What's this?

I have five days until I disappear into Brazil. That means I have a ridiculous amount of homework to finish, but I think I am going to try to get back updating this because really writing poetry is a great way to relieve stress. I might not be writing the best poetry, but that never was the point of this blog. So here is a poem about being in school for almost all my life and how I have been kind of wondering what a degree is really worth. I think learning is a great endeavour; however, I am not sure that the current college system is best. And I certainly am not sure that we should people getting degrees just because that is what you do after high school and getting degrees because that is the only way you can get a good job.

Learning

I've spent my entire life learning.
I think it is a good place to be.

I've spent more of my life in school
than any where I've wanted to be.

I don't know where I will go after
I escape but I know I want to be

something more then what I am in this place.
It is a place where it is hard to be

more than what they tell you can do. More than
a name on a sheet of paper that tells me:
I am a graduate.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

15 days of Evolution

So why no posts for the last two weeks. Well it has been because I haven't been writing and that is because I have been lazy. I even turned in an older poem for my workshop the other day (with some edits). I just haven't been writing new stuff. But I have been forced to produce something new (not really, I bet I could have gotten away with using something older, but that probably wouldn't have been as good) for my Lyric poetry class. We have a draft of form poem due on tomorrow (Friday). I decided that I would use the sonnet form (although in retrospect it probably wasn't a great idea so I might expand it to a longer free verse poem) and I used a concept I came with when I was writing "Evolutionary Poem". Just as a warning this is the most I have ever cursed in a poem. I don't know why I just liked the title line and it kind of spawned the rest. I also want to change the title but I just can't think of anything for that now, so I'll probably change that after I get my comments back from tomorrow.

Fuck you, Darwin

Fuck you, Darwin and your damn theories
about how we came to be and how we
should be reproducing. All your queries
into the human existence will be
answered, but do you really want to know
that my blind eyes are worthless and that my
my useless brain is unthinkably slow.
This is my evolution. This is why
I say fuck you Darwin. There is more to
life then just the right combination of
parents and their genetic make up. You
have all the shit about the soul and love.
The unequivocal answer to this
enigma is that life simply exists.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Not My Best

This is kind of a silly poem. I needs a little too much work though to be really salvaged. I was playing with complex ideas and then I went all simplistic so I don't think this poem really worked for me like I wanted it to, and in a way its name really reflects how I feel about it.

Regret

They tell you to live
without regrets.
Which seems silly
to me, because really
regret is a silly
thing indeed.

To say that you regret something
implies that you want to be
someone else.
Yes, many people do want
to be someone else.
Someone successful
or maybe famous.
But that isn't for me,
I want to be me.
I want my imperfections,
which are really
not all that imperfect at all.
I want my tummy full of blubber,
and I want the scars hidden under
my hair. I want my hairy toes.
And of course I want to
keep on wearing my glasses.
Of I want to change,
but it is the journey I want to go on.
And it is the journey I have been
on that I want to keep.
And I'll never regret
that it led me to fill
my joyous belly with cookies,
for without all those
tasty
tasty cookies
I would not be who I am today
rather I would be a will
with a severe lack of cookies,
and we don't want that.

So what do you regret?
I certainly do not know
what you would regret
or even if you shouldn't regret
regretting having regret.
All I'm saying is think about it.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Proetry

When I was working on the evolution poem I was thinking about how many of my poems I've written recently have been about poems. I find it to be a very fun topic to write about because I can poke fun at myself while I am writing. But then I was thinking that I could write a poem that was not a poem. I don't know what I was thinking, but that hit me at the same time as the idea that if I ever published a poetry book I'd like it to be called "This is not poetry" or even the title of this poem "Not Poetry". So in the process of writing this poem the word proety came about, which was the combination of prose and poetry. I pronounce it "Pro-et-tree" (I know that is not a proper pronunciation key, but I'm too lazy to look up how to actually do it). I like the word because the "pro" part makes me think of professional athletes and I liked the idea of a pro-poet. Yes, we have professional poets who do poetry for a living, and yes we have poets who compete with their poems (i.e. publishing). But I wanted to go with the sports idea and have teams of poets who were literary fighting with each other, not literally fighting of course and I love the "literary" and "literally". So here isn't a poem.


Not Poetry

We all know what a poem is and is not.
And we all know what prose are, so
it isn't that hard to tell the two apart.
But this isn't poetry.
We've already said that we know what poetry is,
so why isn't this a poem. I don't know. I don't want it is to be one.
Or maybe I do.
Maybe I want a poem, but do I want a prose poem. I mean what is
a prose poem. Isn't that simply a short story with awkward
line breaks?
This certainly isn't a short story, there is no story. So what is it?
You tell me. You tell me is crap. Not a poem. Not prose. Not even a memo.
What do we do with this now?
Perhaps we give it another name, proety.
It kind of sounds like a professional poetry league,
where we will gather all the great poets,
we'll gather them into teams and then make them
duke it out literally, not literally but literary.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Evolutionary Poem

I was walking around outside and was thinking that plant evolution didn't make sense to me. I mean is seems like plants should have evolved to not be tasty. That would be an evolutionary advantage, to not be eaten I mean. But I was thinking about it and, well plants were here first so really we evolved to like the taste of certain plants. And some plants have evolved to not be eaten, to have poisonous leaves and flowers, so there is still some plant evolution. Instead of writing a poem directly about evolution I decided to write one about the evolution of a poem, not the revising stage, but rather how poetry has evolved over the last few centuries. I mean we have gone from a very rigid meter and rhyme scheme to a predominately free verse society (not that society is that much interested in poetry anymore) . So I was thinking about where poetry is going to go. Is it going to continue in free verse, or is it going to have a some what circular pattern and go back to having a tight meter and rhyme scheme, or maybe something new entirely. I chose the title Evolutionary Poem because I liked how it reminded me of the revolutionary at the same time as being about evolution, and if you really think about it those words are really quite similar.

Evolutionary Poem

If my poem were to evolve,
what way would it go?
How would the words be grouped? Would the rhythm
fall into place? Would there be a set rhyme
scheme? Which way would it go? Would time
degrade the poem into
that terrible thing
known simply as
free verse?
Or would we have a poem that evolved
into the greatest works of Master Shake?
I don't know how a poem would evolve
and perhaps, it wouldn't be one or the
other, but a melding of the two.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Poetry Emergency

This just popped into my head today, the idea of a poem needing medical attention. I don't know maybe it comes from all the medical dramas I've been watching (Scrubs and House), or perhaps the workshopping I do and how that relates to "fixing" a poem. Anyways here is my poetry emergency.


Poetry Emergency

We need to clear an airway,
this poem is going under.
Bring out the editors,
with their bright red pens,
we'll revise until it
has regained enough function
that we really can really go to work on it.
We will hack away lines like
old civil war surgeons and
we'll drain away its humours
giving the similes and metaphors
the cure they need.
Don't worry about the stanzas and punctuation
we'll throw it through a centrifuge
letting everything separate out and then
fall into place.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Happy People

The few poems I've read from William Carlos Williams have been about very ordinary things. Things that I probably wouldn't have written a poem about, but today I thought about a guy I wanted to write a poem about. I was out driving and it was fairly windy, and I ended up stopped at an intersection where three of the corners had people with signs for King's Mattresses. They were having trouble keeping their signs up in the wind and looked pretty miserable. But they reminded me of a guy I saw doing the same job over the summer. He was literally one of the happiest people I have ever seen. Just out there everyday, holding his sign, waving at people and being happy. So this poem is about that happy man.


Happy Man on the Street Corner

I've been down this way over three times
this week and he is always there,
the happy man holding a sign
telling me to buy discount mattresses.
He is happy,
happy to be himself,
smiling and waving at everyone
who drives by during their busy
unhappy lives while this man is
happy, and I don't know why.


Copyright 2007 William Curb

Another Ekphrastic Poem

Here is another poem I wrote in while I was in Kittredge gallery. This one is based off of the painting "The Heat of the Moment" done by Besty Best-Spadaro. Still needs quite a bit of work, but I like the quick revision I just did of it over the original.


The Fight!

These people are fighting
with fruit on their heads.
They won't talk to each
other any more.
They just stick their
tongues out as if
that was just what you did.
Eyes full of contempt
the apples look at
the oranges that look
back at the apples.
These people are fighting
but they don't know why.


Copyright 2007 William Curb

Ekphrastic poems

In my poetry class today we walked over to the art gallery on campus and then wrote poems from the inspiration we got from the art. I wasn't sure if I would come up with anything, but it didn't turn out so bad. I ended up five poems, only two from the art and then three that just kind of came to me. I'm going to share two of these poems, one from each pile. This first one was inspired by the painting Shark from Sharon Birzer. The original idea started out as a list poem, but it ended quite different as you will see.


Things You Find in a Shark

The fisherman pulled up a shark today,
a real whale of a beast.
It no longer looked fearsome
hanging by that hook.
It just looked sad as they
weighed it and clocked it
in at over three hundred pounds.

And then they gutted it,
right there on the dock
letting the blood drip down
into the water as the sad
creatures guts spilled forth.

People, oohed and awed as
the fisherman told the
story of fighting off the beast
and the great honor they gave
him by dragging him ashore.



This  next poem is the third I wrote while in Kittredge (the art gallery), it is a little different, but I still like it. Don't worry my brain isn't really crowded, I just liked the idea.


The Crowd

It's crowded in here,
my brain I mean,
there just isn't enough space
to stretch out and
everyone is just so noisy.

I remember a teacher of mine
who told me about a crowd
his once was in, where
the people were so tightly
packed together that he
could reach down and
pick up his feet.
He would just slowly sink down
and the reach down and
grab his feet again.

It isn't that crowded in here,
but I wonder if it ever will be or
if someday the crowd will disperse
and I'll be the only one here
picking up my feet and
slowly sinking down.


Copyright 2007 William Curb

Love Poem

I don't like love poetry, I just don't find it interesting and I find most people who write love poetry to believe the lie that their love is special. And it isn't. People like to believe that no one else has felt how they have felt, and the truth really we probably haven't (since we each interpret the world around us differently) but really it isn't that different. Everyone in love has felt relatively the same and most people who have thought that they would love someone till the end of time have realized that they'd rather love someone else to the end of time and then,of course, they realize (I'd hope) after going through the process a few times that they don't need to love someone till the end of time. That is a a lot of responsibility, loving till the end of time, especially because I don't believe they have a good idea how immensely long time is. So anyways here is my love poem about not liking love poems.

Love Poem

I don't actually like love poems.
They are boring,
melodramatic
and in many cases
verbose lies.

I don't believe in true
love, or never ending
love or any of that
nonsense.

There was a time
when I thought
if I loved hard enough
that I would die.
I tried to.

Instead I realized that
dying for love is like
fighting for peace.

So what do I believe in?
I believe in living
and of course loving,
and perhaps
loving again.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Recycling

I wrote another bad poem today; however, I didn't do on purpose this time. Just came out that way. Anyways about a week ago I thought about writing a poem about recycling, and then in the process of writing it I thought about the idea of actually recycling a poem. So here is recycling a poem.

Recycling a Poem

Bring in your words and your sentences.
We will process them,
break them down into syllables and letters
and then dump them into the big machine
that will rebuild them into
new words, with
new meanings, making
new sentences, grouped
into stanzas, made
into a poem.


Copyright 2007 William Curb

Bad Poetry

My girlfriend is an editor (or reviewer, I'm not sure what the title really is) for our school literary magazine, Crosscurrents, and so yesterday we got in a discussion about what people value in poetry and how they judge it. And there are a lot of things that people don't like in poems. Lack of punctuation, not spell checking, to many images, too few images, images that don't make sense, images that aren't deep enough, semicolons, capitals in weird places, periods in weird places (sorry cummings), and I could go on and on. So I wrote a bad poem. An interesting thing about attempting to write bad poetry is that if you succeed you've done your job, and if you fail, well then you have written a good poem. Win, win really. I don't know why but it what I felt I should write. It isn't that clever and it is really messy and ugly. I kind of like it. The last lines tickle me because those wavy red lines they put under misspelled words now just seem so angry looking, and the idea came to me while purposely misspelling a word and having my editor (I use OpenOffice cause I am cheap) continuously auto correct my spelling. I could turn off auto correct, but I have chosen to live in ignorance of how to really use my programs. So basically it was a self inspiring poem as well as a poem inspired by a fellow class mate who loathed (I can think of the word they used, but it was much better than loathe) for poetry that is so casual that it addresses the reader and the fact that it acknowledges that it is a poem, which I must agree is fairly obnoxious.

Also I am displeased somewhat with Blogger, it has given one of my lines a restriction in length, "to discover..." "...looked at" is supposed be one long 28 syllable line. So I am looking at ways to redesign my blogs look and feel(do blogs feel?) so that I can accommodate some of my longer lines. I played around with the HTML for about an hour today before giving up. There was a time in my life where this task would have been fairly easy, but alas I have given up coding and scripting for poetry and prose.

 
bad Poem

I am here writing this poet, and you
already hate it I am addressing
the reader. And I am going to screw
even trying to write a good poem.
I will break da rules dat tell me what I
ned to do But I am no master at
this game I am simply along for the
prolixity from my verbosity
my Everest never ending along these
slope I am climbing I ce AX in han.d
becuse I am at my wits end trying
to discover why a work of so call art is judged by such arbitrary terms that is isn't really looked at.
And so I break rules unknownly, and I
I ceep my mis-ellings God knows my text
editors hates them more than you ever
could;

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Grandparents

This is my first post of November which means I haven't put anything up in 6 days. That is okay, I've been writing in my notebook and just haven't put anything up yet. In my notebook I've been experimenting with longer poetry. I went to see Tess Gallagher speak a few weeks ago and I was amazed at how long some of her poetry is. I suppose I most read shorter stuff for my classes because when we workshop a fellow classmate's poem we have a length restriction, and in my other classes we can only read poetry that can easily be analyzed in fifty minutes or so. So I've been trying my hand at writing some longer poetry. This poem is about my grandparents house. My grandparents have passed on and the family had to go through an immense amount of stuff in their house. It was truly staggering to see the amount of stuff that my grandparents owned. Anyways, this poem is about going through the stuff, remembering my grandparents, and briefly touches on how I regret not getting to know them better before they passed on (it was hard living in Hawaii and having them live in Iowa).


Old House

Over the summer,
I went to Iowa.
I drove.
I don't know why.
I went to my grandparents house,
but they didn't live there anymore,
they died the year before.
I didn't attend a funeral,
or tell them good bye,
it was too far away,
but now I am driving to Iowa
to go through their things.
I was told to ask for anything I wanted,
there was plenty to go around.
Told to ask for something to remind me of
people I did not really know.
I did miss them,
they were always kind to me
always loving.
But I had only seen them a handful of times
in the older years of my life.
Now I was asked to take something
to remind me, from a house
overflowing with meaning.
There is twenty years of wrapping paper in one drawer,
and alcohol that expired twelve years ago in the basement,
did you know alcohol can expire,
I didn't.
Over a hundred decks of playing cards,
and all those little soaps
taken from hotel bathrooms.
What do you do with that stuff?
But it isn't all worthless,
far from it.
Fur coats made from foxes,
(you can tell because they still have
their little feet and faces)
and a crystal dining room set,
it will go nicely with my bowels
from Ikea.
Souvenirs from Nazi Germany
and apartheid Africa
and Alaska
Sweden
Ireland
Hawaii
and the passports proving
their worldliness.
And there are books,
walls lined with books,
and I love books,
so I ask for those books.
And the hats.
The hats are really special.
Inside one of the hats there is
a business card my grandfather used
years earlier. It is not just
worn yellow paper that reads
chairman. And I like having it,
I still keep it in the hat
so I can reach up and be
reminded of grandparents
I had the privilege of meeting.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Bad Language

When I was little I was taught that some language is worst then other language, and there are certain words that I should never say. Of course I would hear the adults says these words and I would tell them that they shouldn't swear. That never really worked. And of course when I was sure no one else was around I try and say them to see how they fit with my tounge. I suppose that's where my current habit came from. I'm not as bad as I used to be, I guess it was the cool thing to do in high school. I'm not so worried about being cool any more. I do remember one time I made a bet with my brother that he couldn't go 5 minutes without swearing. Of course he almost made it, but I was playing a video game and I used the ability "hell ivy" (I'd explain the game, but that isn't really important to the story) and then realizing what he had said immeadately said "fuck". I wasn't wasn't going to hold him to the hell ivy statement, but I had to mark him down for fuck.
I've always been interested in the origins of swearing. It seems completely silly to me that we give certain words such power. And there are words I certainly don't like using. No matter what Eve Ensler, writer of the Vagina Monologues, says about the word "cunt" I still don't like it. Just isn't a word I like using. I know choosing not to use it gives it more power, but still not my thing. Same thing with racist terms. It creeps me out that people can same some of the things they do without cringing. I suppose the words just don't mean the same thing to them because they don't let them have that power. I guess to each his own.


Language in front of a lady

I've been trying to watch my lanuage
recently, my eyes aren't what they used
to be. If I could I'd just snatch those words,
pull them right out of the air. No lady
would ever have such profanity touch
the silk countenance of her ears. Instead
my words would come out truer then I could
supply myself. I would never worry
that my words might get me into trouble.
Of course that is only a dream that I
must keep on dreaming. For now my words are
simply a booby trap in my mouth that
is waiting to go off any second
now, in the presence of a lady.


Copyright 2007 William Curb

Morgan Freeman for God

I've been thinking about starting a Facebook group called "Morgan Freeman for God" in parody of these presidential race groups. I mean I checked today and the Steven Colbert group has over a million people in that group (and he doesn't even want to be president, he just wants to run for president). The idea was inspired by watch Evan Almighty the other weekend while I was on the plane. Perhaps it was because I was trapped on a plane, had low expectations, or the sound kept going out, but I enjoyed the movie. I had decided not to see it in theaters because of poor reviews, that was probably still a wise decision. Anyways, while looking up Morgan Freeman on IMDB I found a link to every person who has played God in a movie. Apparently there have been more then 200 roles of God in movies, with various plays on the name, my favorite being De Lawd. I had to check out the movie with De Lawd, because it was the last item on the list (and there fore listed at the earliest movie with a character God)(I'm sure there must be other movies with god that came out before 1936 but they aren't listed). Anyways this movie is apparently a serious movie and not a parody. I can't imagine why they used De Lawd instead of God in their credits, perhaps they felt casting someone as God would be sacrilegious.
Well De Lawd inspired another poem, it isn't very fancy but I decided to try my hand at blank verse, I'm not very good at it and I need the practice. The poem is kind of interesting for me since I am basically talking about speaking with God at church. I haven't been to church in many years and haven't followed any mainstream religion in many more years than that. So we'll just see how this turns out. 

Speakin' With De Lawd

Always on a Sunday morning I see
him not too far away. Never does he
give me the answers I am looking for,
But he does give me answers that I am
in need of. If only those were what I
really had asked for. My questions are what
he is really interested in. I am
not defined by all that I do, rather
it is all the things that I question that
he believes define me. So on Sunday
mornings, I listen to your answers and
I question what they mean to me, because
I know he has plans for these answers that
might just be beyond what we comprehend.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Steamrollers and Stress

As I often do I read through the google news website and select a few articles that seem important to read. I do a lot of headline reading this way so that I can keep up with world and US events. Really at some point I should customize the my google thing so that it only displays articles I am really going to read, I don't tend to open anything in the sports catagory, I mean there is no Ultimate in there so why would I? Anyways, a few days ago I came across this particular gem that was about stress. It was pretty breif and told me a lot of things I already knew about stress from my own experiences with it. However, it had a great ending with how some CEO's deal with stress, and one particular guy liked to imagine he was a mechanical object. In fact he said that one time he told someone that he was a steamroller. Isn't that wonderful. Of all the objects you could imagine to be a Steamroller is not one that I would have thought of. It inspired this poem, which is about being a steamroller and a CEO (kind of, I really like the metaphor of a CEO being a steamroller, it just tickles me).

Steamroller Man

This man is no ordinary man.
He is a man of steel.
In a word,
invincible.
He runs down all those
before him.

But this man was not
always so,
mighty and round.

This man had dreams
that one day,
he could say,
that he,
was a steamroller.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Univocalic Poetry

While looking at some information about anagrams on wikipedia I came across an article about univocalic poetry. Basically it is a poem with a single vowel. Needless to say the alliteration is amazing on these things. So I decided to try my hand at one of these things. I am pleased with how it turned out actually. Still needs some work, but it is hard with constraints like these. This is the product of three attempts at writing one of these poems. I kept getting maybe one stanza and then having to start over again. This one worked out for me, and turned out a lot more sexual then I am used to writing so I suppose that it an interesting step. Either way here is my newest poem.

Thirst

This chick is
whirling
twirling
with whirlwind
trills.

Glimpsing
lips
licking,
in this
dig.

I wish
with nibbling
misgivings-
pricking
in mind.

Grinning
singing
winking,
dripping with
sin.

Crisp
twilight
flirting
with
wings.

Inviting
virgin
skin
in this
night.

Wild
lightning,
sizzling-
tickling-
twitch.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Zombies

I ended up at Best Buy today, and I guess in celebration (honor?) of Halloween they are having a sale on Horror movies. I ended up buying Dawn of the Dead, the original version. I didn't realize I was buying the original version but I am fine with that. I hadn't seen it before, but it has proved to be amusing. Of course this movie is great because they end up trapped in a mall. Not a bad place to be during the zombie apocalypse, I can think of a number of other zombie movies where they definitely put the characters in far scarier situations. Malls, not so scary, but full of comic potential. Zombies on escalators? Hilarious. Of course these movies aren't about the threat of zombies that is so scary, really you have to be scared of the humans you are with and their stupidity. Zombies are slow, you can out run them at walking speed so really how tough can they be. The great thing about these movies is that you see even in a world wide apocalypse you still have these petty conflicts that divide them. You'd hope that you could just find a way to get a long in these situations, but reality is you will always have to deal with other Anyways I thought I would write a poem about zombies. I do have to say I love surprise zombie attacks, especially at the pace they move at. By the way if for nothing else I'd suggest Dawn of the Dead for its music, classic.


Zombie Supply Kit

What do you need when
you are dead?
Of course if you get up
and walk around
after you've kicked
the bucket
you'll be hungry.
So, we'll need food,
maybe a friends.
maybe an enemy.
It doesn't really matter
to me,
as long as I get my
fill,
thats all I need.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Procrastination

So, right now, I am procrastinating. Yes, at this very minute I am putting off very important things. They aren't truely important, but I believe my professors would be rather upset at me if I did not do the things that they so kindly ask me to do. And it isn't that I don't want to do them, I really don't mind doing them, I just feel like streching out how long it takes me to do these things, I don't know why. Maybe I don't really want a full night of sleep. Honestly, I could have been done by now, it wouldn't have even been hard. Also tonight I read an interesting article about how sleep lost can actually be the cause of metal disorders, not a symptom (found here). So, perhaps, I am actually seeking out a mental disorder. Really it might be terribly interesting, but perhaps when I had one I wouldn't notice, so it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to me. Anyways for my big procrastination session today I've decided that I am going to write a poem, while I put off finishing up a paper and reading many stories written in the second person (really... 3 out of 4 stories for class written in second person... what the hell?).

Procrastination

...
...
I am so clever starting a
poem about not doing a thing,
by doing nothing.
Mastered my craft have I
if I am able to pull off such a feat (and to speak like Yoda, truely awesome am I).

...
...
I'm doing it again,
it gives the poem form
and I just know how you love that.
Ooh, second person.
So sexy.

really...
...
Ah, I've messed up,
broken the form.
I guess I need to try again,
to truely master my craft,
to get back to work.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Acrostics

In my last advanced poetry writing class we discussed the poem "This Be The Verse", by Philip Larkin. It starts off very interestingly with the line, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." This of course is pretty offensive to some people, really a lot of people simply won't like the fact that he used the word fuck so liberally. And really what isn't offensive about the word fuck... regionally of course some people find it less offensive, Lewis Black claims that in New York fuck is simply a comma.
Anyways, the class got together to come up with some challange poems and one of them was a non-offensive fuck poem. Or rather a non-offensive poem that uses the word fuck. I've decided to accept the challange, as well as cheat, and perhaps even make the poem about cheating (since really that seems like a good idea as any at this juncture)(it didn't turn out to be about cheating, but I cheated none the less).
So here is my relatively non-offensive fuck poem.


To the administration

Friday I have a test.
unless I can find a way out of this
catastrophe, I will be
kicked out of school.

You see I need to keep up my grades
or my parents will stop paying
until I bring them back up,

but I have no money.
If I don't get any money
there will
certainly be no money for you.
Here is my last check. I just wanted to
end on a good note.
Sincerely yours.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

A Funny Thing About Murder

Well I actually don't have anything funny to say about murder cause I don't think it is particularly funny, but that is so far the title of my new short story. It is my first attempt at a mystery/murder story, so well see how that goes. Apparently it gets kind of funny towards the end because it gets so ridiculous, I guess that is what I was going for.


Note: I just looked at this and apparently blogger is doing funny things with the spacing... so sorry about that, maybe I'll get that changed over the weekend.

A Funny Thing About Murder

I find that murder is a strange thing. Did you know there are over 16,000 people murdered every year? That's over 40 murders a day. And that is just in the United States. Now, some places are more dangerous to live in than others. Some big cities contribute over 500 of those homicides. Little cities have their crimes as well, but I don't think they have the same worries. Even if you get into a town small enough you'll still get someone who is crazy enough to think the best solution is to kill someone. The really crazy ones, the ones that don't kill for revenge but kill because they can, are the ones you want to watch out for. They say that those are the people who want to get caught and they like to watch. It drives their entire process, they need to know what is going on, and to know what they did had reason.

Frank was a homicide detective. He didn't particularly like what he did, but it paid the bills and he was satisfied with that. He would approach a crime scene like he would his lunch. He'd find the obvious parts first and save the good parts for last. Everything had an order for Frank. He liked to take each part of him meal separately so he could really taste it. Frank also made sure to eat healthy, follow the rules, keep good manners. He liked to take care of his body the best that he could, though his hairline still decided it needed to recede on him.

It was Tuesday when Frank got the case. It was nothing out of the ordinary for Frank. He received new murder files every few weeks. It didn't really matter to him if he solved this particular case, he'd still receive the same pay. Just the same Frank went to investigate.

Frank got into his car, an old Ford he had bought when he first started the force. The car needed to be serviced but Frank figured he could still get a few hundred more miles out of it before it started causing any major problems. Frank pulled out the address for the case and rolled his eyes when he saw that it was on Elm Street. Too many murderers these days just try and repeat what they see in movies, no creativity. Frank turned the ignition and let the car hum for a few minutes before he pulled out of the police station, he wasn't in any sort of hurry.

The usual dispatch team was already at the house when he arrived. Yellow tape and flashing lights were everywhere. Frank parked on the side of the street and got out of his car, adjusting his jacket so that it would sit correctly against him again. He ducked under the police line tape and pulled out his badge for anyone that would question him being there. It wasn't a huge town; most of the people working at the site already knew that Frank was an investigator.

Frank pulled aside the first officer he recognized.

“What's the situation?” He asked and pulled out a notepad.

“Well we actually got something pretty grisly going here, detective.”

Frank interrupted the younger officer, “call me Frank, please.”

“Yeah, okay, Frank. So yeah, we got two victims that have been sliced up bad. We currently suspect that cause of death is loss of blood on both victims,” the officer took a breath, “but we won't know till we get the coroner's report.”

“Do we have any idea who these people are?”

“Not yet sir, uh, Frank. But from what we have gathered they aren't the people that live here.”

“And how do we know that?” Frank looked down at what he had written so far.

“The McCormick's, the people who live here, filed the report.”

The scene was indeed grisly, as the officer had described. Blood was sprayed on the wall in awkward arcs. It looked as if the victims had been hacked to death somehow, cut apart with the body parts strewn about the room. Frank shivered for a second as he looked at the carnage in the room. He had seen a few crime scenes like this before though, and his agitation soon went away and he went back to writing down the details in his notebook. The room had an awkward smell to it, not the same smell of blood that was to be expected. Frank only gave the room with the victims a cursory look-through and then went back out to talk to the officer he had spoken to before.

“And this is the only place where there is any sign of the homicide?” Frank asked.

“Yes, si-Frank,” the officer fidgeted and looked as if he felt he shouldn't be addressing Frank by anything other then detective or sir.

“And do we know how they got in?”

“It seems he had a key to get in, and then used it to lock the door when he left. It is all very strange.”

“He?”

“Oh, the killer.”

“Don't jump to conclusions so quickly officer, you just never know about these cases now-a-days.”

Frank didn't seem to like this case; he continually rubbed his temples and took deep breaths to calm himself. The entire case didn't work for him. The forensic team had so far not come up with anything and there was no identity for the bodies. Frank looked at the papers on his desk, searching for a piece to make sense. He had interrogated the McCormick's and they had no more information than he did. The department chief was satisfied that they didn't have any more information and let them go with a warning not to leave the state just in case. Frank wanted them to make sense of the case, but everything they told him just left him baffled as to what really went on. He couldn't figure out why the house was locked when they got home. It just didn't make sense to Frank that a criminal would break in and then lock the doors after hacking two people apart. As well he couldn't see the connection as to why it had been someone else's house that these people were found in. It was just too logical a crime for him. He needed another piece of the puzzle.

Frank's desk phone rang and he answered it after a few rings.

“Detective Frank Molens speaking.”

“Frank, you're not going to believe this,” said the voice on the other side of the line.

“Who is this?”

“The bodies at the scene were already dead when they got to the house, hacked apart and everything. What's more we think we've figured out who they are.”

“They were dead before they got in the house?”

“Yeah, they had been dead for about a week. We think we have a match on a couple that went missing about two weeks ago. Sally and Tim Randle. Apparently the killer only recently decided to put them in the house.”

“Great work, is this forensics?” Frank asked, but he got no answer and the phone went dead. Frank looked at the phone and shrugged. At least he had something now, but things still weren't clear. A body dumped at a house and then locked in. Frank bit his lower lip while he thought. Something triggered in his head and he mumbled, “the blood.”

Frank got up and headed over to the elevator at the end of the hallway. He got in and hit the button for the second floor, which would take him to forensics.

“I have an idea,” Frank said as he walked into the forensics office. They all looked puzzled. “We need to check if the blood matches that of the victims,” he continued.

“What are you talking about, which blood?” Asked one of the forensic technicians.

“The blood on the walls, you know in the McCormick's case. See if it matches the bodies.”

“Fine, whatever you say, but I think we could use our time a little bit better than that.”

“Just do it, call me when you have the results,” Frank walked back to the elevator and took it to his floor.

Back at his desk, Frank went to his computer to check out the Randle's file. The file said that the Randle's went missing from their homes a week ago. Their 25-year-old son had called it in. Frank took out his pad and started making notes about similarities between his case and this one. He noted that the Randle's home also had no signs of a break and the door was locked when their son arrived home. Frank figured that he would have to talk to their son, Richard Randle.

It wasn't until late in the next day that Frank heard from the forensic team. The phone rang and Frank picked it up.

“Detective Frank Molens speaking.”

“Detective this is the forensics department. Good call on comparing the blood. The results came back and the blood on the walls wasn't even human.”

“Then what was it then?” Frank sat back down at his desk.

“Pig's blood.”

“Pigs?”

“Yeah, amazing call on checking the blood. I would have thought for sure that the blood on the wall was that of the victims.” The forensics officer sounded impressed.

“Well it came to me after you guys gave me the call about the victims being dead on arrival.”

“What?”

“When you guys called me earlier to give me the coroner's report.”

“We don't have the coroner's report yet, there was some sort of complication with identifying the bodies.”

“That can't be. You guys told me you had them identified hours ago.”

“Wasn't us Detective.”

“Well thanks for telling me about the pig's blood.” Frank hung up the phone. He ran his hands through his thinning hair. The information that he had about the identities of the victims made sense. Frank picked up his phone and dialed the number for the coroner. The phone rang four times before anyone picked up.

“Hello, this is detective Frank Molens, I was wondering if the report for the McCormick's was done?”

“Um... let me check,” Frank could hear files being moved in the background, “yeah, here we go. It just came in a few minutes ago.”

“Thanks, keep that out, I'll be right down to check it out.” Frank hung up the phone. He didn't like when things didn't add up, and nothing about this case added up for him.

Down in the coroner's office Frank looked over the file. It had everything in it that he had heard over the phone earlier, but it was time stamped for hours after he had received the call. Also the bodies didn't match up to the names he had heard on the phone earlier.

“And you are the coroner who filed this report?” Frank asked.

“Yes, I am. Is there anything wrong with the report?”

“No, I just wanted to be sure. Has anyone else looked at these bodies?”

“No, I was the only coroner assigned to this file. It took me longer to determine exactly what had happened due to the state the bodies were in and then the fact that they were hacked up after they had been killed. They were poisoned, and they cut apart later.”

“There is no identity for the bodies yet?”

“Not yet, there is a large database we have to go through so it could be another week before we will be certain about the identities. Maybe longer.”

“And there is no way anyone could have known about the condition of these bodies before you examined them?”

“I suppose it is possible, they weren't well preserved but I doubt that anyone on the scene would have guessed that they weren't hacked to death.”

“What type of poison was used?”

“Cyanide.”

“And you are sure that the victims died of poisoning.”

“I wouldn't have put it in the report if I wasn't sure. All the signs in their body show that they died of poisoning.” The coroner looked irate at the fact that his report was being questioned so thoroughly. “What is this about anyways?”

“Nothing, I just want to double check all the facts, this case isn't making any sense and I want to find out what the hell is going on. Every time I think I've figured something out, something new comes in and makes me doubt my original assumptions.”

“Well, if you have anymore questions please call me, but I am off for the day, so good night detective.”

The next day Frank looked up the address of Richard Randle, my address. He had tried calling but I didn't answer, I wanted him to come. I had plans. My address took him to the far side of town, near where my parents were found. My house was in a suburban neighborhood with a nice trimmed lawn, it looked very pleasant. The house was in far better condition then those standing around it and Frank took note of which neighbors he would talk to if I didn't answer my door.

I listened for Frank to knock on the door. I had been waiting for him, it had just taken him longer to get here than I had hoped. The knock came; I stood in the darkness of my house waiting for him to come in. He knocked again. I thought about calling to him to enter but decided against it. That would be too awkward, I wanted him to come in on his own. I saw him peek in the window on the side of the door but then he knocked again. Then I heard him pull out a piece of paper and start writing something against the door. He then slipped the paper under the door and began to walk away. I quickly picked up the paper and read it. It said that I should give Detective Frank Molens a call when I had a chance. This was not what I wanted.

I grabbed my knife from off the hall table and burst out of the door. Frank spun around to see me standing in my doorway in nothing but my tight white underwear, holding a knife.

“Oh, Mr. Randle, you're home,” Frank said rather calmly.

“You're not supposed to leave! You are supposed to break in and check out the house. Where are you going?” I yelled.

“Mr. Randle?”

“Don't call me that! My name is Ricky!”

“Alright Ricky, maybe we should go inside. You really shouldn't be outside like this.”

“What are you doing? I have a knife!”

“Ricky, what's going on, is everything alright?” Frank looked confused, he wasn't threatened like I wanted him to be.

“You think I killed my parents! You're here to arrest me!”

“No, Ricky, I am here because I wanted to talk to you about your parent's disappearance. Now I am going to need you to calm down Ricky.”

“I am not going to calm down! You found the evidence! You know I did it.”

“Ricky, I never said you killed your parents. Now calm down.” The frustration in Frank's voice was apparent now.

“That's right Frank I did it!” I took pleasure in my confession.

“Ricky, if that’s true you're going to have to come with me down to the station for a formal confession.”

“Oh, I'm not going anywhere with you!” I tilted my head to one side, cracking my neck, and looked straight at Frank and grinned. I took off towards Frank raising my knife. Frank reached for his gun and I was pleased. Things were going my way now. He was going to kill me. As I neared Frank I was worried I would actually stab him, he wasn't reacting fast enough. This was supposed to be my moment of glory. The moment where I was gunned down in the street. I slowed down a little to make sure Frank could have a clear shot, but I was still getting to close. As I reach Frank he raised his gun, but instead of shooting me he elbowed me in the arm, knocking my knife away, and then he brought his knee up, hitting me in the stomach. I toppled over onto the ground, dropping the knife, and Frank put his knee down on my back to hold me in place.

“You kicked me!” I screamed.

“Ricky, I had to stop you,” Frank said.

“You're not supposed to kick me!”

“I had to stop you,” Frank repeated.

“But you're supposed to shoot me in the head, you're supposed to end it all right here. In the quietness of this neighborhood I am supposed to die.”

“I'm not going to kill you Ricky.”

“No! Everything was in place! But you! You are ruining everything. All the reasons, everything that I did. You needed my help, you would have never gotten anywhere without me!” I said as Frank pushed me down tightening my handcuffs. “I told you who to look for! You wouldn't have figured out anything without me. I led you to all the answers. You needed me!” Frank didn't say anything as he loaded me into his car.

“So you were the one who called me?” Frank finally said as we drove to the police station.

“Yes, I was the one who called you!”

“Why? If you would have gotten away with it, why would you help me?”

“Why? Why? Because you are an idiot. You don't understand. I had a message.”

“You killed your parents and splashed some pig's blood on the walls of someone else's house.”

“Is that what you think I did,” I tried to hold back a laugh, “Oh, I did more than that. I sent out a message. To everyone that knows about this case. And when the media gets a hold of it, the nation will hear my message!”

“That you're completely crazy?”

“You didn't understand anything that I did. You went to the house and did you even question why the bodies were laid out as they were? Why the pig’s blood was on the wall? Why the doors were locked? Why it was the McCormick's house? Did you question anything at all?” I couldn't contain my rage at Frank. He looked rather taken aback by my outburst.

“The bodies were positioned,” Frank paused, “you mean you had reasons for everything you did?”

“Why else would I have done it?”

“Well I figured it was an elaborate ruse to make it harder to catch you.”

“Elaborate ruse? Are you insane? Everything that I did pointed directly at me. The bodies were arranged to say Darnel, an anagram of Randle,” Frank looked confused.

“As in Darnel McCormick and my last name,” I sighed, Frank still wasn’t seeing everything.

“And then the pig’s blood was there to represent the hypocrisy of the killing since it was my own parents, since we are Jewish and not allowed to eat pork. Clearly with the blood splashed on the walls to represent the swells, or waves, of anger that are in me. The closed doors obviously showed that I was not immediately showing myself and locked door is an anagram for old red cook. I am a professional chef, and I cook at the Old Red Tavern, could it be any more obvious then that. We already know I used Mr. McCormick's first name, but I used them as well since in the first grade I went to school with the McCormick's son Randal I have always hated Randal because he insisted that his name was the correct spelling of Randle, the fucker. So maybe that part was just a little bit of revenge for myself. And when this gets out people will understand that you and your government police are incompetent. That you can't even follow simple clues to solve a murder.” Frank took in my speech in silence as he drove.

“You really are quite crazy, you know,” he finally said.

“And you're an idiot.”

“So I take it the poisoning was just another way to kill your parents then.”

“Oh no,” I said, I particularly liked my reasoning here; “you see we were originally from Pasadena, Texas.” It didn't look like Frank was putting the pieces together, “you know, where the Candyman Killer is from. The guy who killed his kid with pixie sticks lined with cyanide.” Frank still looked like he wasn't getting it, “and cyanide is an anagram for in decay, which is the state my parents were found in, hence the waiting a whole week to plant the bodies. And clearly I was doing a reversal, parent killing kid with cyanide, me killing my parents with cyanide. Don't you understand how to put anything together,” I was nearly shouting at the end, Frank's lack of insight into solving crimes infuriated me to no end. We sat for the rest f the drive in silence. We arrived at the station and Frank brought me upstairs to the booking area.

“Alright, we are going to need to process Mr. Randle here, put him in a solitary cell and I will finish up his paperwork upstairs,” Frank said to the booking officer. Another officer came around and took me and Frank started walking off.

“Frank, wait,” Frank turned to look at me, “are you just going to leave? I'm your case, you can't leave. You have to call the reporters. You need them to interview me. To hear my story.”

“No, as far as I am concerned your case is closed and you are now just a lot of paperwork,” Frank said and then walked into the elevator, leaving me with the booking officer. The only person to truly know what I had done, and why I had done it walked off, not caring.

Lost Momentum

I guess I lost a little momentum recently because I've been a little busy. Okay, not really. I've been play the new Zelda game for the DS and it is so much fun I just haven't felt like writing as much. But here we go. The beginning of Chapter Four.

Chapter Four


By the Seventh grade I was convinced that I was really changing things. For the better, I can't say, but definitely changing things. Alan was still in school and we were still roommates. He had actually become less of a jackass and his grandparents let up on him. The beginning of seventh grade was very different from what I remember. There was of course the fact that Alan was there, and Vinni had already been kicked out with Kekoa, but there were other things that were different. I was in different classes, well they were the same classes but different sections. I had never had some of the teachers before. I didn't know what to expect from them.
And some things were the same. Not all of my classes were different. I still had Mrs. Beth, she would have a mental break down in the middle of the first semester and then we would have Mr. Breaker replace her. Everyone loved Mrs. Beth and it was a shock when she got replaced by Mr. Breaker, he wasn't quite as nice, but he did make a lot of crude jokes that really weren't appropriate for seventh graders. I was awkward to talk to Mrs. Beth at the beginning of the year, knowing that she would have that break down in only a few months. I didn't have any idea of how I would alter that event, I mean how do you prevent someone you have minimal contact with from going crazy. I decided to ignore it and assume I couldn't do anything about it, maybe I'm a bad person.
This year I also had drama. I hadn't really enjoyed the class when I was originally in school, but now I found that it was a class that I could really challenge myself in. Really I was terrible at drama but really going for it had it's advantages as well. There was Julia to consider after all, and I knew she was going to grow up to be a Theater major. So there were bonus points for excelling in drama. I didn't know exactly how I'd use these bonus points, but I figured it was worth a shot.
My first day of drama class went very poorly. I fell through the chair I was suppose to be using as a prop. It was awkward and everyone laughed at me. It made me feel fat again, I had thought that I had been making progress with my weight, but it was hard and I really don't think that my weight had anything to do with the chair, it was just its time. None the less I felt shame like only a seventh grader could and lost all my confidence for the day. That would have been a problem if it hadn't been the first class of the day. Everything afterwards was hard because all I could think about was falling through the chair.
After school I chose not to go with everyone for the boarding activity and went straight to study hall. It was a privilege you got when you when became a seventh grader. In eighth grade you got to have study hall in your room, given you kept your grades up. I was looking forward to that, but for now I went to the library to join the other studiers. I saw my friend Riley sitting at one of the tables studing already. Riley wasn't actually a boarding student but he frequently joined our study halls because his mother worked at the school and stayed late.
“Hey,” I said in a whisper as I sat down.
“Hey,” he returned. We sat in silence for a while, reading, before he added, “I heard you fell through a chair today.”
“Shut up, it was the chairs time.”
“Yeah, after you sat on it, it'd be anythings time after you sat on it.”
“Shut it,” I glared at a him.
“Yeah-,” a teacher walked towards our desk and Riley instantly went back to his reading. Even though it felt like we had more freedom as seventh graders, we really had the same fear of the faculty in us. When I was originally in school I had always thought that you would eventually get over fears like this, but really it was a fear of people in power of you, and you never get over that. It is kind of like how you always feel like a kid around your parents. I suppose that also comes from the fact that the age difference never changes, so that you essentially always have to feel young around them. But with authority you just always feel like they can assert their power over you when ever they feel like it.
“So after study hall you up for video games for a little bit?” I asked.
“Can't”
“Why not?”
“I have a test to study for.”
“Like hell you do,” I said.
“I do, you do too.”
“Which one is that?”
“The geography one, you know 50 states and their capitals,” Riley said. We were cut off again as the supervising teacher made his presence known again. I hated having to cut off my conversations for them, but at the same time it was kind of nice not to have everyone talking in study hall. I didn't know why but it seemed like you could sit in silence with someone for an hour, and then we could go to study hall and the entire time you would want to talk to the person. You just had to talk in study hall, our little fight against the man I guess. I waited for the teacher to get to a safe distance and then looked back at Riley.
“Come on man that thing is going to be a cakewalk,” I said.
“Not it isn't man. That is a lot of shit to remember,” he said. I had to give it to him that he was right, I had failed the test the first time around, but I knew the states pretty well now so I really wasn't worried at all.

A Day With A Friend

Last year a wrote a poem about a friend of mine. It starts out talking about us driving to Hilo, which is on the Big Island of Hawaii (or the island of Hawaii, but that gets confusing). Hilo, for those of you who don't know, is one of two large cities on the Big Island (the other being Kona) and my friend Brett and I would drive down to Hilo a few days a week to play ultimate frisbee. There weren't a lot of places on the Big Island to play and Hilo offered the best games so naturally it was fun to go down; however, Hilo was also a little more then an hour away. This of course led me to not always wanting to go down, when we didn't go down we'd usually either stay at my house in Waimea and play video games, or go to Brett's house in Kona and play video games. Those were much simpler times. As well with those video games we had these fun things called "stupid bets" we mainly called them stupid bets cause, well, because they were stupid. They mostly revolved around us asking out girls and that type of thing. We actually still do stupid bets, but they aren't quite the same since Brett can't harass me about asking out a girl.
I particularly like this poem because it sets up the light hearted feeling of the events early with the rhyme of down with town and then ends up with very simple language at the end with lots of repetitions. I tried to really edit this poem the other day and found that I really like how it is.

A Day With A Friend

How about another drive down
to Hilo Town.
or maybe
We’ll just stay home,
making stupid bets
about things we only
wish we would do.

and
I’ll visit you.
and
you’ll visit me.

and maybe
we’ll each grow up,
a little bit,
on the way.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

The Great Escape from Sixth Grade

Ok, so it hasn't happened yet, but this is the last sixth grade chapter. I don't know if I am moving to 7th or 8th grade next, but I am moving on. I think I summed up my plot keys for sixth enough that I can move on to major events later in our protaganist's life. Chapter 3 is a shorter chapter but I think it is just the right length for what I want here. It reveals a lot more about our main character's life and I feel that we need that by the third chapter. It doesn't reveal everything, but I am thinking we might come to a solid reason as to why Will has been transported back to the sixth grade, or maybe not. Word count at 7700 (what a nifty number).

Chapter 3

The next morning I left the room before Alan got up. At this point I knew he wouldn't listen to anything I said. What was I going to tell him, that I was from the future and I knew that he was going to get caught cheating on this test. Yeah, that would work. I thought of letting the teachers know he was going to cheat but that wasn't going to fix anything anyways. It was frustrating because I didn't know if I could even do anything to prevent this.
I sat alone at a table in the dining hall and ate pancakes by myself. This year I didn't really have many friends in the boarding program, I did originally, but I knew where some of these kids would lead me. Kekoa was going to get kicked out at the end of the semester for drugs and John was going to go with him. No reason to get involved with them, they were dicks anyways. Alan had a chance but those guys were going to fuck up their life no matter what.
When I came back with my second helping of pancakes Julia was sitting at my table.
“Hey, what's going on?” I asked sitting down slowly.
“Not much, think I can have one of your pancakes?”
“Yeah sure,” I was a bit confused, “so what are you doing here?” Every word coming out of my mouth felt awkward.
“My parents dropped me off early because they are going to court today,” Julia forked one of my pancakes. I tried to remember if I was supposed to know why her parents might be in court, but I couldn't think of anything.
“Why are they going to court?”
“They're getting divorced.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I couldn't think of anything else to say. What do you say to that?
“No, they need to separate. They are driving me crazy,” I had forgotten that her parents had gotten divorced. I didn't know what to say so I just kept quite. Julia finished the pancake she had taken from me.
“Thanks, I'll see you in class,” she said and then got up and left. I sat there with a single pancake on my plate and thought about Julia. I'd say our relationship was complicated, but really it was just that we were casual friends. Not quite acquaintances any more, but not really friends. It went that way all the way through school till my senior year. We had ended up at the same college, so we kept in contact so that we'd at least have some reminder of home. But everything was always superficial. By my senior year in high school she knew about my crush but we never talked about, ever. It was just one of those things that was something that we didn't talk about. She didn't want to deal with it, and I didn't want to force it. I just never knew what to do, but now I had an idea of what I did wrong.
The rest of the day things went fairly normally for someone who is trapped in there own sixth grade body. Classes all went well, the science test proved especially easy. All in all it was a good day, no heavy homework, not that a sixth grader ever got a heavy homework load. It all went very smoothly. I got back to my room after the first round of study hall and just laid down in my bed. It was Friday so we only had one study hall. I waited for Alan to return but he didn't come back that evening. It worried me that I hadn't seen him. Maybe he had gotten caught. At 9 the dorm supervisor came around to make sure everyone was in there room. Even on the weekends we weren't allowed to stay up late. In rooms by 9 and lights out by 9:30, 10 on weekends.
“Hey Mr. Veral,” I said as he knocked and came into the room.
“How's it going Will?” He asked. Mr. Veral was one of my favorite teachers, or would be, I didn't have any classes from him yet. He was a fun guy to be around. He was overweight and had short red hair. Later when I was in high school he shaved his head and lost a lot of weight. Also his jolly spirit. It was really nice to see him again as one of my favorite teachers rather then a bitter not quite old man.
“It is going alright. I'm not sure where Alan is, so I'm sorry about that,” I said, I figured I'd hear about Alan's fate now.
“Oh didn't he tell you, he is off with,” Mr. Veral looked down at his clipboard where it listed all of the kids in the boarding program, “he is with Vinni.”
“Really, guess I got the room to myself this weekend.”
“That you do, don't cause too much trouble,” he said and left. Maybe he really had been planning a weekend trip with Vinni. I'd didn't think the two were really friends, but what did I know. Things were changing, or at least I thought they were. There were a lot of things that I couldn't remember that were happening now. Like the incident with Julia earlier. That never happened before, but I don't know how it changed things. I wanted to know how it did but I couldn't think into the future, I could only see one of the possible outcomes based on events that I had already changed. What else had changed that I hadn't noticed. Maybe I just set up Alan off on a worse path because he was hanging out with Vinni now.
And now I had my future to think about. What would I do with that. When I was in school I was always told I could do whatever I wanted to do. And I believed it, but I didn't live it. I had lived my life scared of doing the wrong thing. Scared of people hating me. Scared of what could go wrong with my life. And I was so scared that my life didn't turn out how I wanted it to at all. I had wanted to be on stage. Or be a novelist. Or maybe even own my own bookstore. But instead I had I got a second degree in math and took a job as accountant. I had always found the math to be easy so it seemed like a good idea. Minimal hassle in the work place.
Well it sucked. I was miserable in my job which made me constantly bitch about it when I wasn't working, which lead to no one caring to what I talked about since really I wasn't saying anything anyone cared about. It effect my life at home to the point where my first wife divorced me. I was such a sheep that I didn't even really care. If she didn't want to be with me then fuck her, let her go somewhere else. I wouldn't marry her this time anyways. Then I remarried by keeping my constant bitching about work down to a minimum, but eventually she saw through me and left me as well. I really had to question whether I believed in the whole concept of marriage. Divorced twice by 35, it wasn't a good sign.
After that I just tried one night stand type of deals, but I was too old to really pull it off. My job had aged me terribly. If I could have just stopped bitching about it and realized I could have quit I would have lead a much happier life. Whenever I would visit my brother and his wife we would have a good time, but eventually I would realize that they were happy and I was miserable. And that would just drive me further into depression. So I stopped visiting, and I stopped calling. I removed myself from everything just wishing I could do something, but not having the courage to even try.
It wasn't until Sunday afternoon came around that I saw Alan again.
“Fun weekend?” I asked as Alan set his stuff down in the room. Alan walked back and closed the door and then looked over at me.
“No, Vinni is a dick,” he said.
“Oh really, so why'd you go over?”
“He had some cool plans and stuff, but he just ended up being a jackass the entire time and making fun of me.”
“Well that sounds like Vinni.”
“Yeah,” Alan said as he started unpacking his bag. I watched him unpack for a minute before I spoke again.
“So how'd the test go?”
“Hmm? Oh the test,” Alan paused, “I'd say it went pretty well. By the way man thanks for helping me study for that thing, I'd have been toast with out our study session last night.”
“No problem man,” I debated saying the next part of my thought and then went on, “I almost thought that you were still going to try and cheat.”
“I was, but then I thought about what you said, and you were right. It wouldn't have been worth it, if I got caught and my Grandparents found out I'd be dead.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said remembering a possible future.

End of Chapter 2

So I've ended chapter 2... but now I'm not convinced I'll ever get out of 6th grade. I've set it up so that now I have to be in 6th grade for chapter 3. I don't know, maybe I could do the quantum leap type thing and just bounce around, but that might be too confusing. We'll see. Anyways here is the end of chapter 2. Find the beginning here. Word count is at 6143. Again, not quite where I want to be at when I am really going for NaNoWriMo, however not bad. It has been 4 days and that is excellent progress. Most people on the NaNoWriMo forums suggest 1500 words a day, and I can see that. I don't think it is the best strategy since it leaves you short in 30 days. Either way all this writing is great practice, and that is definitely one of the reason I started this blog. I was reading in Richard Hugo's book "The Triggering Town" and it talked about one of the best ways to get better at writing was simply to practice. And it makes a lot of sense because there aren't many things you can get better at without practice.

Chapter 2

The bell rang and we were off to Math. You see we had a rotating schedule so everyday of the week was different. I knew fewer of people in my Math then any of my other classes, but that was alright. My math teacher had an interesting solution for motivating his students to do well on tests. We all had assigned seating, but after each test we could choose our own seat, and there were some seats that were more in demand then others. The seat that was actually not as nice as it seemed was in the very back of the classroom. It had a little table with a plant on it and had a chair with cushions. Only one person could sit back there at one time, and it usually went to the person who got the highest score on the test. I got it only once while I was originally in sixth grade, I don't know how I pulled it off and then I immediately went back to pulling in my mediocre grades so never got that seat again.
The reason I say that seat is not actually as nice as it seems is because it is so far back that it is far easier to get distracted and not pay attention to the lessons. When you are in sixth grade and learning the stuff for the first time it is important to pay attention. I didn't really need to pay attention this time around so that back seat suited me just fine. It was interesting because no one questions when you get better at math since it is a course that has a definite right or wrong answer. If you start only filling in right answers they assume that you understand everything now and that you were just confused before. It was nice to not worry about how much I excelled at least in one course.
I opened my eyes with a start and looked around. I was a little confused as to where I was. And there was a belling ringing. Then I realized I had fallen asleep in class. I quickly got my stuff together and started to leave bu my teacher, Mr. Brick, called my name. I slowly walked over to him.
“Yes, Mr. Brick?” I asked try to suppress and after sleep yawn.
“I saw you sleeping in class today. Don't let it happen again or I am going to move you back to the front of the room.”
“Yes, I'm sorry Mr. Brick.”
“I know you've really started understanding the stuff in class, but that doesn't mean you can disrespect me or the other students in the class.”
“I wasn't trying to disrespect anyone.”
“Well try harder. Now get going.” Mr. Brick walked back to his desk. I hated being reprimanded, but I suppose I deserved it this time. It was another thing I had to get used to. Older people talked down to kids my age, as if we didn't know anything at all. And really when I was as old as these adults I know I talked down to kids. None the less I still didn't like it.
Classes were over for the day, I only had two after lunch. Essentially I had free time for thirty minutes and then I had to do some planned sporting activity with the rest of the boarding kids. It was never very good, but it beat the alternative of just going straight to study hall. The school had a pretty simple plan of keeping us busy all of the time with breaks no longer then 30 minutes. The idea was that if we were doing other stuff we couldn't get ourselves into trouble. Except on Wednesday when we were allowed to walk into town and buy stuff at the store. Soda or candy usually, maybe McDonald's, stuff that kept sixth graders happy.
Today was not a Wednesday. We all gathered together as they did role call for everyone that didn't need to go to study hall. There were about 30 of us, the boarding program wasn't very large. We all trudged out to the field next to the faculty parking lot. The great thing about this field though was that it wasn't actually level. The north end of the field was roughly seven degrees higher then the south end of the field. Now this isn't really noticeable difference so the school never fixed it. But it was great when you were playing soccer and the ball just started rolling on its own.
Out on the field we were told to split into two groups and that we were going to play kick ball. Crappy orange bases were arranged in the typical baseball diamond and they rolled out a red rubber ball. It felt funny to see all this stuff again. As an adult when I saw this stuff I got nostalgic, as it was, it was hard to be nostalgic. We all circled up and were told the importance of stretching.
The game itself was actually quite fun. I don't really know why there aren't really any adult leagues for kickball. It is a fun enough sport and you don't have to be terribly skilled to play. My young body wasn't terribly in shape for kickball, I had forgotten that as a child I was a fatty. I was breathing hard fairly early in the game with just running around a little bit. But really in kickball, like baseball, there isn't a lot of real movement so you can be pretty lazy if you know how. Just find a part of the field to cover that never gets kicked to. I played it fairly safe for the rest of the game, trying not to expose my weakness to physical exertion.
We all headed in, tired and ready to shower; however, we had 30 minutes until study hall. They were right about keeping us busy, we never had time to get into trouble. Well we did, just not as much as we probably would have. I head to my room and found Alan in discussion with Vinni.
“Hey guys, what's up?” I asked as I plopped down on my bed, still feeling winded from kickball.
“Oh nothing, hey I'll see you tomorrow Alan,” Vinni said and then head out.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Nothing, we were just discussing doing something this weekend.” Alan said. I knew Vinni was trouble. He had gotten kicked out of school for breaking into someone's house and getting high there in eighth grade. He wasn't the smartest kid and he wouldn't care about taking someone else down with him. I figured Alan probably was going to use Vinni to help him cheat.
“Really? Anyways we still on for studying tonight?” I asked trying to see if my predictions were correct.
“Um... yeah, we can do that. But later right?”
“Yeah, whatever. I'm going to shower. I'll see you at study hall,” I grabbed my towel and headed into the bathroom. I wasn't pleased because I guessed I was correct about Alan wanting to cheat with Vinni.
I got in the shower and let the water hit my body. It was cold, but I liked the shock. I found that the water cleared my head. It also let me think about what was happening. It occurred to me that it was possible that I might not be able to change the future as much as I thought I could. Perhaps I could only effect the outcome of my own life. No, that was ridiculous. Everything effects everything else. I was a big believer in the butterfly effect. But here was something that seemed to happen regardless of my interaction. Maybe not, maybe this was an alternative outcome and it still could have other outcomes. I didn't like the idea of it, but it was to early to really know how all this worked. Maybe tomorrow I'd wake up and I'd be back in future, or rather the present. God, I hope not.

Matutolypea

This is a great word and apparently a made up word. I found it will going through one of my favorite books, the Flip Dictionary (which really is a Thersuarus), while trying to find another word for wronged. This one means to get up on the wrong side of the bed. I saw it in the text and had to look it up. According to MyDictionary.com matutolypea is not actually a word, it is a made up word that is a combination of both Greek and Latin. I just find the idea of a nonsense word to be funny, especially one that is supposed to mean to get up on the wrong side of the bed. I had always hated the term when I was younger because I though that there actually was a wrong side to get up on, or rather a wrong side to get out of. I often tried to get out of bed from the footboard since I believed that that wasn't a side. So if any told me that I had gotten out of bed on the wrong side I could tell them that I certainly had not. I hadn't planned on including anything else in this post but it is too tempting and cute not to attempt a poem about this little quirk I haven't thought of in years. Don't judge me on how terrible this first attempt is going to because I kind of feel like rhyming is going to be imporant . Oh and here is a link to the mydictionary definition, it has a pronounciation thing to, although I think the guy saying it has too much of a "bee" sound at the end rather than a "pee" sound.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/wotd.pl?word=matutolypea

Matutolypea

I was always worrried about getting out on the wrong side of the bed.
When I was little I worried about which side was wrong,
but I found ways to get over that dread.

I would simply climb over the end of my bed,
away from Morhpeus, up and strong,
that was enough to let me lightly tread.

And for the day I would get ahead
by simply saying to the throng
that I had not gotten out on the wrong side of the bed.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Grandma Revisited

I'm a tab bit annoyed but I can't really do anything about it. I had a nice post written up about this revision of my poem, but that disappeared some how and got auto-saved over with a big blank space. Can't do anything about that now. No need to rant (but I want to so much).
So this is a revision of my poem about my Grandma. I had it work shopped in my advanced poetry class and so I've gotten some good feedback on it. It was really hard to edit because I liked the draft I turned in so much, but I have to say that I feel like I've changed a lot. I never thought I'd get to the obsessive state of editing line by line, word by word, but what can I say, I went over this poem with a fine tooth comb and I nearly changed every line. I really did changed every line, but some of them got moved back cause I liked their original line more.  I even went as far as agonizing (not really but I love the expression) over whether I should go with Grandma or Grandmother in the last line. I went with Grandmother because it sounds more distinct. Also I had to spend time deciding whether I'd go with the spelling of checks as they were or go with cheque as it is supposed to be spelled. I don't know but I decided that I'm an American and I was going to go with checks because that is how it has been adopted into our language. Anyways here is the revision of Stories My Grandma Told Me, retitled My Grandma Told Me. It is going to be my second Crosscurrent's submission, my first being Drunk Rhinoceros.

My Grandma Told Me

I don't like to think of my Grandmother as
a racist,
it's an ugly word.
But sometimes she makes it hard not to.
She would sit me down and tell me
that minorities were out to get us,
“Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, you name it,
they are all out to get you."
I can't see her logic,
even then it didn't make sense to me.
She said that they would do anything,
to get back for the abuse
inflicted by the whites.
That even our housekeeper,
a kindly Samoan woman,
would do things,
little things,
to get us.

Last week I got a call from my dad.
He told me he had to let our housekeeper go.
She was forging checks,
with my Grandmother's checkbook.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Chapter 2

Here is the beginning of the second chapter of old school. Our protagonist is still in sixth grade, but he is coming into himself. Only a few weeks have passed since his travel back in time so he is still getting used to things. He has also realized that he can't fully utilize his knowledge, in a number of ways. In one way he has realized that if he is getting absolutely everything right at school after being a mediocre student his teachers are going to think that something is up (aka he is cheating). He has also realized that the more he changes in his past the more he is changing his future. He has already changed the past now by refusing to help his roommate cheat on a test. The realization is a little frightening because he realizes that his knowledge of the future is useless if he changes the future. So that's where I am at now. Word count is at 4796 for 3 days. That is less then I'd like to have if I was actually doing the NaNoWriMo right now, but it isn't bad progress.

-Chapter 2-

It was surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of school. Most of my classes were fairly easy. I middle school my hardest subject had been English, or rather Core. Even in high school I wasn't that good at English, but then in college I had spent a few years floundering on a major and fell in with the pack that does English. Really I chose it because it didn't require a thesis at the end of the year. Now my sixth grade English assignments felt like a cakewalk. Math was far more simple then I had remembered it being. The science classes were an extremely light version of what I did in college so I pretty much spent most of my day bored. And living on campus as a boarding student made it hard to do anything else, so my grades soared from the 60's into the high 90's. It felt good.
I hadn't seen any evidence that anything but my arrival in the sixth grade had changed. Everyone else acted the same. I was clearly different. I wasn't the shy smelly kid anymore. I hadn't liked to shower when I originally was in sixth grade, I can't figure out why, they feel so good. I talked to people with confidence. I basically was a different person, but I didn't know what to do with it. I was to young to go after girls, hell I hadn't even gone through puberty yet. Oh hell. I hadn't gone through puberty yet, I'd have to do that again. There were a number of things I wasn't looking forward to. Other things I was looking forward to.
I sat in the computer lab of my school and search the Internet. It was so empty. Well it wasn't empty, it was just less saturated with crap. Or, I don't know. It was just a different Internet. No pop-up ads. I don't think Javascript was in high use yet, or maybe even invented. Most of the sites I had frequented as an adult were either not on line yet or blocked by the schools firewall. It was hard to get an adult porn fix when you are in a sixth through eighth grade boarding school. I did find a few sites I knew. I even found some Internet identities that I knew of when I surfed forums. I knew they were old because they always talked about the old message board days, but I had no idea that they were this old.
My roommate sat down next to me. We were friends now, we hadn't been last time. There had been an incident where he had come onto me and things had gotten ugly. He was confused about his sexuality and I hadn't dealt with it in the right way. At the time I had no idea how to deal with something like that. This time it was easy because I knew it was coming.
“Don't you ever do homework anymore?” Alan asked.
“Why would I? None of this stuff is difficult,” I calmly said as I continued staring at my computer.
“I remember about two weeks ago you were crying about an assignment that was too hard.”
“Yeah, shut up,” I paused to think, “that was like three weeks ago.”
“Whatever, and whats with all the big changes?”
“I don't know, just decided to be a different person.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“So what do you want?” I asked.
“Nothing just needed a place to sit,” Alan said innocently. I knew this wasn't true. I had been chronicling what had happened to me during my sixth grade lift in a journal and I was pretty sure this was about the time that Alan asked me to help him cheat on a test. I don't know why he asked me last time, maybe he thought I could benefit from cheating with him. We were caught last time, and that was one of the things that led to us not being friends. We were both in after school detention for the rest of the year and Alan ended up not coming back because his grandparents, who were the ones paying for his schooling, decided they didn't want to pay for him to cheat.
“Fine, don't tell me,” I said.
“Alright, I have an idea. You know this science test that we have coming up?” He waited for an answer, I just nodded, “Yeah well, I need to raise my grades in history or my grandparents are going to stop giving me an allowance. So I've figured out a way to cheat on the test, but I am going to need someone to help me out.” I finally looked away from my computer and looked Alan in the eyes for a few seconds before speaking.
“No.”
“What? That's all come on it is a great idea, we'll never get caught.”
“How about this instead, I'll tutor you in the history questions and you get better grades without cheating,” I was sure that if I didn't help Alan cheat he'd find someone else to do it with him. I had to persuade him to just not cheat.
“Yeah, you got a zero on the last test, how is that going to help?” He had me there.
“Trust me. I just fucked up on answering the way Mr. Rangerman wanted me to answer. Next time it is going to be easy as all get out.”
“Still, I just-”
“No, we aren't going to cheat, and I'm not going to let you cheat either. We'll study together and then we are both going to have the top grades in Mr. Rangerman's class.”
“But-”
“No, that's how it is going to be.” Alan started to talk again but I just lowered my head and looked at him. It was a habit from when I wore glasses, which I no longer had. It still had the same effect and he shut up and thought about what I had to say.
“Alright, we'll do it your way. But I still think my plan would have worked.”
“No, it wouldn't,” I said as I turned back to my computer.
“How can you say that?”
“Because, your plans never work and Mr. Rangerman is known for catching cheaters.”
“No, he isn't.”
“Well he would be if you tried.” Alan had no argument so he turned back to his computer. I couldn't say that I really liked Alan that much but it was good to have him as a friend. Plus I didn't want him to get in trouble with his grandparents, I hadn't actually met them yet this time around but I remember them being some of the meanest people I had ever met.
The bell rang and everyone started heading to class.
“Alright, Alan I will see you tonight and we'll get our study on,” I said I as got out of my chair.
“Sounds good.”
I had Core to go to and I really didn't want to go. It was one of the hardest classes to sit through. We usually just all took turns reading aloud and, dear lord, sixth graders are terrible at reading aloud. As well the stuff we were reading in class wasn't exactly difficult stuff. I had to follow along just in case Mrs. Lawn called on me to read. The first time she had called on me after I had come back I read far to eloquently for a sixth grader. I had to stop mid-way through because I realized I wasn't acting my age. Now I made sure to stop occasionally and make it look like I was at least having a little problem with the longer words. I had the same problems with homework. Because I was such a mediocre student before it was hard for teachers to believe that I had improved so much so quickly. I quickly toned down all my right answers so I'd at least have a few mistakes.
Math was the worst because I had to show my work. It is actually hard to show your work on a math problem you can do in your head in a few seconds. Actually my hardest class was music. I had taken up an instrument later in life, but that had been kit drums, so that didn't really help for my music class. We also did dancing in my music class and I have never been coordinated, so that was the same pain all over again.
Today Core wasn't so bad. We had to do in-class writing, and we were doing poetry. This was something I could still excel at without the teachers noticing. If a sixth grader wrote an amazing poem it was pure chance, so I could really explore myself with poetry. Today I decided that I would write a poem about my future. It was fun to think about the future from this perspective because I had such a good idea of what was to come. I wrote about how changing the past effected the future so that even if you could see your future you didn't know what was going to happen. I knew a day would come when things were really different. I didn't know if I liked that idea though. A second chance yes, but when you have a second chance and it leads into complete unknown that is a little scary.

Copyright 2007 William Curb