1:1:1:1:1:1....

Why aren't we all trying to save each other.
Not forever.
No not forever.
Hell no, not forever.
Equivalence comes in ratio.
Help one person.
Receive help.
If it doesn't work
That's alright.
No hard feelings.
Move on.
Help another.
Let another help you.
Statistically.
Your chance
of being
Okay
Alright
Content
Will
Be
Satisfied.
Statistically Satisfied.

9/23/2014
Riley Welch

Bubbles Stuck Under Stickers

A light like this is never gone
Well
It is
But it made its mark
The air we breathe has an imprint

Think about space
And how everything takes it up

So even once it is gone
It remains like a bubble

Where it was

The envelope that you take up
Is filled with only yourself
So how does it fill right back up
Just because you remove yourself

9/23/2014
Riley Welch

Favorite Fridays

Sparrow

BY FARNOOSH FATHI

This was more like the atmosphere

had been pinched, whose chirp was an unexpected gust

in a harmonium enough

to break all that high horse talk

that curdles the atmosphere. While centaurs

ate grass and hurdled epitaphs, that chirp

in the midst did change one of us.

'Twas clawed out in a feeling’s flock

'Twas 'couraged by the tall grass

Did you not catch it?

It is enough to gather at your age;

It is enough to note just what

was said that provoked the Alps to rage.

And the eye sews along. But can it cup

a crazing off the tops of trees?

Just one eye as yours could be enough—

one for six moons that surround

the mind’s water birth, while a lily on its cot

bloated, lapses. Sparrow, here again! Countless

consuls tower and luff but the world sizes

down to a restless heart:

To the one note that repeats itself and is all.

To the note one repeats to one’s self and all. 

To the one line spitting the heart into flight.

Metaphor is elsewhere, a jewel resulting

in the snout of a pig. Sparrow, here—nearly unresting thing

which always seems suddenly to never have left

my mind. Because you will so easily disappear,

I think of you as infinitely near. 

Hey Y'all

These past couple weeks have been hectic, but the busy kind of hectic I tend to enjoy. But it has unfortunately made me fall behind on my blog posts. Starting Friday I will begin regular posting again, with a 'Favorite Friday' post. I'm going to be posting an original poem on Wednesday, Saturday, and Monday. Hope you enjoy!

Lots of Love,

Riley Welch

A Lesson

I was told by a professor once,
"Do not make my mistake,
Don't keep your head down,
And get your work done.
Stand up
Stand out
Don't hesitate!"

So I took these ideas,
And I bundled them up
And I didn't really know how to use it.

I've always been told to just keep on going,
Never settle.
Never stop.
Just keep moving.

Even in my rest
It echoes to me,
Through headphones
Meant to de-stress.
"Always move forward,
Going straight will get you nowhere"
Wise Words from Men in Eyeliner.

Doing what you're supposed to
Isn't always right
And keeping quiet
To keep your work moving -
It's a moralistic fight.

So I just try to keep going,
To keep my head up,
To settle for nothing,
And leave a few things to luck.
Work hard and continuously.
And don't lack to much fun.

9/16/2014
Riley Welch

AAA

6 million thoughts a second
Whichever will I choose
Rapid tongues and jittering jaws
It's my speech sped up times two
Syllables, they leave my mouth faster than I can think
Twinkling on 'T' and stuttering on thoughts
Running out
Sputtering
A thought
A want
A must
And done.

9/14/2014
Riley Welch

Mugged Disappointment

You know the disappointment
When you're caught up in a haze,
You don't even notice at first,
But then that feeling drags for days.

All I wanted was that latte,
So chic and sweet and warm
But apparently I asked too much
This expresso-coffee swarm

It is lacking in the rich touch
Of frothy, frothy milk,
Hiding under "oaky tones"
I wanted creamy, smooth silk

Not a touch of sweetness to the cup
And it's lacking its cinnamon touch
This won't compliment any food, or even itself
Why did I get a large - this isn't worth this much

This isn't what I asked for
This isn't what I wanted
Packets upon packets of sugar
I will remain forever haunted

By your beyond bitter flavor
That lattes do not hold
I now have learned my lesson
I shall never order so bold.

9/13/2014
Riley Welch

Favorite Fridays

It Couldn’t Be Done

BY Edgar ALBERT GUEST

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;

At least no one ever has done it;”

But he took off his coat and he took off his hat

And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,

Without any doubting or quiddit,

He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,

There are thousands to prophesy failure,

There are thousands to point out to you one by one,

The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,

Just take off your coat and go to it;

Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing

That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

6 Slow Monday 6 Line Thoughts

1: 8:29
Things are always late
Especially in tandem with me.
Funny how that works
Lateness compounding on lateness
Into sounds of bells
Echoing your tardiness.

2: 11:24
Cotton swabs are hard to find,
And orders take weeks
There plastic bodies melt
And fluffy heads hold steam
So you can't sterilize them,
Without illegal, expensive, unobtainable radiation.

3: 12:48
Trying to hold onto what is natural
Is a pointless task all together
because who defines what nature is
All things come from us
So they have natural creation
Even if the things seem not?

4: 1:02
Plagiarism is wrong.
You're in college.
Did you really not know that?
That's not even possible.
Use quotations.
Not too hard.

5: 6:16
Printers don't print
Because inkers won't ink
And their papers won't "pap"
And then the light won't go green
And it makes that dying noise like it's giving out
You will never print this essay, you should cry and pout.

6: 10:16
Sweet vanilla wrapped up in other peoples words
And fast blue nails clack away
Filling words with busy space
Deadlines looming
Booming gloomy
Warning minds to not  wander or sway.

9/8/2014
Riley Welch

How to Bake A Cake

Today's piece is an imitation of the writing style of Augusten Burroughs. Specifically from his book "This is How".

I

While it can be done many ways, and by many different recipes.

The best way to bake a cake has to be done by hand.

Without the crutch of boxed mixes and jarred frostings to taste just like any other cake. It must be made starting at the base, and built up.

And of course, it cannot be done without first preheating your oven to approximately 350 degrees. No more and no less.

II

You next must grease the baking pan.

You can try to grease with PAM or any knock off grocery store brand of fake butter spray But none taste quite the same and quite as delicate as the grease of sun yellow butter baked into the top crust of your creation.

III

The mixing of the ingredients is a crucial step any cake maker is aware of. Even the cake makers who use boxed cakes and frosting they scrape from the bottom of a red-lidded jar.

As with the rest of the cake, fresh eggs and Mexican vanilla do it best.

Measure out each spoonful as if it were crucial to the mere survival of those eating the cake. As if your job is not just to create a cake, but to create a chemistry.

Exact and perfect. Clean and careful.

Stir gently, only until each part has turned into a homogenous batter where no ingredient can be told from another.

Together and no different from the next.

IV

Fill the pan with your batter. Take pride in the way you pour the mix into its’ bed and smooth the top so it all remains even and un-crevassed.

Bake until it’s puffed up crown appears peeking over the edge of the silver pan.

And its rim is a golden brown.

The kind of golden brown where you know it is done correctly.

The kind where your mother would be proud of you, and your grandmother would pat your head and speak encouraging words to you.

V

Whisk a glaze from sugar and milk. When the glaze is as creamy and together as the batter the cake was born from, you are done.

Spread the topping on the smiling face of your cake.

If it drips off the sides that is alright.

Gravity is uncontrollable. And in that way, so is the cake and how it will look in finality.

VI

Cut into the cake sweetly and in doing so taste its sweetness. Share with friends and they will share themselves with you.

Because cake is meant for celebration. And there is no shame in celebration.

And next time Susan will bake the cake and you will bring the entre, so you only have to get it right this once.

9/5/2014

Riley Welch            

Los Feliz

Sudddddenly time is frozen
And 40 miles per hour is too slow to burst this bubble
It's like you aren't even moving.
It's like you're at a standstill in traffic
But the speedometer says "45"
But you choose to ignore it
Not ignore
Just distrust
There's no way
There's no way you are moving
Because you are stopped
Your heart rhythmically thumps
But you don't believe it either
And the music echoes your heart
But both tell lies.
Lies like the speedometer on your car
And lies like the ones that froze time.
Lies that ripped you apart
Then put you back together
All while time was frozen
So nobody noticed.

9/2/2014
Riley Welch

Favorite Fridays

This weeks poem is from my good friend and fantastic writer Chris Vanjonack. I found this poem to be quite clever, as most of his work is.

A Shore Thing

BY: CHRIS VANJONACK

One warm summer night, I find myself sitting on the couch. One set of eyes glued to the television set. And despite my better judgment—and supposed intellectual restraint, and supposed 21^st century, post-modern, post-consumerism, post everything mindset—I find myself watching an infomercial. But it is not just any infomercial. It is an infomercial I have seen before. It is an infomercial repeat. And so as I am sitting there—not watching, really just absorbing all the ways in which a rainbow sponge has superior absorption—ring-a-ling-ding the telephone rings and the second that I take the phone off the hook—literally down to the millisecond probably—Perry Pullman starts talking as fast as anyone has a right to speak and maybe faster.

So he’s like, “Hey man. Hey. What’s hip? What’s happening? You know lately, I’ve been thinking. And that thing that I’ve been thinking is that we’ve all been doing too much thinking. So let’s go out tonight. Go have a good time. The girls, they’re down to clown down to make a couple mistakes. There’s talk of going to the beach to play a game of beach volleyball or to sit around some campy campfire telling campy ghost stories, but see you know that even if we go for something as innocuous as a campfire that eventually some terrible idea will be crowd-sourced into existence—something to do with drunken water skiing or burying ourselves alive or probably skinny dipping—yeah that’s it, probably skinny dipping.

And that we’ll have a good time, yeah that’s a sure thing, but then there’s this thing about the shore that we’re not really sure about, because the beach that we go to where we dip our skinny bodies feel an awful lot like the beach from Jaws. And we only ever saw the first ten minutes but those first ten minutes had enough ten minutes of some pretty teenage girl being torn to absolute shit by some great white shark to make us all reconsider our nakedly false assumption that swimming nakedly might go in any way positively.

And the guys they all know this but the girls they’re all horny, and so when the topic gets brought up and is subsequently shut down they will all moan and groan:  ‘Oh stop being boring, and let’s all of us go and take off our socks and shoes and shirts and skirts and dip our naked bodies in the cold ocean water.’

As they get to that last part—that last part being the part about taking out their naked parts—they will purse their lips and push out their chests and run their fingers flirtatiously through their hair because there is peer pressure and then there is pants pressure—pants pressure being the pressure that is put onto pants when enough blood flows down to some lower appendage. So we guys we’ll all stand there—and we’ll just be totally erect, totally turned on, totally tentpoled—but even we will resist and stall by saying, ‘Hey, maybe later, lest we get torn to shit by some shark, piranha or gator.’

But the girls—they won’t take no for an answer—and so they’ll push on by saying, ‘Oh come on now pussies, don’t be such pussy cats—all afraid of the water. Go ahead and whip out Neil Patrick Penis or Edgar Allen Penis or whatever hip, clever thing you’ve been calling your penis, and nut up and shrivel up

In the cold ocean water.’

So we guys, we’ll all shrug, and drop chow on our trousers, and begin our baton death march into the cold ocean water. And in the movies, whenever young people go skinny dipping, it’s always romantic, and intimate and all together sexy. But see the thing about us is that we’re not any of us sexy and the thought of each other nude and exposed and unclothed is an odd one that’s not altogether sexy.  And for a good half hour or so, we’ll probably all just bob around coughing and awking and averting our eyes from one another, and then one by one we’ll one by one drag ourselves out of the water, dry ourselves off, and leave without saying good night. Yeah, and that’ll be it. That’ll be our night.”

And then for the first time in our quote-unquote conversation—in which I have managed to squeeze remarkably few words—Perry Pullman takes a moment, and pauses, sighing. And because of how fast he talks and how he talks so fast, that moment feels like a millennium before he finally he concludes by saying: “We’ll all wish we’d been attacked by great white sharks and torn to shit and torn to shreds because at least then we’d have a story out of it. You know no one likes stories where nothing really happen.”

Perry Pullman hangs up the phone and I hang up mine and go back to the infomercial. After watching it for a few more minutes, I consider leaning over and picking up the land line and calling in to order a rainbow sponge, but of course I don’t, because really, who was the energy to do much of anything?

Gospel and Guacamole

This poem is dedicated to my lovely Sundays with my dad, when we I choose to head over to Maria's Taco Xpress:


Picture that building on South Lamar,
Where a paper mache woman greets you with open arms,

And the smell of Tex-Mex drifts up, out the doors.
Line up, order tacos, which I'm sure you'll adore.

But don't stand inside or you'll look like a loon-
Grab a seat outdoors, the service starts at noon.

It's a typical Sunday - but not a typical church,
Here there's singing and dancing out on the porch.

That blazing Austin heat won't stop the congregation.
Grab some shade and a fan, they've made a few accommodations.

And when the pastors starts to speak - in the form of a lead singer
You'll see you've hit the jackpot, you've won a chicken dinner.

And then that heat won't really matter
You'll take in all that music in it's quick repeating pattern.

You'll probably feel the need to tap your feet
Or that beat will get to you and you'll have to leave your seat.

And join the group up front and center,
But here the dancing won't make you a sinner.

As I said before, it's not typical,
But that's not at all critical.

Because here  is Hippie church!
A reason for free spirits to leave their perch.

And take to dance floors and eat good food!
No matter how bad your Saturday, it's hard to be in a bad mood.

And on this certain Sunday, after the last beat
And after we'd all had our fill to eat.

"That was excessive. Thank you everyone."
And just like that, the service is done.

Riley Welch