Make Checks Payable to Yourself

Make Checks Payable To ______

Please make checks payable to:

Make Checks Out To, no

Just make checks payable. 

Do you understand? 

This is your word.

You're all worthless, all of you!

Be a man. Be men! 

Make checks payable. 

-Citron

the hipster song

They said hipsters wore plaid with rolled-up sleeves
and listened to folk-punk music. 
I guess then that you look at me
and say "hey what a loser" cause
I guess that I'm a hipster when
it comes to fashion and kazoo
but I sure hope I don't fit in
when judging me by attitude.
A guy on some lit mag day blog
Said nobody can ever write
that writing's really growing up
with laptops and coffee at night
well the hipsters are all writers then
but guess what about me? 

I go to bed right before ten

and I can't stand the taste of coffee
but I'll write in the morning when
the sun is turned on in my room
and maybe I will start a brand new
group of brand new attitudes
cause urban is just white/rich now
and anyway who wants to be
in any kind of labeled group or

own a large flat-screen TV. 

Though I know you hate rhyming I
didn't write this ironically. 

Maybe it's time to go to bed

or go get some more coffee. 

-Citron

The chair rail

The paper chair rail is much like a tapestry I once saw in the basement

of a yellowed college's history department. 
Then, like now, I was waiting to go on stage. 

In my seventeen year residence of this bedroom

I have painted over most of it

the hot pink border has yellowed

and the flowers have curled mid-flight

just as they would if they were not printed by a large machine

wherever wallpaper is printed. 

Likewise, the men were neither sewn in nor were they men. 

Just a history lesson-- from a hope

waiting to go on stage

from a band of heroes to

stretched along the corridor of a yellowed basement

a history lesson.

-Citron

those lazy kids

no, here is the problem with The Internet Age

mom, it's not because we all sit in dark corners,

like vampires,
and self-promotion
its because we're all so

hopeless. 

a true breath in a hurricaine matters nothing.

i stopped spell checking my letters
its not like people care when they read them
lotslotslotslotslotslotslotslotslotslotslots
and mine isn't that important anyway.
i can make friends wherever i want.
and like the vegetables you didn't want to eat in the sixties,
they just aren't as cool anymore. 

The Internet Age doesn't pay a dime

for a movie cause our eyes hurt

and real like looks flat anyway.

old people market 3D but eight bucks,

but practicing the guitar

to put on a YouTube with over a billion videos now!

to be worthless

is just not worth it.

-Citron

Neopets

Brother, 8, hours a day

a fictional magic life web site for children

which I used to play on as well.  I learned many wonderful things from Neopets,

like the best things are the ones you don't pay for,

figure out how to play the system because the number in the top

left corner of the screen is all you are. 

Neopoints; they are gold coins in pictures, but

the only time you see them

and how many you are is a little number

on the top left corner of the screen. 

You get paid to adopt and create the cute, funny-looking

little creatures called Neopets, but

if the furry cartoon animal (the people are all

furry little cartoon animals in Neopia)

is not cute enough, or does not turn

quite enough tricks, or does not fit

in your favorite outfit, you can send them

to an adoption clinic and be someone else.  All of the Garrrrllls, those

cute, two-dimesnional T-Rexes, the ones who looked awesome

to eight-year-old boys on their first day

of real play but who were mean, really mean in the end,

hang out, waiting for a new user, someone to love them. 

They ran out of names, each animal gets one name

so many of them have numbers.  And they are all red.  Abandones red dinosaurs,

waiting to wash away like the unwanted past information they are. 

Neo means new after all, and this is Neopia. 

Another important lesson I learned was that of patience. 

Handouts (food, money) were limited to three a day; they are expected. 

Rather than learning to drive a car with a keyboard, I learned the tricks,

how to cheat legally and amass vast hordes of cash. 

Originally it was just a website for games,

then an economy was created to further the company's goals, now games give you money,

now you need money so you must play games like to get useless carnival toys with tickets,

or you can every day log in and collect secret handouts. 

The whole world is a rainbow by the way, and the evil looking men

are just trying to get you excited for another product-placing game,

a new one every month to keep the children,

the eight-year-olds who live off handouts,

looking towards the future. 

Yes, shouldn't we all? 

Neopets teaches good life lessons to eight-year-olds. 

Yes, shouldn't we all treat flash video games like the hardest work,

indescribably important to have availible and also to avoid? 

and queue our red T-Rexes in adoption clinics? 

We are not the webmasters.  We are the children,

the consumers of the world.  We have no voice really,

no power.  And really; who knows if the

hordes of abandoned Garrrlllls

just go away after a while? 

I have a top left corner number of my own to maintain,

after all. 

-Citron

the dormant volcano

the dormant volcano inside of me

the caged winged fanged lizard inside of me

they wish to emerge into the palid sun.  but no

no, i mustmust must suppress their willingness for a while longer.
i no longer want to look at the hideous burnt aa lava.  \
or the slimy scales of the unattractive reptile.

leave me in peace

volcano, slowly bubble down into a harmless soiled water
and lizard

suicide yourself and come not near me again.

-Pamplemousse

hourglass is cheating?

my life has always progressed
at a reasonably moderate pace.
there have been times,
when it seems to have flown by
like a dove on roller skates
and other times, when at the speed
of a dying sloth
it inches along
painfully slowly. but, these past 2 years

they are a blur! they have gone by far far too quickly.
it seems like yesterday when i was entering the jungle
and now, i am suddenly quite close to leaving it!

hourglass, you have cheated me.
these years went far far faster than the other ones
you will not get away with this!
this heist will not go
unpunished

-Pamplemousse

burnt umber

the juicy sweat of leaves
seeping into the stale
blanketed crusts of dirt
on the floor of the barely shadowed
demonized forest
at the peak of the equinox

is the color of burnt umber.

-Pamplemousse

the endless cosmos

and as i sit here in my bask
i can not help but ask
from where did i come from?
where is the birthplace of this brain?
the rustles of the trees
when there is no wind
where is this invisible breeze that
causes the great oaks and pines
to shiver in their roots.
the distant stars that peer at my
illuminated features,
are they the homeplace
of some incredible force of nature
or are they empty mirrors,
beautiful, yet soulless.

am i too a mirror??
an asoulic reflection of a greater light?

-Pamplemousse

Both puppies and scientists

He liked to squat and
with a funny L-shaped telescope
look at the stars
that twinkle always. 
Peering into the eyepiece,
the young man almost didn't notice an astronomer at his shoulder. 
(stomach muscles tightened: a long white beard: spiderwebs and snow like afghans resting on a broad mattress)
With no introduction, as astronomers require none,
"Why
does your beard twinkle?"
the astronomer was looking upwards
to twinkles in eyes
The young man followed his gaze, eyes up,
and the beard dissapeared, man with it.
To soggy grass: 
"But you never answered my-"
he rubbed scratchy underside of his jaw, wondering
whether, actually, he had.

-Citron

Pictures come from Darkrooms

On another folded up piece of paper in my desk drawer-- written during a two-person interpretive dance party to Bright Eyes records. 

Something is wrong when I want to move to Tennessee

Because I think a friend might live there

Because profile pictures are more important

than jeans or hair

Yesterday you had to stay

in Shape and Form and Style

and the songs were realer

and the movies grossed in billions

There are billions of movies

And zillions of copies

And I would fail arithmetic

And my mom would be arthritic

Either way

The sun rises and sets differently every day

But the light and dark will roll forever

And even if we destroy the atmosphere

thunder will sound regardless of a simile to drums

Spacebars are for thumbs

Polaroids of postcards

But either way the rock is hard

I asked the child why he cried

and he told me that his luck had died

and I told him mine had too

I told him a story about Jesus

and said it once was true.

And he smiled happily

And laughed and asked me

about how pictures work.

My father doesn't believe I like his music

Or I can operate a record player

But I have fingers and good taste

even though I still have hair. 

People will dance because

tomorrow our software might undoes

but our hardware will be fundamentally the same.

My friends are afraid of God

But I've never met Constantine

And the Spartans cherrypicked their theology

And the taxes have been too high since the invention of money

I'm sure when I'm an old woman

The trees wont be as green

And the kids will be bizarre

There might be a city on the moon

And I'll tell the thirty-somethings what I've seen

And they will think I'm undervalued

because they will be me soon.

But for now everything is hip and cool and new

And I'm in a tapestry

with a special thread to do

and a nice warm knot to make with you

and you have one too.

And some of us hate it and some of us are wealthy.

Things happen and don't and people are happy. 

I want to go to Australia

because a new age brought me an Australian friend.

Everything is good and bad and all songs end. 

-Citron

from geniune to archaic

The beat poets manage to be honest
and use symbols as spice.
A mouthful of ginger and rosemary is not digestible;
their point is preservation, preserve the meat
is their quest, they last forever,
Beowulf was either meat or thyme, anyway it's solid now. 
Nobody chews nothing off that dragon.
Eventually, that sentence will mean the opposite;
it will be the first to rot.

-Citron

Writing an Ode

Look, buddy, you are way too complicated for a song.
Other musicians seem to do it well, but even my flat perspective of your personality
and the reason you exist could never fit into a lyric sheet of any sort. 
You are the epitome of you.  How could I catch that? 

-Citron

decreasing worldsuck

anger, humiliation, nastiness,
death, drugs, [you], depression
homelessness, hatred, hero-worship,
[your children], evil
conform or confront.

-Citron

What is a king?

In the USA
Our kings are not magic; no,
they have mistresses.

Nobody dies so
their heaven is fancier.
We don't build their pyr

Amids our own pyres;
we all burn together
our kings are with us

Everyone hates them
So we all burn together
The question remaining--

What is a king?  Where
is my magic?  Does he have it?
If I starve to death

in a gold-crusted
pyramid, who'se heaven do
I make easier? 

-Citron

vacuum

two uus
like an inside out fabric
the seams are out of place
and the stripes are of a watery hue
the crispness of lemon
and the neatness of city windows
has been punctured and sucked out.

and transported to the dark magenta pit of the vacuum.

-Pamplemousse

the idiot

letters look so much nicer when they're upside down
an elven tongue? a secret code?
merely a hand stand
perhaps this is how i think
when all my pulsing blood rushes to my hear
as if late to a funeral.

you are so desperate, friend. no...
you are not my friend.
you are so desperate, human i dislike,
(better)
why must all the little pinpricks on the globe like you.
seeking their approval, you make yourself
a pitiful spectacle.
a stupid little rodent attempting to befriend a lion.
how naive you are! truly.
i will not help you.
sorry.
i don't really know you,.  but i know i don't like you.

i dislike people who drink their cinnamon lattes with skim milk.

-Pamplemousse

sirens

the lolling female limbs of trees
faded slightly in the breeze
the constant pulse of the shoring waves
caused the rise of a milky haze
the aquamarine waterfall hair
with the dirty seaweed wear,
the navy skin of shells
the curious voices of muffled bells
they sang upon the stormy shore
mournfully, for their empty seamen store.

the blaring horns in the middle of the night
awoke my sorry overworked cartilage
lying on the creaky rectangle of wires and fluff
i wonder what the grave emergency is
could it be a nuclear war?
my organs could turn to orangine dust
and my fingers and skin
turn to strangled blue
it could be an attack:
from strange men, with crazed retinas
smelling death like dying mountain lions
hatefully striking out
at each abandoned roadside
i hear the sirens every night
and every night i invent an exciting story
to fill the voids
of my humdrum existence.

-Pamplemousse

Cloud-gazing

I am such a small thing! 
an intermediate step in the cycle
I lay on my back,
A blade of crabgrass
points up to the clouds
like by understanding one
I can harness the sky

and uproot myself. 

-Citron

Surfing with Spock

Emotion is fluid;
I strive for sincerity
and obliqueness. 

Everybody should. 

Emotion is fluid. 

Were we all to ride

the crests of waves,
life would be a thrilling adventure.
But we have social rules for a reason
and math for a rhyme. 
Emotion is fluid. 
Without cups,
it all runs together
and drowns all but the stones
in a rainbow. 
What if we are all sincere rocks? 
"You are not solid today"

I would say very sincerely

and we would all be happy. 

Everybody should. 

-Citron

The Best Kind of Dyslexia

I blink my eyes, and the sentences jump,
again, and the ink changes color. 
I slam the book shut
and spill coffee all over it
and a new paragraph appears,
as if by magic. 
Like a treasure map in          tales,
                                     fairy
an invisible pen scratches in
new landmarks,

and time lets me

retrace the steps of the one-legged
knave, the scoundrel
who hid his heart's treasure
in a box between the lines
and glued into the binding.

-Citron

Limits

Math and history tend to agree. 
A limit is a point that should be there,
whether in the reality of graphed equations
it is or not.       In reality,
the rock of human will beats paper,
and Homer was blind.

-Citron

An Open Letter to Artemis and to the Kids Who Think Nuns are Weird.

Zeus and Leto slept together
(Or however gods produce), but

they still respected their daughter

When she never replaced Zeus.

One so close to wild nature
So fleet of foot, so sure of shot

Could find a lover, gentle teacher; yes

Artemis could find a lot.
In all her forests, soft dark caves
She joins not in the ringmarole
Why can't she line up as a slave
And do just as the animals?
Oh Artemis, I do not try
To climb Olympus.  No, in fact
I just pursue a simple life. 
No clambering.  The opposite. 
And while one day I might well be
In a white temple as you are
I'll just be praying on the peak
(Or borrowing my husband's car.) 

What you consider godly I

consider part of happy life.

So thanks-- maybe I'm not so weird.

Just quite content to shoot my deer

Without sleeping around.

-Citron

violet house

the metals of the teeth of the stairs
make me afraid
to step on the hallowed flowers that line the path
leading up to the sacred stairs
slowly rising to the ancient portal

to the violet house.

the dark inside the windows, peaking out through the panes
frighten my stomach
and the pale, dying wood on porch
encircle the building, that building
called the wise and fearsome

old violet house.

i will mar the untouched path,
and touch the untouched golden handle on the door
and i will enter the strange and mysterious air
that circulates inside the foyer

of the violet house.

-Pamplemousse

howl

you may howl of broken hearts
but he howls of broken people

the scattered remains of friends and foe alike
fill him with barbaric needs for sound

-Pamplemousse

rings

bells and chimes
the vibrate their cordial tones in my ears
the cartilage on the side of my head perks up
i want to be alone
leave me alone.

i feel drowsy and the rings do not cease
but in fact crescendo
the climax has come, they will go away
i think to myself in the midst of my headache

but no, they are persistent.
just stop, stop it i say.
my brain quakes from the noises.
my forehead shakes and belts
jerking
twitching.

the bells...
the bells....
do not cease again

-Pamplemousse

bicycle club

we ride in the park
a gang of ruffians
with baseball primary colored caps
and skinned knees
but we don't aim to please
we merely enjoy the bump of the road
as she caresses us over the pellets of rock
and the fragile little bones of trees
twigs and pebbles mean nothing to us
because this

this is the last summer.

but we like to forget that
and merely smile and clear our minds
as we look up at the sunlight fighting to catch a glimpse of us
from between the leafy green canopy
and the grass doesn't sway
because it is summer
and the wind has gone to vacation
like the clerk at the butcher shop

and i.
i ride on my bicycle
forgetting about what lies ahead
but still.
riding towards it.

-Pamplemousse

bricks

bricks spell death
bricks spell fate

they are the  foundation
the weapon

a symbol of solidity

of sinking low
slowly
pa inf  ully   slowly

into the murky depths of the sea's gaping wounds

-Pamplemousse

positive complaint.

Sometimes I think that nobody else in the world

loves other people like I do

I think you are wonderful,

truly darling and almost perfect.

Does anyone else love people like I do?

It takes so much effort,

a walk does. 

I might see someone I love

and what would I do then? 

It's so hard. 

-Citron

They forgot to tell us the point.

The clock is hooked onto the wall

and has been for fifty years,

one tick a second, every
second, except for five minutes every
three and a half
years to change the
battery is that the point of learning algebra?
she asked, feet seven
point two inches from
the square linoleum floor
tiles She landed with a double click
and began pacing across the width
of the 18x16 classroom: 

5 out of 250 fingers shot up coming with

"to answer problems,"

now every single student

(well 24/25 of the students--

one was asleep) knew

that for no reason in particular

they had to garble and fumble letters and numbers

for frustrating (180*x h/d) hours

until the symbol after one equals sign

matched the one at the end of the book.

Someone said they would need to be able to

factor trinomials

someday,

in a grocery store or on a train

because those were "real life" things they were approved to

understand. 

because that lady in heels forgot. 

The students remained dubious

(not even I write equations every time I cross a bridge)

glancing apprehensively at a dark pointlessness

that would apparently follow them

for the rest of their lives. 

-Citron

Australia

Just pick up an Austen novel
And you'll see what I mean
Everyone knows everybody
and they're all about twenty- Hey
Sure we have better medicine
and life expectancy
But they didnt know Australia
Or miss it like me. 
I don't know why you're there
I dont know why I'm here
I just know that australia
is across the world from me.
Sure all phtotographs must travel through
A darkroom and a film roll but
that art's a little different because
a piucture cannot see
And I know there wasn't facebook
in the nineteenth century
Which is why we have such prejudices in our society
And they learned to not miss people
cause of all their lost babies
So its nice I know Australia
And low child mortality
I don't know why you're there
I dont know why I'm here
I just know that australia
is across the world from me.

I'm not sure if its your birthday still
But it's the right day here for me
To sing a song about Australia
And what it means to me.

-Citron

Couplets from Myself

I found theses on a neatly folded piece of paper in a dusty corner behind a bookshelf.  I have no idea when they were written.  I usually only rhyme when I intend to set something to music, but these have nothing to do with any song I've written.  Sometimes I set down a verse or chorus for a song in my head that never works out... I'm sad I didn't finish this song, because I really like these lines. 

1.

my friends are too busy (+ nice?) to be judgemental

Criticism's rare and when it's there it's gentle

2.

If the tempo's fast people aren't too picky

That's how songwriting's different from poetry

Cool, right?

-Citron