Every year I try to figure out whether Christmas is the greatest day of the year or the absolute worst. I mean, you spend all that time anticipating, hanging lights, decorating trees, baking cookies, wrapping gifts, and hoping your loved ones like the presents you’ve bought them. And after all that work — after the food’s been eaten, the gifts have been unwrapped, and the tree sheds its needles — what are you left with? The guilt of eating too much, spending too much money, and standing in too many lines to return all the bullshit that doesn’t fit or doesn’t work. What’s more, folks like me don’t get the week off. I mean, here it is Monday, three days after Christmas and three days before New Year’s Eve, and sure enough I’m back at my desk, typing, blowing off my actual work and awake all too early. One of these years I think I might have to go out of the country for Christmas, maybe take a vacation to someplace tropical and give the finger to the rest of the world. I mean, since I can’t cancel Christmas for the rest of you, and I can’t make up my mind as to whether or not I love or hate it, avoiding it altogether might be the proper choice. Also, on Arbor Day.

This installment of haikus covers Monday, December 21 through Sunday, December 27, reflecting upon the beauty of Monday morning, insomnia, Rachael Ray, Christmas, booze, and the world of cliche. As always, you can find this collection here every Monday, or go on over and subscribe to my Twitter feed (@CousinBrandon or www.twitter.com/cousinbrandon). You want to get me a belated Hannukah/Christmas gift? By all means, subscribe, read, follow and everything else. That, or booze. Your choice.

My Life Is On Repeat Haiku (December 21, 2009)

It’s mornings like these
that remind me how much I
hate mornings like these.

My Insomnia as Metaphor Haiku (December 22, 2009)

I am to sleeping
as Rachael Ray is to life:
a talentless fuck.

What to Get for the Guy Who Had Nothing Haiku (December 23, 2009)

Christmas makes me stop
and wonder what Jesus gets
for Christmas. Nikes?

A Reflection On the Holiday Season Haiku (December 24, 2009)

So this is Christmas
Eve, huh? Feels more like Summer’s
Eve, minus fresh scent.

What I Got For Christmas (Set to the “12 Days of Xmas”) Haiku (December 25, 2009)

Three cups of coffee,
two fucking cats and a house
that smells of cat pee.

The Following Morning Haiku (December 26, 2009)

Attention, Science:
“Morning After Christmas” Pill.
Best stocking stuffer.

Cliche and Irony Go Hand-In-Hand Haiku (December 27, 2009)

At the end of the
day, I still hate the phrase “At
the end of the day.”

Well, that’ll do it for this installment of Twitter haiku. Until next time, have at it, you vultures!

BD

Perhaps this week’s entry isn’t necessarily holiday-based, but it somehow felt appropriate to me. This was the first poem I wrote in grad school that began to define my voice. That is, I was in my third semester of grad school when I wrote it, and it was the first time I felt that I’d managed to capture not only who I was as a poet, but who I wanted to be. When I started grad school, I was still writing mostly prose poems – that is, poems that read more like paragraphs. They were incredibly dense and abandoned the line break. I submitted several to my first-semester workshop instructor, Stephen Dobyns, an unbelievable poet and writer of fiction. He gave me some incredible feedback, but began to help me to think differently about form. The following semester I studied under Bill Knott. In fact, I took both a workshop with him as well as a class called “Forms,” which was strictly about writing poetry in every form under the sun. While both classes were beneficial, it was Bill’s curmudgeony insistence that I abandon anecdote that made the most sense to me. What does that mean?

Okay, Bill Knott was hell-bent on asking “Who cares?” That is, it wasn’t enough for a poem to recount a personal event. There needed to be something larger at stake. Sure, this was something I knew subconsciously, in that my favorite poems were saying something more than what was on the page. And, no, not just in the subtext. What I mean is that those favorite poems of mine risked something, and exposed a much greater truth or approached a greater importance than merely recounting an “anecdote.” So by the time my third semester rolled around and I was once again studying under Bill, I finally understood just what in the hell he was talking about. It was like all of sudden it made perfect sense to me. Granted, this approach or “lesson” doesn’t apply to every poem; but, for someone like me who writes almost nothing but narrative work, it was spot-on.

With that, this week’s poem, written in the Fall of 2002, became the opening poem in my MFA thesis, Who Would You Be? It went through several revisions before emerging as what follows. Since then, I have revised it further, but this is as it appeared in my actual thesis. Also, I chose this poem this week for a friend who’s going through a rough patch, who after first reading it told me it “made her heart pang.”

Chopsticks

At five I made my single father watch me
perfect chopsticks, plucking whole

rock shrimp from the plate of lo-mein
like an old pro. Holding those slender

splinters between my thumb and index
finger like miniature stilts was something

to see: all control and balance.
How quickly I mastered them, exhausted

my father with approval that I didn’t
know was required. Who wouldn’t want

to see their youngest conquer centuries-
worth of tradition in a single sitting? What kind

of father? I shot my right arm into the air,
freeze-framing those sticks in my crooked

hand like a how-to poster. Look,
I demanded. It’s simple. My father’s

slight smile was a blessing then, a thumbs-
up or congratulations. But leaning over

that box of take-out just yesterday, plunging
chopsticks into a bed of sesame shrimp

like two exacting spears, I remembered it:
his head-flinch that wasn’t quite a nod,

his smile without teeth. It wasn’t approval
or love that barely crossed his face, but more

like disdain, mock-enthusiasm for a five-year old
hungry for attention. More than twenty

years later, I can still see him there, slumped,
unshaven, grip knuckling around that brown

bottle of beer as if it were the last he’d ever have:
my wifeless father hitched to his mother-

less child, the two of us digging around for
something with only each other for balance.

BD

Today we’ll be taking a look at Cousin Matt’s Best of 2003 compilation. As a special bonus, here’s how they went down, in Cousin Matt’s own words:

2003 – the year with probably my most surprising #1 of all the mixes. It’s also probably my favorite cover, overall. I suppose the back is a little jumbled – and I think it confused the shit out of people (the primary reason I went with a cleaner look the next year). But I liked the way the front worked out with the numbers.

This was also my first two-disc Best Of, and since I wasn’t writing any notes on the inside cover, I used it to make the front cover reversible. So depending on your preference, you could pick green or white.

I was picking top Albums back then, but I hadn’t yet come up with the snazzy way to post them on the cover. Thus, you get songs and only songs.

A couple notes on Cousin’ Matt’s comments. First, as you’ll see starting with his 2004 mixes, he moved to copying the layout of the Billboard charts to list his song selections. Pretty remarkable, really, considering he once again did it in Word. Second, his “snazzy way to post them on the cover” also begins with his 2004 mixes, so this will all make sense in the near future.

As Cousin Matt points out above, a surprising #1 indeed. The question, really, is whether or not it still holds up, or if it’s now kind of annoying and doomed to be on one of those compilations advertised on television, nestled next to nuggets like “Closing Time” and “Stacy’s Mom.” (Oh, shit. Sorry about that, CM, but I never liked “Stacy’s Mom.”) Don’t get me wrong; his #1 was on my 2003 compilation, as well. Still, even I have to question how well it holds up. Oh, well. I guess that’s the point of these mixes, right: to capture the musical zeitgeist, so to speak. Still, in the back of my mind, I’m always wondering about sustainability when I put these things together, and I often wonder how that factors into Cousin Matt’s decisions, too.

In looking over his 2003 choices, all I can say is, wow, there were a lot of really good songs available that year. Among my favorites below are four songs in particular: Need New Body’s “Show Me Your Heart,” The Unicorns’ “Les Os,” Songs: Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission,” and, of course, “No Culture Icons” by The Thermals. This last song was the first track I’d ever heard of my now beloved Thermals, and even though it is grainier and “less produced” than their current sound, it still holds up amazingly well. (And if, by the way, you do no own Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co., as well as The Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, I insist you rectify that immediately.)

As is always the case with Cousin Matt’s year-end mixes, this is a “countdown” as opposed to a compilation. (Again, Track 1, in this case, is his 32^nd favorite song of the year.)

The Best of 2003 front cover.

The Best of 2003 alternate cover.

The Best of 2003 back cover.

The Best of 2003 (Disc 1):

1. The Sea and Cake – “Four Corners”
2. Belle and Sebastian – “Step Into My Office, Baby”
3. The Exploding Hearts – “I’m a Pretender”
4. The Delgados – “All You Need is Hate”
5. The Fire Theft – “Summertime”
6. The Darkness – “Givin’ Up”
7. Fountains of Wayne – “Stacy’s Mom”
8. Wheat – “Closer to Mercury”
9. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
10. Ween – “I Don’t Want It”
11. The New Pornographers – “Miss Teen Wordpower”
12. The Oranges Band – “OK Apartment”
13. Absinthe Blind – “Shields”
14. Single Frame – “Post Daydream Forecast Endeavor”
15. The Mars Volta – “Roulette Dares (The Haunt of)”
16. The Wrens – “Everybody Choose Sides”

The Best of 2003 (Disc 2):

1. The Thermals – “No Culture Icons”
2. Summer at Shatter Creek – “Home for the Holidays”
3. The Kingsbury Manx – “Pelz Komet”
4. The Decemberists – “Billy Liar”
5. The Rapture – “Echoes”
6. Broken Social Scene – “Almost Crimes”
7. Radiohead – “A Wolf at the Door”
8. My Morning Jacket – “Dancefloors”
9. Guided By Voices – “Secret Star”
10. Stephen Malkmus – “Dynamic Calories”
11. TV on the Radio – “Staring at the Sun”
12. Need New Body – “Show Me Your Heart”
13. The Unicorns – “Les Os”
14. The Shins – “Saint Simon”
15. Songs: Ohia – “Farewell Transmission”
16. Outkast – “Hey Ya!”

Next up, obviously, is 2004 in all its glory. And, once again, my Best of 2009 CDs be posted soon enough for your listening pleasure.

Until next time, have at it, you vultures!

BD 

Can you believe that lazy bitch hasn’t changed her sign for days?

So, Ms. Snell, you’re sticking with this one for the holidays, eh? I mean, I get it; it’s on the nose. But perhaps too on the nose. What’s more, I’m surprised at you. Every day it seems you take the time to alternate signs for the good people of Harrisburg, and here it is the holiday season – the one time I finally decided to share your riches with the world – and this is how you repay me? No wonder I despise you. Merry Christmas to you, too, fucker!

Karen’s yard. Walnut Street, Harrisburg. December 24, 2009.

No time stamp today, as I’m using the same photo from a few days ago. All I can say, dear readers, is that she owes us. She owes you! So, even if she fails to change her sign tomorrow for JC’s big day, I’ll bring you the occasional Ms. Snell sign now and then, just so you get a taste of what she’s really all about. That brand of crazy just can’t go unnoticed.

Until tomorrow, have at it, you vultures!

BD

Another day, another collection of Cousin Matt’s year-end CDs. At least 2002 was a year I did, in fact, make mixes of my own. What’s more, I wrote about them here, and even included a write-up of my favorite records of 2002 here. So, you know, there’s that.

In reviewing Cousin Matt’s mix below (which, by the way, would be his final single-disc year-end mix), it’s astounding that two bands in particular aren’t featured: Wilco and …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. It’s not astounding in the sense that he’s a huge fan of both bands; rather, those were two of the bands whose 2002 releases – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Source Tags and Codes, respectively – garnered perfect scores of 10.0 from Pitchfork. In fact, in reviewing Cousin Matt’s Top 20 below, I realize that only 6 of the songs come from records that made my Top 20 Albums of 2002 list (Sigur Ros, Enon, Secret Machines, The Flaming Lips, Spoon and Interpol). Crazy, really, in that he and I have always had similar taste, yet when we disagree we really disagree.

As is always the case with Cousin Matt’s year-end mixes, this is a “countdown” as opposed to a compilation. (Again, Track 1 is his 20^th favorite song of the year.) The other thing I’m now noticing about his selections below is that four of my top five records of the year are nowhere to be found on this list. What gives, sir?

The Best of 2002 front cover.

The Best of 2002 back cover.

The Best of 2002:

1. Sigur Ros – “Untitled #1”
2. Soundtrack of Our Lives – “The Flood”
3. Pretty Girls Make Graves – “By the Throat”
4. Rye Coalition – “Switchblade Sister: One Tough Nun”
5. Enon – “Sold”
6. My Morning Jacket – “Sweetheart”
7. Secret Machines – “Breathe”
8. Hot Hot Heat – “Aveda”
9. Elk City – “Indiana”
10. Damien Jurado and Gathered in Song – “Dancing”
11. Ben Kweller – “Harriet’s Got a Gun”
12. Liars – “Loose Nuts on the Velodrome”
13. The Flaming Lips – “Fight Test”
14. Sleater-Kinney – “Light Rail Coyote”
15. The Ghost – “Red Slippers, Red Wheels”
16. Guided By Voices – “Christian Animation Torch Carriers”
17. Arlo – “Temperature”
18. Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows”
19. Spoon – “The Way We Get By”
20. Interpol – “The New”

So, that’ll do it for 2002. Next we’ll have his 2003 mixes, which features Cousin Matt’s first foray into two CDs worth of music. Again, my Best of 2009 CDs will be along soon enough, including artwork, links and all kinds of fun shit.

Until next time, have at it, you vultures!

BD