10's, Week 3

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A bearded man with a guitar strapped around his shoulder stand alone on stage. Under the pot light, he opens his mouth to a three-tiered crowd of over 3,000 people.
• Settled dust coats a white Woman's size 10 Minnetonka box under the bed, locking in the mementos from better days.
• A mountain, erect with food and porcelain, grows larger and grimier between each visit.
• A tangled knot of silver and gold chains settles at the bottom of the grey patent leather purse, engulfed by the black polyester liner, drowning in eyeliner, a wallet, pens, keys, and tampons.
• Three Smart cars parked in a row on East Liberty Street, taking up only two parking spots.
• The two of us hovering over the double sink vanity, spitting out our toothpaste and rinsing off our toothbrushes, almost in unison.
• A fresh row of lines in the carpet from the brush of the vacuum's bristles sweeping over it.
• A swirl of white breaks the solid black liquid as you pour creamer into your cup of coffee.
• Sitting on the futon in grey sweatpants and a grey t-shirt, you peel an orange like a kid opening a Happy Meal.
• An entire closet not filled with clothes, but instead stacked white boxes filled with an elaborate collection of comics.

10 "Treasures":

• "Our teeth have their origin in sharks but later as mammals we acquired lips that could suck and because of those lips that could suck we acquired kisses." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
• "If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals]." --Michael Pollan, Food Rules
• "Time's not a clock constantly ticking away present-past present-past but a clock that has ceased to beat. Time doesn't pass, but we pass." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
  
• "Only love is revolutionary. Hatred is always reactionary." --Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
  
• "It is said that words alone have specific uses, not sentences.." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
• "When you have craved truth as you crave air, then you will know what truth is." --Roland Barthes (quoting a Buddhist Koan), A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
• "Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone call is thereby woven out of tiny unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy); I suffer torments if someone else telephones me (for the same reason); I madden myself by the thought that at a certain (imminent) hour I shall have to leave, thereby running the risk of missing the healing call, the return of Mother. All these diversions which solicit me are so many wasted moments for waiting, so many impurities of anxiety. for the anxiety of waiting, in its pure state, requires that I be sitting in a chair within reach of the telephone, without doing anything." --Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
  

10's, Week 2

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• Coming to a stop behind four other cars as the red lights blink and the black and white striped gates lower, the 2:30 CSX train passes by, its horn echoing through the trees.
• A fourteen-year-old shag-haired boy stands in front an open door revealing shelves of food, staring into it like it's a work of art on display in a gallery.
• One-eyed tunnel vision outlined in gold, peering into the apartment hallway.
• Sitting in the window seat of a frozen yogurt cafe, a man in a red puffer coat, skinny jeans, and gray knit hat walks his bike past on the other side of the glass with two six-packs in the basket of his bike.
• A half-eaten, chocolate muffin lies alone on a sheet of napkins, abandoned on the granite counter top.
• Flecks of hazel sparkle in your bright blue eyes as the sun hits them.
• As the cold air engulfs me, the brown hair on my arms raises as if struck by lightening.
  
• A series of yellow arrows pointing left are planted in the snow-covered ground, where the gray, salt-dusted concrete curves.
  
• A small crowd of visitors sit around an open stove top as the man in uniform and chef hat works vigorously to feed and appease the guests.
  
• The long white vertical blinds dance as the breeze behind them sneaks in through the open doorway.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "So it goes." --Kurt Vonnegut
• "I hate cynicism. It's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." --Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
• "Une femme sans amour, c'est comme une fleur sans soleil, ca deperit." Translation: "A woman without love wilts like a flower without the sun." --Newsstand woman, Amelie
• "Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now, and it's because they sat there they were able to do it." --George Clooney (as Ryan Bingham), Up in the Air
• "That's life. If nothing else, it's life. It's real and sometimes it fuckin' hurts, but it's sort of all we have." --Natalie Portman (as Sam), Garden State
• "The development of new wonders is not like the production of canned goods. Some things appear to be wonders in the beginning, but when you become familiar with them, are not so wonderful at all." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "We asked ourselves: How can we improve the show? We auditioned an explosion." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "But fools are hard to find." --Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories ["The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace"]
• "Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don't even try." --Alan Arkin (as Grandpa Edwin Hoover), Little Miss Sunshine
  
• "On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose, elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses. On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud que de nos chagrins il s'en fait des manteaux pourtant quelau'un m'a dit." Translation: "I was told that our lives are not worth much, they pass in an instant as roses fade. I was told that the time that slips is a bastard that is making topcoats from our grief." --Carla Bruni, "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" lyrics
  

Found Poem

You were a teenage hipster smoking cigarettes
We traded pleasant words and a cup of coffee

Chemicals
A pleasantly awkward feeling
And a stick of gum

I roll my fingers through his hair

Our mouths o-shaped
A little tongue

I float

10's, Week 1

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• Being the only four people in the hockey arena not on the ice, cheering in the stands.
• James sitting on the edge of the futon in the dark living room, talking endlessly across the room to me about his adventures from the former night.
• An air hockey game under black light. The girl's white shirt glowing like the streaks of blonde in her short hair, a glow from her mouth as she smiles. Across the neon green table, the yellow puck races toward the boy in a black leather coat, smiling under his black baseball cap.
• My pristine black flats on the gritty black, wet concrete stairs of an Ann Arbor parking garage with a glimpse of yellow paint peering through.
• Driving behind a blue Oldsmobile with a handicap license plate, going five under the speed limit, a red Cobalt speeds up from behind me to pass the both of us.
• Two squirrels standing at attention on a fence line, staring me down as I walk past.
• My 11-year-old sister in her skinny jeans and Abercrombie t-shirt, sunken into the oversized couch pillows texting on her phone with the TV on.
• Chris' head tilted back 20 degrees, he stares cautiously at his face in the mirror as he runs the silver Remington electric shaver up and down his lower jaw line.
• A small ball of brown and white fur, curled up at the top of the spiral staircase peers down the steps with lonely green eyes.
• An unopened orange Pixie Stix inside a black empty mailbox.

10 "Treasures":

• "What's in a star? We are. All the elements of our body and of the planet were once in the belly of a star. We are stardust. 15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass of hydrogen floating in space, turning slowly, dancing. We are universal, and after death we will help to form other stars and other galaxies. We come from the stars, and to them we shall return." --Ernesto Cardenal, Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems
• "A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories:" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation." --Jonathan Swift, A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet
• "Fragments represent the state of in between-ness, the source of all creative thought." --Lauren Albert, FragLit
• "The Romantic form of poetry is still in the process of becoming. Indeed, that is its true essence, that it is always in the process of becoming and can never be completed. It cannot be exhausted by any theory, and only a divinatory criticism would dare to want to characterize its ideal. Romantic poetry alone is infinite, just as it alone is free and recognizes as its first law that the poetic will submit itself to no other law. The Romantic kind of poetry is the only one which is more than a kind--it is poetry itself. For, in a certain sense, all poetry is or should be Romantic." --Friedrich Schlegel
• "I've always felt that space is a good fill; gaps can be very emotional." --Ringo Starr, Ringo Starr: The Drums Are Where the Soul Is [NPR Interview]
• "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover. No matter how it ends, now matter how it starts." --Thom Yorke [Radiohead], "House of Cards" lyrics
• "Come and open up your folding chair next to me. My feet are buried in the sand, and there's a breeze. There's a shadow, you can see my eyes. And the sea is just a wetter version of the sky." --Regina Spektor, "Folding Chair" lyrics
• "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." --Albert Camus
• "Take care of the people, and God almighty will take care of himself." --Kurt Vonnegut
• "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return." --from Moulin Rouge