i c a n t d e c i d e t o s l e e p

I dreamed and woke to fizzle pop and it wasn't easy
when I felt the noise all drop and silence bloomed, lingered queasy.
I fell victim to the bottomless tomorrow--

I slipped a flower in my ear and only heard machines
pumping hearts and blood and oxygen--honestly it seemed
like it might be a good idea to slip and dream away
another bottomless tomorrow, today--

My leafy tongue lay motionless in my thorny teeth
drooling puddles you could slip on if you never watched your feet
eyes glued, fixed, and blooming to the sunshine tv
you look like you've been sleeping days.

N O M O R E S I C K D A Y S

a hundred hour glasses half full and we're still fighting over cold spots on the backs of our pillows "I can't sleep, can you?"


after all the heartache sores on our hands your still checking my nails for dirt. "Quit biting your fingers."

I tied my sheets in a knot in my throat and cried all night. "I don't know what you're talking about."

I smeared the fog on the bathroom mirror and I thought I saw you standing there.

(RE:) I P O S T T H I N G S L I K E T H I S O N F A C E B O O K

I'm not team homeless bum. I'm team help them. I'm not team give them five bucks and feel better about yourself. I'm team start something.


Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Talk to them. Get them to a job center. A library. Help them better their lives. Don't try to preach to them about some God that has never given a shit about them. And don't pay for their next bottle, needle, or hit.

Give a fuck. And pray to whoever that someone gives one about you.

Cokes For Lack Of Better Cake

You don’t know it
but you sounded off your birthday
of two decades and two years
with a Coke can popping in the light
of our refrigerator door

and that made me love you more.
And think of the holes in your eyes
where the world seeps through
and translates to your brain
what makes a person a person--
what makes a person good.

It made me fold into your chest,
crumpled as the receipts on the sticky
floorboards of your car

it made me think of eyelids and sleeping
and noises we’ll never know we make

it made me love you.

So I thought of birthdays
the anniversary of the days not spent dying
the astonishment we’ve felt as a civilization for centuries
that we could inhabit the earth for so long

and so I thought of you
tiny, crumpled like me in your chest
dreaming, dying, and I wonder
what woke you up

a sound so quick, as a Coke can pop,
“Not yet.”

What kept you coming back, to have another
today? What can make a person good
except living?

P A W S B I R T H D A Y

Mony and Paw at Mardi Gras in February _______Actual paw.
_________________________________
My great grandfather just had his 83rd birthday. That's amazing to me. Paw and Mony have meant so much to me throughout my life. I wanted to visit him during the weekend, but things didn't work out.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Paw was one of the first people to convince me to write. I would write books and tape the pages together when I stayed with them, hiding them in the "secret drawer" in the couch. Paw always told me to do my best. And I've always done so because of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -

I'm going to start working on some Paw stories so I'll see how that goes and post up some things soon. :3
_________________________________

Happy birthday, Paw. <3

W O R D V O M I T

I got sleepy and thought I'd rest my eyes on something familiar. The selves we all so readily left behind, what seems like not that long ago but in some ways is a life time. I thought about how small we all felt, begging for the pens to crawl off the paper and mark our skins, edit the selves we never knew, the adults we were becoming--halfheartedly. And we all took a stab at growing. Carving into ourselves more&deeper until we realize we couldn't grow just by tearing ourselves apart. You minus comas, you minus past-tense-shifts, you minus high school. The only way we could grow was to add in jobs, to add in stress, to add in real-life-problemsolvingbullshit and deal with the things our parents still think we're too young for.

So our eyes get tired and we all blink more than the average person. And we all wander off the map to places where people don't know what vocals, visuals, or crazy art school kids are and we get scared. Or we get scary.

I feel taller, I only speak word processor. And reading all those words you said, the image clusters and the metaphors wet my lips and made the words creep out of me. And my fingers shook, really shook, and I crawled into myself and thought about crying. Because it really isn't youth until you're older. When you're there, when you're standing in that skin it's the oldest you've ever been and you feel it. You feel like you're all you're ever going to be, you feel invincible and tiny and the same time. Safe in whatever corner of high school you've stored yourself away in. But when you have to actually walk outside, and you look back--you really see what's true. You really know what happened and I see us differently than I see MTV and down town Collins. We look big. We look nearly full-screen. We embody the missing link in adolescence. We are prepared as prepared could be. And that makes me happy.

Nostalgia is youth minus youth. It's younger minus stress; hormones; parents. It's riding in the car singing American Pie. It's staying up all night writing plays in your dorm room. It's a real life cafeteria musical every day. It's what you want to see. But I'm choosing something else. When I look at you all I'm choosing more than that.

I want to see you crying on the bathroom floor, dragging your mattress in so we can sleep alone and talk and whine and tell each other everything no one ever knew except for the few friends we don't have anymore. The things you never tell boyfriends because they don't stick around. And we had to learn that the hard way.

I want to see your parents house ripped in half and you parenting your siblings 100 miles away. I want to see you succeed beyond that and force them to balls out and be proud of you. Because you're so much more beautiful when you're falling apart, only then can everyone see how strong you are. How together you're becoming despite everything. How perfect we are because of the holes drilled in us before we're old enough to know it's happening.

And it makes me want to write. It makes me want to put you all in words, in free form poetry images slipping down acrylic paper and dancing through my typewriter. But you are more words than I have fingers for. And they just aren't used to the pole-driving method of type writers. They racket of production. They're spoiled by these computer machines.

I just don't want you to fill in the memories with some nirvana high school experience that didn't exist. We did things. It was hard. But don't fill in those holes we never drilled with parts of us that don't exist. Love the people we are. The whole person. Even the people that aren't whole, even the cracks that let the light out enough for you to see the perfectly broken people we really are.

And I just want to love you. In whatever way that love can be in whatever distance has to be between us for me to, in some way, be able to appreciate and accept that you exist.

I don't edit these things. My computer sits here with blogger open until I think it's been filled enough. I just thought you should know. I'm aware I ramble.

P R O C E S S

For those of you curious, this is my writing process:

USM student:Marcus Howell, a Hattiesburg, Mississippi artist, studied studio art at Jones County Junior College, Louisiana College in Alexandria, LA, and now attends the University of Southern Miss. Howell is a senior working towards his Interdisciplinary Studies degree in Studio Art, Design, and Fashion Merchandising. His art includes vibrant colors of ink on canvas with a collection of famous iconic portraits illustrated in abstract realism. A combination of classic images, sparkling color, and loose strokes will literally “draw” you in. He also offers original framed photography with a fresh and unique outlook on life and beauty. Jennifer Bennett is a plush artistKevin the collage artistWill Brooks the pop art cubist (See about emailing or calling each of the artists:

{{}}

What made you want to be involved in SFC?Were you previously interested in comic-inspired art?Who’s your favorite superhero?How has being involved in the store benefited you?)

{{}}

What made you want to open SFC?What do you think makes SFC different than other comic book stores?What would you say to people how aren’t interested in comics (to get them to come to the store)?Do you think you would ever want to write comics or do comic-inspired art?What goals do you have for the store?Would you prefer to keep the amount of artists in your shop a smaller number or are you looking to expand on that?What can you tell me about the process that goes into choosing artists for the shop?How do you choose which comics to include in the store?What are your top selling comics so far?What’s one thing that people seem to really enjoy about your store?Are there any events in the store coming up that you think people should know about?Who is your favorite superhero?Do you think Hattiesburg needs a superhero? And if so, what would they be called and what would their powers be?What do you think comics are really made of, and could they be fried (would they be tasty?)

M Y F I R S T F E A T U R E

I'll be writing a story this week on a comic book store in downtown Hattiesburg. It's legitimately the coolest place I've ever been to in Mississippi. I'm really excited about it and I hope you guys all check it out (especially after reading my story). It's newly opened and has a really great selection of comics and comic-type things (for those of you more into the visual appeal of comics than the stories themselves). I'll actually be interviewing the owners on Thursday (and essentially writing it up then as well) so I hope to have a link up to the story on the website soon and if it goes to print I'll let you know. :)


I got an Angel single from there today and saw some really cool L O C A L art. You guys should fer sure stop by and buy some comics, or stickers, or plushies. :3


BTW, he ordered Buffy singles. I'll be back there so frequently.

Just wanted to let you all know what's up in the writing world of Ashlyn.
That's what's up.

P R I N T Z A N D P R I N T Z E S S E S

I just got back from my retreat with The Student Printz at Black Creek in Lumberton. It was so fun, we all had a lot of similar ideas and agreed on most goals and changes. It was exciting to get to know everyone and see what they had to offer the paper, I'm really anxious about writing my first story and seeing it in print. Being a part of the paper feels like such an honor. I really like the other staffers and I think Sam is going to be a really good Editor.
We had a lot of fun playing the ice breaker games and eating donuts and sandwiches. I'm so happy we get to use nice cameras and can rent recorders. I can't wait to see what my assignment is. I really hope people stay as enthusiastic as they seemed today. I was a little put off by some of the girls' attitudes towards making time for the paper and writing stories. They had very overdone (cliche') ideas and seemed kind of flippant about the whole day. I think their enthusiasm will die down as soon as real work needs to be done.
Apparently, we need to generate more interest in the Printz's website, so I'm going to try to do that. We have a Facebook and Twitter too, but they don't really use them. I wish I was in charge of social networking the Printz. I would be so ballin'. But, I'm new and a baby so I probably can't do something that cool. But, I'll try my best to use my own networking to benefit the Printz in whatever way I can. And I'll link all my stories from here so you all can click them to read them on the website. Also, comment if you ever need me to reserve a copy, we print 5,000 copies of each issue once, and they're archived on the website. But, if you want a tangible copy let me know and I can see about mailing you one. :)
I'm really excited.

I'm really sorry about last night.
I'll make it up to you.


I can't help but write when I'm that sleepy. And I was so sad. Sadder than I knew, and I just wanted to force out whatever was there. Whatever was left, scrape the bottom and just purge myself of it. But, I still couldn't. There's still so much.

Naps like maps across twin cities--
finding fingers&hands like missing suburbs.
I want to find myself in the rubble,
let me crawl back to the surface,
I can't fall if I'm sleeping in the ashes.
I can't sleep with my shoes on.

A P P L I E D

I applied to Student Printz the paper at USM.
They asked some stuff. Here's what I said.
---
After spending my past two years at Mississippi School of the Arts studying under the literary department, I have become interested in both the journalism world and the writing that accompanies it. My last summer was spent mostly at Delta State University during a program that allowed students to study arts as well as other classes, including journalism. I worked on the paper there (less of an actual paper and more of an opportunity for students of all ages to see what journalism would be like) and served as the editor-in-chief. I also spent a week last summer as a job shadow at the "News Commercial," the local paper in Collins (where I'm from). Near the end of my stay, I was surprisingly given a spot in the paper to feature one of the articles I had written just for fun. Other than the two occurrences aforementioned, I have had no experience writing journalism, though I would like to. In creative writing, however, I write mostly non-fiction personal essays that I believe would translate well into perhaps an interest column. I'm open to all positions and would love for a chance to work with The Student Printz.

Peer editing is a big part of the literary program at Mississippi School of the Arts, and during the two years spent there it becomes a craft in and of itself. Though it is a creative writing department, I worked with things other than prose and poetry such as: college essays, scholarship/contest essays, artists' statements, pamphlets, programs, and lastly The Phoenix our literary journal.
Our senior project in literary arts is to put on a "senior showcase" a reading and performance of our literary works. Students of my discipline get into groups and choose dates, venues, readers, music, set design, and create pamphlets or programs for the evening. Doing these shows not only forces us to decide which works are best for the audience, but also proves the ability of each individual to handle the pressures of planning and the issues that arise.
Other things I learned were how to arrange portfolios, write artist's statements, and meet deadlines. I feel as though these skills could make me prepared for the fast-paced world of journalism.

My junior year was a stressful time, I had to write a lot and I had to know what I wanted to write about. I had no problem writing a lot, but deciding what to write often troubled me. Going through this time I learned quickly how to feel out which things would be best for me to write, or how I should go about responding to a specific prompt, and quickly. I once took a lunch to edit my play before turning it in, decided I didn't like it, and completely rewrote the ten pages in thirty minutes. Pressure pushes me, and it's usually when my best work happens. When I have to stop trying to perfect something and thinking too hard, and actually just write, or do whatever I need to get done. At the same time, my senior show was the only one done a week in advance, so I also feel pressured to get things done in a timely manner, not necessarily at the last minute.

I tend to dwell on minor things that I feel need perfecting and overlook the entire picture. While it's not at all a bad thing to edit and rewrite time and time again, I sometimes lose hope and start over when there's only a sentence that needs unraveling. However, I feel that having a week to do a piece for the paper and having a month to write a short story are very difference and as I've mentioned in previous answers, I work best under pressure.

Since I've yet to read the paper much, I don't feel safe giving any real criticism. However, in my experience, published writing can only be better if there is more time to edit it--and I assume journalism has a bit of a deadline that doesn't allow for that sort of thing. I also would imagine that, with that knowledge, the paper would only employ editors with bionic editing abilities that supersede any spell check around.
Speaking from someone who's not been a part of the USM campus, I would suggest giving the readers what they need and want to hear. As long as the readers are happy and the paper is up to its full potential as far as writing goes, I would call that a success.

A P O L O G I Z I N

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

If I was John my hair would be so poof-tastic right now.

Well, it sort of is.

Andbutso, let me get down to it and explain myself.

Because once again to you my lovely, yes you. I am sorry.

I'm neglecting you.

I am a bad parent.

No affection

attention

advice

text messages.

Let me make it up to you.

I'll just unload.

Give you all I can.

Here it goes:

---

I'm living with Daniel which falls into

Jason left me which ties in with

I'm buying lots of things because

Daniel and I shop mostly at

Garage sales and thrift stores but I still

can't sleep

or eat properly.

But

I went to USM

for preview day

With BEBEH

it was meh.

I was sad.

I love USM, really

I met the paper

it was the only booth not filled with cheesy cheesepoo.

---

It is insane how much I want to work for the paper. Like. There are no words.

>>>Sidebar: there ARE words. There are always words. However. I'm so sleepy. Word for me this time, okay?

---

I can't put Jason in a box just yet. I just can't. And I have so much giraffe stuff now. And a new Buffy VHS box set. My life, please rationalize it.

---

W R I T E R S & S U C H

David.

---

Going to Gaga in April next year with Daniel :)

Something I've been working on a while

Snakes In The Huts In My Back Yard
Ashlyn Ervin

The day my father died I was sitting cross-legged on the tile of my kitchen floor watching my cat lick peanut butter off my shoes—wondering how the sticky mess got from my sandwich to the floor (and my shoe) yet, at the same time, really not caring. My father was in the back yard, there must have been something out there because the dogs were barking way too much for there not to be and Dad was sick of those fox’s getting after his chickens. But, I was used to that. Whenever there is ruckus outside, Sniff crawls through the ripped screen in my front door and hides between the big wooden door and the thin wooden and ripped screen door. For a cat, she acts awfully chicken, but I would never let her think that; and she really does just sit there between two doors waiting for me to hear the rustling of one door smacking the other until I come in from whatever I’m doing, namely eating a peanut butter sandwich (since Dad had polished off the jelly at breakfast the day before, not because I was ironic and only liked peanut butter), and let her in. I guess I really should have known something was up, but, again, it was something I was used to.

Snakes in the Everglades aren’t like gators in the sewer systems of New York, they’re not debatable—it’s been proven. It wasn’t, however, the kind of story (actually interesting) that my father would find interesting. So, when the lady that never blinks came on WDAM and said, “Hey, ya’ll those snakes aren’t sitting tight in Florida anymore,” and I said, “Dad, I think they’ll come here,” and he said, “Hush, girl, you always say the stupidest snakes,” and I said, “Louisiana feels a lot like Florida sometimes, and the coast feel awful close to the New Orleans, and bet those snakes are long enough to stretch across Mississippi—they’ll be here,” I knew that last part was a bit imaginative, but I also knew that I could pull a scientific formula that proved they were building shacks in our back yard and Dad would still rock holes into the hard wood floor, sit in his big chair, and tell me to hush—so I did.

I guess I heard something, I must have gotten startled and dropped my sandwich and stomped it—that’s what I keep telling Ma, though, I don’t remember what happened. I still dream about what I think I saw though, a snake, with the perfect shape of a person sitting in his middle (because snakes cannot have stomachs, they just can’t, they’re one long face and neck.) When I dream about it, I can hear Dad muffled through that skin—tight, and I wake up thinking, “How can you breath in there? Isn’t it tight? Always worried about those stupid chickens, what now, huh?” And, yeah, that last part is mean—but I just never knew why we couldn’t just buy eggs at the store.

Well, when WDAM showed up to my house, asking to interview my mom about what happened and she just couldn’t bear to get out of bed, I couldn’t bear to tell them that she wasn’t just crying over snakes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mom and I, we’ve never liked snakes—and not just the long necked kinds, the kinds that are sometimes people, and tend to wrap around married men. But, I didn’t tell them that for two weeks she’d been in bed, I just told them that I was too busy eating peanut butter off my shoe (and sharing one side with my cat) to notice. They really just wanted to see the back yard, but the cops told me and me that no matter what we couldn’t let anybody out there.

Sniff sat in my lap that whole day, and she’s the only one I told about the night before my dad died, when I heard him backing out of the drive way, when I answered his phone because I was in the kitchen getting a coke from the very back of the fridge so it might have some ice slivers in it and his phone was going crazy on the counter so I picked it up and heard a lady say, “Hurry up!” and quiet real quick when I asked who she was. I didn’t tell Mom that Dad had arranged to have Boo-Boo pick up eggs for him in the morning because he had to go make groceries and try to sell a pig somewhere far-off. I mean, of course me and Mom wouldn’t notice if a pig went missing, we didn’t count them or anything crazy, and neither did Boo-Boo. And Mom, being in bed, and Dad, being on the couch, had no knowledge of what the other was doing, or planning. And that snake, that snake just slithered away as soon as it caught me looking at it—like snakes always do, and I didn’t even think that weird, or ironic. Like everything else that day, I was just pretty used to it.

L E F T O V E R S

I'm reading Saturday. At New Student Day
I'm reading Leftovers:

I like the picture I have of you in my head: you in your kitchen, with a
spoon as tall as I am, stirring a pot as tall as you, on a stepladder so you can
reach the stove. I like thinking you will always be that Mony. Making gumbo and
serving our rations to all the family, each of us with the same number of shrimp
in our bowls.

T A B L E O F E A S Y

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Spend two years working on writing a book--

teacher is impressed you can format a table of contents.

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W H Y Y O U S H O U L D W R I T E

you can only write what you know. either you know how to make stuff up or you know how to tell the truth or you know how to research or you know how to ask questions or string words together but those words fall out of your brain and your brain, though argued by internet and MTV, is Y O U. That brain is every thought you've had and will have and might think of having and that brain is all that separates you from the next person, and doesn't every person want to be special? but how do they expect other people, just as brain-filled as them, years from now after the aforementioned brain is nothing but goo and has been eaten and turned to ashes by the inevitable monsters of the world--how does one brain expect a future brain to know it is something of tangible substance and interesting individuality if that brain has left nothing but potting soil for the tin can buildings of tomorrow? so what are these brains supposed to do, then? write down everything. the lies and the truth and the pretty and the ugly and all they'll ever be is creative non-fiction, even if they say they are the elephant of the parkinglots and the aligators of the mini vans or the monsters of the squash plots--their brains cannot lie to them, so if they think it, it must be so. And no one will ever think in the same way as someone else and writing down those thoughts is the only way we brains can roll out of our skinnyfatwhiteblackjewishatheistsame-bodies and stand up, proving we're more than our looks, our clothes, and our mothers and fathers--something that's sticky, that'll last--prove there was once a human race that ruled the internet.

B O O K E N D S, F T W

Just realized I'm just shy of 40 pages into my goal of 100 pages by May for my Mony Chronicles.

Today is a writing kind of day. Goal-- "Letter" to Mony: the first bookend to my Chronicles. Hoping it'll breech ten pages. Hoping to get that done by 11.30, it's 10.57 now. Starting at about 2 I hope to start my last bookend, a second letter to Mony: a sort of twin to the first. Also breeching ten pages. If I could get twenty pages today I would be quite happy.

There isn't going to be much B L O G G I N G today.