It was Hugo's newsletter.
We all heard about it.
Distributed all over.
Everybody talked and talked.
Did you hear he used three printers?
Yes, we know he used three printers.
Did you hear he double-stapled?
Yes, we saw it with our own eyes.
It was hard to believe at first, though.
But actually, why? Everyone loves Hugo.
Blue eyes frosted with malice.
Sneering lips, a charming boar of a man.
There's really nothing he can't accomplish.
Some people are born to get attention.
Then there's that thing that happened.
Wait, what do you mean by "thing"?
That guy down on 30th Street, the Russian.
The guy with the grizzly bear hat? What of him?
He burned some. Burned some? Yes, I guess he . . .
Well we all get sick some times, Lily. That's what--
Hugo isn't for anything like that. Don't accuse him.
You can't just speak of someone like an object!
Needless to say I walked away with one slap that evening.
That evening my face felt like a well-oiled gong.
The next day was all prairies and graffiti strips.
It went by like nothing had happened, ever. Not one day.
Lily was a beautiful woman who wore long dresses.
Green dresses, the kind that hung like coats of moss.
When I wasn't trying to stop my thoughts about Lily,
I was trying to stop getting distracted by Hugo and his newsletter.
Then Mark happened. Mark was an old friend.
He came from cash but he also came from the West.
Did you hear about Mark?
No, what about Mark?
He put out a newsletter.
Is it any good? Mark's stuff is usually terrible.
It's pretty informative.
But it looks like shit, doesn't it?
Well it's missing something.
Well what? What do you mean, "missing something"?
He forgot to put the date on it.
Oh my god . . . the date? The date of the newsletter?
Yes. It was the day after you got slapped.
By you, you mean? When my face felt like a gong?
Yes, a well-oiled gong. It was the day you were too busy.
Too busy doing what? Feeling your appendage attack me?
Thinking of yourself of course. You just don't learn. Excuse me.
Now wait a sec, where do you think you're going?
Over to Hugo's. He's going to write me,
write me into a feature in his next newsletter.
Well be careful. Have you ever been to see him before?
No but there really isn't any risk.
Yes, he does have some great facial features.
Like his eyes of malice. And the grip of his fingers.
You really pay attention to this Hugo, don't you?
All I know is he's going to make me see circles.
Then I thought to myself like a beach expanding to parking lot--
If I had a circle for every bruised face I wanted to create . . .
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Césairian section.
I
il me semble
le mouton dans un serpent
quand je lui vois
c’est comme un mille des plumes
[qui échappent d’un duvet des hallucinations]
ramassées par le vent
dans un déclivité
d’un tapis perse
il est un cercle
dans un carré
dans les frissons d’une lac
et il est la voix de raison
[une voix délicieux des madeleines]
même si la raison existe
seulement au bout d’une bouteille verte
pleine des goûtes des pensées
en feu par le lumière
des yeux ivres
[et bleus comme la saveur d’un orange]
qui répriment mes souffles
avec ses doigts duveteux
tout juste est-il
une muse absente
des idées malavisés
[mais doux comme le miel doré
d’un bourdon fripon]
qui déroulent sur les synapses
isolées par des songées visqueux
et violets
un des gens palpables.
II
Tu étais devenu pour moi comme
Un vide en s’ouvrant :
Repoussant, comme l’espace entre
deux exhalations des cils
le frisson de ta voix
avec une couche de la moisissure douce
Je te regard comme à travers
Un verre de l’eau
Et ton visage était une constellation
Des réverbères accusateurs qui
se fondrent en des nuages des
sauterelles --
Sonner jaunes.
III
Le battement des ailes
des corbeaux grises
c’est le coeur d’homme catatonique.
le coeur d’homme catatonique
c’est les yeux d’une fille maudite.
les yeux d’une fille maudite:
l’amour de tous le monde.
Songs from Senegal
[translation of Leopold Sedar Senghor's "Masque Nègre"]
She sleeps, reclines upon the ingenuousness of the sand.
Koumba Tam
sleeps.
One green leaf of palm veils the frenzy of hair,
bowed copper forehead
Closed eyelids, a bowl doubled, wellsprings cemented fast.
That fine crescent, that lip more black and voluminous up to the brink of grief --
where goes the smile of that conniving mistress?
the plates of cheeks, the silhouette of the chin, singing a mute chord.
the face of a mask, closed from the ever-fleeting, without eyes
without matter
a head of bronze, absolute, and with its patina of time
defiled neither by powders nor rouges, nor wrinkles
nor by the footprints of tears
or kisses
oh face, such as God made you even before the memory of all time,
face of the dawn of the world, do not open yourself as a tenuous neck,
to cause a stir in my flesh
i love you, oh beauty of my single-chord eye.
[original:
Elle dort et repose sur la candeur de sable.
Koumba Tam dort. Une palme verte voile la fièvre des cheveux,
cuivre le front courbe
Les paupières closes, coupe double et sources scellées.
Ce fin croissant, cette lèvre plus noire et lourde à peine – où le
sourire de la femme complice?
Les patènes des joues, le dessin du menton chantent l’accord muet.
Visage de masque fermé à l’éphémère, sans yeux sans matière
Tête de bronze parfaite et sa patine de temps
Que ne souillent fards ni rougeur ni rides, ni traces des larmes ni de
baisers
O visage tel que Dieu t’a créé avant la mémoire même des âges
Visage de l’aube du monde, ne t’ouvre pas comme un col tendre
pour émouvoir ma chair.
Je t’adore, ô Beauté, de mon oeil monocorde!]
Monday, March 30, 2009
An Altered Poem by Beazley and an Altered Poem by Me.
Our Coats' Liquid Treasure
Sleep this, nestled map, and see but never fill in Phiz (viz: huns),
ready to wot glassed-up vids to melt the wake.
Dead walk amongst us, shopping.
Rousseau's doorman, the big dog, ready to
have toys in this forest dividing the stream, our coats’ liquid treasure.
The multiple.
The multiple.
The fungicides correct spelling.
But back to back to
taken twine for noon wings in hiding.
Piss a piano lapping gravy in gravy bathing in that spill.
***
We Found Liquid in Our Copra
Fizz was the hardest part of the map to fill.
Being eight and shoving rock candy down the hatch.
If you glass-up the gulls you'll melt them all down.
Each person has a hero and my boss ain't it.
Waldo and Arthur. Patrick White cutting up skins.
The candy was sticky, like hellspawn liquid breath.
Listen buddy, I said, I can't afford another bird wake.
Silence really inutterable and muted. Giant mutation.
Fungicides to keep the feet dry, as they say.
It was far too easy to accompany Rousseau on the run.
He pushed the shopping cart; I inspected the coupons.
SHOP RITE. WHOLE FOOD. TRADER JOE.
Everywhere dead produce. Lines of people.
People bathing in smelly dollars and dead veg (sluicing begins)
A cough runs blisters miles long down a throat.
Remember when Dante fellatioed the dog?
LIBERATE WOMAN.
"I don't care how pure she is, she's still a sex object."
Beatrice smelled like old cigarettes, eyes white space.
Dante, snifter in hand, drifted in and out of the new purgatory.
Who do we end up in America?
What if Verg (stop sluice) made the whole thing up?
But Dante is gone now, Ugolino's bait. Multiple brain gnaws.
Grizzly gravy iced over providing extra crunch.
If you piss on the piano, are you tuning it?
Sleep this, nestled map, and see but never fill in Phiz (viz: huns),
ready to wot glassed-up vids to melt the wake.
Dead walk amongst us, shopping.
Rousseau's doorman, the big dog, ready to
have toys in this forest dividing the stream, our coats’ liquid treasure.
The multiple.
The multiple.
The fungicides correct spelling.
But back to back to
taken twine for noon wings in hiding.
Piss a piano lapping gravy in gravy bathing in that spill.
***
We Found Liquid in Our Copra
Fizz was the hardest part of the map to fill.
Being eight and shoving rock candy down the hatch.
If you glass-up the gulls you'll melt them all down.
Each person has a hero and my boss ain't it.
Waldo and Arthur. Patrick White cutting up skins.
The candy was sticky, like hellspawn liquid breath.
Listen buddy, I said, I can't afford another bird wake.
Silence really inutterable and muted. Giant mutation.
Fungicides to keep the feet dry, as they say.
It was far too easy to accompany Rousseau on the run.
He pushed the shopping cart; I inspected the coupons.
SHOP RITE. WHOLE FOOD. TRADER JOE.
Everywhere dead produce. Lines of people.
People bathing in smelly dollars and dead veg (sluicing begins)
A cough runs blisters miles long down a throat.
Remember when Dante fellatioed the dog?
LIBERATE WOMAN.
"I don't care how pure she is, she's still a sex object."
Beatrice smelled like old cigarettes, eyes white space.
Dante, snifter in hand, drifted in and out of the new purgatory.
Who do we end up in America?
What if Verg (stop sluice) made the whole thing up?
But Dante is gone now, Ugolino's bait. Multiple brain gnaws.
Grizzly gravy iced over providing extra crunch.
If you piss on the piano, are you tuning it?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Did you open your eyes?"
After Marianne Moore (who's work I hate) and some things Alex Ruggeri told me about working with "Special Needs" students
the child asked
--------panes are paved of deserts
the demonstration was unnecessary
--------we caught ourselves running from
churches, imagined
--------the gale, the vision of the manic us
the recycled light
--------that went into it
but then what would the air breathe?
the child asked
--------panes are paved of deserts
the demonstration was unnecessary
--------we caught ourselves running from
churches, imagined
--------the gale, the vision of the manic us
the recycled light
--------that went into it
but then what would the air breathe?
This is Just to Say
After WCW, Spring & All, and all the coverage Silliman's Blog has dedicated to it the past week prompting another rereading in as many weeks
I'm sorry I keep staring
-----it's just that
you are made of pink
-----wet
-----glass
I'm sorry I keep staring
-----it's just that
you are made of pink
-----wet
-----glass
Friday, March 27, 2009
When Down by that Other River
To take you as I am would mean opening up two hands.
Wireless call centers in an underground facility.
Every where you look forms of cancer sprouting up.
No there is no guilt here there is guilt every other place.
No there is no guilt here we pretend for happiness.
Peace groups and milk churned around in sweet and salt.
Stank up my bedroom why'd we have to make that here.
Why'd we have to join into the communications business?
Suckers breathing up and down the highway kernels like moths.
Pampered children pulling up their layers of skin on the stone.
Born into another problem between two rows of evergreens.
Barricaded before the great master splicing rocks with spice.
The great horned element pooling moves like a misty Capricorn.
We can see the blemish in his armor, where creation failed.
Wireless call centers in an underground facility.
Every where you look forms of cancer sprouting up.
No there is no guilt here there is guilt every other place.
No there is no guilt here we pretend for happiness.
Peace groups and milk churned around in sweet and salt.
Stank up my bedroom why'd we have to make that here.
Why'd we have to join into the communications business?
Suckers breathing up and down the highway kernels like moths.
Pampered children pulling up their layers of skin on the stone.
Born into another problem between two rows of evergreens.
Barricaded before the great master splicing rocks with spice.
The great horned element pooling moves like a misty Capricorn.
We can see the blemish in his armor, where creation failed.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Light Pollution
The ambulance ran off the tracks
the panicked tunnels teem
in the once dim city'd pitch
we licked salt from wounded soil
it made us more thirsty
like a picture of a man flying
the cloudlessness circles
the blaring nimbus of our halo
and still the sky can't blink
the panicked tunnels teem
in the once dim city'd pitch
we licked salt from wounded soil
it made us more thirsty
like a picture of a man flying
the cloudlessness circles
the blaring nimbus of our halo
and still the sky can't blink
Monday, March 23, 2009
Remember February was Cellular
Just some highlights after the recent transcription.
From: Campbell
Coffee pope swift gay
and Rochester, good times.
Feb 21, 757pm
From: Jeff
That Pickard book is soul-
rending. Texting Cady.
She says her dreams are
religious and I'm not in
them.
Feb 22, 252pm
From: Jeff
Love the word mithering.
And rouk.
Feb 22, 312pm
From: Campbell
Play into the woman's
death drive, make her
drink whiskey.
Feb 24, 9:51pm
From: Rhonda
Don't forget the simulated
female bonding hiding
knives ... Ah I miss that
*sigh*
Feb 24, 1024pm
From: Rhonda
Where in the fuck did
YOU get lobsterita
beads? Girls today make
it hard not to smack the
taste out of their cheap
mouths.
Feb 24, 1038pm
From: Campbell
Bromion knows teh truth
yet has not the eye,
Theotormon looks away
blindly sheds a tear,
Oothoon longs for
Thanatos--her cursed
eternity
Feb 24, 1038pm
From: Jeff
Blood. Alone at the table.
The toilet says to kill Bill
O'Reilly. Tuxedo pays the
tab. Stephanie wants
regulator. The fires and
the parsley form driftweed
o
Feb 28, 1254am
From: Tim Hollan
The weather is always a
passionate bitch in heat
Feb 28, 1108am
From: Jeff
Too much snow. Got a
marketing internship that
pays almost nothing. I
feel like the black part of
an oreo in my mother's
purse at church. I hear a
drill closeby. Boring
nearer. Nearer still.
Date unknown
From: Campbell
Coffee pope swift gay
and Rochester, good times.
Feb 21, 757pm
From: Jeff
That Pickard book is soul-
rending. Texting Cady.
She says her dreams are
religious and I'm not in
them.
Feb 22, 252pm
From: Jeff
Love the word mithering.
And rouk.
Feb 22, 312pm
From: Campbell
Play into the woman's
death drive, make her
drink whiskey.
Feb 24, 9:51pm
From: Rhonda
Don't forget the simulated
female bonding hiding
knives ... Ah I miss that
*sigh*
Feb 24, 1024pm
From: Rhonda
Where in the fuck did
YOU get lobsterita
beads? Girls today make
it hard not to smack the
taste out of their cheap
mouths.
Feb 24, 1038pm
From: Campbell
Bromion knows teh truth
yet has not the eye,
Theotormon looks away
blindly sheds a tear,
Oothoon longs for
Thanatos--her cursed
eternity
Feb 24, 1038pm
From: Jeff
Blood. Alone at the table.
The toilet says to kill Bill
O'Reilly. Tuxedo pays the
tab. Stephanie wants
regulator. The fires and
the parsley form driftweed
o
Feb 28, 1254am
From: Tim Hollan
The weather is always a
passionate bitch in heat
Feb 28, 1108am
From: Jeff
Too much snow. Got a
marketing internship that
pays almost nothing. I
feel like the black part of
an oreo in my mother's
purse at church. I hear a
drill closeby. Boring
nearer. Nearer still.
Date unknown
Sea Host
Another collaboration with Beazley.
Squids. Giants only I
know how to introduce.
And in this house, of
water and denizens,
to be deep means solidity.
In Atlanta's Aquarium,
God's velour is mad. It hangs,
jellyfish strands and
nothing but God, from below,
makes a sound, to our divers:
There is more dirt.
Scrape those edges good.
Love the children simulated
into being with each siren of alert;
love the announcer's words
running us around
You can't find us moving the nails.
You can't find us cracking the bell.
You can't find us sheepishly waiting
to be gobbled up or torn apart.
Squids. Giants only I
know how to introduce.
And in this house, of
water and denizens,
to be deep means solidity.
In Atlanta's Aquarium,
God's velour is mad. It hangs,
jellyfish strands and
nothing but God, from below,
makes a sound, to our divers:
There is more dirt.
Scrape those edges good.
Love the children simulated
into being with each siren of alert;
love the announcer's words
running us around
You can't find us moving the nails.
You can't find us cracking the bell.
You can't find us sheepishly waiting
to be gobbled up or torn apart.
Bird Burial
This poem, one of many morphing parts, is one limb of an exercise that friend, mentor, and professor Beazley Kanost and I are undertaking in which we consistently transform the poem from one state to the next; to put it plainly, she revised one of my poems and emailed it to me to revise and send back to her to revise and send back to me and so on and so forth; this particular version was about a dead bird my friend Chelsea and I came across in West Philadelphia, which we ended up providing a burial for.
Onward twin bright hands,
born through twin words,
ward the birdmelt into a soft mush.
Before and after a sidewalked dead bird.
Rivulets rushing against byways.
Steampipes intercepting steelcoats.
Hands crawl over their eyes, pour
into the leather at the sneakers' bottoms.
Hands crawl over treasure wails; stuff
felt only by toenails and fungi dance parties.
Answers in prayer; digits meshed.
Dirt clinging up to stretched stars.
The flame of the sun mutes and mutates,
and in the dark damp beneath bushes,
amidst the bushels of mulch grit,
twin defeathered wings brassed by noon.
Onward twin bright hands,
born through twin words,
ward the birdmelt into a soft mush.
Before and after a sidewalked dead bird.
Rivulets rushing against byways.
Steampipes intercepting steelcoats.
Hands crawl over their eyes, pour
into the leather at the sneakers' bottoms.
Hands crawl over treasure wails; stuff
felt only by toenails and fungi dance parties.
Answers in prayer; digits meshed.
Dirt clinging up to stretched stars.
The flame of the sun mutes and mutates,
and in the dark damp beneath bushes,
amidst the bushels of mulch grit,
twin defeathered wings brassed by noon.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Broken Poem
After Spicer (probably)
I said
too bad old friend
about time
and how you're still inside it
and therefore
unable to operate upon it
like those idiots stuck in whales
or lions, their dens
in the great captivity of faith which
like time/chance
happeneth to us all
no matter how bad Christmas can be
or how low rents fall in the flat-iron
alliterative
a low ritual
quarks, top quarks
pose like the flowers
of grandmothers
briefly undying,
nonlinearely
a bell chiming
I saw your democracy
snagged in North Carolina's blood grass
crushed by highway gusts
exhausted by the billow
the mountains were incredible
and much too frantic to count
no apology is good enough
for our making the windshield
truely, our greatest failure
but not for failing
the last battery of waves
on darkish, March rocks
I said
too bad old friend
about time
and how you're still inside it
and therefore
unable to operate upon it
like those idiots stuck in whales
or lions, their dens
in the great captivity of faith which
like time/chance
happeneth to us all
no matter how bad Christmas can be
or how low rents fall in the flat-iron
alliterative
a low ritual
quarks, top quarks
pose like the flowers
of grandmothers
briefly undying,
nonlinearely
a bell chiming
I saw your democracy
snagged in North Carolina's blood grass
crushed by highway gusts
exhausted by the billow
the mountains were incredible
and much too frantic to count
no apology is good enough
for our making the windshield
truely, our greatest failure
but not for failing
the last battery of waves
on darkish, March rocks
Spring Train
The vernal light
jockies flatly with itself
on the far southbound rails
the bald march trees
are also bisexual
the hair of the showering world
arrested in a puberty
of bark and sky
together, concentrically
the system is a cycle
of julian back-stabbings
and playwrights parties
jockies flatly with itself
on the far southbound rails
the bald march trees
are also bisexual
the hair of the showering world
arrested in a puberty
of bark and sky
together, concentrically
the system is a cycle
of julian back-stabbings
and playwrights parties
US Airways
After Jim Harrison
Take off
into the sky's blue cup
into the drunken yonder where God lived
please return
those seatbacks and tray-tables
you will float on them in the coming emergency
who are you
shrieks the child in your arms
as the window screams back from the American pale
we bag our own peanuts
we are the fat sky-kings on rayon thrones
we put them in the sky using our most modern noise
we see everything
we see the earth rolling into stars
from our great, turbulent jail in the newly vacant heaven
Take off
into the sky's blue cup
into the drunken yonder where God lived
please return
those seatbacks and tray-tables
you will float on them in the coming emergency
who are you
shrieks the child in your arms
as the window screams back from the American pale
we bag our own peanuts
we are the fat sky-kings on rayon thrones
we put them in the sky using our most modern noise
we see everything
we see the earth rolling into stars
from our great, turbulent jail in the newly vacant heaven
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
After Margie Stern Plays Kung Fu Necktie on Tuesday
It is Tuesday 2009
and the guy wasn't impressed
after the show but
we don't listen to this guy,
just offer money for tobacco
but he gives us it instead
and so we respect him
and listen to his complaints.
The future is yourself;
fill this part in.
To be schizoid and frenetic.
To be the ghost falling out.
Sometimes going to these such shows
allows for such keen focus. I saw a tour van
from California, it was black, sitting
a few cars down and I thought that
maybe they, those musician--types,
are smoking inside of it--
but I walked on by in 21st century bob,
and thought about how bands form.
Thanks.
Jackals.
Appollinaire.
Roman aquaducts and roads.
Made off into the night
thinking about how similar this neighborhood
can look under the same company's light bulbs
making everything orange and I thought
of Hemingway once, the Poetics of Space once,
Nabokov a couple of times--
Olneyville over in Providence on the way along
drunk driving back to the house.
My girls can dance along riverbanks.
Hey Josef's going to Japan to find himself
and the meaning of life but I'm worried he'll
lose it, himself, in Tokyo, where the streets
have no names, quite literally, and I give
him advice on the phone (as it dies)--get
the card from your hotel and bring it with you.
A taxi can always bring you back home.
It's true, isn't it? The situation, sometimes.
The problem as I see it, can be found
throughout the explosions. That is,
the land of the rising sun is self-explained.
Dreaming of catalysts and catalepsy.
Thinking of Marnie Stern's bassist
forming a syncopation of candy chords
and with the frizzy guitar Marnie taps along.
Cannot tell follower from leader.
One giant bang under circus tent.
Preposition phrases screaming like
the songs of the witch, the Valkyrie,
the screaming of a billion winds in a cave
down hundreds of feet of the angled shade.
Should've applied for that job.
Trained on that instrument.
Learned that language.
Now bigger fish circle around. Circles.
Thinking of communism and how
to think about oppression regularly.
Women will always be oppressed in this system,
says Steve,
and I agree, but this time for real.
Number munchers, land lords on computers,
dental records and chipped teeth
or rotten teeth or broken teeth or cracked.
The jaw work is a lotion
to the problem; there is no solution.
These trees won't grow themselves.
Get a bigger pot for a bigger plant.
Finished Jack Spicer, time for White and
Savage Detectives breaking open caverns
of ice and the death of an image.
Savage they move about like apes.
Frank Bidart pouring out of a spigot.
Frank Bidart forming from stone.
Frank Bidart as the waves of a storm.
Frank Bidart read before Marnie Stern.
Frank Bidart shivering in the wind,
his poems frozen tears cranking into--
Esquire 04/09's chimp story almost
brought me to tears. I think about
Rachel over in Rhode Island doing
vegan food and smiling a lot.
Then there's the other Rachel over there
smiling a lot and laughing in that semi-deep voice
and both Rachels are so passive.
The tapping of a guitar. The pat of a
panda's stomach. Marnie Stern's stomach--
how do stomachs look inside the body?
Doing everything that Deerhoof
was too weird to do; never saw Lightning Bolt
perform; this job wants 35 words per minutes;
my ass scratch to itch it means death.
The black purse hangs from the shoulder
and some random girl once holding a banana
wears a black cap that affords her little.
I am sure she can speak in French if forced.
Though chiseled into practicality, the
French singers too swim this ocean today,
and Animal Collective was playing
and NPR the sinful was on but difficult,
and tonight Marnie's a potion, and I didn't
mention her drummer once but meant to
the whole time, like a back brace.
Maybe i was afraid, or wished he continued
to pound with the same smile Marnie wears.
and the guy wasn't impressed
after the show but
we don't listen to this guy,
just offer money for tobacco
but he gives us it instead
and so we respect him
and listen to his complaints.
The future is yourself;
fill this part in.
To be schizoid and frenetic.
To be the ghost falling out.
Sometimes going to these such shows
allows for such keen focus. I saw a tour van
from California, it was black, sitting
a few cars down and I thought that
maybe they, those musician--types,
are smoking inside of it--
but I walked on by in 21st century bob,
and thought about how bands form.
Thanks.
Jackals.
Appollinaire.
Roman aquaducts and roads.
Made off into the night
thinking about how similar this neighborhood
can look under the same company's light bulbs
making everything orange and I thought
of Hemingway once, the Poetics of Space once,
Nabokov a couple of times--
Olneyville over in Providence on the way along
drunk driving back to the house.
My girls can dance along riverbanks.
Hey Josef's going to Japan to find himself
and the meaning of life but I'm worried he'll
lose it, himself, in Tokyo, where the streets
have no names, quite literally, and I give
him advice on the phone (as it dies)--get
the card from your hotel and bring it with you.
A taxi can always bring you back home.
It's true, isn't it? The situation, sometimes.
The problem as I see it, can be found
throughout the explosions. That is,
the land of the rising sun is self-explained.
Dreaming of catalysts and catalepsy.
Thinking of Marnie Stern's bassist
forming a syncopation of candy chords
and with the frizzy guitar Marnie taps along.
Cannot tell follower from leader.
One giant bang under circus tent.
Preposition phrases screaming like
the songs of the witch, the Valkyrie,
the screaming of a billion winds in a cave
down hundreds of feet of the angled shade.
Should've applied for that job.
Trained on that instrument.
Learned that language.
Now bigger fish circle around. Circles.
Thinking of communism and how
to think about oppression regularly.
Women will always be oppressed in this system,
says Steve,
and I agree, but this time for real.
Number munchers, land lords on computers,
dental records and chipped teeth
or rotten teeth or broken teeth or cracked.
The jaw work is a lotion
to the problem; there is no solution.
These trees won't grow themselves.
Get a bigger pot for a bigger plant.
Finished Jack Spicer, time for White and
Savage Detectives breaking open caverns
of ice and the death of an image.
Savage they move about like apes.
Frank Bidart pouring out of a spigot.
Frank Bidart forming from stone.
Frank Bidart as the waves of a storm.
Frank Bidart read before Marnie Stern.
Frank Bidart shivering in the wind,
his poems frozen tears cranking into--
Esquire 04/09's chimp story almost
brought me to tears. I think about
Rachel over in Rhode Island doing
vegan food and smiling a lot.
Then there's the other Rachel over there
smiling a lot and laughing in that semi-deep voice
and both Rachels are so passive.
The tapping of a guitar. The pat of a
panda's stomach. Marnie Stern's stomach--
how do stomachs look inside the body?
Doing everything that Deerhoof
was too weird to do; never saw Lightning Bolt
perform; this job wants 35 words per minutes;
my ass scratch to itch it means death.
The black purse hangs from the shoulder
and some random girl once holding a banana
wears a black cap that affords her little.
I am sure she can speak in French if forced.
Though chiseled into practicality, the
French singers too swim this ocean today,
and Animal Collective was playing
and NPR the sinful was on but difficult,
and tonight Marnie's a potion, and I didn't
mention her drummer once but meant to
the whole time, like a back brace.
Maybe i was afraid, or wished he continued
to pound with the same smile Marnie wears.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Chill through the Window
This same chill stares stapled
at the epidermus but calmly oceanic
it was a different place
exactly one year ago all those days wound
when warmth was so desperate
to be discovered hiding, but warmth wasn't,
not enough really just puckered,
punk and endangered, endangering
and now this chill, harlequin spinning,
returns like gun recoil or pesticides
from their hiding place the back cabinet,
the subtle atomic rustle returns
as a fist gloved and ready for thrust,
upper body strength to plexus
the woman for they are different
walking down the street, is
dressed in comments and ugly
scowls fearing to be feared.
Steadying out she continues
leg over leg praying
indigent intervention,
God has a soul, God must
but mutters and psychopathic
belongs in whitewrap in salon
in crazy house kooky floored
where women walk around
the screams processing
the screams didn't know them
at first but now at second
this glance is a meteor
sucking everything around it
it is vacuous and cold sucking
to the hill where one man
hung his neck a coil of serpent
twisting sexually, devious.
Comets snuff but their flames
are pure and stay strong.
The winter chill electric
pulsing the hairs on my
wrist, forearm, latter muscles
twitching in identity, this is it,
the incision, scissor to fabric,
guitar chord scattering like
the armies of capillaries
or the pulse of two areolas,
what it means to be moment
with the skin long and sheathing
but cold and fresh and anew.
What it means to be your helicopter
the houses so small from so high
so high will we ever see everything
high will we ever be fast enough?
I wonder if the woman walking along
in fear and agony face distortion
I wonder where she finds her love,
if it's love like language and
dead poets everywhere screaming ghosts
under billions of grains of earth
while the world tramples by because
they have been trained even the artists
who profit like pigs who are policing
the laws of aesthetic and nurturing
with the most pure filth imaginable--
discard thy artistry hisses the wind,
also serpentine but formless, angry.
I wonder if the woman walking along
fears her fear when it comes up to her
like a breeze or a glass bottle or sweep
of trash, a race of ants, a battle cry
of the hysterical, the endless supply of
children left behind for rot instant perishing
in the system that lies, says it cannot allow.
I wonder but really I am thinking
about colleges training all of us to be
idiots, to be lied to, to be forced
into thinking into being to be unable
to focus or write or think or remember--
colleges like guns recoiling and shoving
you back as soon as you have fired
their bullet, thousands of monetary units
being burned at the local celebration.
I think of the ritual sacrifices on Mayan
monuments, their fierce historical lovers,
Aztecs of yellowed teething and hunger, propping
up like giant syringes of snake, scaled
and horrifying, I think of the mandates and
embargoes, the grueling fats and oils, the
snot running thick to be crusted in the breeze,
a love that is concrete and the smack of our boots--
What do we fear when talking about love?
Can you calm me down by giving me puckered lips
or aching knees or forkfuls of couscous
dripping in nonsense, ingredients, heat?
Love songs are like tornadoes, they slow
time down, but at the same time, love songs,
are like worst situations, for better is for worse,
and love songs are dogs or cats or companions.
I think about love songs but really I am thinking
about myself, it took me 20 years to start
stopping myself from being one giant mirror,
and I think about all the girls that got wasted
away through time because of that mirror, it's
sunlight magnified to burn and its clarity
mortally haunting for what it can show, those
few beautiful women their minds wombs of ideas,
and the few men who I have loved as much as the women,
who return scattered when processed by the mirror,
their songs of love denied, their songs denied audience.
The call of the warlord, the benchmark of
a sad computer, the 9-gallon hat deficiency,
the woman walking down the street in blisters
and moans and praying to a God that I can never--
the air, it's breeze, calm, like a buckshot
experienced the first time, reminds me of Rhode Island,
Iran, Afghanistan lovers, entire cultures of
poets mad with chattering teeth and bleeding knives,
horrible leaders, false shimmers in stars--
The breeze makes me think of doubt, and reprisal,
and repression a giant cycle or ball rolled up,
slamming into the ground like the metric ton
of clay molded and for disruption, thereon fever
Forever, and let us hope you have felt it at least once
Shut the window, prepare the meat, load your
wood stove and imagine red riots, blue pulses,
veiny legs and electric shivers, piercing
the shelves of silence like noise, spirals of static,
the lowest region of the dial, zeros making us all
go home to think and pray, to get off our legs
into our eyes, our own and your own, dear
doppelgangeress, dear double helix still breathing,
you who will walk that street again and again
but like Eurydice I cannot find you, like death,
you are living and forever but a breeze, passing.
at the epidermus but calmly oceanic
it was a different place
exactly one year ago all those days wound
when warmth was so desperate
to be discovered hiding, but warmth wasn't,
not enough really just puckered,
punk and endangered, endangering
and now this chill, harlequin spinning,
returns like gun recoil or pesticides
from their hiding place the back cabinet,
the subtle atomic rustle returns
as a fist gloved and ready for thrust,
upper body strength to plexus
the woman for they are different
walking down the street, is
dressed in comments and ugly
scowls fearing to be feared.
Steadying out she continues
leg over leg praying
indigent intervention,
God has a soul, God must
but mutters and psychopathic
belongs in whitewrap in salon
in crazy house kooky floored
where women walk around
the screams processing
the screams didn't know them
at first but now at second
this glance is a meteor
sucking everything around it
it is vacuous and cold sucking
to the hill where one man
hung his neck a coil of serpent
twisting sexually, devious.
Comets snuff but their flames
are pure and stay strong.
The winter chill electric
pulsing the hairs on my
wrist, forearm, latter muscles
twitching in identity, this is it,
the incision, scissor to fabric,
guitar chord scattering like
the armies of capillaries
or the pulse of two areolas,
what it means to be moment
with the skin long and sheathing
but cold and fresh and anew.
What it means to be your helicopter
the houses so small from so high
so high will we ever see everything
high will we ever be fast enough?
I wonder if the woman walking along
in fear and agony face distortion
I wonder where she finds her love,
if it's love like language and
dead poets everywhere screaming ghosts
under billions of grains of earth
while the world tramples by because
they have been trained even the artists
who profit like pigs who are policing
the laws of aesthetic and nurturing
with the most pure filth imaginable--
discard thy artistry hisses the wind,
also serpentine but formless, angry.
I wonder if the woman walking along
fears her fear when it comes up to her
like a breeze or a glass bottle or sweep
of trash, a race of ants, a battle cry
of the hysterical, the endless supply of
children left behind for rot instant perishing
in the system that lies, says it cannot allow.
I wonder but really I am thinking
about colleges training all of us to be
idiots, to be lied to, to be forced
into thinking into being to be unable
to focus or write or think or remember--
colleges like guns recoiling and shoving
you back as soon as you have fired
their bullet, thousands of monetary units
being burned at the local celebration.
I think of the ritual sacrifices on Mayan
monuments, their fierce historical lovers,
Aztecs of yellowed teething and hunger, propping
up like giant syringes of snake, scaled
and horrifying, I think of the mandates and
embargoes, the grueling fats and oils, the
snot running thick to be crusted in the breeze,
a love that is concrete and the smack of our boots--
What do we fear when talking about love?
Can you calm me down by giving me puckered lips
or aching knees or forkfuls of couscous
dripping in nonsense, ingredients, heat?
Love songs are like tornadoes, they slow
time down, but at the same time, love songs,
are like worst situations, for better is for worse,
and love songs are dogs or cats or companions.
I think about love songs but really I am thinking
about myself, it took me 20 years to start
stopping myself from being one giant mirror,
and I think about all the girls that got wasted
away through time because of that mirror, it's
sunlight magnified to burn and its clarity
mortally haunting for what it can show, those
few beautiful women their minds wombs of ideas,
and the few men who I have loved as much as the women,
who return scattered when processed by the mirror,
their songs of love denied, their songs denied audience.
The call of the warlord, the benchmark of
a sad computer, the 9-gallon hat deficiency,
the woman walking down the street in blisters
and moans and praying to a God that I can never--
the air, it's breeze, calm, like a buckshot
experienced the first time, reminds me of Rhode Island,
Iran, Afghanistan lovers, entire cultures of
poets mad with chattering teeth and bleeding knives,
horrible leaders, false shimmers in stars--
The breeze makes me think of doubt, and reprisal,
and repression a giant cycle or ball rolled up,
slamming into the ground like the metric ton
of clay molded and for disruption, thereon fever
Forever, and let us hope you have felt it at least once
Shut the window, prepare the meat, load your
wood stove and imagine red riots, blue pulses,
veiny legs and electric shivers, piercing
the shelves of silence like noise, spirals of static,
the lowest region of the dial, zeros making us all
go home to think and pray, to get off our legs
into our eyes, our own and your own, dear
doppelgangeress, dear double helix still breathing,
you who will walk that street again and again
but like Eurydice I cannot find you, like death,
you are living and forever but a breeze, passing.
NJ Transit II
"Cool dudes" write graffiti (circa 2007)
in the vantage of commuters
advertising stylishly
their aerosol skills
embossed and dropped shadows
like Free Public WiFi (you snake)
or rhymes which are like bombs
to some rappers
everyday, I'm hustling
after past-tense trains
in the ratty Brooklyn subway slips
managed by higher authorities
New York
pitches a tent of it's own mither
while a toilet in transit pleads
"Do not drink the water"
to a born-again communist
who's urine smells of coffee, suspiciously
orange cones perched on the cherry pickers (of our youth) like deposed Diocletian cardinals
disowned as both son and business partner
this is horrible weather for birds
they love it anyway
in your hands you barely cup the faint shards of a broken muse
bring on the West Nile virus
we cross our mountains
in Toyota Rubicons
fully loaded (or: with all the options)
you look like the hell I don't believe in
you smell like a north western funeral
you speak like a lawn-mower
which someone mistakenly gave a cell phone
the bricks are stained as ever
they grow beards of miserable soot
the 12:25 Jersey local
rolls on the bygone bones of the New Deal
but the dealer is cheating
and just the bones know it
in the vantage of commuters
advertising stylishly
their aerosol skills
embossed and dropped shadows
like Free Public WiFi (you snake)
or rhymes which are like bombs
to some rappers
everyday, I'm hustling
after past-tense trains
in the ratty Brooklyn subway slips
managed by higher authorities
New York
pitches a tent of it's own mither
while a toilet in transit pleads
"Do not drink the water"
to a born-again communist
who's urine smells of coffee, suspiciously
orange cones perched on the cherry pickers (of our youth) like deposed Diocletian cardinals
disowned as both son and business partner
this is horrible weather for birds
they love it anyway
in your hands you barely cup the faint shards of a broken muse
bring on the West Nile virus
we cross our mountains
in Toyota Rubicons
fully loaded (or: with all the options)
you look like the hell I don't believe in
you smell like a north western funeral
you speak like a lawn-mower
which someone mistakenly gave a cell phone
the bricks are stained as ever
they grow beards of miserable soot
the 12:25 Jersey local
rolls on the bygone bones of the New Deal
but the dealer is cheating
and just the bones know it
Sunday, March 8, 2009
It's Dumb Living Sometimes
The trinity's metal
warped nothing but
the thing visible
in currents of hair
static along the mats
caused a tidal wave
in emotional out crop
the same dread bubbling
up like tap water or
thick, bluesy orange
juice, OJ because of
the pleasing sounds.
Cries of child on
the corner, cats
calling too like
we should probably
get moving since
the car is ready, our
shoes tied tight,
the television on,
the heat busting out
the way it's supposed
to though we're not
ready in these black
jumpers and neon smiles,
our gloves pressing
our lips like clay.
warped nothing but
the thing visible
in currents of hair
static along the mats
caused a tidal wave
in emotional out crop
the same dread bubbling
up like tap water or
thick, bluesy orange
juice, OJ because of
the pleasing sounds.
Cries of child on
the corner, cats
calling too like
we should probably
get moving since
the car is ready, our
shoes tied tight,
the television on,
the heat busting out
the way it's supposed
to though we're not
ready in these black
jumpers and neon smiles,
our gloves pressing
our lips like clay.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Rare Love Poem That Ends Sadder than it Began (which says Something about the Nature of Love)
After the Series Finale of Nip/Tuck
When is my
protector
coming home
we danced like
old songs. Stangers
in the night
the stars and subways
are alive and mindful
of north, noon
you know you're
gonna need her
when I'm gone
the old moon which
can't even remember
her name, smile
the last flag
was buried in
our best box
When is my
protector
coming home
we danced like
old songs. Stangers
in the night
the stars and subways
are alive and mindful
of north, noon
you know you're
gonna need her
when I'm gone
the old moon which
can't even remember
her name, smile
the last flag
was buried in
our best box
Waterproof
For FOUND Magazine, Rachel Jackson, and John Ashbery
You will bore
through the thick strata
of fat paint globbed on windows
the march snow's own fatness
and it's own fallow mirth
the black keys nearby
and just slightly higher
Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke Box
felt each other up in the 8th grade
New Years parties
at the end of the mind
I heard you humming
USA IS A MONSTER
during the hourly reminder of Laguardian flight paths
and the bouquet of ashes, handbags
that lip below your eye
with the water-proofness of a seal.
You will bore
through the thick strata
of fat paint globbed on windows
the march snow's own fatness
and it's own fallow mirth
the black keys nearby
and just slightly higher
Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke Box
felt each other up in the 8th grade
New Years parties
at the end of the mind
I heard you humming
USA IS A MONSTER
during the hourly reminder of Laguardian flight paths
and the bouquet of ashes, handbags
that lip below your eye
with the water-proofness of a seal.
Mimosas in Bloom
by Elizabeth Bishop
Dust from the floors of Heaven
that makes one sneeze and then smell honey.
What angels threw it out down here,
the lovely, yellow, air-light litter?
The gray-green leaves fold neatly back
like kittens' ears. The hillside's gold.
No, better than gold
this fine, soft, unmixed pigment.
Dust from the floors of Heaven
that makes one sneeze and then smell honey.
What angels threw it out down here,
the lovely, yellow, air-light litter?
The gray-green leaves fold neatly back
like kittens' ears. The hillside's gold.
No, better than gold
this fine, soft, unmixed pigment.
Monday, March 2, 2009
American Portraits and Translations
After watching Lost in Translation and thinking of memories in Japan.
What will get you
writing again?
What will get you
thinking of things,
expressable things,
things that should
move you in strangest
directions?
It is amazing the
contrast of light
and dark, spread over
like a tightly-knit
blanket, or a routine.
Sometimes routines
are nothing.
Sometimes routines
depress with their
impressive orders.
In Tokyo, the light
is an impression
in world of other light.
In writing, the words
depress like maniacs
holding flaming swords,
their hearts in sheaths,
sleeves made out of grass,
blood pouring down lines
like telephones, abruptive
immensities, cheatings.
The cops stole your smirks
like they were towels
to be wrung out; breaths
like baths of grease,
midnight motorcycles
to the instant grills.
If I were your lipstick
would I shade your face
in cherry blossom?
If I were the hanging
plants, if I were moons,
if I were strange dogs,
if I stockings licked,
or ripped, lipped to
let go . . . if you
held that umbrella?
Every girl walks
down the street the same,
each mall's layout slime.
The really big deals
mold fashion to greyback.
The mysterious face
of the close your face.
Double oh seven propped
in the shower, the rope
snapped hours after
judgment's rolls.
To stop and to drop,
to roll around in
and be awash with sound.
Chaos the blond, lashes,
longingly looked
at your likeness like
Italian gardens, moto,
spread cheese across.
It was hard to reach
the soul when the soul
was a woman walking
blocks away, her form
blurred motion, her
orientation, midnight
velocity, midnight this,
midnight that, midnight
of the same, thick cuts.
A sweater wrapped in,
"um" style, "okay,"
flowers for purpose,
sticks of fire and color.
We waited to hold your
hands together in
practice, the exhaustion
supervising from above.
Taken on March 1, 2009
Listenings to screams
of cats, noodles eaten,
staring foreheads,
the masculine bowing
before katana death!
Suzuki! Please, whiskey!
For relaxing time,
make it Santori time.
Make it time of the will.
Make it a cabride zone.
Make it forgetting.
Make it millions.
Make it plays upon.
Make it gravity.
While husband worked,
wife dined out explaining
her husband to the other,
who is husband,
the form cannot explain,
Aristotelian commotion,
the battle of molasses,
long gunshot of lazer.
Nowhere. The anarchy of
nowhere, no time, video
heads bouncing around
like slaves to heads.
This is how it is
to respond to
the best beast,
the vocal projection.
Anorexia it is not.
Toxins it is not.
Some people think in
tongues, think in jokes.
If I fall, someone will
notice. The people are
the secret, the dancing
is the muse. Heliotropic.
Mastodons of menace!
How their footsteps fall!
Dancing the meringue!
Dreaming the rasta!
Tongues of Babylon
opening up and eating
all of it, crowns, sides
of the diamond, eating
the routine in the whole.
What is the definition
of burgundy?
The wrong situation for
orange camo?
What is too small?
What is pizza of death?
Taken on March 29, 2008
Seven gulls for seven
women born to triptych.
One gull explodes wing.
One gull picks up woman.
Third gull dances blues.
One gull picks up guitar.
One gull silenced.
Sixth gull dances seventh.
Seven gulls but sixth
and seventh are dancing.
Special? You called me
special and then Morrisey
and then the same lights
saying the same words
the same symbols bogging
along the same lanes,
driving down into etched
marks of brig's stand.
(Thinking,
like Lisa Jarnot
thinks)
How many times have we
shut the door and walked
away knowing we did shut
the door and walked away,
drunk, or stunned, our
hair wind blown along,
we tired to think but
still thinking and what
was it they whispered
those chancellors, those
kids on the sidewalk,
those chancellors of
the wind, their hair
shut doors, their time
drunk or stunned, Mount
Fuji standing straight up
and us begging forgiveness
for having walked away.
Strange canisters, broken
xrayed feet and toes,
in forms that we haven't
seen. How's that song go?
The magpie's come home.
The chicken's come home.
The roost has come home.
An old friend, David,
used to sing in a band.
He sung of remote control.
Being a remote control.
I think about these things
years later. Does this h-
happen, later on? To run
through traffic and think,
to watch the smashed glass
on the windshield chipped
and crumbling beneath
each wiper that unlimits
our visions and glances
to the east and west,
like children across a
street, or fingers torn
from an envelope, or
the fingers later spooning
jellies and cubed ice
dowsed with whiskey
into the gaping mouth
of the one your love, so
does this happen, does it
happen forever and ever?
Taken on March 2, 2007
Mt. Fuji in quiet movie.
Blues are the colors
my mother used to make
me admire, the tones
of the sky and the water
and the color of some ink,
of a car and my favorite
crayon, of binders and
folders and shirts and
toys, of flowers and
butterflies and berries,
of weddings no one watched
and funerals with eyes
closed for ages, shadows
behind the lids all blue.
Then the abstractions,
the subtle intangibles,
the blues neither felt
nor felt, the deep
widening blues matched
with music and sound
but felt raw and uncut,
blobs and blurbs of blue,
claps and waves of blue
through lines and circles,
bubbles and bottoms of
holes, of everything.
Transfers always help
but never in the blue,
enraptured and bathing,
blue descriptive in its
vague sense of being,
a cloak flowing in the
forest, the breeze bowing,
teasing, tracing skin
and massaging and the
metamorphosis; no wait,
hesitation is in blue,
too; the lines and lines
all circumferences
ensnared. The great slick; up and you chose blue.
You can start a jazz band
as every object in your
field of vision becomes
tilted and titled with
blue. Tiled along in
parade like tears to
spout. This is the spooked
way of living. This is
the hardship of starships
and our chizeled features
becoming the great love
story of our time. It is
easy to think of the hero
as a farcical character.
It is easy to think of
such masses on the walks!
Subtle reflections await
and it's the hardest
things we do, every day
going on like this, the
romance killing us,
becoming us, and onwards
to the sky, I dream of
Ashbery's system, being
lost in translation,
the deep undercurrents
of the underbelly, and
ten at night zooming
past in chorus, songs
sung to make us drip.
This is the grief of
honey being licked
by paws, the bottom
of the container visible.
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