2011.
Two Poems About Mice
27.10.2009
Today I walked into my kitchen
and saw a mouse in the sink
he sat on the drain, maybe because the sink is white and
the drain was the closest to his color and he was trying to hide there.
I put a cup on him so he couldn’t run away
then I stood and thought for a while
looked at him paw the sides
clear cup with a gray mouse, a white sink with some mouse poop
The cup was easy, but what to do with a mouse under a cup?
She started to wake in the other room
would need to get ready
bathroom adjacent to the kitchen, I needed to act fast
cause having a mouse is embarrassing.
I took the cutting board from the table
slid it carefully under the cup
accidentally pinched the mouse’s tail and it squealed, made me frown
shuffled to the bathroom and opened the cup into
the toilet
I saw the mouse swim for a moment before I closed the lid and flushed
The mouse went away
There is still some mouse poop in my kitchen.
29.10.2009
Today in the bathroom
there was a new mouse stuck in the tub
scrambling against the white tub walls
but the walls were too slippery for mousefeet.
I was running late and needed a shower
put a cup on the mouse
watched him as I cleaned myself
some water got under the cup and he
got a little wet, started dancing
he looked much littler then.
cutting board under the cup, I took him to the toilet
put him in and flushed
but he didn’t go down.
So I peed on him, watched him swim as my pee hit his head
golden shower mouse
flushed again, this time he went away
like the other one
A Belated Letter To Moscow
Dear Moscow,
I went to you about a month ago, and I know it’s probably a bit belated, but I wanted to let you know how I spent my time there.
I drank lots of Jaguar brand malt liquor/energy drink with other Americans. We then proceeded to get lost a lot while walking around/trying to find something we were looking for. We usually ended up finding an alternative that was twenty times better than we ever anticipated.
I went to the American embassy where I kinda met the ambassador. I had to be escorted everywhere and the Russian police check your passports before the embassy officials do. They have a nice swimming pool there. The meetings were pretty boring, though. I’m glad I’m not an American citizen living there, though. I think I’d go crazy.
Hotel room parties are always super fun, buying cakes from disgruntled ladies at corner stores is also fun. We gave Helen a sweet nickname but we forgot it almost immediately, and it still eludes us to this day.
There are way too many portraits of aristocracy in the one Tretyakov gallery. The other Tretyakov gallery had a lot of bad modern art, especially in the non-permanent exhibitions. You should make it clearer if we’re supposed to play with the radio controlled cars or not. We were afraid that one of the old ladies who mind the galleries was going to yell at us.
Seeing one old-lady-gallery-watcher aggressively on the prow was funny, especially when she would yell at little children for eating instead of yelling at the parent that was holding their hand. This became even funnier when juxtaposed with her coworker on the other side of the room who was sound asleep in her chair. I love foils.
I got to play the banjo, that’s always a plus, even if there now is somewhat embarrassing video footage of it.
Red Square is beautiful, but I don’t understand why everybody wants to stand in line for five hours to see Lenin’s preserved body. It’s pretty creepy to look at a dead guy. Most Russians seem to agree with me.
I’ve figured out your metro system. It’s a good one. I like the really long escalators. A lot of them make me think about space stations.
Visiting children in elementary schools is heartwarming, especially when they practice their English on you.
All of the old ladies selling things at subway entrances in a sort of slipshod flea market form is rather funny, until you learn that they are doing that because they invested their life savings in these products and they really have no other means of survival. Then it’s sad.
The fact that people can still smoke in hotel lobbies makes me think of movies with people smoking in hotel lobbies. Usually, they are black and white.
Your hotel receptionists are pretty and extremely helpful. They way they react when given flowers (even though they were given to us in the first place) is magical. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone tear up with surprise/confusion/happiness.
I was the last one to leave, so I got to ride with some folks to the airport I hadn’t seen since I arrived in Russia. I almost got nostalgic, it was where I first set foot here two point nine months ago. I then got to ride back to the hotel and then to the other airport. I feel like I covered a lot of ground.
Yours,
Keith Birthday
I </3 u blogging.
Back when I didn’t have internet in my apartment, I blamed my non-blogginess on that fact.
Now that I do have internet in my apartment. I realized that maybe I don’t want to do so much blogging anymore, I end up feeling like I’m trying to hard to sell my personal underdeveloped writing style on the internet. Feel like an ego-oriented person.
I really don’t think anyone reads this/takes it seriously except my mom/dad who probably love my blog unconditionally like they’re supposed to because they try to be involved/supportive/loving parents.
I really think that blogs are like oral tradition of the 21st century, except that your legacy can live on without you having done anything interesting/important and no one actually has to pay attention to it. Makes me feel as though the competition for lasting social importance is more difficult than ever because there is so much ‘crappy blogging’ in the cyberzone. How are you supposed to know if your blogging is good or not? I should write my senator and propose a new law requiring a license to blog, where you have to take classes/meet an instructor/have a decent WPM/have social skills.
