gone.

today is goodbye.

i'm off to see the girl i love.

i'll see you next year,
friends.
family.
new jersey.
blog.
stress.

-Dan.

lovely.

who do you want to be.

allow me to set the scene.
mediocrity follows me
into a dark alley.

i struggle
as his tail rattles.
is the poison of this
snake my fate?
i ask as
his fangs shatter
the callus
that i've developed
in the battles
we've had many times before.
generations ago,
when we strived to be more.
and we weren't enamored with the allure
of being a culture or society
that never defined itself.
instead we whore ourselves,
and allow it to be so that we
are defined by everyone else.

the question I have to ask is:
if I hold myself to the standards of the masses,
what makes me different from any other
poet that passes.
i will write
and it will be like bandicoot
when it crashes
through your front door like the kool aid man.
that's me.
all these others are poets are just lemonade stands.
i refuse to bland.
i refuse to be a copy of shakespeare, twain, angelou,
and the rest of the pulitzer prize for poetry gang.
i will be dan.
no ifs or ands.
no buts.
no question marks.
today. it starts.

-Dan.

alg/trig final.

so i spent all weekend/night making a cheat sheet that we were allowed to have.

i filled that bad boy up w. everything i needed to know.

then i forgot it.

-Dan.

it's the best day ever.

said spongebob.

wise words from a decent man.

i woke up and left my house @ 722 am on saturday. the first time i've driven in anything deeper than flurries. luckily, i got caught behind snow plows on the expressway. they were slow, but my drive was safe. cws thanksgiving was good. ronick taught well. it was nice. then devotional. then practice. then food. then everyone started splitting up. me, mike, jp, ronick, dee, jr, eric, ivan, donald, jaime, and lynn stayed @ the chapel over night.

we shoveled a lot. i took 2 hours to bury lorrenas car in snow. we had 30 minute shifts to shovel, then took breaks while other guys shoveled. we set up a pretty intricate system. we had a heater to dry everyone's clothes who were on break. all night, cars would pull into the parking lot, then get stuck. then all the guys would have to gear up into their wet clothes, plastic bags over their feet, gloves, hats, hood, etc... and we would have to push the car. my back is really sore cause of the shoveling.

we ended up hanging out. talking a lot. connect 4. imagining what feljohn was doing. eating chinese food. shoveling. that was pretty much my night. i ended up sleeping @ around 2, i'm guessing.

i woke up @ around 5 something to the sight of dee beating up a tired ronick. i lol'd, but went back to sleep.

then eric woke me up, saying it was 650 when it was only 550. and so i went back to sleep.

on a side note:
all the guys smelled like cheeks, because we shoveled all night and no one showered.

i woke up. ate some breakfast. set up my offering and everything. i had to go to my car and get the shirt i was planning to wear later. i had to leave it in front of the heater for our shoveling gear for about 10 minutes, because it was frozen stiff.

i changed straight into my toga from the clothes i was wearing.

exhausted, i went upstairs and prayed for strength. i prayed that God would accept and be pleased by the sacrifices everyone had made over the last 2 days of just getting to church. over the last week of devotional prayer. over the last months of practicing our hymns. over the last year.

through God's blessing, it was a great year end thanksgiving. God was truly with us today.

Afterwards, we all ate food. changed. and played in the snow for what seemed like hours. bro marlo got stuck for like 8 years in a deep ditch. bro G.V.M. saved him. i cleaned the snow i put on lorrenas car. i had 100 snowball fights. i tackled 100 people into the snow. lorrena broke my sternum when she hit me while i was talking to carlo. dee terry tate'd feljohn. when all was said and done, i was frozen. i sat in my car for a long time. changed my clothes. turned the heat all the way up and just relaxed. it was a chance to put it all into perspective.

we just might be ok, after all.

-Dan.

i am going so raw.

watch me soy sauce wasabi with.
noble on the protools hot as H.E. double hockey sticks.

i took my first final and finished my last english essay.

what's left?
chem lab.
chem homework.
a&p final.
chem final.
trig final.

-Dan.

mw2.

mad people play this joint.

i'm trying to set up an epic NESB v. SESB when i get back from vacation.

-Dan.

30 minutes.

i finished my essay early.
it's 1:15.
i have til 1:45 to do nothing.

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

30 minutes of nothing.
30 minutes of freedom is my whole world.
who cares if my essay is in terrible quality.
i won't let my printer being a dick bother me.
done. that's all it's got to be.
my composition teachers gonna kick me a lot of heat.

but me? i'll just kick pipe dreams around.
like how i just won the lottery.
and alicia keys just came over
and whispered in my ear that she's a big fan of sodomy.
life's a road trip,
and there's a whole lot i want to see.

come with me.
to the sun rise and set from the panama canal.
the pyramids of eygpt.
the safaris of south africa.
and the northern lights.
the city of venice.
the city of paris.
the city of tokyo.
the city of new york.
i'd love to see the sights.
from there to ayers rock
to see the constellations shining bright.
we can be in all of these places today
through the poems i write.

i'll see you there tonight.
yes or no.
i'll just lay in my hammock made of banana leaves.
and let the flow take me where i got to go.
in style.
wherever the rivers crawl.
down the nile.
off niagra falls.
just to drown in great lake michigan.
i bet they'll all miss me then.
but by then, i've seen everything there is to see,
and so it ends.

i got to get ready for school.

-Dan.

ENEMY OF THE STATE:

a love story.

lupe the fiasco's new mixtape. it's pretty good.

i hate how people spell definitely 'definately' and lose 'loose'. bothered.

i'm writing an essay about cigarettes. butter.

it's going to be a long week. i'm sweating the 4 finals i'm taking this week. i have devotional every day. i have to perform straight on wednesday. but once this week is over, easy street.

off to chicago. house lights. bravo!

i wish i could blog about more meaningful things, but my head is wrapped around school and church too much for me to get all abstract and philosophical. for now, i'll keep focusing on the concrete things in my life.

all in all, life is good.

-Dan.

snow.

cws activity.
snow.
chicago, soon.
school almost done. disappointing first semester. chronic underachiever.

-Dan.

As of this point,

My grades are alright. A's and B's.

My poetry project is too cheesy, hence I have to scrap a lot of the poems. I'm trying to get used to typing grammatically correct for my project.

We have a new minister. I'm going to be seeing him pretty soon. I'm off to church.

Till next time. Cheers.

-Dan.