite my temper and attitude all the time, which comes upon entering teenage years, I really can’t help having such personality swings between social and private life.  Raging hormones and teen angst are really a bitch these days. 
     I’m getting into too many fights with too many people over meager things like lighters.  For example:  I was riding the bus home from the football game against J. A. Fair, of which I feel inclined to add that we lost miserably, and I flicked my lighter for light to read something.  This unappreciative prick  yells at me: “Why you got a lighter on the bus?  CALEB COOLEY HAS A LIGHTER!”  I ignore his feeble attempts in humiliating me and flick it once more, only to feel his leathery palm slap the back of my head.  I turn around and cuss him out, chest out, fists up, ready to swing away.  He sits down, acting very calm but at the same time arrogant as ever and a smart ass at that.  Remarks fly through the bus from random lips in the darkness.  The bus driver doesn’t even flinch.  He just keeps on driving down the curvy road we were on.  I tell him I’ll meet him when we get off the bus and I’ll settle this once and for all.  We get back to the high school, and I walk back to my car, void of any notion that we are supposed to put our instruments back in the band room from the trailer.  I get to my car only to find dozens of pamphlets reading:  “How to deal with Homosexuality” and “The Advantages of Using Condoms” sprawled across ever crevice on my car.  This would be the lousy and foolish work of that hairy behemoth of a gorilla, Ryan Simmons A.K.A. “Winky Timmy!”

Little does he know that his plans are going to take a turn against him with the help of my Associate in Evilness, Stephen A.K.A. Keith Urban.

Yes this is going to be grand. 

Anyways, back to the point at hand.  Those pamphlets only further enraged me, well, not enraged me, just kinda gave me a legitimate reason to unleash some built-up frustration on that prick that smacked me on the back of my head.  He came to my car and I pulled out my “Bitch Stick” so I could royally dubb him “My Bitch”.  Now I need to explain the workings of the “Bitch Stick”.  It is pretty simple.  A wooden table leg whose soul purpose to to bludgeon my enemies.  Genius eh?  Yeah I thought so too.  Glad we agree.  He saw the table leg and was like, “So you’re gonna hit me with a piece of wood now?”.  “Damn right I am if you try starting crap!”, were the words that pompously spilt from my lips without any remorse whatsoever.  I put down the stick however, in hopes of being the “Bigger Man”, and tried to talk things out.  I calmly asked him, “Why do you have a problem with me, man?”.  He answered back with some irrelevant question/ statement that went sort of like:  “Ayo, if we gonna do this then lets do this, cuz I’m gonna just have to kick your ass right here.”  I of course could not intelligently answer back to his idiocy, so I just said, “If you don’t have a problem with me, we have no reason to fight.  However, if we do, we can settle this right here.  Its only a school parking lot with a security camera overhead watching our every move.”  I was just trying to get him to swing at me first so I could (1) Walk away, and if he kept trying to hit me, then I could go to step (2) Knock the hell out of him.  That way I could plead Self-Defense in court when he tried to accuse me of Assault & Battery.  Heh, I learned that in Business Law that very day.  Who would have though I would use something I learned outside of school!  Nothing happened and it was over.  J.R., you pussy. 

The End.

---

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -
A Poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all of the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -
A poem should not mean
But be.

~Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)

one month
twenty-one days
since the day you left me
well
met me
(Your lips met mine)
and i still remember the ecstasy of that kiss.
something keeps telling me
i’m a fool!
my heart has been ripped from that
seam in on my shirt sleeve.
a sleeve laced with stitching
that only love could break
or make.
Your cheek against mine
hour hand dissipates
from the face of
a cellphone in my pocket.

*ring ring*

wait
my heart just skipped a beat

*ring ring*

“what have i told you about
wearing your heart on your sleeves,
young man?”
(yes mother I know)

*ring ring*

warm hand on my arms
tongue-tied by misinterpretations

*ring ring*

“Don’t talk, lets just enjoy ourselves.”

*ring ring*

darkness on the ride home
probing fingers in the shadows
fingers laced
She’s there

*ring ring*

She’s asleep on my shoulder
almost home
can’t wait to dream

*ring ring*

silence everywhere.
still tongue-tied
misinterpretations and false hopes
a fling

*ring ring*

  -WHAT!
“I thought I told you to leave me alone.”
  -What did i do?
“I’m not sure yet”
  -Whatever

*ring ring*

i turn the phone off.
Now I just wish
I could forget about
everything.

I needed some time to reflect
on myself
and found the perfect opporitunity
in a sunset.
Now only my shadow walks
beside me.

I woke up late for school today.  I have such bad luck it seems.  I told myself, “Caleb, you’re not going to miss anymore school this week.  You already skipped band this week, you idiot! 

THEN MY ALARM CLOCK BECOMES GAY, SCREWS ME UP THE ASS, AND RUINS ALL MY PLANS!!!

Well, not really.  It’s just that I told myself I wouldn’t do something and then that magical hand (from God?) “interferes” with my plans. 

Maybe I’ll see Stacey and say ”Hi” or maybe I won’t…all depends on the chance of actually seeing her in the hallway.  I’ll make fourth period though.  It starts at 11 o’clock and its about 10:10 right now. 

I don’t know if Mr. Jordan is going to let me march at the game against J. A. Fair tonight.  Despite the missed days, I know we haven’t learned the anything new.  We already have the entire show down.  Well, not really “down“, more like we know what we’re “supposed” to do.  So this week we’ve probably been working on perfecting that.  Hopefully, John and Logan (the two freshman Horns without a clue) got along okay in my absence.  I’ll tell Jordan that I had some personal things to take care of at home.  Yes, that might work, seeing as he hasn’t called my parents about any of the days…..yet.

I have faith in our football team’s (losing) streak like always.  I know they’ll make me proud (which is actually somewhat contradictory and abstract to other minds i.e. the parents of the football team).  What can I say though?  I’m in band.  I don’t have to support our team.  I merely have to be at the games.  I’m not playing for them, I’m playing for the crowd baby!  So make me proud Trojans!  That is, do it like always…lose!

(buff)MUFF
Truant Lake/ Rooftop PiRaTe
in Desparate Search for Booty

So, last night was fun…lots of fun actually.  I went to Praise Band practice at my church.  We couldn’t really practice because all of the amps and speakers were gone.  So Rob, Mike, and I broke it down hardcore….*not*.  Still alot of fun. 

Speaking of fun….Guess what I did after practice…

Well, I went to the Poet’s Loft, and hung out with Stacey.  She is REALLY cool.  I had the impression we “clicked”, but then again that could just be the alcohol talking again…*not*.  I do, however, have concern for MY first impression to her.  Did I come on too strong of a personality?  Did I talk too much?  Too less?  Was I moderately polite, despite the casual setting?  So many questions.  I think she’s really cool though, and I really want to hang with her again. 

Regarding the Poet’s Loft:

…I AM good aren’t I…

Here’s something pretty to look at.

Anyways, I’m outta here.  Gotta go get a cigarette…*not*…and then
pick up a dirty lady named Elaine….*not*…then go for a drinking binge
at Cupids’….*not*….then go to sleep…*hells YES*.

-(buff)MUFF-