"A medium made only of words does'nt impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so." -Roger Ebert

I am afraid for our future generation when this great nation of ours breeds fear instead of tolerance, violence instead of peace, hate instead of love. Ignorance of a thing does not mean you must fear it. This is especially true when it pertains to a third of the world's people.

Dear Texas, Really? You want to write civil rights, slavery, separation of church and state, and frickin' Thomas Jefferson out of our history books? Listen, I'm certain that your entire state is NOT populated by backwater hicks, as evidenced by the location of my beautiful sister and niece; so stop assuming America is full of gun-and-god-loving capitalist Neocrats. Love, This Guy. http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/16/211238/Texas-Schools-Board-Rewriting-US-History http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/12/182223/Texas-Textbooks-Battle-Is-Actually-an-American-War

"It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: 'marriage.' You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car; I didn't gay park it" -Liz Feldman

Acceptance

Skidding down the tracks
at fifty miles per hour,
bile crawling up my
throat vexing the interstate
hexing the interstitial highway.

The blue sky is a
far cry from the black cloud
hung above my head,
and me without my umbrella.

Maybe metaphors are useless.
I just want to break something.
Too bad my bookbag is weighed down
with tissue and used toilet paper.
There's a time where I want to say
I'm sorry, or
I forgive you, or
I wish this could have turned out differently.
There's a time where all the words
built up around our little brittle
brick walls could have poured in
from a cement truck,
but those fucking union workers were on break
drinking lattes from the trendy joint on the corner.

Besides, you just handed me the keys.
Said "Have a nice life."

That was weeks ago.

I careen down the 42nd Street river,
the downpour harder than my cock during a
spectacular blowjob, and I slide past the vendors
offering soup for the soul, past the tourists
gobbling the city for the last time, past the map givers,
past the guy selling bus rides, past the fliers
advertising commerce or shame (or both), past the comedy shows
where nothing is funny and everyone laughs.

My eyes scream in monochrome.
The devil has half its job done,
just waits for me to place
my other hand to the stove.

But I still forgive you.



Acceptance by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

An Imaginary Conversation With My Girlfriend

The urinals at work are awful.
They comprise some of the
worst design choices I have
ever witnessed or been privy to.
The thing is 'V'-shaped, which
would be OK in most situations, but
is made at such a severe angle that
the backsplash returns
a full stream right on your pants.

Every time I use it I can
see the droplets spring forth from the porcelain
with such force it's everything
I can do to dodge them while
still maintaining a respectable distance
from the stall. My
feet must part an extra foot
at an equally acute angle as the urinal.

The floor wets itself every
time, as a nod to its own design flaws.
God forbid I strike the
dome-shaped drain with my pee-stream --
it guffaws as it throws yellow
drops straight at my face.

The pink sterile smelling cakes
are just more obstacles to traverse.
Ultimately, I have two choices - constant
vigilance to protect my shoes,
or the toilet stool.

I tell you this
because you listen.
I wish I had a story about
some incredible sale I made,
or how my
coworker is having lunch
with Tommy Lee Jones tomorrow. But
my day isn't fraught
with interesting goings-on.

Nay, it's the urinals or silence.

In conclusion, my pants stayed dry today.


An Imaginary Conversation With My Girlfriend by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Name Calling

You fat, ugly cunt.

You waste of skin, you
harried and unrepentant bitch. You filthy
piece of humanity, you poor,
snobbed misguided
form, you sincerely large pile of saggy tits
and loose pussy, you callous-handed harbinger of pain
and suffering.

You immature half of a person,
you child, you
indescribably bad liar, you cavorting slut, you
sad excuse for a woman, you undesirable piece
of female genitalia, you reason men turn gay.

You paunch of disgust and reverb, you mannish hen, you
sorry grub of musical talent, you infinitesimally
intelligent sow, you beady-eyed con artist,
you slow-witted wonder of molecules, you attention-
seeking thrill rat, you drug-addled
veil of sycophantic maina.

You hypocritical mass of hysterics.



I used to love you.


Name Calling by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The 100th Post.

Is boring. Move on to the next one please.

Oh, and be good, or be good at it.

Endless

end-

-less

like God stuck a turkey baster in the middle of the color wheel and spun them just for me just like every time i get nauseated with this giddy charm like i'm 13 and the babysitter just winked at me like i was just in the way of that goddamned cherub's line of sight and i was going like 95 down the tunnel of love smoking a fag and swiggin' on the old beam like that punch drunk love kind of crazy like i might go insane from looking too long at them.

end-like-an-afternoon-of-held-breaths-and-long-sighs-and-quickened-pulse-less

(and they had to be brown)



Endless by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

- bademailname

Pipe Dream

envelop
me.

beckon, waste me away to your corner.
Coil,
spring.

cut,
lash.
Tongue whip me submissive;
breathe fire and seal fates.

crush fear.
I’ll love you forever.


Pipe Dream by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This was rewritten from another piece I believe I've already posted. Much better this way.

- bademailname

My Life Without Underwear: Nearing Completion

I have one, maybe two more rounds of quick editing on my upcoming book, My Life Without Underwear, before the final publishing authorization is made. It's almost time to announce a publication date! Should there be a release party, and if so, where should it be held? Would New York City open its arms to yet another contemporary poet, or do I return to Virginia Beach, VA where my work originally took on its shape?

There's plenty of time to make a decision.

- bademailname

Addendum to May 13 Post (Google Analytics)

I also wanted to mention that I was right; a rare occurrence. My post dated May 13 that was mostly flame-bait succeeded in netting me the most visitors to date. Woohoo!

According to the theory of obtaining a thousand true fans: One down, only 999 to go.

New York Living On The Cheap: Fuggetaboudit

And so, in my panic at realizing it has been nearly ten days since my last post, I would just like to submit that I finally succumbed to the truism that NYC is the single most expensive place to live in the world.

Gas was $4.13 at the station nearest me, last time I checked. I drove a handful of times over the last few weeks, and only then to pick up/drop off my girlfriend. Thankfully, I can get nearly anywhere in the five boroughs for $2.00 (thank you, Metrocard). The food is incredible here, and sometimes incredibly expensive. I found several electronics stores in the city that mark everything up by 50-80% from original retail. (C'mon, an iPhone for $1329.99?! Are you effin' nuts?)

My unemployment insurance barely covers my monthlies, and leaves me with virtually zero spending cash. Any poetry readers care to donate to the cause of my livelyhood?

To boot, I've been sulking, not writing. It may be a cop-out, but it's the only excuse I have left to hold.

By and Large, though, I maintain optimistic and vigilant in my search for a life here.

- bademailname

Prickdom and Popularity: Directly Proportional.

I feel a rage coming, but soon. Hopefully, as has happened in the past, a torrent of better-than-decent/good writing will come from it. But first, an intro/meta-spective. It's full of embellishments, some outright lies, but mostly single-mindedness to the point of chaos. It's a first step to saying what's really on my mind, so bear with me.

Has anyone else noticed that snobbery and popularity move in direct proportion on the internet?

Follow along with this stream of consciousness, if you will. I was reading "The Next Page" this morning, a holdover from something i saw yesterday but never got around to reading. They had reprinted online a small book that had been published only for a conference held in Denver. Firstly, I found that when the slideshow started, the new window had covered up most of the logo on the page out of focus ... so that the letters spelled out "NOBserver." Which led to me thinking what snobby little pricks they were for being so high-faluting that anyone would want to view 30 pages' worth of tables of contents - with barely any comment offered as to why these specific TOCs were chosen (one small introductory page about five paragraphs deep). What's more, why are 50% of the picks all design books? Surely there's a designer that made better choices for a 13th edition of The Great Gatsby than did some design grad's senior thesis. To boot, nearly half of the design "choices" were identical to one another. Now, I realize I'm no graphic design student, but I do have two eyes and a bit of logic. Besides the stylistic choice to columnize the page numbers, or perhaps a single or double-space decision, there is little else to discern between two-thirds of the presented TOCs.

Which got me thinking that, most of the time, the most severe pricks on the internet are also the most popular figureheads: Steve Jobs, John C. Dvorak, the entire crew at b0ingb0ing - all snobbery, and yet somehow all incredibly loved for their ability to spew vitriol and scathe.

It's a given that none of the aforementioned characters wants to be a snob, (except perhaps Dvorak or Jardin), but they all seem to occasionally fall into the same pit traps as any other writer worth their salt. The motto of news agencies the world over is "If it bleeds it leads;" A more stringent rule of the internet is "If it causes emotional distress to at least one person besides the writer, post it." Web writers have long known that the stake the internet has on our psyches is one of emotional needs, and very personal; compared to the wide, sweeping lifelessness of the printed word, or the decadent past tense of video. The latter two mediums have conditioned us to feel nothing unless it is immediate. Therefore, the internet is the best source of cultural emotional temperatures, while TV, magazines and newspapers strive to reiterate our boundaries.

What's more, I LIKE Xeni, Cory, Mark, and all the other peeps at b0ingb0ing. I read that site every damn day, and I love most of the things they put in their repository. So, why am I belittling the BB gang? Simple, they are easy targets, and I myself am falling into the trap of causing emotional distress for the sake of popularity. I'm a little jealous of their fame, a little peeved that they consider themselves so hip as to be above and beyond the culture fashionistas, a little disappointed they don't post my suggestions.

In my building hatred for people I've never met, I seem to be storing it all in the pit of my stomach. Either this will be my own claim to fame when it is finally released, or it will be my downfall as it consumes me. In any case, I bet a gazillion dollars that I get more reads on this post than any before it.

Using the Skyfire beta ...

... to write this post. So far, it has been a pretty slick ride. even using EDGE it's fast (enough) to keep me from going crazy; it fortunately does not harken back to the dial-up days.

Then again, it doesn't like zooming-in on pages with rich content. Myspace does OK until you hit a friend's page that contains so much brik-a-brak you can't stand viewing it on any browser - mobile or otherwise. Sites like YouTube and Break.com may as well not have a place here, since they first have to render on a remote server before hitting your winmo phone. Video barely runs a frame per second while the audio whittles away blithely.

Strange that I haven't posted any creative works lately. It's not that I've run out of ideas - quite the opposite actually. I have a glut of ideas sitting in my head, all fighting for a little focus. It's that I can't seem to pick one idea without all the others entering my consciousness and bitch-slapping me back into a confused schizophrenia.

But that's for another time.

Skyfire is under beta now, for Windows Mobile 5 and up.

Black Coffin

OK, Sherman, set the wayback machine for 2001, when I decided that my poetry didn't entirely suck.


This:
This is an aggregation.
An amalgamation.
A congregation,
A conglomeration, an estimation of the
trepidation.
You:
You are an imbecility.
A facility for the anti-
amiability. Amicability.
It becomes:
A Disastorability for
Brandability. To Intractability.
So let us have:
Insinuation. Insulation for our
Nation of Calculation, Recalcitration, Fornication.
We:
As a people.
As a person.
As a whole being.
Insipid Insipid Insipid.
Stupid uneducated no effect having promiscuous
silly little worms of a blood beating fuck-up as
a person.
Annihilation.
Infarcication.
Truncation.
We die:
We cough sputter weep for our forefathers cry
for our descendants and all of us I mean
Every
Fucking
One of us
lets go of this too real world to
Meet the not too calm and all
too cold world of a
Nailed
Down
Black
Lacquer
Coffin
DEAD.
Amen, brother.
A-fuckin-men.


Black Coffin by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Alltop lists bademailname under Books!

It wasn't precisely what I was hoping for, but what on Earth is? Alltop was kind enough to list this blog under their Culture > Books category. Triple Huzzah! Yes, it's at the very bottom, because I get very few clicks by anyone not directly related to me; but it's there in technicolored intarweb goodness!

Now, to catch up on that whole creative process thingy I've been missing out on since my move.

Link

Also, My Book -

- "My Life Without Underwear" is being published verr verr soon, by the verr verr kind brothers and sisters at San Francisco Bay Press. It will be a retelling of the original chapbook (which is still available, by the way. Hinthint, winkwink, nudgenudge.) along with some newer material; much like ole' Whitman did with Leaves of Grass. I don't mean to compare my work to his, I wouldn't hold a match - just that he also constantly revamped his original work.

Anyway, be on the lookout here, on Amazon, or San Francisco Bay Press.

bademailname. now in NYC flavor

I moved to NYC over last weekend, and today marks the first day of teh internet. Huzzah! More postings to come in short order.

1k Competition Entry (b0ingb0ing Gadgets)

"Today on the NewYou.com hour our guest is scientist, author - and until a recent press release, recluse - Doctor Joeseph Veriton. Thank you for coming on our show."

"I'm delighted to be here, thank you for having me."

"Doctor Veriton, how did you manage to encode an entire human genome into a single kilobyte?"

"The short answer is compression. The long answer is I didn't; the DNA did."

"Could you describe for us the theory behind it?"

"Sure. DNA has four ingredients, and those ingredients are mapped in a series in order to create the infamous double helix. What happens is: incredibly complex patterns begin to emerge, so complex that we can't see them -- but protein-based computers can, because they contain many if not all the same patterns, but in a different order. We don't encode the genome, we encode the patterns. The protein can 'unzip' the pattern, using itself as a sort of template."

"And what is your proof, doctor?"

With a nod, three more Doctors Veriton walked on, stage right.


This work by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Link to Contest