Gravedigger (Small Change, Long Funk)
Current mood: blah
Category: Writing and Poetry

Yeah, I haven't written in a long time really...on and off, frankly I haven't been online or on MySpace or on my forums much. Just kind of in a funk that's lasted longer than a year. The muse hasn't been around as much as she used to be, she used to come around and sing me songs all the time, but maybe these days I'm not listening or she isn't around, or maybe it's the meds. Anyway, I've written a few random pieces, none of them impress me much, here's one of them that I just wrote in an unexpected flow. Eh. It's not very good.


Gravedigger
When my eyes are closed
I'm digging graves
Saving spots for breathless days
May you peer in between
The depth of my closed eyes
And my digging team
Up along my dry eyelids dreary
Lies the high rise cemetery
Towering stands of right and wrong
In my closed eyes about to bury
Both night and song without worry
And the dewdrops in between
Of tear-stained morns
And butterfly wrecks
Bury them all as I end those dull shutters
When my eyes are closed
I'm digging graves
Of light and dream
Seems that they only show
What's right before me
None of the actor's parts in between
Misery, prose and those who sorely
Need a break
But I close them again
And bury those bones
Of love, life, even worse,
And whimsical strife ruin
Until my grim life runs its course
And the gravedigger digs my tomb
Among the feelings and grief-strewn lies
Let the tears in between the creases of your face
Speak not of the bodies I buried, but my open eyes.

Copyright 2008 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently listening : Small Change By Tom Waits Release date: 1990-10-25

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I Ate Fire and Drank From the Ganges (And I’ll beg there for mercy for me)
Current mood: cynical
Category: Writing and Poetry

Yeah, I haven't been around my MySpace very much, sorry if I haven't really responded to messages or comments or anything, too busy and blah.
Really I haven't written a damn thing in months, I've just been plagued by an unsettled mind and hundreds of intensely emotional and unsettling dreams that always leave me affected and confused hours after I wake up. I just had one of those this morning, which inspired me to write "The Great Flood", though frankly I'm not a fan of anything I've written lately including that.
I've felt too numb to write, but I've written three poems over the months, "Born", "The Great Flood", and "Unfinished Lord". I feel like all of them are a bit rusty and eh, I haven't written too much lately, though I hope to. Woah, I seriously haven't made a poetry post since November 2007 and my poetry blog following is falling into disrepair. Oh well.


Born
Have you ever glimpsed a dream that made you cry
A windborn muse of graceful sleep symmetry
I held her in my arms as she died
And so did I, everbrimming
With strange apparitions taking me skimming
Across waves of surreal tides
Fantastic depths of the human mind.
From the romantic, bizarre, to the perverse
Have you ever glimpsed a dream that made you thirst
And contemplate the border between
Your waking life and a dewdrop dream.
In my dreams of supposed self-creation
I am just as unable to fight fear and hesitation
But at least I can switch that life on and off
How many times I've wished I could grit my teeth
Scoff harshly
Open my eyes
Shout myself awake
From grim forlorn news of life asymmetry
From reality.

Copyright 2008 Sanbud Tehrani


Unfinished Lord
Why is it only that when I carry the cross
I search for god
When dealing with loss or greedy hunger pains
Or ill-gotten gains blown away
Or dirt and sod on forgetful human days
Only then do I search for something higher
At my very lowest.
Faith, surely I don't greatly show it
And neither does anyone with this drug, religion.
Blow it, use it, blame it, abuse it,
God is merely invented to fill in our lackings
Or explain them, or blame them, on a lack of faith.
At my weakest, I am a deacon
At my strongest, my mind stands a beacon
Harkening at the foolishness
In god and god sons and all that blessed madness.
Think not that some sort of revelation on my true feelings
Or that an athiest secretly believes in kneeling
To imaginary deities.
I'm just not a very strong fellow,
So denial is my first step of desperation.
Denial of the obvious reality sans divinity.
This same lord that kings used as their jewels
That judges use as their gavels
That peasants use as their lovers.
First comes delusion
Then comes salvation.

Copyright 2008 Sanbud Tehrani


The Great Flood
Emptiness inside
Hollow form anesthetized 
I yearn for fingers, yearn for eyes
Whose, why?
I dreamt of the great flood
Over and over
And with every new death
I felt bolder and bolder
Let me into that arc
Let me hoist your firm hips
But that Noah is just a fable
As well as your kiss
Have the hollow inside blues
This bitter shell holds nothing true
Just an aching pain stark
A gaping hole
Where the joy of others made its mark
I dreamt of the great flood
As it carried us past rusted skyscrapers
And drowning marching bands
In your eyes I felt purpose
By your fingers I felt whole
But that arc is already full
Swim past my drowning
Bitter soul.

Copyright 2008 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently listening : Orphans [Fold-out Digipak with 24-page booklet] By Tom Waits Release date: 2006-12-05

11:55 AM - 16 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

Rest In Peace Sir Arthur (All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there)
Current mood: sad
Category: Life

I know I haven’t written anything lately or made any blog posts, but I just learned about this and I wanted to post about it.
Aide says science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7304004.stm



I made a memorial about Kurt Vonnegut when he died, so I had to do the same for Clarke because I adored both equally among the pantheon of authors I’ve read as a child that influenced me.


I’m seriously so bummed out, I remember devouring his work as a kid and just loving his writing. RIP, my all-time favorite sci-fi author. Your influence on the genre will live on forever.
And yeah, he was 90 so it wasn’t unexpected, but somehow I imagined he’d continue on and on and keep writing, he was still writing even recently. No more Arthur C Clarke books, the harshness of that reality is a bummer...
It wasn’t so long ago we lost Kurt Vonnegut and Hubert Selby Jr., and now this. Next I’ll hear about Milan Kundera’s death. 


R.I.P. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, I’ll never forget those evenings of my youth reading on fascinations of Rama, the end of childhoods, and grand odysseys into space.

Reflections on his 90th Birthday



"I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheel-chaired doesn’t stop my mind from roaming the universe — on the contrary!"

"I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here."

"The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

"We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began."

"All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest."

"Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal."

"Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now."

"They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge ... no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command ... But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young."

"Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."

-Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Currently reading : Rendezvous with Rama By Arthur C. Clarke Release date: 01 November, 1990

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At The Back of the Bus (Come, Take a Seat With Us)
Current mood: cold
Category: Writing and Poetry

Just wrote this a few minutes ago, not sure what to think, it's not in my usual style but it just flowed out like this and I penned it. Not that great, but oh well, glad I'm at least writing.

Also, FYI, I added a playlist where I basically tried to fit in my most favorite songs of all time in. Obviously I forgot like 90% of them, but here we have many represented, from Eminem to Randy Newman, from Bjork to Radiohead to Dr. Dre to Utada. And so on.
No real theme, though I began and ended with Evangelion themes.
Hope it isn't an annoyance or anything, you can just pause/stop the music.


At The Back of the Bus
The bitter scent of sweat, pungent in the night wind
Pitter pattering wheels on track, lunging through dark ways might hint
At the cargo loads of frozen flesh inside who defrost from their dusk-ended
Day.
The bus coasts past street signs and frozen glimpses of men
C-clunk, c-clunk
Holding them in second long captures of life and sorrow
That you know so well and feel a despising swell for.
A rising hell forms around your body as you pray for sleep,
Ignorance, death, or some way up out of this rumbling angry vehicle;
Life.
There in the back, legs pressed together, cheap perfume weather
With a chance of lazy storm fronts, up front sit a child and his mother.
Gaze upon them knowingly, eyes dripping degradation with a hint of envy
Always walking forward with neck twisted one hundred eighty degrees for solicitude
Contemplating the loss of life and time while numbing present calendar whines
To silence with your nostalgic empty air-bitten life.
Thump, thump, head against the glass, darkness woke
Lumped against a young woman leaving class, heaving breast of sex artfully spoke.
Avert your eyes and feel an awareness of careless passion and doomed fancies frozen midair
Of loves she'll find, men with minds and sharp ivory-tooth combs to hold her hair
And the years of fraught love-sought games ending inevitably in old age, a smoldering bare visage
Of experience not wished for and the young woman you see now armored in the cynicism you already
Hold.
At the back, prefer viewing open moments of life rather than be viewed
Stay the viewer, comfortable with a hint of paranoia,
May the lure of the eternal voyeur soul of man hide your fear and any pain of existence; Hence the only thing to fear is being viewed yourself.
Staring at others smothered with this ever present clog of smells and air
Forcing itself through your nostrils, wondering at the shared traits you see
In the viewed;
Hoping the television screen remains hard and unflinching,
Stay static, until no one sees you.
The darkness is closing, cloaking interminably the illusions of life outside
Remind yourself with strife touched eyes that the averse lack of light is just that
Not some perverse hustle of killers with matted hair and chain fussed bats,
Just an opposite, see day in night, see gray in right, see light in death;
See your effort and vigor and raise you a few milligrams of turquoise pills
To subvert those shills who raised you in a filching fawning childhood
Of no hurt past bills to be paid.
There at the back of the bus, an observing ghost, that swerving vehicle
Winding between dark buildings and unnerving hope with each c-clunk c-clunk
Of its wheels and spokes.

Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently watching : It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Seasons 1 & 2 Release date: 04 September, 2007

11:30 AM - 22 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

Swallowed Through A Forgetful Maw (Forgetful God)
Current mood: blank
Category: Writing and Poetry

Yeah, haven't been around much, really enjoying the new Jay-Z and Radiohead albums...busy with life, and all that. I hope to write some more later, just haven't been in the mental state for the past few weeks.
Anyway, expect more writes from me in the near future and updates on my poetry challenges and such. I just go in and out of activity and creativity, it's always a fluctuation between a barren desert and a cornucopia of heaven's ichor. Back and forth.
Just felt like posting this archived write because I came upon it and rather felt like reading it again...I also included the child-like scrawls where the piece was born.



Belly
Despite the terrible amber chorus
Of life and gold and jubilant forests,
One must feel a certain porous
Sucking at your humble chamber of skin.
Within this beast's belly termed life,
Past chance and fate and girls and wives
And thrill and luck and god and love
All above is a thick muscled roof
We need no sky limit, the limit was
Brewed into our minds
The moment Babel fell to make sure we'd see
If god exists, what an insult, this mortality.
There is no tower to lead us out
Of the brewing maw or the snapping mouth
Nicknamed existence.
Sucked in from birth past its grinning omnitooth
Life is digestion in this monster's belly
Born prey and then shat out
Tell the colon I am not ready
Swallowed past life's calm hollow mouth.
Do not go silent into that dark intestine
Or woe the loss of life's colored investments
Only smile softly at those who actually tried.

Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently reading : Troubled Sleep: A Novel By Jean-Paul Sartre Release date: 07 July, 1992

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Nine Months (American Gangster)
Current mood: calm

Hey, got a new write I guess. Again, sorry for not responding to your requests and/or messages, I've been busy, I hope to soon. Also there's the contributing issue of so many of them being spam messages from you guys who unknowingly Hey, got a new write I guess. Again, sorry for not responding to your requests and/or messages, I've been busy, I hope to soon. Also there's the contributing issue of so many of them being spam messages from you guys who unknowingly have your accounts infected. So many of you do, I just hope I don't. Nah. I briefly remember something with Tom saying a while back that the spam/hack problems would be taken care of for good. Alas!
FYI, for those who know what I'm talking about, the below-mentioned album is a return to form.

Anyway, I haven't written anything really, for the last half year, not really. I'm still getting back into my normal rhythm and slowly warming up, this write isn't particularly marvelous to me, but hopefully we'll see some interesting stuff when I'm in the mood and maybe some good older ones too. The basic background of "Nine Months" is simple. I experienced something very painful and horrible for a good amount of time, an amount of time which, and this dawned on me yesterday, just happened to be exactly nine months.
Also, I feel like including the image of my original write just for kicks and giggles. Sort of emphasizing my horrific handwriting and how I really do just randomly flow and write my stuff anywhere I can. This particular write was penned on a page of poor torn Time magazine. The title of the article ripped to the side sort of makes me laugh in relation to the poem.


Nine Months
Nine months,
Nine months have passed
And when they are through
I will birth a child of
Low expectations, scorn,
Obscurity.
Nine months,
Nine months I've had
This face ripping
Chin lowering cherubim
Full of bitterness and sorry din.
So as I birth him
On a bed of romantic excuses
Loosened through a canal tearing into
Self-respect,
I wonder, will this Sanbud
Curl his tender little fetal fist
Around the world
Counting off one by one
Hope rather than woe.
Or will he choke and bite
Cynically in his amber
After-birth,
Blaming unseen and yet unknown worlds
For his lack of mirth.
 
Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently listening : American Gangster [EXPLICIT] By Jay-Z Release date: 06 November, 2007

9:20 AM - 25 Comments - 50 Kudos - Add Comment

Unfinished Poem (Unfinished Life)
Current mood: awake
Category: Writing and Poetry

I apologize if I don't respond to messages or if I haven't really paid anyone much attention or even written lately.
Just unable to.
Anyway, here's a write. Don't look too deeply into it or its meaning, it's nothing much, just a random write.


Carthago delenda est
Do you ever just seize yourself by your very skin
Hoping to tear it off and throw it away
Urged by some sense of utter madness
Into the truth of your sewage sadness
Forsooth, I did, and this I found.
I'm a scourge on my family
A spoiled spot on the State,
As they deal out solid sentences
To men locked in cages of toil and hate.
Responsible people with strength and pride
You doldrums of society that function and thrive
There is another class, call us terminal losers
Who cannot look past time's curtain, gray.
We see our path in seconds, minutes
Not years, no future
Ten minutes to feel that, two minutes to suture
Consequences with forgetful bandages
Hiding our self-afflicted casualty cancer.
One second of pleasure, two days of escape
While the lawholders try to impress their own time
With bloodied lictor's rods and crude metal spades.
Their nine to five, their twenty to life
Four years of college, eternities of marital strife.
I refuse to abide by your sensible realities
For once I pledge to take responsibility.
So, I am no victim, the sword was my own.
So, I am no human, excuse me for expecting humanity
In your bones.
I'm a terrible writer, love, and adult,
My tragedy was naught but self-imposed faults.
So, then shouldn't my end mirror that assault
That my mind already bore on my soul without halt?
Let the fist follow fear, let the medicine mimic mind,
Let the razor retort rare self-respect,
Let the body bludgeon what the brain already has.
A boy raised on history outside history class.
Reading of one day, one conqueror, one marvelous man
Timelines magically mapping each achievement and win holy
As if they occurred by mere manifest of living such stories.
Expecting my own life to reach happiness and glory
As if guided by Tacitus, Aristotle, or Livy
In conveniently kept dates, then I'll let you be privy
To November Eight
Two Thousand and Seven
I know none shall remember it
Though a few won't forget it.
To those cursing the loss of a "Sanbud"
I question why in heaven?
It was a queer and doomed endeavor
Circa Nineteen Thousand and Eighty Seven.
I barely invested my own effort in this enterprise
So forget bitter tears or mournful asides.
I wish to be forgotten
Let no flowers be planted
Let no briny waste be shed.
There are so many of us humans
Far too many for worth, or mourning the dead.
When an empty milk carton is tossed,
Dost thou shed tears?
When a broken television
Lays abandoned on the wayside,
Or a couch with far too
Many shady sports;
Do you mourn such
Sewage as you pass?
Do not.
I take responsibility.
Time to take out the trash.
I open the bin and lower myself in
Shut it tight above me
With bitter tears
That I only allow myself.
Let I be the only one
Responsible for such watery junk.
I take responsibility.
If I'm a punk,
A criminal, trash,
Irresponsible, bastard,
Inhuman, disgusting,
Nothing, worthless,
Shit, Deluded
Miserable,
Not if, I see it.
That I am
And more.
Then let me solve this
As befitting my worth and rank.
For once,
Let me take out the trash.
For once,
I'm taking responsibility...
And so said he.
(Oh and remember to return my history books
Don't want no library fees).


Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently reading : Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors By James Jr Reston Release date: 10 October, 2006

8:10 PM - 17 Comments - 36 Kudos - Add Comment

The Fog Within Becomes The Fog Without
Current mood: blah
Category: Writing and Poetry

Sorry for not really being around lately, but I've been busy and full of ennui as I often tend to be. I can't really concentrate or care enough to write or use MySpace or do anything like that. So sorry if I'm late with responses to your messages or friend requests or sometimes don't even respond. Can't muster the interest or leave the ever-present sea of ennui I'm immersed in.
Do check out what I'm Currently Reading, Tom Holland is great, I love his books. Rubicon just enrages me and makes me feel pity for people like Cato and Cicero while wanting to punch Caesar in the face for being so horrible and pathetic

Anyway, I wrote this sudden poem on a morning in Orange County laden with thick and impenetrable fog, a weather condition we rarely receive. For me it was profoundly beautiful.
So I suddenly wrote a this poem, in a quick and unedited flow of randomly inspired seconds as always.



The Fog Within Becomes The Fog Without
Perceptions dulled and thawed by it
A sheet of airborne, shying sleet.
The embracing fog cushions
The trembling puppy legs and stutters of life.
Responsibility, recognizance
Stolen,
Mercifully.
As the sky unites and slowly lowers itself upon us
Like a hesitant virgin,
Street lamps once dull reminders of urban imprisonment
Become sonorous, salutary stars reminding one of
The everbrimming beauty life often masquerades as.
Time lost as the fog hides the judgmental sun
Ready to lower and raise its aid and light
To urge us futilely through day and night.
Voices without source
Songs that seem luminescent in midair.
We are all either lost ghosts or brethren
Within the fog
Both embraced and linked by that
Kind curtain of mist
Yet hidden gracefully in our pockets of white.
Life given clarity in blinding blight
Only through those occasional white seas lacking lucidity
Do we see.
We are mere ancient ships of uncertainty, floating along
Occasionally passing another straying vessel
Only to nod and pass on
Smiling silently in appreciation of our shared isolation.

 Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently reading : Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic By Tom Holland Release date: 08 March, 2005

9:08 AM - 32 Comments - 61 Kudos - Add Comment

For a Good Cause (For the Lulz)
Current mood: cold
Category: Blogging

A pretty good cause, check it out:
Save Manila Now

1:04 AM - 8 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Freedom to Forget (They Hate Our Freedom, I Bet)
Current mood: apathetic
Category: Writing and Poetry

I wrote this in like, a minute or so, just a random flow. *shrug*


The Freedom to Forget
So the towers fell, so did my wallet
Glad we're in a safer world
If that's what you'd call it
All those dead boys and girls
And we just let out
Angry shouts of "They hate our freedom"
A nation of forgetfulness as long as you feed 'em
Corporate propaganda and bullshit about seeding
Places with democracy and lovely words.
More "bang" and "boom" than "love", more action verbs
Like "shoot" and "kill", who'd think they still hold grudges
For things done decades ago, can't they forget and love us?
Mossadegh who? CIA coups what?
They attacked us because they're jealous
And they hate the way we strut!
Right? How dare any accuse complacency
Or cause and effect!
Or foreign policy that acted as a noose
On our necks.
Please, give me a drink, a little shot of Lohan
Throw in some diversions and weapon programs
Give me free cable and I'll forget it all man
I'll forget every skeleton, just kill the bad guys
This drawn curtain is a bandage on my lacerated eyes
I dare not look behind it lest I leave this homeland
Of laughter and forgettfullness, of taking faux stands
To engineer a few states and blow up some new man
Whose grandson will strap his AK and hole up a news stand.
Put up a flag, maybe throw out a prayer
Then let's go back to watching TV and throwing our fists in the air.
I find it ironic when you say "9/11, Never Forget"
All you're remembering is the pain, like a cruel mongrel whipped
Not the reason it happened, or the loss of young kids
Sent out to die to aid your freedom to forget.
If enough of them die, we can remember that day
But ignore mistakes we made, no need to heed them yet.
1948+1953+1979+1980+1990+1992+2000=9112001
2003+2004+2007= And so on it goes
Until the next date our closet swells and overflows
I'll be here forgetting with all of you, leave the past behind,
Just close the blinds, close your eyes, and don't forget to forget
Ignore the trickling words of the past, no need to heed them yet.
So in fifty years another generation can go:
"Why?! Struck by surprise! They hate our freedom, I bet!"
Indeed they hate our freedom, the freedom to forget.

 Copyright 2007 Sanbud Tehrani

Currently listening : Year Zero By Nine Inch Nails Release date: 17 April, 2007

9:08 AM - 36 Comments - 64 Kudos - Add Comment