If the title isn't self-explanatory, the tattoo is fully finished. I decided upon teal, burgundy and an orange and gold overlay at the edge of the roses. Here is another picture of the tattoo taken at O'Reilly's in Santa Cruz... I am contemplating a second tattoo of a large bird like a raven!

~

KISSING BOOTH

I will be participating and showing my interactive poetry installation TRY ME. in KISSING BOOTH which is an ensemble performance with drinks AND kissing booth at 21grand in Oakland on Sunday Sunday Sunday January 18th from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The event is sponsored by TAXT, my chapbook publisher...

The directions are:

21GRAND
416 25th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
(Near Broadway, between Broadway and Telegraph)

KISSING RULES:

The kissers are those who wear white rectangular stickers reading, "I'm KISSING for TAXT." Threat levels: (yellow, orange, red), will be issued on the stickers.

Yellow: Cheek and peck
Orange: Peck, cheek, lip, neck
Red: at kisser's discretion, i.e. KISS AT YOUR OWN RISK

Kissees pay to get kissed, not to kiss, like a lap dance!

The strands of your hair on the curb in front of your house
The stroke of your heart courts the beauty you make for it
It's not the talk of ex-lovers that gets to you
or even when you look at other girls

How do you court the dead? Un real? Far away? Unknown?
I wonder

Everyone sees something solid creeping in me that they don't want to see which is the bone I exist for.



Happy new year; now I acknowledge that so often it seems that I strive to keep a semblance of closeness with something so inane as with an internet connection without effort, when everyone else lives to physically touch, breath up air and talk at, in scores, every day, every night and tonight. What am I doing? I am trying to figure out why I feel a solid sensation in my stomach.

I should come off as creepy but I always come off as creepy. Even when I act facetious I come off as creepy. I thought about you on my voyage to So Cal two weeks past and a thought is a burden for you since creepy people are the ones who think.

Anyway, I'm giving you a bunch of bones with no meat to savor over... I have nothing you could really respond to. Maybe you're ashamed over my past parading in my underwear. I've done some things earlier this month I felt you would be appalled at. You're a lot more moralistic than most. Everyone sees something ugly in me that they don't want to see which is what I realize I exist for. I am the evidence of what is fucked up about the internet. I suppose I just manipulated what you see now and yet I feel like the answer should be self-evident.

I'm 25 years old which is a quarter of how long I plan to live for. I talked to a psychotherapist today and discovered I can't get enough of structure. I like chaos WITHIN structure. I like labels and boxes and sets of poems with specific numbers of lines; and photography that is stacked. In a way, as my cohort put it, I am following somewhat of a post-post-structuralist movement. I discovered that in completing my second MFA, I am coming to a point in my life which I learned everything I ever wanted to learn. I hate school and will likely teach in a non-authoritarian style one day. I will be nobody's favorite teacher and most certainly be nobody's least favorite teacher. I'll exist in present time as much I exist here to you, my audience, if seeing is believing.

We're having a 24 hour thesis here. I'm destroying two Sylvia Plath poems and recreating them for my project which you could read about here. You can look at me all day, here:

http://www.stickam.com/xtoph

Beats in tiny cracks surrender the songs like old currents
on your shoes you paralyze the infrastructure with
dialogue to exchange secrets in bear to the ground you absorb
its pavement in corridors trespass onto your property
cheeks of your testicles submit to the flesh of your costume
you fantasize alone inside your shadow upon bread that pervades
a mouth to every date expels your concentrate to regurgitate
your force that lingers with envy comes insoluble horror
ears parallel parallel elastic saturates the invasions
frigid though warm in liquid still you erode
to subside your silk is loose

for Charles L. Davis

Turn fan turn clockwise lady on a world of
bandages to close the matter
though that boy pleads no contest pleas for melody
hands crooked stage curtains wet
a trash bag ends in disgraceful space
show me a long cold shoreline in sequel you baton
you wait your vocals in despair today
with a breath comes sirens wet bodies tiresome in pursuit
an entertainer for mothers forlorn and awake
slow tires like a casual journey with a privy view
mislead the void that sweat an apology

http://www.chrisgirard.com/multimedia/try-me/index.html

I'm moving to Santa Cruz to pursue a second masters degree in the Digital Arts and New Media at UC Santa Cruz. I'm paving the West Coast equivalent of what electronic writers like kore were doing for the past fifteen years on the East Coast. (Her for two years.) Albeit I can make small programs on Xcode and have the ability to learn a whole new set of codes in C++, I lack the logic to execute a program in an adequate timeframe. I suck at it frankly. So hi I have a lot on my plate this summer plus the first poetry thesis which constitute a series of 11-line poems.

I sound different. I don't know who reads this journal and I might write more. I feel like I'm stuck in 2006.