UPDATE: 30 Second Film

Hello again! This is very important, so I will cut to the chase. A friend of mine is studying to be a director. He recently cast me in a very short film he made for a video contest powered by zooppa.com and hosted by matchingdonors.com. (I'm the zombie with the monologue). The winner gets to intern with 20th Century Fox. We are currently at position number 4, which means we only need a few more votes to win. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE VOTE!!! You can vote using multiple emails. Just create an account by clicking "log in and vote" on the right hand side, it can be canceled at any time. And, of course, enjoy the video. (Make sure to move the quality bar up to 5 before submitting):

Don't Donate Your Organs to Zombies

UPDATE: The video is now on YouTube. Here's the link:

Don't Donate Your Organs to Zombies

The Hands Series

Woo! My, my, my, has it been a few tumultuous weeks since my last update. I hope you all weren't fretting I may have fallen into a time rift and was lost beyond the ramparts of this dimension. Hardly! In fact, I was on a feverish quest to find my misplaced laptop and along with it the better of my work. Yes, my poetry, my stories, my photos, my novel, all of it was almost lost. Thanks to the grace of God, a kind hearted, honest young gentleman retrieved the device and ensured its safe return to me. For those few days, however, I felt as though the foundation of my life, the very purpose of this existence, had been squandered.  
But the past is but a point of reference for the present. As I touched on earlier in my Stretch Marks post, there is an addition poetic series I have been working on called The Hands Series. The series consists of poems dedicated to the hand's of musicians (though I'm considering expanding this premise to include artists and other craftsmen).
I was inspired after attending an Eric Whitacre concert in Manhattan. I sat relatively close - close enough that I could keenly watch the motions of his hands as he conducted the choir. I was fascinated by the fluid, smokey movements of his dexterous phalanges. I immediately felt compelled to write about them. Then, as my mind was bubbling, I pondered the hands of other artists and: The series was born.
So here is the first in the series, The Conductor's Hands. The rest are soon to come. In addition, since I have not yet posted anything regarding my art, I have included a small sketch - a prelude to what is soon to come.

The Conductor’s Hands

The conductor’s hands,

Roiling like smoke, 

Lead a formless pack

Of hellhounds and turtledoves,

Rising and falling

Like cities and mountains,

Following the steady hands

As they whisk away emotions

And squander breaths.

We watch intimately

Each digit like a ballerina,

The wrists dragging the palms away

Screaming,

To cut the air into perfect

Bight sized pieces

That we gobble up

Into our ears

Starvingly. 

Ermeneglossia

"Ermeneglossia" is defined as "the interpretation of tongues" by American anthropologist L. Carlyle May in his 1956 essay, A Survey of Glossolalia and Related Phenomena in None-Christian Religions. It entails the deciphering of jumbled, incoherent, cryptic annunciations emitted by an individual in an induced state by a religious layperson (a sorcerer, a shaman, a priest, etc.). It is presently the title of a short story I had written quite some years ago.

It is written from the first person perspective and concerns the misfortune of a man who awakes to find himself trapped in an incredibly small stone space with no recollection of who he is, where he is, and how he got there. His voice-box has been removed and he suckles from a drizzle of water as it runs down the wall from a crack in the ceiling for sustenance. After several days of examination, finding only petty artifacts, he retreats into wallowing as he contemplates his plight. To his relief, however, he hears a faint rapping coming from the wall of his confinements. In excitement, he attempts to contact the faceless entity through a small hole in the wall by his feet, only to be met with a greater horror.

Please enjoy the excerpt and let me know if you care to read the rest.

Ermeneglossia

Excruciated, trying still desperately to call out, to convene with the stranger, I could only make out one feature of him at a time: a nostril, an eyebrow, a lip. I whispered, but all I could make out from the thumper were muffled groans and grunts. I put my mouth directly in front of the hole, but received the same reply.

   It hurt too much to continue, so I stopped and swallowed a chunk of what I assumed to be my own tissue. I could hear the stranger on the other side continue to murmur and garble. Inquiring, I pressed my eye to the opening again and saw blackness, then I felt a moist, hot, foul-smelling gust lollop over my cornea and cause me to shut my eye swiftly to tear, and back away.

   Rubbing it and opening it again, I looked through and saw the beam of light once more on the other side of the gap. I saw the gentleman lean back and throw his opened mouth into the light as I continued to hear him gargling. The beam shot through his missing and broken teeth, and into the cavity, allowing effortless view to his tonsils. But where I expected to find a flicking, anxious tongue, as a line of drool rolled down his unshaven chin and neck, I saw only a bloody, knotted mass, sown up tight with blackish string, encrusted in a thick coating of uncontrollable mucus, a stale wound where his tongue used to be. It filled my gullet with contortions, shooting pains up my back and over my shoulders that bleated from my spine.

   I was overcome with coughing, the most painful, harshest coughing fit I had ever known, and I couldn’t stop because of the pain, but I pleaded for it to for the very same reason. Horrified, I began to whimper once more.

 
  

UPDATED: Dust

The prospect of one's own mortality has always fascinated me, and has been the foci of my obsession for quite some years now. It has even lead to the development of a novel, which is still very much in the works. Of all of life's grand mysteries, the certainty of death lingers ever-present, and appears as both a beacon of apprehension and motivation. Yet, it should be recognized that the very atoms that construct your present anatomy have existed since the birth of the universe. You are recycled, built from the debris of past existence. So, really, death is merely a transference of form and a preservation of existence, rather than the destruction of it.
That is the subject of the present poem "Dust", which deals with this very motif. The poem itself began as a request from a close friend, Samantha Monteleone, who asked that I assist her in constructing the lyrics to a song. She said that the only line she had was "my dust" and proposed the tempo sound like footsteps. So, I worked my craft, and churned out this curious specimen. She has since incorporated it into a brilliant work-in-progress, making it very much her own. I myself experimented with sounds and produced a different version. I'm going to try and post that version up somehow, but in the meantime please enjoy these "lyrics".

Dust

My dust

Hangs

In crisp beams of light

In rain

In every creeping breeze

Breath

Smithereens of me

Death

Is not quite what it seems

It’s a masquerade

A casting off of things once dear to me

To embrace

The celestial divide

To chase

Down dreams once kept inside

Bursting forth

From the flesh that used to line

This silly shell

Cocoon of selfsame diligence

Ne’er-do-well

Metamorphosed

Pieces of the past

Construct the present form

You are just
The dust of what has come before

UPDATE: Samantha has since completed her song and uploaded it to YouTube. She has entitled it "only just Dust". I personally think it's quite brilliant, and highly suggest you Like it and leave feedback for her in the Comments.

only just Dust

Stretch Marks

I know that the majority of my posts as of late have been concerned with poetry. I am also well aware that the description of this webpage contains reference to a plethora of addition mediums of expression that (aside from photography) appear to have been ruthlessly neglected. Fear not, for I shall be bringing you fresh samples of my other preoccupations once I have found the time to do so! I have stuck diligently to poetry simply because I have far too many specimens at my disposal.

Alas, we have here a section from yet another series I am working on. You have already seen me make reference to "The Heart Series", which is composed exclusively of photographs. By contrast, this is a poetic series, consisting of poems of a similar theme that are meant to compliment each other. (I have another poem series in the works, but that's for another post).

This series is made up of poems that glorify the female body. More specifically, they focus on parts of the body that women often frown upon and features that society has enforced as negative to poses. These include things like wrinkles, cellulite, fat, stretch marks, and so on. The poems are meant to convey the message that a woman's body is beautiful, especially those wonderful pieces that we obsess over and try to erase. The poems are very much about women's empowerment, and should fill the female reader with a sense of confidence, sexuality, and individualism. Without further delay, I present the first in the series:

Stretch Marks

Come,

Ride my rivers,

Sail across these muddled maelstroms;  

Get swept away by the currents that mark my 

Stomach,

Thigh, and  

Breast.

I am an expanding star,

A red giant bursting with fervency,

My seams stretched from welling ego and

Hubris drawn in zebra stripes.

These trails are uncharted,

So won’t you map them extensively?

Trace them with your fingertips,

Eager to but scratch the surface.

I have outgrown this skin,

This epidermis hinders,

The butterfly within imprisoned,

Its wings slicing scars toward reality.

         

Carrara

It's been over a week now since my return from Italy and I am still very much attempting to grasp everything I saw and experienced. Because I was so overwhelmed visually, mentally, and even emotionally, I didn't have very much time to compose anything. I did, however, manage to write a little something simple.

 I was inspired by the enormous prevalence of ancient structures and statues scattered all over that wonderful country. When you consider all the museums around the world that house slivers and chips of so many lost monuments, it's really quite incredible how the cultural history of Italy has contributed to the greater concept of human expression. Personally, when I look at such hulking structures as the Colosseum, Pompeii, the Pantheon, and others, I remind myself that each brick was shaped and set by hand; each carved hunk of marble was chiseled away by hand; and I wonder at how many hands had graced these massive monuments during their construction. Was the man who laid this brick thinking of his pregnant wife at home, eager to return to her as he finished his obligation? Was the face that here represents Demeter  designed and pulled from the head of a woman whom the artist adored? There were emotions, personalities, identities, selfhood, life behind those gracing hands. And what ever became of them?

 One can read the following poem from the point of view of either a sculpture itself or of an ancient individual lost to the cockles of time. Also, please enjoy some these quaint photos I took while abroad. Caio!

 Carrara

I consign

Many centuries from now

Someone will find

The calcified remnants of me

Mismatched and incomplete

Broken

Splayed

Scuttled

Frayed

The flesh torn away

But what will remain are signatures of you

Monuments to the love that became a part of me

For you

They will find the gristle in my bones replaced

The marrow having assumed a heart shape

For you  

The Heart Series: Italia

So, in my travels across Italy, (naturally) I stumbled upon several surprises. Italy, it seems, is rife with hearts. Please, enjoy the latest additions to The Heart Series, straight from beautiful Italia.