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88

Maybe it wasn’t 88

but that’s how I always remember it.

88 Ashkars I will never meet

slaughtered under cars, in their homes.

30 years and 7,000 miles away I’m safe and

I couldn’t imagine losing 88 (or so).

I love rejection letters.

Dear Mario Joseph Ashkar:

Thank you for sending us “My Father Who Art”.

Although we are unable to use the material you offered, we do thank you for sharing it with us. Since our space is limited we must often pass on well-crafted efforts. We wish you good fortune in placing your work elsewhere. Unfortunately, the number of submissions we receive does not permit us to personally comment on declined material.

Sincerely,

The Editors of War, Literature & the Arts

 

Rejection letters remind me that a few months back I took a step forward and put myself out there. Getting rejection letters don’t fill me with sadness but actually make me feel motivated. There is something about not being liked that really gets me going. I will include the poems that I sent to them here.

behind the moon

where the radio waves

don’t reach and the signal fades for weeks at a time

he floats

in a small box

with one window

that peers into the

patient loneliness

slowly he hallucinates empty cafes

in an empty world.

We’ll note that not even man’s contempt for nature or his dominating spirit can overcome

the need for companionship that makes solitary space exploration so unmanageably terrifying.

Performance Art

Over the last two years my creative life have exploded. I am currently involved on at least three separate projects and they are all very different mediums; photography/film, hip hop/poetry and music, and painting/stenciling. Today though, I broke away a little and wrote up my first attempt at a stand up comedy act. Whenever I define any of my projects I always do it very lightly. This would be more connected to a dream-like theatrical production than a straight forward stand up performance. I want to post some of it here but really I’m going to start practicing this and I’ll try to get it out on stage soon. 🙂

 

Faggot Dinosaur

I responded to a prompt on a site filled with calls for writers. It asked to write a poem with the title Faggot Dinosaur. All of the responses and artwork are being compiled into a book and here is my entry.

Faggot Dinosaur
When Georgie arrived in blue and orange
Tim and Jeff were fucking ecstatic
it was gross actually. They seemed so
mindless, so eager to enjoy anything.
Put Georgie on VHS, take him to the beach,
see his costume changes, remember his face.

Dinner’s too fast, plants are slow. You think this is poisonous?
It doesn’t taste poisonous.
When Charlene arrived, disoriented and uninterested
they continued eating laughing until there was one left.
Shaky hands aren’t an accurate depiction because the
Jim Henson Muppet workshop generally gets it right.

That our legs fuse and cavities form into breathing holes on the backs of our necks

i want to hang out in the ocean

with some beluga whale boys