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Tag: Poetry
Untitled Night Club Poem
by Marc Alexander Valle
The multicolored lights. Bodies grinding and a few fist fights. Anything but actual dancing on the dance floor.
Groups of girls huddled in corners. I see young men walk over. They’re dressed in the style of ‘loose and baggy’ or ‘bad boy I don’t care what any thinks’.
The endless beat and bass. I vibe to the music just in case. They might see that I’m not like them.
The problem with the nightclub was that it was just like my head. Stimulation, movement, nonstop noise and chatter.
The problem was that I believed that these people were somehow more advanced than me. They could socialize and talk better than me.
The problem was with Beethoven. When we were in high school, these people were moving through the bases of dating. When we were in high school, I listened to the 9th for the 9th time, wondering if I would ever create something so sublime in my lifetime.
The problem was with movies. The problem was with filmmaking. The problem was with following your dreams. Which means the problem was with me.
If I could find a time machine and talk to a younger me I’d tell myself, “You have no interest in making art that slow and working as a team. Find another medium.”
The problem is that the world is incentivized to see reality in black and white, and as much as I tried to fight I could only see reality as an explosion of light.
So after one more visit to the nightclub, I decided that time would be more well spent behind a word processor. Written words always had a habit of flowing my way even when they came in cluttered.
Clubbing was no way to find myself. Clubbing was no way to find my niche. Trying to find your place with everyone in a place where everyone is trying to forget is the perfect way to lose your mind and maybe even your convictions.
Beethoven wrote that. Right after he wrote the 9th.
The Olive Tree
I had a roommate in college that couldn’t get used to it. Frank would walk in and say, “How come you’re always just looking at the wall when I come in?” I wanted to tell him that I was actually staring at the corner between the ceiling and the wall, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. I was socially inept back then, but I wasn’t that helpless.
But I would just lay there and think, feeling an immense sense of sadness about my life. I wanted to get away from who I was without losing my heart, my mind, and my beliefs. Daydreaming provided a drug-free buffer from a world that didn’t get me but still couldn’t get rid of me.
It really seemed to bother Frank though. It was the way he’d say it. Not with malice, but not jokingly either. Like he’d caught someone smelling their own underwear. In time, whenever I heard him approaching the door, I’d sit up and find something to do in order to look occupied. It was like working a minimum-wage job and hearing the boss’s keys jangling around the corner.
I still do it today when I hear Yvonne walking upstairs yet she’s one of the few people who’s ever understood me. It’s another little complex of mine that I’ve picked up like a common cold, and I don’t see it leaving my body anytime soon.
It takes love and it takes guts to undo what’s been done by an idiot. But we only have less than a lifetime to undo it. And there’s no shortage of idiots.
Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc by Marc Alexander Valle
One of my earliest memories of your grandmother is learning how to spell words. She would draw a picture and write the word beneath it. I asked her multiple times to run this lesson for me, and every time she did do it for me, she’d place a cup of juice with Vienna Fingers on the kitchen table by my side.
There was something about a visual representation of an idea that blew my mind. I’d ask her to draw different words to see what they look like. By then, I’d seen every one of those objects in artistic depictions, but there was something magical about your grandmother doing it before my eyes. She knew the world in a way that I couldn’t yet process, and the drawings solidified her power in my mind.
Sometimes I swear I can feel abstract ideas as tangibly as I can feel the keys on this computer. I can perceive their texture and their weight. Sometimes I can see the cost of manifesting them into the world, and sometimes I can see their consequences. This phenomenon has fueled my art and maybe my humanity.
I’m sure there’s an earlier memory of your grandmother somewhere in my unconscious. I’ll keep it there until it needs to be replaced, and I’ll keep the memory from you until something more pressing needs to be said. I’ve learned that it’s better to see loved ones at their greatest moment if you can help it. For everything else, there’s Vienna Fingers and juice.
by Marc Alexander Valle
It’s Always in the Corners (Latest Draft)
I let him hit me. Not punch me and not “I let him” as in “Sure! Go ahead and hit me” but I let him hit me. He’d push my head with an open hand. I told him to stop, but he didn’t. He’d hit me more than I’d like to admit, and sometimes I even told myself we were really friends.
Some time ago, I started to believe that it began in Algebra class, and that I was Tourette’s-and-facial-tic-free until I sat in front of Axel Sidezski that sophomore year of high school. I don’t remember having or feeling the tics before then, and for years I felt shame for knowing that I let him do that. It took many more years to begin to understand why I did.
I googled searched Axel the other day, asking two questions: Is he still the same? And is he doing better than I am? I searched for 10 minutes, and I only found white-page profiles of other Axels. Nowhere could I find that parted, reddish-blondish hair. Nowhere could I find that smirk.
I made a promise to myself long ago. I told myself that I would write things and create things of immense beauty. I told myself that if the Axels of the world ever came back, I could do one thing better than they could, one thing no person can take away.
Is he still the same and is he doing better than I am?
I don’t even think he’d remember my name.
Happy 548 Birthday!
One-and-a-half trips around The Sun today, Emile. There will be no party, but I celebrate all the same.
You are here. You are healthy and strong and absorbing new words faster than I ever could. You were meant to be here and will inherit the world in ways that I could not.
There was a time when my head was a carnival of light, my son. Thoughts, ideas, and emotions all intertwined in a kaleidoscopic feast, and I believed that if I just put it out there, put it on paper or film or on stage, people would understand me. I was convinced I was here to save the world and show them things hidden under the blanket of their fixed views and idealogy.
But no one seemed to care, and I engaged in a protracted and misanthropic self-conversation that robbed me of joy and gratification with even the most delectable of occasions.
It doesn’t matter what they think of me anymore, at least not like it used to. I see the psychedelic-Kodachrome cavalcade in your smile and I am reborn. It makes its way down the abandoned roads of my soul, and some days I think I can see barren fields filled with life again. I ask myself, “How could I ever have allowed others such power over me? How could anyone torture themselves as I did?”
I will be your audience, my son. I will be your witness. I know that if I can do anything it will be to see you in your most noble and extraordinary wardrobe, a tapestry of confidence and sweetness patched together with no visible seams. I will be your champion. The world doesn’t know what they’re in for like I do.
Happy 18 months old, Emile. We’ve come so far in such a short time, and we have miles and miles to go. Sometimes I wonder what I would do for a few miles more.
An Evening Note
AN EVENING NOTE
(from a father to his 11-month-old son)
by Marc Alexander Valle
Much has already been decided. It was out of my hands. Out of your mother’s hands. Out of anyone’s control. I see it as you sleep soundly on this bed right now. Your mother’s dark blonde hair, your nose like mine, your cheeks like mine, your chin like mine, all out of my control. I orchestrated none of it. It was all God. It was all The Universe. It was all Nature. It was all Luck. Fate. Destiny. Chance. The Gods. Truth be told, I delivered some DNA that Odin would be proud of, but it was all in a genetic pool that I had no command over. And you are an extraordinary specimen, my son. Cary Grant. Marlon Brando. Superhero illustrations. Your face, so handsome and symmetric. The doctor said at your last check-up that you have a mug that she could stare at for hours and hours. I’d call her a weirdo if it weren’t so true. But it is true. And it was all decided without my authority and I am in love.
But what of these tentacles? These unwelcomed circumstances that are out of my dominion. What of the fact that your father is a peasant. And his father was a peasant. And his father was a peasant. I am a peasant. I don’t make too much money. We live with my parents. I have little saved up for retirement. I’ve never really traveled. I’ve never eaten crab in Maryland, and I never had Bar-B-Que chicken in Memphis. I’ve only been on a plane once. I get most of my news from mainstream outlets. I can’t get my weight down. And I buy dumb stuff on the Internet that I don’t even need. I am a peasant. And you will see your father struggle as a peasant. And work like one. And eat like one. And play like one. And maybe even love like one.
As you sleep soundly on this bed, I know that forces of the natural realm have already decided some things. Wherever you go, one way or the other, you will carry the ZIP code that you were born in. For that I’m sorry.
But what if I told you that I am a king? What if I told you that I cannot be touched? That I am impervious to the influence of the masses and their mob mentality? That the walls of mediocrity will never cave in on me? I am a king. With a mind burning as bright as magnesium lit by a 7th-grade science teacher. With the world’s greatest ideas stewing in my subconscious like your grandmother’s Puerto Rican kidney beans. With thoughts and emotions deeper than an atom at the dead center of The Sun. What if I told you that I put people at ease and that many people trust me more than their own lawyers, doctors, and spiritual advisors? Would I even really need to tell you that? Will you see it for yourself one day?
As you sleep soundly on this bed, I don’t remember what a restful night is like anymore. By the time I experience it again you’ll be your own man, and I’ll be closing in on the end of this life. The tendrils of time, space, and causality pull us towards a state of pure energy once again, and the crickets outside have been chirping for a good two hours. I think I’ll lie next to you for now. Just for a little. Just until you wake. Just to watch you wake. Just for now. I will lie next to you.
Happy 10-month birthday, Emile. Daddy loves you.
A Twilight-Hour Note (from a first-time father to his newborn son) by Marc Alexander Valle
Your Daddy writes to be heard. Your Daddy writes to let the world know that he’s here. Your Daddy writes because he feels that he has something to say, a message that needs to be delivered and pulled out of his gut like some-type of science fiction movie. Your Daddy writes to not be interrupted when he speaks. Your Daddy writes to be loved. Your Daddy hopes to be understood, but at this point feels that most people will never understand him. Your Daddy writes because he cannot say what he means on the top of his head without the other person giving him time to think or respond. If Daddy were to try to verbally express what you’re reading now, he would sound like the under-educated, working class kid that he was. Your Daddy writes because he’s an artist. Your Daddy is an artist, someone that sees things so hidden from the world that if he could package it the right way and the right opportunity came along, it could become a product with an assigned value. His name could become a commodity in the world market, a perpetual machine that inflates worth based on perception alone. Your Daddy could be somebody.
Daddy never wanted to see the world in terms of transactions. Daddy was a romantic that just wanted to be loved and heard and seen without making a scene and just being good. This has been the cause of much frustration for Daddy. Sometimes it’s been the cause of great sadness. How can we express ourselves without being rejected or feeling that we have to alter the message? This is and has been Daddy’s life theme. This is and has been Daddy’s monster. From childhood battles with classmates and peers to adulthood interactions that seem so small but carry so much weight, this is The War, the search for validation without having to compromise one’s belief system.
Your Daddy’s words have protected him from this reality, from becoming a casualty of The War, full of contempt and venom and cynicism, and he’s glad that he found his words at such a young age. Your Daddy has ridden on his words like a cloud in jetstream, like the initial buzz from a hard drink, like a child running down a hill with his arms spread open and the wind in his face. I am grateful for the words as I am grateful for your existence. I am grateful for your existence as I am grateful for the words. This is why your Daddy writes.
. . .
Emile, you have arrived. Daddy’s been waiting. I love you.
Mav The Writer: The Lost Years
There’s a time in my life that I cannot write about. There’s no story there that would be of interest to my audience. I even get bored, thinking about it. From my teens to my very early 30s, I neither acted upon nor reacted to the world.
I did my thing. I wrote in various mediums, I went to karaoke twice a week, I read my work at open mics, I had my artwork in a gallery, I went back to school and earned my degree, I experimented in photography, and I worked various low-paying jobs with colorful people. But for the most part it was my lost years. I took no risks and barely ventured out of my comfort zone. I hardly dared to ask out females, fearing what they might have thought of me.
Is time ever really lost? Does the brain collect and process data and turn it into wisdom no matter the circumstance? And do movies, books, and music count as life experience?
I got into a shoving match in second grade, and it’s one of my sweetest moments. Some kid bullied my best friend on the playground. He was high up on himself, because all the girls followed him around during recess. I cursed at him and pushed him to the ground. All the girls came after me and yelled at me. The bully stood back up and cried. It felt good.
The world acted, I reacted, and in turn I existed. Beginning, middle and end.
We grade our lives on curves and our view of ourselves is rich with self-talk rebuttals.
I see no good in those years except that it makes my story different.
To excavate our lives for a happy ending can be a brutal endeavor, but a necessary one if the left foot is to move in front of the right and the right foot is to move in front of the left. I still can’t write a lick about that era.
The Santa Poem by Marc Alexander Valle
(Feedback is welcome)
The Santa Poem
My brother told me that Santa doesn’t exist. He showed me where all the gifts were stashed. G.I. Joes were everywhere. I felt a thrill throughout my body. Finding that Santa doesn’t exist is a double-edged sword. Your childhood is almost over, but now you have the advantage in gift begging. You can manipulate your parents into getting you what you want, and now you have someone to blame when you don’t get it. I’ll probably lie to my kids about Santa if I ever have any. When they find the gift stash, I’ll still lie to them. One Christmas, our dad made us leave a can of beer for Santa. He said that he wanted to see if Santa would drink it. The can was empty in the morning.
The Bucket: A Flash Nonfiction by Marc Alexander Valle
“Wax on, wax off,” I said. Tanya laughed. I continued with more impersonations.
After the fourth minute, it was indisputable. The second grade blackboard was clean. I would have to impress her another time.
“Alright,” she said. “Mrs. Reed makes us dump the water in the sink when we’re done.”
Tanya approached the sink. I followed.
“I got it,” I said, taking the bucket from her.
“Mrs. Reed told you how to dump it, right?”
“Yeah! Watch.”
I grabbed the handle with my left hand and lifted. It wobbled. I held the bottom with my other hand. All I needed was to get it above the sink, way above, as high as I could get it without getting water on the counter.
Tanya stepped forward, “Mrs. Reed said–
I tilted the bucket.
“Just make sure you pour the water sl—
I dumped all of the water into the sink in one shot. Nearly all of it splashed back.
Tanya backed off a step.
I backed off a few.
But it was too late.
“Oh my God! You got water all over my dress.”
I looked at myself, “Yeah, I got it on me too.”
“Why’d you do that? You were supposed to pour it in.”
“I didn’t know.”
Students got out of their seats, looking over.
“Ooohhh, weeee,” they said.
I turned to Mrs. Reed’s desk.
She was walking towards us. I placed my hands in front of me to cover the water.
Bully by Mavthewriter (Open Mic Version)
A poem written and performed by Mavthewriter (Marc Alexander Valle) at Coffeehouse without Limits in Allentown, PA.
Bully: A Video Poem by Mavthewriter
Any feedback on the video or poem will help. Written, filmed and performed by mavthewriter.
New Bike: A Flash Fiction Video
My newest flash fiction video. Written, performed, and filmed by mavthewriter.
Hour of the Muse: A Video Poem
Hour of the Muse. A video poem that I wrote, directed and performed in.
Chauvet Cave: A Video Poem ©2018
A video poem written and directed by Marc Alexander Valle ©2018
Inquisition: A Video Poem by Marc Alexander Valle ©2018
A video poem that I wrote, edited and performed in. All photos from pixabay.com
Mavthewriter 