Ah yes lovely lovely spring has finally arrived! it makes winter worth the dreary last months of the ordeal. the first few months of the cold season are tolerable, actually a welcome transition from the heat of summer through the crisp breezes of fall. Spring here on Long Island seems to just show up one day and decide to stay. its like a friend who you have not seen in what seems like years just shows up at your door and stays for a while, no restrictions set by schedule or any other annoyance. And it stays until the springtime sun wakes up one morning and come noon, well you have the intense sun of summer. this season wakes the toes and fingers of the soul, shaking free the frost that settles in late januaru and februaury and solidifies into a deep ennui, a complete hopeless feeling with the relentlessness of the slush on sidewalks, and winds with cerrated teeth. The bodies senses wake up and a certain wanderlust takes over. You can smell it in the air, see it in the eyes, feel it in a touch. woke up yesterday and watched motorcycle diaries. Great movie. really enjoyed it. then got a text haiku from Haikuster and had the urge to drive out cross the big land to the other coast. tap my toes on the carpet of gold that rolls out into the pacific. it was a sad day when the pope died. not being catholic i still think the pope was a good man, though there are a lot of things that he stood for that i don't agree with. I believe he was good because he had hope for the human race, and for the goodness he feels is inate in us. I have been reading a book called the Faber Book of America, and i recomend it to all who may peruse this page. It is not a blow hard, chest beating self affirmantion of our capitalistic superiority, or morass (which ever way you may look at it. i feel you can look at it as the same, our superiority in material goods makes us the man who built his house on sand) the book is filled with eassays by the famous and those not so famous. Foreigners and our own citizens. It is seperated into "chapters" that are a very interesting way of dividing our national personality. Hopefully soon i will have the internet back in my apt, and i will be writing a lot again. i don't quite feel myself when i am not writing, as Haikuster knows, i have even been slacking in my responsibility in my haiku sending sorry!!!! i feel as if i have changed, that i have lost something, a friend when i am not writing. well anyways enough of that blabber. i will talk to you all again soon

The Low were great last nite. though i would have liked to hear more of their older stuff, and at the tempo i am used to i also know that it was to promote their new cd. anyhow. caught up with some old buds last nite, the haikuster being one of them, her and her mad lot of raging accomplices. i was actually all over last nite, from the concert to a couple of seedy establishments in town, then on to mohawk place where i caught part of a really cool band, then to bullys and finally on to fahertys. it was quite a nite capped off by some intense, or not so intense foosball. great game, really it is. we shall see what tonite holds. tomorrow is the daunting trek home to ny. traffic is going to be a bear. agckh. lousy anyhow i am off write more later enjoy the lovely day

home for the holiday, the drive up from New York was actually not that bad. that probably is because i left around 430 in the morning. it was a beautiful drive, the city all lit up and little traffic, well i guess that is relative to what i am really used to. while in my last post i was really looking forward to coming back to buffalo for a few days, now that i am here, i don't know how i feel about it really. there is so much sprawl out where my parents live. everything is so damn far apart. don't get me wrong i love space. it is a great thing to grow up with, but i think right now i much prefer a busy hectic setting. I am however looking forward to seeing the LOw on Friday nite. really psyched. catching up with a few people whom i have not seen in a while will also be nice. the holiday party schedule is already being scratched out, and it seems as though this year will be a doozy. I am really going to be taking advantage of that. i really am out of things to say, well not really, just that everything is whirrrrring about in my head so quickly that i need to slow it down, maybe a few pints of black and tan, we'll see. dee, hope to see you when you are in town.

contemplating my next move. yeah i can understand how the place you are can make you happy, content, excited, stimulate you, capture your heart, break it, but still want to be at home. weighing the pros and the cons. the rent i pay here a month could be a mortgage payment on a nice house at home, my parents are there, but i would be missing out on the cornicpoia of people that pour out onto the table that is this city. went to a party in astoria last weekend and it was very interesting. 99 percent of the people were Kerry men and women, they most all worked on the campaign, me excluded. my buddy who went was outed as a bush man, the whole crowd went quiet. it was as if the needle was dragged across the record. one guy asked me if he could use some of my material, because he though it was a bit, and he was a stand up. i was flattered. the party was really stuffy. too much politiking, and not enough fun for all, well i had my own little audience, so it was fine with me. one guy tried was like the ringleader of the pols, and he had a really magnetic personality, but he was intent on trying to prove his vast library of knowledge, and he starts blathering on about socrates, plato, and then moved on into poetry and other lit topics. he was quite suprised to know that i have read some "highbrow" items. so he right away wanted to be my new friend, and to know a basic list of what i have read. then my buddy announces that i had done readings of my poetry in brooklyn, so they were like say something. it was cool on one hand, on the other....eh...i have been writing a lot again lately. i wonder if misery, well not misery, but heartache is really the best muse. god i hope not. actually i know its not, but it does make for some dark writing. at times i feel like a junior highschool kid writing love poems that will never hit their mark. its like a closing argument and the jury does not need to deliberate. oh yeah for halloween i was wheres waldo! it was great. walking down the street people yelling at me, random people asking to have their picture taken with me. and i made it! reading subteranneans right now by kerouac, yeah probably spelled it wrong, its great. its a love story about kerouac and some black woman. not sure what her real name is, in the book its mardou. his is leo percepied. its the genisis of his love for her, and apparently the destruction of it. you know whats funny about falling in love with someone is all of the things you talk about doing, the little things that draw you to thoughts of them, act as burs in your heart.

it is in vain i try to paint,
draw your beauty with these simple words,
plain letters on this canvas of mine

i cannot wait to go home, yes that does sound defeatest, or as if i am running. i think everyone runs in their own way. can't wait to be home in Buffalo!

Well its the day after the day, the big day of big eating and big laying around, of families coming together and being big and noisey, new little additions trying out their fawny legs, rumbling around issuing loud procolmations from their newly toothed yaps, while everyone looks at them in wonder and delight. the slightest change in their expression illicits a response of varying degrees from everyone in the room. its actually really funny watching how we (i use this term lightly in my case) adults respond to the children. twins, a boy and a girl (sure i mentioned thembefore) 14 months old. i taught nick how to stick his tounge out to be funny. i would stick mine out and he would try and grab it, so then he would do the same. it was quite a game for a while. then there was uh oh, apparently its an age old game that even i played. he would push the sippy cup off the table, and i would pick it up, then he would do it again. well that lasted all of two uh ohs. yeah i was not that enthusiastic about that one. Wednesday nite was an interesting nite. started by spreading some holiday cheer around during happy hour at bullfeathers. met some friends i have not seen in a while. actually they met me as i was eating and reading quietly in the far corner, well that ended when they rolled in like a pack of thirsty sailors. after happy hour went home to eat dinner with the parents and then take a nap in preperation to what i thought would be a nite of ranging around downtown and running into people i have not seen since the Clinton years. Well that didn't happen. just basically found out highschool friends don't understand that people change, are different, and that there is really nothing to gain by tolerating each other anymore. Its sad really. but that is just the way it goes. Taxied from the burbs to Elmwood where we caught the tail end of the biggest party nite of the year. it was fizziling out quite rapidly. as was my desire to continue the celebration. Its SNoWing! I know I still live in NY, but it somehow seems colder this year, and the cold has been someting i have always enjoyed. Plans for this evening are slowly coming together. The LoW concert, and then off to a party. fantastic. should be good. holiday cheer. though with that is that ennui that seems to attack me yearly. I really hoped that jana would have made this trip with me. holidays are the best time to be in a relationship, well not that any other time of the year isn't. just there is something about coming home, especially living away from family and friends, you come into town, wrapped up in wools and cottons, packages in colorful papers and bags, smells of wood burning in cold late autumn early winter crystal clear nite skies, warm wooden bars reflecting neons and laughter, slaps on the back from friends, great big hugs and smiles to match, cold drafts of fall and winter brews warming the frosty ears and limbering up vocal chords, families gathered in frosty windowpaned houses that rumble and move to the riotous laughter and evervescent love. in quiet moments a squeeze of the hand, walking out side stealing warm soft kisses inbetween wintery breaths, long drives home through bear tree stubbled mountains, along cold tired slowing rivers and creeks where tressel bridges stretch their legs to cross the cold waters, afraid of their toes getting wet, coming upon the great city, christmas's city of lites of diamonds sparkling in towers of nite highs, great christmas tree lites compete, superscede the majesty of these towering magnificies scraping the sky of which santa will wisk in his sleigh on that fateful nite in snowy childrens books decembers. when lovers look on each other with eyes of holly and ivy, soft, lusty eyes of flannel sheets, cold floors and warm feet exchanging gifts in pure nakedness wrapped in not swaddling cloths, but bed linens throwing shadows in mulberry candle lite. maybe the reason that love is so intense, magnified in the autumn, winter months is becaus
e everything is dormant, the trees, the grass, the sky, all have a bleak, deathlike quality to them. love, affection, passion, all include the promise of life, future, prosperity of the flesh, of the heart, of the mind.