IN MEMORY OF OUR FEELINGS

400th post

2010-07-01T22:41:00.002-04:00

Maria winters: how was your day?

Sent at 10:36 PM on Thursday

me: sucked

invented a drinking game

where you buy 6 rolling rock pounders

and don't put them in the fridge

and try to drink them all before they get cold

i'm winning right now

literally, as we speak

New York Shoe

2010-05-09T23:04:00.002-04:00

A wet shoe from the pavement
taps with its quiet wetness
with its solitary, broken strap,
a pattern smudged, an object forgotten.
Walking passed.

Shivasana

2010-04-22T01:36:00.003-04:00

yoga
Apr. 11, 2010 – 5:41pm

Trying out this icebreakers thing...what do you think about when you can't settle into a good shivasana? I inevitably yogadream about food and up and bought some out-of-season strawberries right after the last class I took.

29% Enemy 59% Friend 67% Match Message from [omitted]

--------------------

Apr. 21, 2010 - 1:34am

I have no idea what shivasana is although it sounds metaphysical so I probably hate it. I do the kind of yoga that looks like yoga to people who don't know what yoga is (because I don't know what yoga is...mainly).

Most likely I will spend a few minutes looking up shivasana on Wikipedia and then looking at the "discussion" section to see what's been changed recently, whether or not there are other schools of thought, or just trolling the most devoted editors of the article until I get flamed/they get banned (because this is a fun thing for me).

--------------------

Savasana

Aliens.

2010-03-19T05:59:00.002-04:00

In last night's dream, which is the first I've had the ability to remember in vivid detail in I don't know how many years, I am overcome by the presence of UFOs. The first encounter so to speak is walking through an abandoned lot somewhere in Northern Liberties in Philadelphia and I come across a group of people who are hanging out on this lot and they are all young people and I'm walking across this lot and see a two strings extending into the air, but there are clouds and there is no way of seeing where the strings are going but upon getting much closer I notice that it's a swing set with amazingly long chains and on the swing is a person who has been paralyzed in fear or awe or something worse and they get sucked up and dragged but I never am able to tell the others and so they don't understand what the hell I'm talking about since it happened and is over and is a very strange account.

Later there is a poetry reading in a building that is on a very similar lot and I don't find out it's a reading until later but I am on that lot again and I see all these people and I am now hanging out with the people and then all of a sudden I see the same thing happen again but this time I drag the people over to where it's happening while it's happening and they all come and we are able to pull two or three people off the swing set, the entire thing of which is being pulled up into the the abyss of the sky and we succeed in rescuing these victims and then all of a sudden we see the giant ship that's shaped like a trapezoid and is extremely large and close to the ground speed off into the distance and we are so frightened and everything is going crazy but we don't know what to do. The ship zooms off into the distance.

Back inside the building I don't hear the poets or see them but I know it's a poetry reading for some reason and I decide to take a smoke break (I don't remember from the dream the interactions that happened inside the building even though I know I dreamed something . . . ) and I am outside talking blankly with one of the people who assisted me and we are all dumbfounded. I think at some point I go back into the building and grab more people who had no idea about the ship and bring them outside and they are able to see it zooming over some warehouses in the distance and fading instantaneously.

The other major part of the dream that happened before I woke up and decided to stop dreaming and start writing was during the smoke break when an older couple come outside and the man introduces me (I didn't get a name) and he starts talking about how he has had experiences with spaceships like this in the past but he doesn't describe them. He merely describes my performance during the poetry reading in a nostalgic way and it's the first reading he's been to in fifteen years and loves it. I don't really know what to say and at this point there are a lot of people milling about outside and the last image I have is of all of us, maybe twenty people, looking up into the sky and seeing this gray, metallic object (that is hardly as impressive as the original ship) very far up in the sky, floating up into outer space, disappearing, and everyone sitting still in amazement.

The weather in the dream was fair.

The Desert (Excerpt)

2010-03-16T02:07:00.001-04:00

The first thing I did was buy a big dog.

I named the big dog Kurt Gödel. I know almost nothing about Kurt Gödel except that he formulated the incompleteness theorem and starved himself to death.

I want to meet a girl who knows the same amount about Kurt Gödel that I do. Probably.

The second thing I did was find a desert. David Foster Wallace said that Tuscon was one of the only places he ever felt at home in. He hung himself on his front porch in Bloomington, IL. His dogs were barking. His dogs were named Drone and Jeeves.

Harold Bloom covered all of this in The Anxiety of Influence I think.

Next I found an apartment near the desert. I lived with a couple who fought a lot. Sometimes I would break up the fights. I would separate the couple and tell each of them that they hated each other and the best thing to do for all parties was to end things amicably. I told her he says these things because he loves you and is passionate. I told him she hits you with hangers because you she knows you won’t hit her back in any serious way. My windows faced the desert.

A window that faces the desert looks different than a television show set in the desert. The desert in your window is one color.

The dog liked the desert.

I always imagined I would see guys in the desert with metal detectors. I always felt that sand and metal detectors went together. There is an episode of Pete and Pete where the dad brings a metal detector to the beach and finds a Cadillac buried in the sand. The family spends all day digging out the Cadillac and then they drive home in the Cadillac. How did they get to the beach though?

This was the period where I often did Yoga. It wasn’t real Yoga because learned all the positions from a Google image search for “Yoga.” It was stretching, with grace. This was back when I was trying to be happy. This also explains why I bought the dog (Kurt Gödel).

I did lots of jumping jacks too. One time I recorded video of myself doing jumping jacks to see if I was getting the timing right. I stopped doing jumping jacks after that.

I started waking up at 9 o’clock. Waking up at 9 o’clock makes you want to do things like get a haircut.

I got a military style haircut. People looked me in the eyes and said “thank you for your service” and I would say “You are welcome. Enjoy your freedom.” One time a boy asked me how many people I’d killed and I had to tell him none. The boy was disappointed and his disappointment disappointed me.

My dog got pregnant by another species of dog. She gave birth to cytoplasm-filled water-balloons. She wept and I held her and said “poor Kurt Gödel” like two hundred times.

Reading Terminal Market

2010-03-08T13:03:00.001-05:00

To: White Negro

You could do some serious kidnapping in that building.

From: White Negro

Yeah. But the kids keep coming so its pointless.

The Best Part

2010-03-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

is when she wakes up to pee
around six

wraps a towel around
exits, enters

towel drops and
she's back, wrapping your arms around

making everything the same
again

Tolerance

2010-02-08T23:04:00.003-05:00

How we live our lives
with these marks on our feet.

How we sit and wait
for the alarms to sound.

Outside a young woman
pokes holes in the snowy chair.

Over in Annapolis a young woman
contemplates the northwest.

Up the street a young woman
tells me how she loves her family.

How we live our lives
hoping the wounds will resolve.

From the Institute: 01-28-10

2010-01-31T14:38:00.002-05:00

For now I am at the Institute.
My TD Bank pen tip dulls.
I steal the bar’s Sierra Nevada paper pen.
Is it an ink water fountain or ink vomit mouth?

*

My stomach rides on illness tonight.
Dark chocolate shuffle syndrome.
I sip the Voodoo White Magic from a very small glass.
I dream of the calmest bile shaded with caramel.

*

Some may say leave your hats on.
Others would talk about rudeness and indoors.
You would probably say nothing if you were here.
I tell myself everything, and right now.

*

During a workshop Jeff Weaver stood,
facilitating and staring at me.
He never got my name right.
I watched his lazy eye stare at the others.

*

On the televisions there’s a snowboarding competition.
The commercial is cut to as usual.
Now a gnome sails down some slope.
It is a raunchy third person close up.

*

Outside it is cold enough
to freeze my testicles to marble.
I wonder about frost giants.
Their sex organs must be godly.

*

Who is George Lopez?
What is the Ace of Spades?
Channel surfing is done on surf channels.
The state of television is the cause of television.

*

A man saunters on inside.
A 6-pack of something to go.
There are no 6-packs for here.
I wonder about alcohol markets.

*

So yesterday Howard Zinn died
and today JD Salinger did.
There are pillars of culture crumbling.
Left, right, and on down the center.

*

I still haven’t written about noise.
A flash image: Jamie Townsend’s grin.
The chef says Seven Deadly Sin-dwiches.
Satanic cuisine needs more of us.

*

When you go to your favorite place
you will see your family.
They will be lined up, like rabbits.
What awaits is a group hug or mass homicide.

*

Shit, man, it’s like a stout, a shrine.
Inevitably the cherry smiles are sequestered.
There is buckshot to your own abdomen.
Pigs in this dream gut themselves wide open.

*

Prior to wondering about fairy tales
I took up a stance to other streets.
All you shemales, fuck off, says the barbarian.
I can’t call that fighter anything else.

*

What’s with color in conversations?
We work all day wearing cool eyewear.
We take things too far.
We go home and fuck up the toilet.

*

New Holland has a beer called Dragon’s Milk.
All I see are drakelings sucking
grinding, plate-like teats.
I mean it’s horny unlike those silk trousers.

*

Haven’t thought about Frank Sherlock recently,
but I was at the Last Drop yesterday
and got Dirty Frank’s wifi signal.
While thinking about boozers I forget big connections.

*

I’ve moved on to Victory’s Helios.
It’s a golden amber that’s defined by Now.
Maine was all local bullshit brews;
Rhode Island was shit brews; Philly’s exotica brews.

*

Storybook romance in text message form.
Oh jesus Katherine we would be perfect,
perfect love but there’s so much rotting distance.
I hope you never find this metastatic notebook.

*

Steven’s faces on his phone are guttural.
I mean his facial expressions are all mushed.
Like let’s go disturb the entire world.
I mean Steven Silverman, you’re on my boat.

*

My favorite new concept is code-switching.
“I use the term acid jazz sometimes
because it’s dirty,” he says.
I want to yell like a pit bull looks.

*

95% of an average human being’s thoughts are negative.
Thank the verse gods.
Thank the meditative state.
Thank pornographic Blakean angel visions.

*

There’s not a drop of hope
leaning against this bar
where these lines cross with telephonea.
Style is public when you ain’t watching.

*

This guy has the best lines about music.
But I can’t write straight with this Boolean cube
synesthesia barking up and down the trees
of this submarine tragedy.

*

I have never seen
more people behind the bar
than on the stools
and I needed to see this.

*

It seems like it’s time,
said the girl and guy.
Clutched hands and the cold forgotten.
There is that oncoming frostbite, though.

*

Glissade. Glossolalia.
Movies about gladiators.
Really timed, stopped motion.
Faux succubae kisses.
*

Sure there is the father who left,
hiding beneath Illinois billboards.
Sure your hair is perfect.
You are the universal receiver.

*

It’s so easy analyzing our death obsessings.
Some Superman move on a movie, an abscess.
Crashing buildings and this dream.
I have a dream: let’s fucking stop it.

*

Wild nights, wild nights, and skinny bikinis.
When you go there
you will get drunk
and your endings will be enough.

*

At the First Unitarian Church
Kate sat down on the reversed pew.
We talked about the summer and the future.
Just to remind you: she has elf beauty.

*

Kat asks: Can I get a sneak peak of your work?
You don’t need a cure if you yourself are the elixir.
I smile and reply: When you feed me lines I love you like chainmail.
Your distance is like staring at a cloth map with ex marks on it.

*

Folks are talking about hot food stories.
I’ve got a leaky bladder.
Goodnight to the perpendicular.
Good morning late, abstract night.

*

Some days it’s easier to let it out.
To fart in public, to be that imbecile.
You forget why you’re where you are.
I think about China, and Vatican City, V-City to you.

*

Sitting outside on the Unitarian steps
the black girl smiled and stared.
At me I am the kingly one.
At me this is another first person’s story.

*

A metal suit to hold me.
A raw beet to gnaw.
This heat is a turned-on flame.
We are rocking in these caverns.

*

In a world wrought with disease
another planet reflects on height.
God exists as nether region.
A boy is whipped by a pastor.

*

There’s a snus because I want to.
Bed time is because of spiders.
Everything dies to reawaken.
Life is the swagger of the Grim Reaper.

*

Watch for the glance avoided.
Hang on to a hang glider.
Wait and watch that teddy bear burn.
Wreak your havoc for your hairnet.

*

As Richard Brautigan turned trees into curbs,
Richard Brautigan fantasized about fish.
There were no suicidal characters
before Richard Brautigan’s raised rods.

*

Smelly, hippy vegan dude walks in.
The bar is susceptible to radicals.
The radicals have been here
with the same smells for so long.

*

Jury duty and scoundrels.
Let’s put the emphasis on “and”.
Jury duty and scoundrels.
Let’s get kicked out because of the bathroom.

*

Could it be drunk?
Could it be a slam dunk?
Could it be North Philadelphia?
Could it be taking the socks out?

*

I don’t know like I am too selfish
like you are as pure as that sunset
on the computer I saw with brain matter
and heart disease and flower petals tangoing.

*

Let it be known that there is hatred
and a lot of laughter in every corner.
Let it be known that there’s a storm
and precipitation comes with storms.

*

Before the eyes twitch into other ways
a land loads into the memory.
We have remembered this for you.
Just click around and become free again.

Training: 01-27-10

2010-01-31T13:36:00.001-05:00

Training: 1/27/10

At St. Luke and the Epiphany
where the pews actually pad the ass
and there are white hymnals and black hymnals
and it’s quite apparent Jesus be in the glass.

*

Eugene says he needs a four letter lamb word.
Are crossroads to be found in crosswords?
Is Obama really old or really new?
Wilhelm Reich wrote about psychoanalysis and fascism.

Hills of Slag

2010-01-27T21:08:00.002-05:00

1/25

Yesterday we were in Jim Thorpe.
We were also in Centralia, among its smoke and mist.
In Pottsville we were at its most silent.
Yesterday we were travelers and we ate cookies well.

*

We don't like sitting in rooms together.
But we do it anyway.
We don't learn from our mistakes
but we don't learn together.

*

I know what I saw.
I saw a cosmic radiance.
I saw the vision of moonshine.
Atop a slag castle, staring through mist.

*

Who would live in a town like Quakake
without hiding bodies
and thanking the rails
for a wonderland of jump pads?

*

No spray, the sign read.
I wanted to dip it in cacao chunks.
I wanted to swallow it all down my tight throat.
No spray, the sign read.

*

1/26

I remember Ron
who stood at the bar at M & M's
in downtown Pottsville.
He gave us so many beer tokens.

*

Also at that bar
which played strictly its club rap,
bologna from Jerusalem was the bar food
and we got free red and white plastic mugs.

*

Centralia's dusty paths
were the black backs of wyrms.
We road them and snused.
I puffed too and tried to forget her.

*

I am the robot king! I shouted.
My lazers are the fastest.
My armor the thickest.
My processor a blitzer.

*

So I'm in wait for the principal.
Plans fail. I repeat: fail fail fail.
There was once a metal army.
The nuke glued their shadows down like Hiroshima.

*

His voice was the sound of a guitar.
His mood was a flopping soggy roast beef hoagie.
I could put him between two pieces of toast
and ship him to the Emperors in Antarctica.

*

Today there's goulash and tomomrrow, Let's Go!
There is pending parental supervision.
Sitting makes us go crazy.
Bees go crazy when they're on a fence in front of a cave.

*

Ms. S. and I chatted Stenton Park
and Old Stenton Road and Logan Station.
She accused me of email viruses, and
after I mentioned Centralia, trees fell.

*

Chris and Carry are bright and merry.
They keep up talking about stuff
no one I know would follow.
Such fabulous knowledge the oppressed have prepped.

*

A carrot that's mine; and a brownie, a cookie: both Kyle's.
A swig of tap water. Phiadelphia's.
Danea's coffee. Down this hatch or that.
I'm still yearning for more fucking fruits and veggies.

*

So Yossarian gets visited by his fam.
They don't remember his name.
They care and he doesn't.
Nothing matters and that's that.

*

Berryman's Dream Songs failed and duh.
It's like this cat playing with a dead mouse.
But there are hundreds of dead mice and only one cat.
No one wants to see it go down like that.

*

I haven't driven a Creeley poem in a while.
Maybe because I'm afraid of the road.
Maybe the turns are too dangerous for me.
Or maybe I'm thinking of Penelope Creeley in Providence.

Twenty Tramps Lined Up

2010-01-27T21:00:00.003-05:00

1/19

Today we walked to the bus.
Andy said two molestors were possible.
I said he could be the third if he wanted.
On the bus zero were obvious.

*

I pour down beer.
Its throat is wet.
The burger grease is dry.
Finn McCool's is opening, like an oyster.

*

The heels are all flesh and burn.
The streets are a rain forest.
No, wait, that's been chopped down.
Life is as a black hole or extinct animal.

*

1/24

While I wait for the exam
I try to grasp all of this year.
It would be easier to eat the year.
If only 2010 was just a leg of chicken.

*

It's a fun glide when Jeff orders.
The food was a chicken cheese steak. And fries.
Nathalie was a cynic babe serving him.
He stared at the plate then passed it to Steven.

*

Perhaps I am the youngest one here.
Perhaps I am the oldest.
Do suicidal thoughts graph age?
Who dreams of Kafka in pleasant ways?

*

I fear that there will be no money.
I fear that there will be no friends.
I fear that successes will disappear.
There will be a mushroom or an earthquaked island.

*

There are so many songs to dream.
Deep-rooted, they hit home in Philly.
Can thee be compared to a knife?
Thy kingdom is made of pen tubes.

*

I noticed the store around the corner of the block.
The Maverick burned like an incense ash stem forming.
Beyond the wall sat a cubicle forest.
I stamped out the paper and tobacco on the ground.

*

When you cannot stand still you get failure.
You get illicit downloads. Videos.
I cannot help but laugh at that screen.
We are dumb brutes when we try to grow up.

*

The bartender said, Rock and Roll.
The gorgeous Asian American was still there.
In a single moment of work she brought me the BBQ.
Later, we all agreed that her gift was damn good.

*

A man says, Traffic court.
A man says, The moving guy called me.
Please believe, please believe, please believe.
This shit is escapable.

Tales from Olney HS West pt 5

2010-01-23T10:03:00.003-05:00

1/12

She's signed up she just hasn't shown.

Two bullets in your A.S.S.

You are cheesy because you see me - Chris.

time

They gonna get this shit in
opposed to this documentary.

on Wayne: He's got tattoos all up on
everywhere. Even on his thing.

Bryant: Get a grip on her. Come on to her.

Julius: I'm done . . . done the first word.

Dom: Take him . . . because we hate you.

***

Without the teacher
this is a place of undonned masks.
Zero respect.
More than one brow met.
If they aren't going to do the work
they aren't going to do it.
Circling your head like a cannon.

Get it gone like you had it.

Like a pass in Maddon.
[I don't even dream about it.
Keep it or doubt it.
Put a snout to it.
Give it a try before ya abuse it.

Story about a class
where everything in the
room is removed.

Does he want dips? Does he want to have sex?

***

Naime: Easy girls give it up so fast.
Ugly girls give it up so fast.

Walls and kisses.

***

1/19

Our life living as paper does.
Dry on one side and bold inside it's cold.
I moan warmth.
Where were we walking?
How did we get there?
Were the supplications too supple for ye?

***

1/26

Chris: there are too many A's in "Alabama."

Tales from Olney HS West pt 4

2010-01-21T19:36:00.003-05:00

12/16

Somewhere I could/can see us
calling each other names
and finding takers, like everybody does..

The anti-hustle. Rushed with sugar.
Rush me to sleep.
Rush me to believe in nonexistence.
Diva glances. The lone ranger
rides in and out whenever he wants.
But to decipher desire ends in peril
and a puke-colored unhappiness.
Not helping anyone is the numb feeling
to dominate all others.

*

I think you should show effort
on a daily basis . . .

*

Earn a choice.

*

Does sugar constrict blood?

*

Sleep or television?
The hours of sleep increased
as the hours of television-watching increased . . .

*

I see you, you see me. That's talent. - Chris

*

Unique's tattoos are stronger than
dynamite. They cost him $5.00.

*

"It's not fun getting up in the
morning anymore." - Ms. S

*

To try and teach Emersonian transcendentalism
to inner city youth in 2010 is hilarious.

*

You're a biscuit or brisket.

*

Games from where they come on down by
life into foul zone triumph. This
cell phone to capture head folk.
Focus point. Your camera just don't
work anymore. Ditch to downright
doorbell snobbery. Knowing the
clacks of seats. Collapsing
issuance. Collapsing insurance. Insurance
spectacle. Anticoach job. Job
as coach. Coach and resplendent.

*

Ms. P: "How are you gonna make sure
your workers are loyal?

Chris: If not, they're gonna get popped
in the head. Carrie get
the AK47. Go pop pop.

*

"Ear hustlin'" = eaves dropping.

*

What would the plan to pass be?

*

Civil disobedience in everyday life.

*

I don't live the way you act. There's
something about you that makes me want
to throw up. - Ms. S

*

Fredeshia said: "It was so crazy
I was just laugh-like . . ."

*

You will get some credit.

*

A) How many times you spoke?
B) But how many times I tell
the truth?

Gun-Piece

2010-01-21T18:46:00.002-05:00

This was originally written for an HIV Awareness event as a spoken word performance piece. It was never completed.

In the morning the sun unsheathes its casing. Minds click awake. I am the reborn one. Reborn into throws and thrills, blasts of life. I am reborn into deathlessness.

But it's a world of carnage. The balance of the beam. Men and women walk with holes in their bodies. The blood leaks freely and yet these peeled-back eyes cannot clearly see. People pass and go. A full throw through a window.

Beings of every age picking up all the pieces and loading them. We do not live in an action scene but the obscenity of action. The leaky one's dreams are shaped.

Four Six-Word Stories

2010-01-21T18:45:00.001-05:00

1) Sparkles then birth then death, repeat.

2) The moral: it was effective bubblegum.

3) But back then soda wasn't grape.

4) The train took a long journey.

Tales from Olney HS West pt 3

2010-01-18T22:00:00.002-05:00

12-16

We sit discussing rockets.
We delete images.
Our coffee is being hand-delivered.
This language is of yo-yos
and candied bulls-eyes.
We live in a world of disc-ed ideas
and disc-ed apologies.
It doesn't take much to think
about little. Or being stupid.
When you wake you are flashbanged.
Think of the worst words you know:
cruel rotting skin sapped in pine ash.

*

My goal, like others, is to relive.
But sifting into childhood is exposure.
Why don't we become wall-hangings?
Let's redefine period-piece thinking.
Let's rezone with electromagnetic
forcefields and the world's biggest pinwheel.
Our coffee is on the way.
There is blood on some pavement
but I am blind to which one.

*

Chris: "He's lunchbox. Burned out."

*

Julius: "Watch out for your body. Niggas gettin' shot. It's close to Christmas. People got bread on them."

*

Today she told me she is pregnant.
She has only known for two weeks.
She has only told four others.
Her brother doesn't even know.
She is so happy and so excited.
To be in on a secret of creation
is like opening a treasure chest
of gold in a shadowy corridor.

*

There are many pages I want to write about
my time here but I fear it will all be
fiction. I want to write what is here and
now but there are too many spaces to fill.

*

R. calculates his salute.
Arms outstretched he
mimics a soldier or criminal
firing a machine gun. Grand Theft Posture.
This air is false.
He speaks of the army like a
simile. His sister, V., shakes her head.
It's a no. He cannot wait.
The idea. It spreads like iced fire. Smiles.
These are the notes I take doing
tests. When disintegrating.
It is silent. Bent head over stranger.
If I don't pay attention I will be chastised.

*

We dreamed of hospitals
and the fields going green.
The steps to the front lawn
and children carrying things.
Our purple eyes were dark
and that image made us think
that every moment after
would come back to our drink.

I am dead, save face,
move it to the wall,
I am dead, save face,
in the backmost of the hall.
I am dead, true taste,
in the underwater room.
I am dead
but watch my body swoon.

Keep the coldest calculation
on the edge of your feet.

Keep up the stones
for the warmth of the tree.

"Yelling makes it harder
for people to hear you." - Ms. P

Tales from Olney HS West pt 2

2010-01-17T22:59:00.003-05:00

12-3

Hooray for the Happy Hall Heroes.

+

Start algebraically. Start anthropomorphic shag.
My mother is a reincarnation.
If only everyone was. Ruby red
freshmen having difficult times.

Fine pat of the century.
D-Mac. Wu-Tang. A wall beat that
you cannot turn off.
How would I do it?
When can you return?
The equation of the eclipse.
Koszi is a raunchy thank you.
I do not even stand it.

*

12-7

"You know I'm math." - Chris

*

The concept of absence, as
enduring and timeless,
is a broken mirror.
Do you dare step up?
Only to be forced. Away.

*

Music on my iPad.

*

In consequence we do not double-check the
DOUBLE-DUTCH quantifier tonight.
Toasted, bred flaking ash, oh goodness.
Pouches--madness--madmen--mocking
pockmark--toc-mouth--chantry
canticle balding feature
the axiom angel hair prune.
Whadda prude boys, whadda prude.

*

I lick up the streets, fornicators
with vengeful malice and imitation.
The media's hyped giant processor
flailing against clean air.

*

Practicing signatures.
Post-quiz-part.
The blue paper taped to the wall
reminds me of the blue upper.
Some cultural residue doesn't heave.
It sits and rots. We are protectors.

*

You know you really like it.
Yo. Check yo before yo wreck yo.

*

Drink cookies and eat milk.

*

Why do they stop going?
Once you go to night school
you can't come back.
Through the administration
I found myself wandering blindly.
Silk surrounded me and yet
I felt turned off. Turned spun, around
for once and for good. For a
God forsaken credit or a measly
meal. A chance at the win.

*

Before Olney: nonviolence.
Winter makes me think of muggers
and rapists around the corner.
Of electric plots buzzing knowingly.
Of frozen puddles and sleet spit up.
Of fogged glasses and shivers.
Of women and men in furs, pea-coats.
And thick leathers, mittens, gloves, boots.

*

Moona mom.

*

12-8

At what point does anarchy
rebuild its cans of ashes?

*

Today Ms. S said only gays
wear black underwear.

*

Today I taught Lucretia
and Tramaine about negative nancies.
Laughter. Tons.

*

Party music:

*

Does the Ronald McDonald House
provide care for heart disease victims?

*

Control the air.
Put on the round shoes tomorrow.
Birthday ideas.
Storms on a 4th floor.

*

"Welcome to Ocky" - Chris

*

Come more, cut less.
We work here, below the cutlass, every day.
We've moved on.
We have chased
our tails and
through the calm
of forests we
have found rest.
Rest in our
lame bodies.
Rest in minds.
There are trees
standing straight.
Uprooted they
reach with hands,
grasp the sun,
a golden fruit,
an outsider.

*

Did we actually call that change?
Smoking on our off-hours
in Gorham, Maine?

*

Jardnains.

*

I know what to add to broccoli:
melted cheese.

*

I shove caramels down my throat.
I feel Ignatius. Purchased happiness.
Glands of rumpled fat.
These entries are the divine.
The subconscious of a high school
sunked to the low.

*

It will finally happen
and when they finally ask you
you won't even think about
how your response sounds.

*

In the lands of fights
I saw a ghost hanging
from the ceiling.

What I Owe

2010-01-17T22:43:00.003-05:00

New Jersey blasts by
and Joe punches keys.
Sam talks about "gay music"
and am I the only asshole?

*

Stoned at the Sanctuary.
Whiteness whacky and contemplated.
I talked to the tallest black tran.
I'll pay what I owe someday.

*

Molly's Books where I brought guac chips,
where I drank beer and ate cornbread,
where we talked about subversive second graders,
where Jack never put on Little Richard.

*

Stoned in the room is a plunger
shoving me into the sloppy slit
like I'm nine and it's Christmas
and I just have to jerk off to the Internet.

*

What am I doing gagging people
while Philadelphia rots, wound afestered,
and it's true I like muffled voices,
and it's true, I love shutting up.

*

The black homeless man
has dry, cracked skin around his eyes.
When you look at something that's like a river,
hate yourself for not looking at all.

*

Let's get this party started right.
Funk and freaky, stay up all night.
I'll be munching on a cell phone
thinking about asphyxiation.

*

I was taping the top line
in the gymnasium's entryway.
The barbecue sauce exploded all over
and I wanted to force you to lick at gunpoint.

*

If I were a drumline
tapping kinetically on the wall;
if I regularly had seizures
and partook in grand anal sex schemes;

*

At one time in New York
olives equaled broc equaled cheese.
When we're done with mozzarella
let's design Mr. Potato Head interchangeables.

*

I threw a highlighter at Sarah
and took a swig of Yuengling.
I threw my head down
and took my favorite burp out. Burp.

Tales from Olney HS West pt 1

2010-01-15T10:27:00.003-05:00

We weren't trapped at all, in fact.
I stared your face into mush.
Calming me, knowing you could
bend into fragments.

*

Normally a bedroom does not bend.
"Humdrum" as accurate word.
We were looking forward through the past.
I can't imagine sitting alone another moment.

*

The girl in the brown leather coat
sits at the desk with her head down.
This world is laughter grafted.
Between walls she will never wake.
The bell will cure her hypnotic toxic.
For now: seizure, her leg tapping on tile.
In her skull there are explosions
I can never return to.

*

No whining. Exercises.
Math class.
Math robbed them.
Mica in distance.
Micro crab trees
beneath finger nails.
Power surge from whence . . .
bandied posterboard.
Unplugged fan.
Brown and black jumpsuit
and an eggplant haircut.
White uniform: proxy.
Purple Vietnam hook hickey.
There was blood drained from
his mouth.

*

Oh God, father, oh
vegan rice krispies.
Cocoa and dates.
Walnut, coconut.
The sticking substances
sliding into finger cracks.
The hand base.
Zero preparation.

*

The feral zero zap.
My men are a military monster.
Green flak with Gak.
(I will not make you
take this test but I hope
you take it anyway)

*

Quilting, quotations.
For every nook there's open space.
Subatomic mind shank.
A shack housing blisters.
We live in a flooded mind.
Rouge criterion; single belly computer.
FOR SPANISH: change this to this.

*

Ms. Griffin as true American hero.
Security guard from Fels:
THEY WILL FIGHT TEACHERS.
Get back: what's real is real.
But there are more than one.

*

I don't believe in
make-up tests.
Hardly one more
trick of the trade.
Treated to trill tricks.
That jawn is straight.
The universal word.
Like breathing without
a silence.
Bulbuous black eyes.
Precognitive liminality.
Metal detector wear.
Get your garb on.
Crunk up a slam.
Three pastry eggs.

*

Now there are three
heads down where
once there were
two. Four
then verging
to five.
I'm finished.
Miss.
One second.

*

MONOFRAGMENT SILICATE. OSTEOECCENTRICISM. MALAFFECTED COOLENT. UNWORDED UNARANGED BOMBARDMENT. SIGN CHANGE THR0UGH TEN MORE MINI-MINUTES. COLLECTED CORRIDORS WITH LACKED FACES. CRUEL CAJOLLING GUEST CRUISE. APPLICANT REPLICATED TO TURNCOAT TORSO. EYE STARE TOWARD SORE. SOUR MEN DANCING ON TOP OF TWIN TWO HANDS. MARSHMALLOWING GRIEVANCE OFFSPRING. YO' NORMAL. PUSHCARD REPROBATE BECKONING ANTICLAVICAL TECHNICALITY. SUBWATCH WHAT I DO OR MY HESITANCY IN UNDOING. ROUGHED-UP RULING CLASS CLASH CULTURE. WHAT IS IN RED RIPS REGULO-RESPITORY. SAD FLAX SEED AND FLANKED MAGNET MONSOON MAROONED FOR OUR GOOD. WHAT HE GOT GROPED OPEN SPECIFIC BLOWHOLES.

*

Pierced irregularities flood the preordained input structure. It was a cut because you weren't wearing the correct pants. Bull feathers. The galaxy gala. Work piling up. Double to go over it. You are responsible for it. It is due on ____. Just so you know. Before grades go in.

*

A coffee from S & R is large
and costs a dollar and
is made of styrofoam
that is colored white and
has no decorations and
the lid is colored white too
and today the actual coffee
is actually a 3/10
rather than a 1/10 and
maybe that's because the liquid
is more cream than coffee
and yet that's okay with me.

((12/01/09))

Us two we're done for

2010-01-15T07:34:00.000-05:00

The cornet blows deep
where the oleander grows.
You’re breathing
while I’m trying to empty my lungs.

*

Sick, sad ions inside coffee.
This brew’s done for.
This brew’s from four years ago.
This brew contains my vomit.

*

When I talk about Haiti ending,
and you look at me like
you don’t know who I am,
I feel like you should please keep up.

*

One time I stared at the pictures
of little Haitian children covered and swabbed
with blood so real it couldn’t be fake
and there was a small surge, but it was small.

*

Too bad Shauna wasn’t laughing
when she was yelling at me,
exploiting my failures
like they were breaded salmon or something.

*

I watched the castle turn into a hotel.
The school, Olney, lit up with so many whites inside it.
My face frowned and I wanted to find Staci,
run away with her, so we could build cabinets together.

*

Casey’s silence is age getting older.
I know she’s in Farmington somewhere
farming and inching along for now.
I know that our friendship has faded, a little at least.

*

And there was Jeff’s malevolence
slicing down across my cheeks, bones,
inadequacies blown apart by dedication.
And there was Jeff’s best texts, his best phone behavior.

*

I live in an old, converted bread factory.
We cool man we, call it THE BAKERY.
In a story, I get raped in the garage,
and then go to piss in it the next day.

*

Drexel University was built on flames.
So was Jefferson and all the other oppressors.
If I wasn’t older than now I would throw bricks.
If I wasn’t billabong I wouldn’t play along.

*

Bess was leaving for London
and all I could think was
studying schizophrenia in London
is way too schizophrenic for me.

*

At the party Bess touched my thigh,
Nora put burned classical CDs into a boombox,
and Nathalie gave us good directions,
and I, well, I . . . well, I, well:

*

I’ve started smoking outside in the morning again.
Every time I think about it I smile.
I think about the people who think about it too
but really I think about the mushroom kingdoms.

*

Tacked to my wall there’s a list of jobs.
I have applied to two of these jobs.
I have inquired about one but gotten no response.
I have not applied to three of these fucking jobs.

*

Carlos runs a cool house
and Debrah sits next to me.
We’re staring at computer.
Then I drop it like a fucking idiot.

*

Are you saying something?
You can’t tell me nothing.
You can’t tell me nothing.
Dear Christ, Philadelphia, nothing.

Basically All I Said Was

2010-01-12T23:11:00.003-05:00

*
Patrick said the only way
is to obliterate everything.
He's in ninth grade
and he can see beneath.
*
"Cuckoo for cocoa puffs is my favorite"
said the nondescript girl.
In one of my stories I spray paint a bulls-eye
and jump down fifty stories to it.
*
I hadn't been high in months.
Debrah said her printer died
and I mentioned it was weird,
how people still say that.
*
In one of my stories
we all move away.
We track deer shit for miles
before going home and stripping down.
*
One thing I didn't mention
was tidal influence.
Arcane effects for these hearts.
It could be a problem.
*
When she or he said "matching witches"
I instantly thought about Salem.
They'll never prosecute your ass, Alex.
Will I ever see your witch's brew brain again?
*
Fredisha smiled at me before turning back.
When I was in high school it was "Fool on the Hill"
and now I am in high school and there it is again.
The minute it's about authority it's bogus shit.
*
Jahzeel's anger management
is something from a video game cover.
It's something you can hold
in your hands and stay pissed about.
*
Bubz: scars on cheek and eye.
"I see you got a problem."
Somewhere south of here you
will finally find what it is.
*
Seizure moments; chorus as echo.
In a failed idea four voices for one voice.
It's hard to experiment
without sticking matchsticks on down.
*
Far below Carl Rove drove home.
Even in hell he hollered quotations.
His eyes were way too deep.
The audacity too fucking hysterical.
*
There are so many labias
and each labia glistens
and someone's thinking
let me swirl a few fingers.
*
Two can roll as many dice as eight.
Two dice from two palms.
There's been a lot of dirt lately.
No one's saying a thing.
*
Lines, lines, lines.
Not on my face yet, asshole.
Anti-time lines, multiple-life time lines.
I'll keep knocking on doors when you're dead.
*
As a collective we dreamed of
a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.
As an individual I could only think of
tearing it down right away.
*
Random output: Duncannon and Mascher.
Glancing down a hallway I think
shit, the young bulls are grazing.
I think boy, you outta pocket.
*
We can make it.
This is all I think
and all I see are Kat's lips talking
two inches from mine. Hot tub.
*
It was an old disease
and it kept on striking.
Everywhere: even where
Mr. Buck took her to fuck.
*
"It assesses nothing."
"The schools appear improving."
"Juke the stats." "Wherever you go,
there you are." Too many calories.
*
Supercock. The two words
blend and break into each other
like a couple crackly stones
fucking inside an asteroid.
*
First there was the mist.
Then there was the dome.
But always the same old dust.
Actually, first was lower back.
*
It can be a blurring process.
It can always be blurred.
I was going to reference that face
but I forgot the name.
*
Frame construction: up on 12th
I pass Callowhill and remember
Lucretia's worst face.
How I could fail her. How could I?
*
There's probably no answer on the west coast
like there's no answer here or home or in Asia
or in Austin or Montreal or in death.
Even the books have stopped staring back.

Chocolate Makes You Happy

2010-01-11T01:27:00.002-05:00

you have a contract with your shit

it keeps working, you keep doing shit with it

watching No Country For Old Men

the best part is all the self-doctoring

and all the bad yellows and blues

and how hard they are together

and how right it is

Divine Lorraine 2.0

2010-01-09T04:30:00.009-05:00

Download Here.

New Songs, Level Adjustment, Superfluous Audio of me Fucking Around, More Bandwidth, Reverb.

1. Walpurgisnacht
2. Gasoline & Lime
3. Divine Lorraine
4. Song for Murray Siskind
5. A Room Full of People who Love You Like Crazy
6. Peter and a Song with Many Birds in It

Special thanks to Maya and Jamerson for putting up with me recording this shit from 2:00-3:30 A. M.

to

2009-12-24T19:02:00.003-05:00

December 23rd and 24th

Jeff Bennan, Nicole O'Brian, Casey Bracket, Debrah Morkun, Linda Thea, Victoria Tran, Austin Wylie, Khalil Smith, Hal Bernstein, Jenn Washington, Chelsey Del Castillo,

Baby walrus. For entry hit glass here. Get the mind away from reality a bit. Like Casiotone. I miss happiness and the white folks aren't the ones to provide it. Sida is a great beverage. What if it was the only suicide spot? Such a struggle to find Maine babes on a flight. Post-Thailand I want to pilot either a plane or a ship. To see the sunblasted clouds every day. I love the noisy rumble inside the plane's midflight cabin. It is gray. It is concentration. I'm drinking blueberry beeah. I could totally see them all on meth. The silence. Think about all the places that don't get any light at night. Cepelinai. Lithuanian dumplings. My belly is finally back to obesity. I was going to walk into the woods and blow my brains out just to see what it would be like but Robert bought a gun safe. Remember Ice-9? When's that gonna happen? Over a river and through a wood to grandmother's house I go. Bring in a training manual. Westbrook reminds me of my longing for you. And my bulging choc gut. Trojan horse it. Find me a black babe that's turned on by young fat white guys so I can fuck the checkmark away. Wish I had money for Z-d. Wish I could teach an acrobatics class outside of Munich. I'm glad I like olives now. Post-feast depression. Jamming to Patsy Kline. Fatpick. After tomorrow my diet for the break is going to be whiskey and coffee and lettuce. Just shat a horn of Lucifer. Happy Holidays from America featuring rum and eggnog. The dog opens presents. Hold yer muthafuckin' horses before I explode in joy. Choose my own adventure little pony. Feel like jabba da huh-it with this gut right now. You deserve it for being a sweetheart. Fat and happy in Maine. You should have rejected the gifts. Ironic broadsword. Zero. It's actually clear as glass. And the air is so clean. But it's Maine and pretty much horrible. Yah doo. Get some cheap whiskay 'n' walk roun' to find cars to spit on. Find bars to talk to strangas outside of. Pussy monster? I poke her face off and now she faceless and I just made her face need a face lift. Young moola baby. That's beyond my control now.

from

2009-12-23T21:44:00.007-05:00

December

Jeff Brennan, Hillary Galvin, Steven Silverman, Hal Bernstein, Khalil Smith, Eugene Vaynberg, Bess Friedman, Victoria Tran, Linda Thea, Daphne Koek, Austin Wylie

Just realized that everything in my stomach today has ended with ine. Bucks is going out of style. Wish I could lose my whole body and just be a nervous system on a me-sized i.v. Rack. Who needs bones even if they are this lovely? The train is late. The train is late so we clear the benches--like someone's hit a deep fly or a fight's starting. When I murder-suicide Don DeLillo make sure they put our ashes in an urn of our composite busts and shoot us out of a great cannon into deep deep space. Suicide is just obvious symbolism. It's people converting to everyone else's fiction. Just talked to our Koss representative for way too long. Told him about the headphones I bought at Trax. Told him about the retards. We set a price point. Let's get jobs as Santas and every culture's Santa analog. Ho ho ho. See the world. Asian women seem to only write about Asian women identity. That airport employee camper is back. Blaring on her cell phone. She's my official enemy. She's "at work." She's the reason people hate unions. This place is the march of the monsters. Suit doo koo? Just had someone return White Noise because she hated it. The awesome thing is that I sold it to her like two weeks ago. My biggest regret about this job is never finding that fucking phantom. Sidelong in the R1 window the all-biology part of my eye is moon-sical. Cheekbones. And that all-shnozz that enables safe passage everywhere but Gaza. Or race-blind plantation united under substances and nameless movers. Angel in the snow. Love that babe too. Abandoning poetry. Too much like a magic trick. Too many black-hatted rabbits. Besides my lines are just the meaningless stuff I forget to text you. Who put the lam in the sham a lam a ding dong? Gotta fly international to explore customs. Flagworld is recession-proof. It's freezing and we need oil. Ethical. My pants ripped when I popped a boner while reading the word of the day. Got sent home to change. Today is the day of the kooky old ladies. The most extrovertedly depressed person just bought the Road. You're gonna love this, I said. That's like meat day. I love meat. Sunglass Hut has babes in every stage of decline. These soldiers are so young. Let's write a movie about butch lesbians serving in Afghanistan. No red coat? And what's with the fisheye lens? You're fancy. How unethical. You're red as you need to be. I'm at long in the tooth. I can't do music and booze tonight. Feels like an all jack hammer fueled construction crew is digging ditches in my head. Most defeated el group ever. Obscenely sad. Get Josh or Steven and come do fake fighting with me on the dance floor upstairs. Trainage wreck. There is a light and metal bird are both tracks. Can't kill myself at least until it leaks. I guess I should've gotten wasted last night so that I'd have to pass out at your place then would've been able to make snowmen . . . duh me. More powered turds. Typical. Space heater. One of those heated water bags. Long johns. About to fuck my. Just left Trenton. Should be back around midnight. Let's get a drink at Inst. Kind of want to walk around in the cold ash castle. Moving snow is one of the ways the dark ones control us. Dark because it's night not because they are black. Lost baggage. This is a crazy trip oh my God. So yes I am without anything. Quirky ticket seller told me it would be happening. Late to work. Love how my client's family did not shovel. I love the part of hunger with the weak leg back tingle and you say things like healthy sexy vagina to healthy sexy warmly dressed babes. How's that baldness coming? I think the number 4 is my favorite to draw. Confronted my enemy today. Can you buy booze with your food stamps? I can pay you back in real money. Skinny tastes better than any food. Remember it. Today is the day of insane phone greetings. The key to water gun fights is to aim for the eyes. The key to soccer is call-movement. The key to Borders is not caring. The key to the airport is emergency. The key to happiness is rough sex with people you're only loosely invested in and ascetic eating habits. In the spirit of the coming Christ would you like to donate a book to sick kids? How can I offer my assistance this post-solstice evening? I am an evil forest that could kill a man on the day his life seems sweetest to him. Let's follow up our novel of obsession with a novel of forgiveness. Really nice wasted red necks. How'dja know we's fixin na go to Raleigh? I can see your future. Driving in your car that has sand everywhere through the low sun-bleached snowbound Maine twigs with a cigarette going and listening to something acoustic because what else does a guy like you listen to at this time of year in Allen's country. The sperm is the only cell that has a tail. Production begins at puberty. For females, production of eggs begins before they are born. 2 million! I hope there's some snus in that dragon tattoo. Wanna burn one down and throw some stars? No drying rack. And the glory of the lord shone round about them. Best part of that magic. Imagine having a relationship like Eugene and Alex and having to kill it because you are us. Let's throw everything away and become back-alley abortionists. Gonna document my enemy. Timestamps and everything. Just quit food. Odwallas and Zyrtec-d are the diet. Where is the supporting picture? Thanks for making me feel special. I will show you the iron discipline I've learned in the AIR FORCE. We can make dirty Frenchmans. Wine and olive juice. At least there aren't clouds of foul smoke floating around like Smelladelph. You fly there? This is the lonely Christmas with Morrissey. Gonna try to fuck a stranger or someone famous tonight. Grizzly like Ed Gein, make her face feel face pain.

Weezing Geiser

2009-12-23T09:20:00.003-05:00

I am without feeling now, says the sparrow.
I am without feeling and my wings are like ice.

But then I spotted a second sparrow walking
away, down the ice ring, around the circle.

It's hard not to think about the job you perform.
Big moolah for your molars.
Baby.

Buildings felled in every direction.
The hands of a stone giant captured on my digital.
When we were teenagers we would sneak around.

Self-complexities. Reaching around to your neck.
Your neck brace was made with gold.
I am the sparrow sinking into quicksand.

He didn't know how to draw a bald eagle. He subdued.
The train kept coming. Over and out again.

Positive Integer

2009-12-21T02:04:00.015-05:00

Thanks to Greg for editing.

Pastor Tyler was stuck in transit. Stuck somewhere in the forgettable New Jersey night in a place he’d have to consciously think about remembering only to remember more original thoughts. It was the abnormality of forcing typically-subconscious commitments. And he’d have to personally key into his sub-history the sidereal mutant orange from the New York his crumpled ticket promised, data-log the sense of public trappedness. This was the apathetic community he shared with fellow budgeted passengers, the cell-phone talker in the back, a slurry of slang-crusted Spanish, the girl seeming nice right next to him, how courteous with their shared dome-lamp she’d been, the noxious clouds billowing chaotically, birth-defected, in contrast with the cruel symmetry of the wrought-iron estuaries that spawned them, the Ionic lattice works with Clinton-era bunting, pithy revelations: we make refrigerators here, this is where Teflon comes from, sand production, glue gun ammo. It was all illuminated in some fake way by the unblinking sodium bulbs refracting in the glassy quiet of the inbound winter. But then again if the mind only deposited what was essential then what the fuck had he been doing all these years?

At least they’re paying.

He took what was always his own advice and prayed. Prayed for his family, his neighbors, his steadily swelling readership, industry friends who came through when they told him they “knew people,” who told him they’d get him noticed, you’ve got the look, the message, you’re what the people, the people you want to be reaching, are always looking to find. He prayed until he cracked that smirk, the one that shone only with reflection on his mission's greatness, on his aptitude as an instrument, His instrument, a sense of self/creator-satisfaction known only to the premier fraternity of prophets.

I’ll bet Falwell isn’t carted around on busses.

He drifted out the window into the fleeting immobillia to catch some industrial chimney’s vigilante flame jet disturb the late December cold: such dependability, and the permanence. He passed between these worlds, the frazzle-wired metaphysics of the beleaguered self and the observable external world, the subordinate exogenous one of plural egos, ecosystems, of seemingly random variety in the hidden creator's dominion, all serving as proof of some disparate genius.

Book deal...lecture tour...eventually national radio syndication. My message can travel beyond busses. It can travel without them. That’ll be alright.

He saw the other cars. He eyed them suspiciously and wondered what their drivers read. Maybe they had headed into town to see him to see him, or catch a matinee of some tawdry spectacle entering the sixth year of its run. Bring the wife, kids, and then head over to the talk. Come to hear him, get his books signed, one per person, it's included in the ticket, shake his hands, smear tears and makeup into some brackish ecstasy .

He thought of the branched nature of experience, the entanglement of narrative possibilities for those beings imbued with the radical capacity for free-will, existing in a society of others. Willers, id-abusers, megalomaniacal super-egoists, atheists…

He liked the line and wrote it down for his lecture. Audiences love personal experiences. You introduce a thought as “On the way up here I was thinking…” and it has gauranteed success. By demonstrating personal incompleteness the introduction provides authority. It provokes an endearment in the listener, a disarmament strategy. Really, it is grounding. Really, anyone could write this stuff. It'd been around for two thousand years. Everyone was paraphrasing from their forebearers. It wasn't the content so much, but delivery, showmanship, the verbal magic-tricks, the rehearsed idiosyncrasies, the self-caricaturisation necessary to become digestible through personal fiction.

The bus crash could happen so suddenly. Exit 8, I would die right now thinking about Exit 8. The Parkway of the Garden State.

He thought about his best friend in sixth grade, Andrew Mason, Andy, who lived on the small, Connecticut street, whose mother died of breast cancer, her ashes scattered in the family’s backyard garden. He thought about the way Andy cradled his head in his hands for a week after the wake, how he couldn’t attend the service, how, after returning to school a week later, Andy was greeted by being absorbed into the popular kid’s group, sitting at their lunch table and smoking cigarettes and learning about pornography and all those weird sex moves that you only ever hear about in seventh grade on the bus ride home and how Andy eventually abandoned his once best friend to join the elite caste even though they lived on the same street, even though he’d been the only other person in their grade who really actually knew his mother really as a person rather than some harrowing event, and how she drove the two of them to the bus-stop in the winter even until the last days, listening to NPR, Morning Edition, with the heat was on high, wasting away under her body’s betrayal and the chemotherapy, and how they even went sledding together on the day of her passing, down the hill in the woods behind the house, where the property lines ended, and back under the rope swing, where talking seemed redundant. How he was the only one who didn’t talk to Andy about it and how this was the major mistake in seventh grade. The green sweater on the day of the funeral. The snow-laden evergreens. How there were teachers in attendance: Mr. Lossey, Homeroom and Math. How after the service in the wood-paneled basement the two of them played soccer on Super Nintendo and how Andy was much better because it was his game and he knew how to do a bicycle kick and he wouldn’t tell anyone how to do it: “Figure it out,” he said, “like I did.”

Tyler’s message is simply about positive thinking. Sure, someone is always going to be telling us how horrible things are. People like the horrible, they need the horrible. But these wants and needs are all the evidence required to understand that this revulsion to ourselves is itself a vice. We understand there is a Perfect. We are part of that Perfect. We march toward that Perfect under our cross, under the word, under the Lord. With this message Tyler has inspired thousands. You can change your life today!

How easily this bus could crash. How quick it could happen. How at the second the driver loses control, you’re at the mercy of some foreign, depressed machinists' engineering of a more productive decade. Notice the integral force of whatever you’re colliding with. Notice there are no seatbelts, unlike a Greyhound. These fuckers won’t even pay for a seatbelt. Do they salivate while pondering post-mortem sales?

Out the window again, into the world of arterial soullessness, inter-state transience, the windowed world who’s lifespan corresponds with the width of cool plexiglass framing peripheral limbo. The closest we could get to understanding Earth’s rotation. This is what they call the empirical world. It was labeled thus by the maniacs busy smashing atoms together, dropping pennies off observation decks. Yet we only observe everything you’ve already heard, everything that’s already obvious, everything that coheres.

We pen mental forecasts to ourselves in the now and call it experience--half the sum-total of human philosophical endeavors--or wisdom, that taste of the unobtainable omniscience men like himself, like his followers, those with eyes open, slouch towards, like in that poem, toward the tragic asymptotic truth.

He wrote this down too, for his audience, his flock. They’d have to love him now. Yes, now.

Hopscotch

2009-12-15T23:36:00.003-05:00

Post Moles reading/performance

First of all let's not forget Fatima performing Nina Simone.
Let's not forget the voice as the most beautiful musical instrument.
Let's not forget sturdily-structured architecture from Jacob's 1860s.
Or chair rearrangements.

There was a fabric'd mousy woman who talked about electricity.
And another Jen who knew Futurism and other nonplus activities.
There was a hatred in the air toward personal experience isolation.

Kim and Frank were there, smiles sincere, they lightened our lives.
What it means to be from Philadelphia and engage in dialogue.
What it means to talk about Invisibility and radical daughters.

Jeff talked about the elevator and Tower of Terror perf-romps.
Rattled. Three bulldogs. Hounds moving along the windstreets
with a white slaver and their slouched faces acting beauty.

We saw hopscotch on Master Street in duct tape.
The storm was coming in according to Carlos's wife.
Underneath the El there was the El Bar and an old shimmed building.

He took my dollar and we talked about Chile, Copenhagen, and Spain.

We road home and I, encouraged, talked about vaginal bleeding
and Sammy being raped by three guys: there was Lil Walter too
and the Dome knowing seizures and knows it's giving us seizures too.

We fire cruise missiles at things we don't understand.

Only one thought of suicide this evening; do babes bring
malefaction? Or is it the empty beer cans rested with
digital audio recorders that remind me of pints of water?

I sit here in my ink-stained glasses, shirt, and remember We.
We should transform ourselves into Raiders and seek shelter.

A Basis

2009-12-13T02:22:00.002-05:00

In our lives I am hunting.
There was once a feral field.
A boy and a girl shared flowers.
The past has was yet to come
forward, but we were to believe
in it, when time has ripened.

For us, love occurred to make do.
On the will of the rain, serenity.
There are natural things that are.
The exchange of stems between hands.
A purpose is known yet is not.
In the collective existence only history.

Some moments only have the self.
It stands in the wind facing uphill.
Other moments there is plurality.
A decaying brick that our eyes stare at
shudders like a guitar strum.
Instrumentation defined by one maker.

My music shivers and is acknowledged.
I am the sound-boy made into magic. Selfish?
The earth always shifts with the dipped spade.
A grip makes the insert and then a path exerts.
Life itself is corroded when pursued.
A quest occurs because there are examples.

Apple

2009-12-12T20:56:00.001-05:00

Clumps of Dirt

2009-12-12T11:28:00.003-05:00

My A-freek, steeling of calm: steal, stealth
(fowl missionary posits--
positioned satellites, 101 course images:
en route to ward porous cashery, the rendezvous twice tripped,
laden with gold, cramped-crimp fingers: delusional parents)

I forkful mushing meal.
I put on my old brown shoes.
I put out the fire in the stove.
I take the last sip of the coffee.
I move through the rotting door.
I feel clumps of dirt on my cheeks.
I understand the fame in the wind.
I believe in the lack of skill.
I scream into air like a wolf.

Ouched and outed into the howl;
I will forgive their grinding machines.

(a dirty sunrise, moors over bluffs; chastisation
while a widowed daughter buries her lover using rusted shovel:
we are haunted
by what remains
to be archived in the earth)

Indifference

2009-12-09T01:26:00.002-05:00

Too bad Derrida died
before the Blackberry became so popular.
He could have done commercials
about there being nothing beyond the text.
People would like to see that creepy Frenchman
(no one to them) huddled over a device
and mention things in a funny way.

Light Logic

2009-12-09T01:16:00.003-05:00

How far the city lights skim space.
Distant presumptions of occupation
and life- yet there is no necessary link
between light and life.

With so many lights on
you could forget the dark
that's always there
and unknowing-
better to assume the lights
are on for someone.

Mid-Coitus Considerations

2009-12-09T01:01:00.003-05:00

Early morning in March on Spring Break:
role over and she's there and she makes
the request and the mechanics of stimulation
go into effect and the sheathing and the slow breath
rear-entry penetration and the slow movement
slow breathing all in and towards the it.

She breathes into the sheets, quiet breaths
there's no one else in the house she had said
I wonder about it as rubber and flesh
stir liquids and that all-desirous nothing
seeps from white torso, bent legs, hidden face,
hair by the sheets moaning.

Mid-coitus and I look away, still acting,
but then I begin noticing the clay pots
on the sill, opposite side of the room
resting in the morning shadow, small
clay pots. And I wonder when they were
put there, their contents, their intent as
decor or utility.

Rubber and motion
these coated joys toward nothing,
continuous mechanics.
Clay pots counted, and morning shadows.
Fucking bored.

Cabin Pressure

2009-12-04T15:43:00.004-05:00

For cigarette prohibition

You, yeah, you
You're with me
We're going to destroy the lavatory smoke detector
or at least tamper with it

the hangover, the Snus, the psuedoephedrine

look at our University system
          our Boeing hangers
          our train tracks

take in the cloudscape
the world's sidereal temple garment
the bleached hurricane paper shredlets

elementry foliage, forclosed canopy
that we figured was too big to fail

The authorities report that Mr. Polanski
must remain in his Swiss chalet

"Remain in your Swiss chalet Polanski!"

Mr. Polanski confessed to giving a 13 year old girl
Quailudes and then raping her in the ass while she cried

"Remain in your Swiss Chalet Mr. Polanski"

FYI, I'll be fighting you for your flotation device
in the event of a water landing

the storm extends its Dracula phalanges
the vapor becomes something countable

I wonder: "How many Barack Obamas high am I?"

the visible world again, the final descent
understanding everything shares the bend
the arterial infastructure
the outlying mountains, found earthworks
Graphite romantics, the subjects of screens savers
the shared logos of forgettable things
                           of summers
                           of worms
of the moving sidewalks of life where they've prohibited smoking
for the children
because they eat the future

Colony Collapse Disorder

2009-12-04T15:32:00.004-05:00

After the inaugural Wrestling Night

Alright, I'll believe in your magic for another minute
just promise me you'll remove the boots.

There's a cold science to traffic
that we're always in the process of understanding

the quiet times, the nurse trash times, solvency

One can't help but pity
the Australian highway system
their inaccessible middle
their clog-hearted coast ribbons
their black ballroomism

water colors into bruise swirl puddles
into unnameable nudities
we requisitioned by not improving anything

here's to grappling, to the head-tap
that your unconscious response
let's me know you aren't ready
for me or the bees
who were so horrible who
we want with all our atoms
to come home.

Divine Lorraine Demo Release

2009-12-02T23:26:00.005-05:00

Download Here (Let me know if the link expires)

======= DIVINE LORRAINE ========

-- Walpurgis Nacht --

Walpurgis Night, Good Friday morning
in your bed, in your spider web
at dawn, with the AC on

me only seventeen, you showed your face to me
made of smoke, but you never choked
silk tongue, like the yarns you spun

we chilled the bile, we toast your child
to wealth, and the best of health
to fame, but let us stay the same

we ride, at night
sure thing, but let me hang the ring
close your eyes, and learn to love the red red red red light

-- Gasoline & Lime --

A Asus2 D

Look Alive
the battles in the jeroboam tonight

hit the lights
we're feeling through the family tomb it's right

C#m Fm E D

Were you born an anarchist
without a place to hide?

do you fear the fetishist
or the beam of light he rides?

It's alright
your treasure chest is safely stowed inside

behind
the men we made of frames and sturdy twine

can you smell the river now
or is it all still ice?

are you on the pills again?
I know it's not my life

babe
I am o.k. I am o.k. alright

i lied
this skin you see's all gasoline and lime

but if you think i wrote this song
and coded every line

then you need more help than me
more help or more white wine

-- The Artists --

C E Am C E Am C E Am C E Am

we know who we are
born beneath pale stars
running laps toward the light
houses liquid night
and the black bubbles in
just as thick as our sin
just as thick as the crowds we've left behind

F G C E Am F G C E Am F G F G

dissolved with our blue-print minds
at sun rise the shadow both lives and dies

We'll be dropping our bombs
any day now
we'll be snaking your drains
implicating Mao
and all that that once was
lost to summer's buzz
and some kid breathing dirt breathing soot

breathing air while God's own voice eddies his hair
think in lines and get straight your alibi
sit for moi, we're artists we're NOT bourgeois
note the schwa WE'RE ARTISTS WE'RE NOT Bourgeois

-- (Old Me) --

G B C Cm

The old me wouldn't take it so lightly
cold beneath the shallow dark of birds above the wires

A D C Cm

On fire: who sing without their eyes
and wing into some sky

And bold: the black ones make a game
of unlearning their names

you told me this dirt would make me holy
three/four weeks pass before the bears come out from hiding

their babes who only want to play
they only want to play (and lay)

and get old but wrap your face in gold
and horde your bones in holes (with souls)

you know me a still villain of cracked glass and white lies
know you're free to leave behind your pretty window eyes

and sleep, sleep out on the sand
that's spilling from your hands (and glands)

and rise, to meet the blue of noon
and mend the milk-wet moon (to choose)

the old me wouldn't take you so lightly
the old me throws no leaves or thorns upon your already kicked fire

-- Peggy-O (Traditional) --

G C G
As we marched out to Fennerio
G G/F# Em Bm
As we marched out to Fennerio
C G
Our Captain fell in love
G G/F# Em
With a lady like a dove
G C G
And he called her by name, Pretty Peggy-O

Would you marry me, pretty Peggy-O?
Would you marry me, pretty Peggy-O?
If you would marry me,
I would set your cities free
Free all the ladies in the are-o

I would marry you, sweet William-O
I would marry you, sweet William-O
I would marry you but your Guineas are too few
And I fear my mama would be angry-o

What would your mama think, pretty Peggy-O
What would your mama think, pretty Peggy-O
If she heard my Guineas clink?
Saw me marching at the head of my soldiers-o.

Come a-steppin down the stairs, pretty Peggy-O
Come a-steppin down the stairs, pretty Peggy-O
Come a-steppin down the stairs
Combing' back your yellow hair
Bid a last fair well to your William-O

For if ever I return, pretty Peggy-O
If ever I return, pretty Peggy-O
If ever I return
All your cities I will burn
Destroy all the ladies in the are-o

Sweet William he is dead, pretty Peggy-O
Sweet William he is dead, pretty Peggy-O
Sweet William he is dead,
And he died for a maid
And he's buried in Louisana country-O

As we marched out to Fenerio
As we marched out to Fenerio
Our Captain fell in love
With a lady like a dove
And he called her by name, Pretty Peggy-O

-- Scarecrow--

Intro: G

Am F

THE SCARECROW
IN CINDERS

C G F

there are two suns above your sharpening stone
we lost your pretty pearl in our house of bones

Am G

THE FROST ROSE
FROM THE OXBOW

stars shake, famously burning slow
strung lights in canopies have blown their bulbs

Am
DESERT BLOOM
F
THE NEW MOON
C
THE SHOW ROOM
G
A STONE MOVES

We hold you
and robe you
then crown you
dethrone too

and loathe you
bemoan you
and stone you
alone

the scarecrow's
skin shivers
still arrows
in quivers
not taken
or blown gone
or strung up
and so on

-- Predatory Lending --

C G Am F G C

we all know your face from your mistake your flims have broken in your grave
a grand jury your fiancée framed photos from your fathers wake

C G Am F C

wake wake your eyes,
sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep your alibi

spent fall on fire shoved round the wires that leak and tweak into your bane
it's not the same this acrid rain corrodes and roasts the amber grain

OLD OLD OLD YOUR NAME
NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW YOUR FAME

a new roommate warrants all states commands demands from conscript knaves
conflagrate back draft to face our cells wilt down like paper...

Let's explode this maze and drive the porters off their barricade
all those blood-forged barbs all turned to shards that skitter down the palisade

flee your bleeding mind mind mind mind
mine the bread crumb trail you leave behind
check for cuts and lumps
your two heads fuse fully to one

-- Deaf and There --

F Bb F C F Bb Dm C

She was deaf and there folding her proteins
as they spoke of the symbols they found in their wet dreams
jilted and jaded tornado eyes over her paper
scanning the pages and all other titles and labels

she was deaf and there, despairingly empty
and the lines round her eyelids curved circularly
their tracking told stories of worlds she should fear
but it didn't consider all those who can't hear
so their tales of terror fell only on ears
that were painted like white spots upon baby deer

she was deaf in the dark in the light of a bright screen
watching pictures and adds pinks and yellows and pale greens
and they screamed for attention but got no reply
as she closed the windows and then closed her eyes

she was visited strangely that night in a dream
by a soothplaying satyr of sweet melodies
then a choir of cherubs plunged from the sky
and crushed the poor player thus ending his life
all the cacophonous clamor of all of their cries
the wreckage spat splinters in all of their eyes
the rumbling tremolo of old oak's demise
ruptured their eardrums which served to baptize
all the innocent singers who finally realized
this was the most beautiful song she had heard in her life

diaphanous smog of the party let no one breath
the evening was waning and new lovers started to leave
a white silver crucified christ hung between
her white silver breasts that had gone sight unseen

she spotted him there in the corner his mouth asking please
his hissings of lust wove sibilantly
a drunk irish catholic boy: the new philistine
but goaded by contact that all of us need
she turned down her hearing aid, nodded, agreed
and they traipsed back together both dumb and lonely
and she tasted his sweat and smelled his disease
romping and rolling their elbows and knees
all the spinning and skinning, exposing her seams
arrested by the mess she thought of her dream and in

agony she spoke, and choked, it's too real for me, it's too real for me

I wasn’t ready to see

-- Lorraine --

E B C#m A

The holy ghost is slowly headed home
can't you see him
all image and bone

the glade and spring are mixed beneath the snow
we got what we needed
now give us more gold

C#m B G#m A E F#m A E

highway signs for
paradise
but we can't find it on the map
so I guess we'll just turn back

Let's get depressed and change our names!
"I'll call you peter
but I'm staying Lorraine"

let's don our capes and save the day
"give me the signal!"
"then get out of my way!!"

your soft-spoken heart's broke
cause two years is no joke
and then
this is how it ends

transz

2009-12-02T23:07:00.003-05:00

Hungarian-Transylvania Kányádi Sándor's VÁGY has been translated into the English by me. It's my first translation--in Hungarian or otherwise, and I apologize for that. Going to try and find a previously-translated version soon.

The Original:

az esti folyó illatát
aratás idején
a küküllő esti illatát
aratás idején

s egy marék vizet
hogy arcom visszamosdjam

Translation:

Desire

That nighttime river scent
approaches the harvest here

The night trash scent
approaches the harvest here

and a single handful is diluted
so to remember its core

November: Outbox

2009-11-30T22:03:00.004-05:00

You can listen to a reading of this one too. Click.

Recips include: Jasmine; Jeff; Steven; Victoria; Thuy; Kathryn; Bess; Eugene; Hal; Casey; Stephanie

Ran into Sarah at the rave. Crazy. How are you our starlit night map? Finally got it all documented. Wish the aliens would abduct me to their UFOs.

SEPTA is a rotting horse carc. Just wana ride and die for my steel champions. Just wana grab some babe and save some day.

The smell of eggs and coitus and death and apostrophe and maligned souls and burnt rubies having been burnt by lazers and honesty’s chafing arguments anarchist women who are babes but taken by themselves in South Phila eating dumplings ‘n’ raisin bread ‘n’ drinking Tuscono wine under a quiet roof hiding from frozen fingers. It’s okay to save weird for later sometimes if you’re not like me ‘cause I fuck shit up through illogic.

Beefcup panty surprise. You miss’d the most insanely depressing morning ever. I recommend you van it tomorrow if only to know this stagnant misery. If that wasn’t the most miserable waiting period of this city’s boiling year I can’t figure out what is.

She has a good kind soul. Wish I could be a rebel without feeling so alone. I understand why all men in Victorian novels hate women their age and go for the youngins. With what machinery will we yank them all?

Another night alone. A great feeling for a 23-year-old. Can’t wait for the two year abstinence anniversary. Should be pretty soon. I love the floors after last period. Like looting the dungeon. I see you but you’ll never see me. Neon gummy worm waste gut. Hope Mangum has been writing albums this whole time and releases them every month in 2012.

What a fuckin’ night! Insanity on the open plane. One of these days I need to convince a City year babe to take a day off and fuck me for the entire ten hours of the shift. Experiences become fresher through the ages as information becomes more available. Harder for us to get into reality. Slower to exist out of such. Tonight is more about opening people’s minds up than anything else. Doesn’t matter your stance. My performance will be addressing greed and hubris society-wide

We don’t need more Creeleys dicking around with single eyeballs. Only way to survive is to join something or make it. That only matters to silencing fields. I’ll read it all when I’m in Hell’s quantum playground. Sugar Mom’s. Land o’ Lakes and cheese fry innuendos. For every brute a brawn. Some more soul-crushing weather.

The Names by Don is agonizing, hilarious, merciless and important for expats and airport enthusiasts. Gonna skip everything tonight and read it, I hope. Wish I was on the Olney East team. They are in their office doing makeup reading, playing cards, and drinking juice boxes. The them is neutrinos and their presence in dark matter. Vice is perfect. Brian is awesome. Optimism personified. Like Jasmine but not eighteen. The El Bar’s backyard is like Union Pool but for people who know they are fucked. Strippers dressed in unicorn costumes. True story.

Alone at Fox and Hound is like being transcendentalized by a wash of noise. Just got done the interview. One hour long. Amazing. And The Names is great humor too but marriage dysfunction is the big lesson. And that is what comes next for us lame duck isolators.

You are the sweetest heart in all the Atlantic. We need a leader we can fall in love with. Where did political romance go? I like the smell of your curry.

Dome pg 28: Allens. Dome pg 35: LCD Soundsystem. Recovery from last night’s nonsense. Today has been nomadic misery. The pains of being pure at heart are nails in the head. The sky is great and post-Leonid creamwash this morning. Your sister called me last night. Said your other phone was found or something. Where can you get Grimbergen here? You drunken fuckfoot. Incognegro.

If I’m free. Many things. Maybe Blind Man’s Ball Tuesday. How old are you? What kind of cooking? I leave for Maine on Wednesday. Same schedule situation. 23. Stews are precious. Will update you after lost planner madness is resolved. Strawberries are a dollar a pack. No answer. Feverish.

I’ll get the cert in January. For now gotta make sandwiches and contemplate why not offing myself. Snusing on the job. Scoundrel of a raging soulless. Like in Myth 2 where I was number three on the official ladder. Bat your eyes mate. Weed cookies. A sly fox. But skinnier. Pic image you blues busta. Cookie effect noticeable. Bottle of aura and uproarious coping viz. Get up on it or bow down low before the elephant.

The ghosts are moshing. Fuck Mitch. Assembly line assassin today. Post-weed cookie and gregarious feast hangover. Feel like a cookie monster. An egg salad sandwich gutterfly. The warehouse was called Wood Stove and the dogs were perfect and I remember spicy cornbread and a curry dish. Oh no! My brother! Snuggle with the decapz!

You or your fam want chocolate PIE? I swear your insanity is bolding. Same diff as head exploding Mine defined. Yours to be announced at your convenience. Goodbye all the lonely train trax. I forgot about the absolute terror of driving through Maine backwoods stoned into treebark. Bush transplants and shit. Trying to figure out naughty vs. nice. They don’t sensor the word “tits” on the radio here

Four out of ten spice-wise. But the nicest male waiter in all of Portland said a 20 has been done before. Hope hope hope I get to see you, oh Smile of Maine. Take Benadryl and zombie this one. It’ll resurge your Goats commitment. Plane leaves at 6:09. I hope I’m not delayed at the PWM eleven-gate wonderland. Is hanging in PHILADELPHIA ok, oh suburbanista?

I’m gona fast all week. Anti-caloric highway patrol. Remember Disturbed? Maine radio still plays them. Other highlights of the past three days—Blink 182, Tool, Eminem. BUY 3 SNOWS GET 1 FREE. Tires Brennan. It’s all about the tires. Drinking Long Trail. Typing. In front of a half-cranked woodstove. Now I know why Creeley loved this region during those last days.

Hope I don’t get arrested for medical THC blobs. Boarding time. This team blows. Too passive. Where and when am I meeting you plague fiend? This plane is so cramped. Nice seats though. The background on the phone of the person next to me is of herself. Made this shit. Bar bar bararanne Philadelphia’s air toxicity makes my grin much deeper.

Ungodly screams from Spaghetti Warehouse. Tenth and Vine. Homeless summit. Bring your baby carriages. Rolodex init. 4 blox My phone’s dying Front left Sex and all Jonathans in ten. So tired Someplace does. Some nether region place I feel like the underbelly of Hope Blvd. All of it.

I wish we could wrestle at that house every night. Lucky foothold. Sexual demon. Want a babe? Maybe two? Or three? Come to RT where the pussy’s free to see. Irish dancer convention. Creepily beautiful children with kinky curls. Thanks for the animalistic evening I love you both as though you are older siblings

No road tonight. Just too many lagers. Battle wounds. Miserable in the land of redbots. It’s so funny how lonely it gets at City Year when you succeed in rebelling. Buy a pink helmet. Start a development off to the side. My uniform. My bloody mouth and Rittenhouse Square. You are the stochastic huzband. Face mask land. Espresso suck pump. Banks armed with cash like Kabul patrols. Heroin sequin dress. Keep your eye on the lost memory of penguin warmth like me It’s where the ogres originate. A paisley time.

Just learned Olney’s Hispanic guidance counselor was jumped by a bunch of youth last Friday afternoon. Was on his way to the clinic for his heart. Died. Heart attack. We don’t know anything right now Short notice issues. Did she cure you for that day? Short lived departure. Fear is too large. Sexuality prevents. I don’t learn anything when I’m abstinent. I unlearn things when sexually active. 2 reasons to die. You can take it right between the eyes. Suck up.

What does that Japanese mean? And what existential place are you at? And why strange? I just made 2 delicious potluck items.

Jeff Brennan’s Last November of the First Decade of the Twenty First Century

2009-11-30T21:47:00.005-05:00

You can listen to a recording of most of the following. On it Jeff plays guitar while I do vocal reenactment. It was recorded on November 29th in the Ol' Bread Factory in Philadelphia.

(6)
Wiki ruby ridge and you’ll get it. Played the adjective icebreaker. Want to fuck Artistic Allie and Adventurous Amanda.

(13)
Elliot Smith heart-stabbed himself at this time of day on a day like this. I read these guys to access the forbidden intelligence they wave in front of our faces like the opposite of money. And what’s tomorrow? Also: easiest airport day ever. How’s the sogworld treating you? Rescued another person from Ayn Rand. Made her buy White Noise.

(15-17)
Most zombie day ever. Two sleep hours. A whole new kind of moonwalk. Hope you didn’t not make out with her.

Snus was made to go with warm mustard pretzels. These should be the themes of Steven’s party. Moments like these are what make being most likely bipolar worth it.

Wish we could just vote Dave into office and get it over with. Went rogue. Person Pitch as anti-R1 ambiance weaponry.

(18-19)
Swamps finally dead. Call in the fish gods for the tree-bare rapture. Back at collegiate weight. Gonna eat pure garbage to celebrate. Chainsnusing. Looks German. First time this feels like my neighborhood. I know because I would kill a malignant invader.

20
Soldier returning from two years in Iraq. Left a baby here and gets three months to be its mother before heading to Afghanistan. We should adopt some Asians.

21
Market East brickwork deserves its own monopoly space. I never remember summers. Winter though. Winter is familiar. Seeing Victoria alone and leaving that place was my demise. Oh and the pills. I need to learn fitness or at least the cheat code for it. Should’ve prepared a lesson on snus since I just explained it to everyone anyway. Snus, Delillo, airports are the only things I think about. It took a tobacco to push suicide out of the top three.

22
Don’t let prostate cancer take you out of the game. Wish I were allergic to something weird.

23-25
Marathon babe as supercustomer. Tampa-bound. I would make this Alabama babe my lady. I can’t believe they left us with these hippos. These hungry, hungry hippos. This place is retarded today. These are the kinds of days where I buy Dewars and Vaseline on the way home. Austin is probably the best place in America. This sickness might be the start of a new Quiet Times.

25
They put angels. Christmas music is undoubtedly the most suicide-inspiring. The babes are the only things that keep me going. The media is here. Going home early. Sick as shit.

Combos and scotch. This is what I am now. You can’t. You just straight can’t. Haha. It’s awful. Nothing good in there.

26
Let’s start a non-profit steam factory that we only the truth about to children. We could put it near the airport with the others. Where they’re zoned.

Just release a hurricane of matter. Biblical bowel movements. The airport is only ever morning. Agnostic recreations.

27
Dome life looks pretty good. Let’s settle there if we can resolve life. Toblerone is angel feces.

Just saw new Nick Cage. Awesome as usual. Killing time at the old wooly mammoth until the Road starts. Love this city and St. John’s Wart placebo effect. Bawitdabaw. Get in the pit and try to love someone.

The Road is great. Pretty much what I imagine suburban Toledo to be. At Skinners thinking about life choices. Gotta score some molls for the showdance. Would rather culture a supervirus than life with this cold one more day.

Make her snus and then she can live in the dome we’ve commissioned. This is a rewind to my high school soul.

28
Trapped in a colony of unrealized sexuality. I understand my self-genesis through these humbling epiphanies. Might not make the show tonight. I think I have the flu. Can’t move. Hot and shivering. Vomitron. I’ll know by five if I’m up for it. This headache could be a headache celebrity. Gotta get my bike too. Oh no. Oh no. Dreamt of football pirates in teacups eating spam. Cell phone screen light hurts. Remember elementary school where ice-bags cured everything?

Where can a nigga buy some sorbet in this ambulancery? When will you be home? That’s why we let Maine stay in America. I miss being able to drink beer bottles in my house Metro workers are the carnies of the Winter World.

29)
I’m still at this hen house. Waiting for the infirm to awake. Meanwhile staring at a map of Australia, pitying their highway system. An inaccessible middle. Santa was probably much more believable in the time before Toys ‘r’ Us.

30))
Just me and the ambassador of crack on the el now. Taking inventory, stock of metaphysical things. Needle in the hayyyyy. Hysterical American Life segment on Chik Fil A The goal of today is 500 calories. Zertec-d makes one superhuman. I am becoming. Time releases, ticks on black wire. The world as static touchpads and orgasms. A truly Cyber Monday. This life is just one big burn after another

Babylon was built on bad smell air.

Guy Debord would’ve loved Zyrtec-d. All the personal illusions of health but the worst, spectacular Castorpian coughs. Inside me is the ideal image. The image and a Breughel phlegm pallet in lower relief.

Yoga and yogurt. Who was the defiler who made pseudo into speed?

The day was great. She’s great too. It’s confusing. Maybe I’m entering incel as you depart it. Just watched a child get locked in the automated checkpoint. Her backpack initials: DMT.

Been choking on tongue coat flecks all day. Not too far gone to care.

Teddy

2009-11-24T23:37:00.002-05:00

my high school guidance counselor's husband won the lottery and she quit the next day

I took ceramics because nobody told me to take AP English

I hate the lottery

The Penguins (previewing)

2009-11-18T19:15:00.002-05:00

Introduction

My penguins are hotter than yours.

Part One

My penguins are dicier, more clavicle, robotic-winged than yours. I don’t care if you’ve never seen the colony. I watch my penguins with interest. It is all about penguins, snow-white-fresh cocaine, and me. Believe me as sucker emcee. Goodnight, y’all, believe me and the ball that got rolling when I necked down on the floor, soaked in patio grime tracked in from outside under the slivered moon and purposed children were dancing for once in their God-forsaken lives.

Part Two

When my penguins get together they listen to up and coming orchestra. The flapping of wings and sucking of frozen feet, limbs appendaged upward, create snow dust on the coasts of Antarctica. The great mother looked at her children and screamed about politic's policies. I'm getting used to freezer burn. I'm getting used to being a loaf left in the back for months. My penguins rule the country while sucking their faces off in lust. My penguins are sexual deviants.

Part Three

Deicer, the word that the penguin king lives by, is like a cloak of ice words getting ready to melt for a few moments. You will be consumed by its chokehold. You will drown and the king will smile. Fresh bait baited.

Cameron Diaz

2009-11-18T08:43:00.005-05:00

For The Fat Asshole I Almost Hit on My Bike

"Well for one thing you're going the wrong way"
"I know," I say, "I know I'm going the wrong way"

I feel like all the people who were just kicked out of the library for looking at porn
Who are they kidding when they claim a banana is a "solid food"

Hello, we're calling from the Suburban Station Lost and Found office
Mom thought you died or something, nope, still here

"Your session is over because this is certainly not research"
"I know," I say, "I know this is not research"

I find a watch on my floor and ask my friends if I should wear it
-Yeah, wear the watch, sure
-Do you like the watch? If you like it you should wear it, ya know?
-Watch?! I don't have time for this or did you forget what I'm going through!

An older friend believes his virus scanner is what's giving him viruses
"The fix is in" he says, smiling with pride
smiling because he's above the corruption
the corruption that's drowning us
that we're pretending we're swimming through

The way you set up your room now makes me think you're having sex with other people in it

This is me at my most spaceman
doing a whole new brand of moonwalk

This is about the time of night I start thinking
about the letters spelling Cameron Diaz

The time i think about "sweeping up"
in verb form

The time I think of Jodi Picoult
menstruating somewhere
somewhere woodsy where the heat's always on
because it always just snowed

Tourism

2009-11-10T19:21:00.002-05:00

from Don DeLillo's The Names

"I began to think of myself as a perennial tourist. There was something agreeable about this. To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't clin to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expect to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dystenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event." (pgs 43-44)

Panomie

2009-11-09T22:21:00.004-05:00

After Koestenbaum

Shedding the filth of adult urbanity,
you may have recognized them as necessary golem.

It is in true thought, in perfect form for the deranged,
that this is all hotel life. The transient stagecoach.
The backward doors and upside down Chinese in mirrors.

You would do this amazing thing with your hands.
Choke up on the buster of greening balls. It was made:
adamantium, human skin; oil degreaser concocted
by the wrinkle wizard wearing blue satin.

He was in his penthouse suite shining his shoes.
Too soon, you said! Grabbing your stickered bag
and letting go while spied upon by private eyes.

Snickering curses through the revolving portal.
You were the large gray whirlwind up front and in tune.

You were wondering in idealist conjecture.
Where there's will there's an answer. I could
have lost you like tennis balls flying by cameras.

But inside and then underneath your clay pockets
sat a recording device: vibraphone; instant finger
plucker response system. Your mind painted news.

It was you on the opposite veranda. All balsa.
This capture the flag game. This treaty of verdant sides
creeping along another king's kingdom garden path.
Where they hide the dead, where they hide your family,
is what sucks you up and makes the skin sticky.

You packed up bags and fled, thinking about robot
transfusion, neutrinos, and the red dots bouncing off
black holes during a mushroom trip your boyfriend had,
where the ceiling was molecular pancake mix frying up.

There is no blame to be spent when courtesy markets
are down: shareholders holding pens like pigged projects.
A giant glass dome made out of thousands of squares.
Rectangular thought provides intimacy and warm showers.

The Haunting of M. P.

2009-11-09T21:44:00.002-05:00

The first time Margerie was haunted it was the one year anniversary to her marriage. She was getting married to Benjamin Russle on her 23rd October 25th. It was a date I recommended to her on the eve of my honeymoon while we both cascaded significance through painkiller cocktail torpor. As I bit lazily the dead skin at the base of my cuticles, peeling off strands, pretending to get ready and spit them out of my mouth in haste, but primarily swallowing them down, I assured Margerie that as her father I was an authority on each October 25th in her short life's catalog. All save the last, her 21st, which occurred while she was, as she told me, studying diligently at school. Little did she know that I checked all the credit card bills that came into my addresses, including those which contained purchases on the card I had co-signed with her. The card was for emergencies. It was her first time away from New England, away from the town in New England she grew up in. And as a responsible and progressive parent I nodded off under the gulp of a pill for back pain the strange, minute charges for soda, trail mix, and condoms over in Flagstaff. How she made it all the way over to the other side of this country without using her plastic is a phenomenon even to me, her omniscience. It would be a lie if I told you I hadn't screamed WHORE to a beige living room wall at least once after the weekly, alcohol-soaked social. But this is not about me. This is about Margerie Pacingfield, and her haunted existence.

October 25, numbers one through twenty, were important dates for all of us. We always prepared for Halloween in our own ways, starting on the 25th of the month with a bang. Here is a brief composite of Margerie's explosive wind-up prep periods:

1) Ba-ba.
2) Da-da.
3) More cookie dough please!
4) I don't want that.
5) When are we going to the store? The doll!
6) I need more makeup!
7) I miss Kelly. (this was her school friend, a female)
8) I miss Bobby. (this was her school friend, a male)
9) The bad kids told me they'll egg me if I go out there.
10) But what if I just made a costume this year!
11) I'm gonna get more candy than anyone else out there!
12) Can I go trick or treating with Bruce this year? (her first boyfriend)
13) Mima's having a party and yes her parents will be there so can I please go? Please please pretty please?
14) I don't want to talk about it to any of you.
15) Halloween? Halloween is for losers!
16) Halloween is so fucking awesome! This year will be the best! (and I don't care WHO you are, I said, I told her, but watch your god damn mouth when you're under my roof)
17) Halloween is against my religion
18) I'm just gonna stick around here this year.
19) If God is dead, then Halloween is dead too.
20) (most recently) Josh and I will stay home and watch the candy. You guys go have some fun. (her first "steady" relationship)

Josh was the last one. With him came the haunting. He held the ladder when I fell from it and injured my spine all over. He was okay in my book otherwise. The association still paralyzes. The purple pills paralyze. Unfortunately despite Josh's good intentions he failed at severing the cord attached to the failed relationship with Margerie. Following the breakup, exactly two weeks after Margerie's 20th Halloween, Josh began his frenzy. There was reclusion. There was aggression. There was anger and pain. Like many hauntings, there was a lack of evidence, and a victim. There: Margerie smiling despite everything wrong inside the picture.

DUNE DUNE DUNE DUNE

2009-11-09T21:41:00.002-05:00

1

oh my good GOD
---my understanding of you
(now that I know you've got
a calf clutch
on that T-Mobile
flip cam)

2

Listen up there
instead of down here
where my head sticks out
like an architect
on the verge
of collapsing
cell towers
disguised as birch
queens.

3

It was redemption at first.
At second (glance)
my QWERTY
caught fire and was more
dust for the fingertips

TESOL Free Write On Pedagogy

2009-11-09T09:31:00.003-05:00

We start with the system
it's working parts
the consciousness that seeks to be assimilated
Frank O'Hara sounds that way because he thinks that way
I do this I do that
and schools are birthed
and entire industries from those schools
which is what Pete was talking about, passionately
which we are coming back to

the big picture and only mattering details
teaching as impressionism
only approaching, like cursors
for the occasional Icarus crater
or the tenebrism
or if you're Dan Brown the way St. Peter
sort of looks like a babe

the big picture and the system that produced it
which is the point of systems
and why we like pictures

Wishing You

2009-11-07T12:25:00.003-05:00

Unlike the wavering reception of the traditional accordion, which derives its hulkish, centipedenal sound from some handsome 19th C Germanic roots (Dear Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann, this one's for you, who never did dance with me, when I was traveling back in time, and couldn't get a grip on your skeleton's claw! You who sulk! You who unfolded your instrument for me and begged me to worship! Nevermore! Nay, I'll keep an eye on you as I pry each of those diatonic buttons out and pound them into your corpse dust!) and has long fallen decayed to the many tests of Father Time, the twin-lipped human whistle has proven its significance through a popularity never known before. Since its inception, and through until now, the whist, as it is called back home, a name generally accepted and often found adorable, has captivated audiences of all circles for a good twenty years now.

The whist is one part synthetic-human lip-skin, and two parts conducted-air current. For every batch of tones created, only a select amount of joules are needed, and these are negligible when the measurement of beauty commences. Have you noticed the latest tools in aesthetic quantification? Look into the matter further, if you dare. Buschmanns need not apply.

It is no surprise that the whist is finding its way in every home. Professor Dunbar just purchased one two years ago and utilizes its preset tunes every night. He marvels at the Bach; he snaps to Eldridge; he bangs his head to Megadeath. He is quizzical and prays to God every night on the euphoric, almost sinful qualities of this curious musical instrument.

Little Annie down the street knows similar aural satisfaction and bewilderment as she listens to the mouthed -O- coo her to sleep. Ba Ba Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool? And when she wakes up in the morning to Miley Cyrus, the mimetic inclination rings her own lips as though one day, yes--oh, she is just a dreamer.

And yes, Marcus, oh Marcus--how his life was changed by the whist. Found on the streets by the WhistWonder 2XXL, a gigantotron of a whist, proudly displayed in the front window, bullet proof, down on the block, Marcus did not even know what was in store. But he stopped dealing, left the crowds he always considered friends, and family. Now he is off unemployment; off food stamps; and away from the government-issued housing projects. In the day M does cultural development and marketing processing downtown at WhistWonder's HQ; when he gets off, he sets up his two whists--one a prototype that only a select group of WW employees are allowed to know of, the other the original 2XXL--definitely inferior, though humorously, and touchingly nostalgic--on each side of the room, and creates mash-ups of popular folk songs. Big Rock Candy Ring of Fire actually found airplay at the local WURY station, famous for its innovative playlisting and advocation for experimental "sound artists."

Before I took the five minute drive to go and buy the whist, my life was hell. I had been a scholar in classical composition; my forte was piano sonatas. I could never "get it up," as they say in the office, to the string quartets or the symphonies or the nu-operatic. Even the dueling xylophones over on Ridge Street, during the student block parties, made me quiver more often than not. But none of that matters now. The plaguing life of family--wife, daughter, daughter, son--and the university position at the local League school--who really cares at all about 'consonant vocabulary' of late 20th-century composers?--and the weekend job doing research for a local comic book hero-artist, which sometimes provided me with the opportunity to write up some of the subplots--all went out the window, the attic window and the basement window, with the arrival of the fantastic machine.

As humans we spend years moving outward onto instruments. We strive for abandonment of our bodies. Security is fashionable. Always. From the dawn of time the goal has been to feel extremely comfortable with our own bodies by distancing ourselves from them. The painter picks up the brush and oils and canvas. The writer picks up the pen and notebook. The engineer builds models out of small wooden pieces. The doctor will only feel okay in life if he wields his scalpel. And the warmonger his tank. And the goddess her lightning bolts. And me, well, my whist.

With the whist comes a rationale that is grounding. It sobers. The whist will make us cry, will make us laugh, and make us love. The whist brings peace. At its current rate, it should end poverty and world hunger in no less than two years. In four I suspect the imperialist system throughout this globe will deteriorate and fall off like some old garment no longer desired, no longer sexually appealing. In eight years, the whist will come to be a language commonly accepted in all households. In ten, the whist will be a model of worship. Inevitably the whist will end and will be replaced by something else. The emulation of the human voice will be surpassed by the real human voice; but that state of enlightenment will not be immediate. There will be a crysis, then a dark age, and then, perhaps, the renaissance. Our mouths will quake and our moans will be deep and sound. I will be long dead, probably gathering dust right next to Buschmann. But that is okay. The whist, sitting next to me in my coffin, will provide my requiem, and my safe passage to the land of the silent.

Littering

2009-11-06T08:03:00.003-05:00

He was prostrate on the blue rail bench trying to work the last of the coffee out of his body and commit the defining event of the day to memory. He imagined he was safe here, with his water, a lemon in it, at the Philadelphia International Airport, at the Terminal D R1 stop, the only sheltered railroad stop in like the entire airport rail-loop with benches large enough to lay prostrate on. It was so ordinary--a notable ordinariness considering what had happened. “How could everything feel so ordinary?” he thought, laying prostrate in the enclosure, waiting for the train to bounce back from its final stop: the E Terminal.

This is what he always did after work although using a word like always seemed more than a little ridiculous in light of the circumstances. Henceforth, he thought, there would always be the way things had been before the event and the way things were after. His life-line now sundered by some pre/post duality. It had been one of those days where history becomes binary.

He noted how ordinary everyone else was being.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to no one in that nothing-voice we use when addressing ourselves.

“But-,“ he almost replied before being rebutted by some other cerebral pundit. In times like these self-talking is often shaken down to breath-heavy prepositions or whichever expletives we’re most invested in at the moment. Plausible narratives, causality, other words that basically mean “meaning” weave slip-shod quilts in the frontal lobe and, due largely to latency issues, these paltry push-pins of language are all that escape. It’s as if what we conceive as our “lips” were trying to remember the dreams of what we conceive as our “self” had had last night.

He sat up. He was sitting up now, no longer prostrate, although we know that the rail bench was long enough to accommodate his 5’10” 160 frame. He thought about what he must’ve looked like there on the blue rail bench, under the sign that said “Terminal D: all Gates, Ticketing, Baggage Claim,” at once the Airport’s anatomy and its religion, mouth-speaking things to the ether. He thought about memory and experience and perception and eventually cinematic perspective. According to the sorts of authors he always cursed because they were always right: “I’m in your movie; you’re in mine.” Ergo, he wondered: where would they place the camera in this scene of the bio-pic? What would the other scenes be? Surely today’s event would be incorporated. How could it be skirted? Anything with this many breath-heavy mouthed words behind it must hold some belly of biographical significance. Surely, some theater-goer or reader (because, at some point, he probably would write some memoirs or letters or something if that’s still the trend for “the greats” when he’s had enough life experiences to be called a “life” and the desire to feel young again—a desire to return to days like today: the day of the event…the day that changed everything forever ago.) Surely someone could cull some meaning from things like this, things this traumatic, things this memorable, things that inspire this much fucking introspection and meta-fiction and poetry that will surely be anthologized as his post-“whatever-the-media-and-internet-are-calling-the-event” period, which represents a major departure from his juvenilia.

The train slid in exactly when the paint-chipped sign said it would and he left the enclosure, leaving behind the empty cup, a depleted lemon inside.

“What an asshole” everything who boarded previously at the E Terminal and sitting in the seats with windows that could see into the enclosure thought as this indignant, self-absorbed litterer walked through the requisite series of automatic doors and joined them as passengers.

Sixty years later he still feels guilty about littering because it’s the only thing anyone else remembered.

"Minor Things" or "Nantucket"

2009-11-04T08:16:00.005-05:00

Let's start with a nod to the irrational numbers
followed briefly by what we consider imaginary
and who could forget the fractals
by which Star Wars is possible
that teenage ship-launcher
like mine, Times Square, eighteen
at B. B. King's
the guy who bought me the first bar shot
meeting Magner in the crowd like a smoke monster
that one guy with the backpack with the acid
the myth he was until you found him
and train-ride home through the laughing gas of youth
how youth ends at drug use
how drugs make Plato credible
and Boltzmann, Morrison (who I hate), Coyne, and the current anorexic music slump
and Timothy Leary
who JFK Jr. summered with
great plane crasher, great Payne Stewart figure
great vicarious sadnesses
a depressed father driving through Massachusetts
the lesson on the "Texas Wedge"
how small and awful this island really is
how these are the poems your father would like if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself

The Middle of the Atlantic

2009-11-04T07:54:00.003-05:00

For Future Breakups

It became clear earlier
that this was no time to be happy

I know you think the stage extends everywhere
but this is Fishtown
and we're in a parking lot
and the sky just went on strike
it's been without a contract since March

you recognize the horizon from the broken churches
where only the locks work
and we keep swearing at each other in our graffiti
about it being over, about it being too un-tragic

You text:
"Even if it is Jeff Koons
a wax penis in a beer cozy
won't win me back"
Which I immediately forward
to all my fake lesbians

rather than photography
let's bank this instance
for the next time we're in a long line
or staving off ejaculation
or on the El dodging H__ N__'s
or trying to forget about you
forgetting about me

Bumping Some Coke With You

2009-11-02T20:45:00.007-05:00

Another Frank O'Hara Fantasy

is even more wonderful since once you told me it makes you horny and I'm in the market for a life experience
partially for the fact that we both love Morissey
partially because this is a send-off on a roof-top
partially for New York picketing cross-river like a gold-leaf chorus line
a city with more Exit signs than memories
instilling it's children with a wholesome insignificance, hiply disaffected
all so temporary, like tattoos and erections
every public works project the internet talks about happening but are less real than ocean maps

but they will approach it as long as its perfectly still

and this is what makes you a legend and also what makes you a movie

and it’s tremendously inspiring this isolation we’ve imposed

is it’s own form of madness

And how do they stay in business, these cartographers
is it a family thing?

I look at you, sadly, because you will never engender those Vincent feelings that make literature possible to care about
you will never be the white space or the belly button in a "You Are Gorgeous And I'm Coming" or an iamb in a Lunch Poem although you do have feet and are unshaven
and your mother most likely accepts you since you didn't turn out an artist or something
or a dancer
so I'm done wasting energy on you and about that time on the roof near the satellites after we licked the bag like two new celebrities
and return to the ordinary muggings endemic with the gentry

Your Holiness, I Beg You

2009-11-02T18:46:00.004-05:00

The hole was gently smuggled in across the Bulgarian border. There was no directive. The hole moved silently about the landscape like iron on curtain. Your mother was there and she told us all about it when she got back to Dayton, Ohio, where the cat jumped a few times. It had been twenty years since she left for Europe. The year she left a hot-air-balloon took off and had a tragic crash only several hours later, when the man, young Thompson who I went to college with, shot himself in the head. The day had been bright blue, some puffy white clouds jumping out of the background like forested explosions. When Thompson pulled the trigger, he immediately flipped out of the basket, like in rag doll physics.

The bullet had been aimed upwards and shot upwards. Thompson had been looking down at the gun's barrel. It was his father's gun. I had seen the balloon floating along in the sky thirty minutes before the bullet tore through the balloon's fabric material and caused the previously-rising sky device, having lost weight when Thompson flipped, precisely 190 pounds of good, standard weight, to be exact, to fall slowly. The balloon tore with all its weight. I was studying for the SATs and didn't notice its fiery descent into the baseball field in the center of town. There was a large bang and there were some children remembering moments earlier when they had been screaming and running and looking for a place to hide. When I heard from Coach Jordan, my physics teacher, about all the clandestine chaos and resulting whimpers, I remembered being in the woods with my stepfather some years ago, maybe two, and felling trees left and right. There was definitely a fear of being squashed. I could be a LEGO man too.

As mother flew across the Atlantic Ocean headed for god knows what, because I was only 15 at the time and didn't give a shit about Europe or balloons or sissy music either, she had some fears of her own. Like a shortage of Perrier on board the flight; like obnoxious older women hitting on her; or worse, older anybodies farting next to her in the type of flatulence you associate with death and the most uncanny of resurrections.

But think of the odds: I am a god now, a living and breathing one, and I tell this story because it humors me. To think about what all the mortals like, in their pasty lifestyle of prowls and ill-humor. I can't imagine what they would do if the cows came home. What would you do if the milk boy delivered peat moss? A beer a night keeps the moss deliverer away. Get your best lagers out, is my free advice.

When she lands and when we're done playing the last card game of the night, where I'm stuck on the sidelines, having lost over and over, and have my imagination turning as I watch the mobiles hanging from the ceiling and the wine stench rotting holes in my mouth, I think about the hole. The hole marches back across to Bulgaria and is legally represented by an assortment of other holes. After the trial it gets penetrated by a stampede of beast feet. Where is the herdsmen? Where is the woman with the golden pipes? Where is father, his axe swinging, blowing the masses into pulp and plunder?

My mother takes a picture like a tourist. If I had found out she had done that I would have hated her for several years; I am currently hating her for several right now because she didn't tell me, and I found out about it, because I'm a god now, and when it comes to fourth through sixth dimensions in Bulgaria, I'm there. Hi mom.

Killermine

2009-10-29T06:15:00.003-04:00

for (h)alloween

I've heard enough of your translators.
Inside the bag the meat parts were fresh.
Cold rooms and cold lights on all sides.
The top makes the bottom sets me right.
I've heard enough of your peace and meals.
A fork with prongs bent north then south.
There was once a man who tried to save me.
There was once a woman who tried to save me.
Sillouettes creeping about to smuggle you.
Our best friends are the ones we don't know.
Crying in the biggest open lot in the world.
He didn't know he was going to get it.
She didn't know he would get it over with.
Do you understand what a grated portal means?
Life comes to me in portmanteaus, bass drums.
It was all fine and okay until the walk.
How do we get through these fragrant signs?
Then there was a dance and they paired me.
It could have been metalworks and mayhem.
I stepped on her toes and she howled.
Are we all dogs when it comes down to what?
There is so much noise that needs silencing.
A security guard watched it happen.
I am the crowned prince that no one knows.
Social workers watched me get dragged away.
We all have problems no one recognizes.
Drop-kicked into the funnel of highway.
Launched through a world of pine and birch.
It wasn't a thorough search but it bled.
That great, raspy howl at such a young age.
I remember the first night and all nights.
There was never room to protest it.
Here we all look at each other in the eyes.
There was never any room to walk out.
Our corneas seethe and the pressure unfolds.
All we know is the happy, seated position.
I will rip everyone's eyes from their sockets.

Camden

2009-10-27T09:15:00.004-04:00

After Micheal Gizzi's Chapterhouse Reading

Diabetic Capricorn, get out of your snow pants

why are you so worried, I'm like an airport genius

we sell the best weekend in town even though we aren't supposed to be here

the poets are poeming with each others names

my past is here, save me

let's start a pharmaceutical company

tell the women we forgot them but let em down easy like a first kiss

this place would be more hip if the clocks worked

this is why we invented Camden and introduced credit card minimums

you're probably bad at gum then
but we can't all be good at everything

Olney High School West - Selections

2009-10-27T08:13:00.003-04:00

Every few days I get the urge to write a poem while in my class. Here are a few. I've left them unedited.

10-21-09

back in worlds where torn hearts hit the wayside
filleted open under a cover, one or another.
Respect comes in breathing forms.
Who can breathe the loudest breath
before the time is up and away?

*

Students who don’t stare at paper
stare at the walls
which keep everything in.

Benchmark Testing Today

The real tests begin before the class begins.
Say things five times too fast for security.
Five star hotel. Security taskforce with stun guns.
I will dance with you along disinfected halls.
The bellhop will be our third person choreographed.
His cemeteries dream the cries of the dead.
Office labyrinths keep everyone lost.
I had a dream of limbs failing.
The final frontier spared; free of fear.
You wait by the building that drips into the background.
I’ve got whips in a chest somewhere.

It was like a horde of ants covering linoleum seascape

attendance. ms. G’s
students came to class
because they could
get minimal points
for it.
but there’s no
reason to do
work. and they
won’t get kicked out
for doing
nothing: even
distraction.

From the October Cell Cutups

2009-10-26T23:32:00.001-04:00

featuring Victoria Tran; Jeff Brennan; Stephen Silverman

This day has been a constant battle against my hangover head and failing body. I’m pissing like every hour and my pee smells like honeynut cheerios. Who knew Piels! Only eaten ten strawberries since I saw you I think. Ducking has the zero transparency in this organization Don’t stomp too salty or your blame will flare up in a thiefy way.

Thinking About Chainsaw Massacres

2009-10-22T06:11:00.003-04:00

There is the sound of the moon
but it does not phase my morning.
The lump-sack of flesh around me
like a ring does not care back.
Three Puerto Rican girls tricked me
into thinking I thought them a fool.
I can't think of anything
I'd rather be doing right now.
A man walks down the street
with a sword made of green glass.
A hunter scatters his shadow
across the roofs of buildings.
In a many days' cycle we have learned
that we don't know our apathy.
We probably never will;
there are cinders in the sky;
this is another of your mornings,
with unchecked parts lingering.
It is everyone's goal to teach
but no one wants to admit it.
The teachers are as muzzled
as the students; the students
run around scramming for more time
and scrambling our shields.
The adults are silenced goons where we
once saw monitors who could love.
We carry love around like a child;
even if its heart stills we still carry.
Before long: burden smiles continue.
The sly fox sits in a wooden grove.
I gave you a container of honey
to ward away our spirit animals.
No 'thank you' or cast glance.
You have succeeded in dribbling.
I want to wrap you in my arms
and explain the meaning of a cut lung.
The voice on the announcer box
sounds like a baritone mosquito wheeze,
and parts of me beg for refined sugar.
Parts of parts of parts of them.
Us in the mechanic's garage, tweaking.

Caution: I Live in a Crime Scene Photo

2009-10-21T17:37:00.005-04:00

A reconstitution

my smoking cloud is a mushroom gun
our bridge doesn't get along with other bridges

grimace was our brother, a bond stronger
than the bridge and wild highland magic

the island avenue exit discovers herself
on the blue line, Philadelphia

* * *

we all know you involves shadow

where you (you round (you grab)) crazy you

the rest: a dirty of delish

It's me that includes a show

the sun comes up
every season anyway

at the top of the world, your breath

we have lots of Benjamin Franklins

summer's lovely, I enclosed a picture
stuffing in a problem

* * *

Our braille is beautiful, elegant
one of your station sleeps in our curtains
his slump ended on the sabbath
even if the internet is calling things differently

I heard the ninjas found religion
but their sourdough paradigm clashes
with the plaid of a country we just started
that we named for her beauty marks

* * *

the wires were barbed with another morning stomach
"fluids" mouthed the conductors, in essence: everything
we heard our child, behind us, breathless now
a stare like yours, more parts per million
it was then the greens organized in order of their halos

* * *

weeping, yeah, in my
silent open-mouth jaw-lock wet-
eye way, the lights of
Penn tunnels en route to others
less friendly and successful

we were brotherly
with one another
until the flood
(ice had covered Ninevah)
the tide-drowned harpers

there had been love there
making out with the thing
it had been consuming
the blank space, tasteless backhairs
our fevered livers ballooning

living above condition
the smiling Ivy, her perk
Dan's har, the impossibility
of his experimental season
barring androgyny

a man laughing himself awake
we should quit our jobs
and be the shadows who sleep in the train station
and change will fall like girl hair
as love wells in the trespassing public

------------
Video of the poem in an early version from back when I was fat:

The Dog-Destroyers

2009-10-21T16:15:00.011-04:00

Today is the day of the squirrel
the day of the mouth-waffle
an awesome day

A Chinese farmer has constructed a
one-man submarine, revolutionizing war

The police didn't join in the dance
they arrested him for disorderly conduct

We love Hollywood, we just
have a funny way of showing it

they give me free soda, I'm here so much
it's Jack-o-lantern anarchy

Pall Mall particles in their perfect randomness
the distance of the jump corresponding with the color

these are the impossible endings
you're not considering

We disassemble poems until the tiles run out
see our credit policy for more information

Remember, VIAGRA does not protect against sexually
transmitted diseases, including HIV,
so live your life in the average window of shark-attacks;
in what industry insiders have termed the "shark-attack window."

Never-me Slandeh

2009-10-20T18:07:00.002-04:00

To be a reclusive white communist
close with a female communist white friend.

I watched them about a year ago from today
and hope I don't run into them tonight.

In fifty minutes. Also the other he fell in love with
this guy's work. He found it randomly while scrolling across
the landscape and it was a digital rendezvous.

"The problem with you is that you never finish
a single project." That's right, I didn't pay
attention and now I can't make goals. Workshops
are the types you dismiss at the backslap of a hand.

I need money and will be homeless to get it.

Pray that you're given the brass band five-star
stud-knuck this time. Or pray that you aren't.
The alleyway is where supermoves are invented.
But nobody thinks about these things at the time.

I've got a Cuban Vision now. I met a Dominican today.
I think about necrophiles all the time. And child rapists.
I bite my tongue when I think of attrocities. I eat so much candy.
This coffee tastes like it has sugar in it:
it's sweet and from Switzerland and the packaging
is yellow but not from age. It's probably a fungus.

Or a dye. The kind you use to roll fabric in.

Hunchback Poem

2009-10-19T06:15:00.003-04:00

I'm waiting for him to step out
the door so I can follow him for
a block or two wielding a claw
for him and struggling to keep up
but not struggling too hard since
I will definitely reach him and tear
open a quality of his that he cherishes,
though I can't say which part now, but
as I'm standing under the moon's
reflections from the glass-sheathed
buildings erupting from the pavements,
like my own magnificence, my hands
quiver and I feel I will know feelings
of murder, revenge, satisfaction soon,
as remainders, and like bunches of taxis
who will stop their cars one block
down from you and I, shake their heads,
move along, ready to spot live ones,
for I am dead too, and will be long gone
too, bending around other sunken corners,
new fragments and saps itching my skull.

Live from the Crash Site

2009-10-15T20:54:00.008-04:00

After Chicago's Field Museum

Say that someone needs a certain kind of mask
the elder women grind iridescent shells
and crowd a house to capacity like cigarettes
dressed as great cannibal spirits
we call this "the forced distribution of gifts"

a document which depicts both education and marriage
most likely written by the governor of bridges

I'm going to eat you...what are you going to do about it?

Live from the crash site...
You know, in a way it's like bowling
the hideous smells and after-clatter
are almost too obvious

The Loop, spokes of it
a Mexican popcorn child's pigeon circus
he abdicates as you see the disease you're sitting in

(infrastructure as cancer-factory)

I'm partial to the Drake passage, nothing personal

A nature walk ending on the south side
begs the question: "What is an animal?"

the first flowering plants appear
in the dinosaur times

little girl says to little girl
"did you know we are making history right now?"

the clouds are close down and no storms are coming in
perfect weather in which to leave the atoll

even the dead prefer it sub-tropic
even the dead have morning breath

there have been six mass-extinctions in the earth's history
rock beach versus blown-foam flip-flop
a brief history of the Precambrian
a brief history of the minefield

Forget feet, miles, or kilometers
the tower is 283 Barack Obama's tall

smoking again (for the benefits)

we peek through portholes like lovers, like thieves

at least one death can be attributed to the Gatorade shower
nah man, I've been out of bread bowls since 1
upon landing, we splinter our canoes for the same reason as our bodies
the spirit, which brought such good fortune on the voyage over, can atrophy, or worse, become malignant and a pox upon the tribe

Trapped with Sandor

2009-10-14T21:24:00.005-04:00

Olney High School is a Stern Soldier

"Bus Wait"

After the Transylvanian, Sandor Kanyadi

the tomb swept on was ridden once
by two riders sucking brand new thumbs
colored in grief and denunciation
while waiting my turn gathered steamy pause

those pockmarks are your bane your banner
and bent while watched by the not so gentle
whose sparks flicker the stolen corners
away from their shadows, yes, to thievery

*

"Your Last Best Friend Recently Diseased"

it could be that all
this is imprisonment
while it aligns to form
its message
that it's coming home
from the battlefields
(the plains being sexed up
by torn shrubs
and powdered footprints)
to greet you
with a bear-hug

Two Poems by Sandor Kanyadi

2009-10-14T21:19:00.003-04:00

From Dancing Embers (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002)

"Unvaried Variation"
-Originally from Black-and-Red Verses" (1965-1972)

although the thunders have rolled on
and the lightning bolts have fizzled out
the evening still can make a child of
this old man with autumn hair and gout

standing int he same old hollow tree
where I was at the age of five
when I spent a long night crying
and shouting songs to stay alive

*

"Should Be Abolished"
-Originally from Poems about Poetry (1974-1977)

not only punctuation marks
but capital letters basking
in class distinction
should be abolished
words should be stripped
naked just like
those deported

When They Say That They Want You (Don't They, Version)

2009-10-12T18:55:00.004-04:00

What was the father really but big goof balls
popping and drain covers and long rails of fat
'cause cause to order fresh appropriation seemed
good back then when we thought about patterns.

It takes a long strand of thought to explode
circuits I said watching circuits darken, power
outage from east bank to west, drawing as in lips
to cold pool of coldest month in transition you

sitting there sipping discussing structures' lacked
evidence. But it was fine, it was like having falling
back to worms since that's everything all the time
anyway and this new shirt isn't helping your look.

Naked Pictures

2009-10-12T17:46:00.008-04:00

Let's liken it to something
since memory, evidence
of it happening holds more value
than an actual experience
that we don't even need you for
that we have removed you from

Envelope

2009-10-11T23:32:00.001-04:00

October 11, 2009

Maura:

The work I sent you most recently was indeed rough drafts and other bits and pieces I had floating around. I sent various friends small collections of my drafts because the drafts weren’t doing anything here with me and I figured it would be more beneficial to confuse/mystify/startle various recipients by doing something different. I guess it worked with the inquisitive you. The problem with sending out material like this, unmarked and appearing haphazard, is that it looks half-ass, and while the amount of effort that goes into stuffing an envelope filled with messy, crazy pieces of paper is not necessarily that great, I hoped you find it pleasurable anyway. I assure you the next creative work I mail to you will be up to par in its neat composure.

But how is Rhode Island? Is it still a sink hole? A stink pit? A nether realm? A beautiful coastal habitat? I rarely think about it these days, though I take note of it whenever it comes up in conversation with randoms. I think about you sometimes and wish I could see you as it’s been so long. Do you miss your friends from school in strange ways? To me Roger Williams is like a ghost town, like a refinery of spirits, fading but still out there, somewhere. A mist, if you like King references. Is it tragic? I do not know. Some days I contemplate the integrity of growing old and I get really sad. Following college life and that post-college-confused-glow, people really turn into those caricatures that show up on the big screen. Only now am I freaking out about it, breaking down about it. Strangely enough it wasn’t the first high school friend I noticed got married, or the first friend I noticed had a child, a baby, an offspring, an heir; rather, it’s the work and the relationships that are chaotic all around me that freak me out. People dating people they hardly know and have to start to get to know. It is a commodity of survival; and it seems false. And oddly enough, I think about the primal qualities in relationships from high school and early college, where people weren’t pretentious and prestigious and were just wild, sexual beings coming together for some raw energy appeal.

The obvious answer is in recreation. People can recreate their youthful heydays if they want to. But this recreation is the struggle everyone faces, and it’s a struggle. And it’s faced. This is error to me; this is denial and unwillingness. We do not know how to push forward but we do not care. Because time is always running out for the adult. I am waiting until that time where I become one of the millions who claim adult years go by so fast. I am scared sometimes. Some people take chemicals to recreate their childhood emotions and intelligences. The LSD-baby-vision-reformation-practice is what I mean. You have heard of this, I am sure? To be able to think on the same imaginative level as the young child who is still learning via full, wholesome emersion. I still engage in tripping on hallucinogens like acid but mostly I get really happy—really, really happy (because non-refined, utterly true blue happiness is early childhood for me), but then I get really sad, really critical, and subject to the great failures of my life thus far. For me failure is the most apposite affectation. It is a hump that can’t be retrieved; attempting to leap over such a hill becomes a new hill in its attempt. Do you ever think about storms? There’s an author who wrote about a storm. It was large and always on the horizon. It was terrifying. When it reaches you it sucks out your life, sucks it up, and gives you a new life. It’s a life that can’t be built or destroyed. We can only bear witness.

Storms are cruel mothers. Lightning; thunder; beauty; intensity. But it is just like that uncropped childhood block building. Storms are completely immense experiences. Unexplainable, no matter how hard we try. I think the greatest weapon in the world would be a storm that could be controlled; or a storm that didn’t end. Is this why weathers of disaster always come up in literature, film, and other modes of “entertainment”? We love death. Thanatos. We love fear. Phobias. Our anxiety keeps us on the edge of our seats. Then we dream of loves. People to be there with us; people who we want to understand us better than we can understand ourselves. This is a painful request for the self as it requires the suffering of admission. Admittance is never free: boundaries will pop up like bacteria. Small things that eat away at the whole. Do you ever dream of the blindness of a newborn? Sometimes I wish I was forever in that womb-ejected state. Fresh, warm, wet, screaming, the light everywhere. That first light. That infinite light. The light that comes before we learn to use our memory, before we learn to use our memory so we can start forgetting how to memorize, in order to protect ourselves, because all we really want is that first light.

Greg

***

11-09-07

I sat and watched you,
your ears were behind earphones,
spectacles spat to face,
the droning of so many songs.

Evil brightening before days,
yellow lights electric skyline
porous skyline put your boots on
take them off scrape off the mud

it must come off come off, it must.

little bird flying with little wings
sighing with little children as champs
behind billions of boxes, behind all of
those eyes ripple trickling water
trickling water,
torrential torpor
try this
try that
do something
do black under spotlight
do shirt of gold
under sparkling white teeth

tweet tweet tweet tweet

billboard burnt fuchsia
billboard burnt

the callers at the call centers, I can't
imagine them being very happy, I cannot
imagine them trying very hard--this is what
I do, do not try hard, the clown mask
is hilarious, as it is: many, many people
cornered by jaguar grins
and currency became teeth under old
spotlit
glamor glance billboard drums too
old!

The smallest positive integer not definable in under eleven words.

2009-10-08T21:13:00.001-04:00

Duck!

(bullets)

Actual Borders Bookseller/Bookbuyer Conversation

2009-10-08T20:37:00.006-04:00

[Bookseller is breaking Borders SOP by reading White Noise while listening to Bromst when he should be shelving shiny mystery books]

[Enter Bookbuyer.]

Bookseller: How ya doin'?

Bookbuyer: Perfect

Bookseller: Perfect?

Bookbuyer: Nobody's perfect.

Bookseller: What?

Bookbuyer: Nobody's perfect.

Bookseller: Oh. I like the absurdity you bring to this interaction.

Bookbuyer: Ha! Now, that's an absurd thing to say.

Bookseller: More meta, really.

Bookbuyer: Right.

[Bookbuyer places the Money Issue of the New Yorker on the brackish marble counter]

Bookseller: That'll be $4.23. Where are you going?

Bookbuyer: Where are any of us going?

Bookseller: Down to death. The Greeks knew it. The Jews knew it. And since then all human endeavor has been an effort to make us forget about it.

Bookbuyer: [Pays] I think about it everyday.

Bookseller: That's why we're the way we are.

[Register cacophony. Receipt tears.]

Bookseller: I'll probably blog about this later.

Bookbuyer: Weird. Cya!

Bookseller: Cya!

[Exeunt]

Why I Hate You

2009-10-08T18:32:00.002-04:00

You never looked at me
on the subway. I waited
for twelve stops.

*

There was a long line
and we were both in it,
but to you I was a link.

*

Scalpels can reconstruct
the faces of the ugly:
the impositions of surgeons.

*

It’s only a pensive existence
where you come in. Don’t wash
my back and remove me scars.

*

Rolls of coins drop from your pockets
and nobody understands; there I am
cleaning them up, fitting them back in.

*

A car can hit
but a car can
also speed away.

*

Lights through the kitchen window
were just like the flashlights
when they came to get us under covers.

*

Once that concrete
was carved into shapes
we could recognize.

*

Beheld beneath those
brawny branches
a the girl in pink pajamas
and her mother screaming;
the blood pouring out,
but from which mouth?

This is your Brain on Don DeLillo

2009-10-07T20:49:00.001-04:00

8:43pmJeff:
i hate people who greet everything new with wide-eye'd terror
like Tracy on the biggest loser

8:44pmMaria:
better to squint?

8:44pmJeff:
no, better to concentrate on blowing yourself up
and hoping to feel wonder, surprise
even though mass-culture has made that impossible
we can find every stimuli possible on television, or On Demand
or the internet
we only seek these new stimuli because we saw them on television, on Demand, or online
and others have described them as ideal
it's all an effort to be part of a crowd
and the crowd is massive
it's every person in the world except for luddites in south america and the dying in africa
it's not even a shared experience
since there is no sharing
but it's the furthest thing from unique
since we now have an "ideal" set of life experiences
and our lives are spent grinding towards the resources necessary to accomplishing them
and if we don't, we are failures

Brandywine, Sponge

2009-10-05T23:02:00.000-04:00

I will not revise no never-(_0_-

Vomit in the foyer
and a reminder: burger patties.
Drone of a television:
behind courtyard walls the
suicide girl clutches her remote;
these memories are wireless,
and streaming, a real
tourniquet sans buttons.
Back to creeping fingers
to ward off parched throat.
Plunge into columned skin.
We spoke of flayed facial flesh,
the blood drops pittering
down the cheek. My
mouth is dry in daily thought,
and while the bands sucked
tonight one of them didn’t.
I think I’ll send you
a message later; carpet bombs.
Bombs for the babes,
for the lightning beings
and crass espionage failings.
Wandering around: wondering
aloud—blackout, bonanza’d
sam-itches in a foreign city.
We are plastered forever
waiting for bombs forever and
still, some news clips preloaded.
We can ride the train to work
reading them and thinking
of not calling anyone else
including your sisters.

Moon, Death [Vallies of]

2009-10-04T20:20:00.005-04:00

For Rio De Janerio
we can only blame ourselves
yelled the fat-cats (black now)
over old fat lawnspeople
also yelling

we hold back our waters
with siege weapons
trebuchets mainly

"this is like
the fourth grandma joke
we've made today"
says the ghost we hired
for just that purpose

she's like bleached pink
and may be recycled
delicately

the center city skyline
unites against lesser cancers
is aware (anyway)
of your U-bar on the down-tube
leaving divot constellations

City Year Update 0: Literary Requirement

2009-09-30T20:26:00.002-04:00

More than a Feeling: How the Red Jacket of City Year Adopts and Transfuses its Wearer and Viewer with the City Year Culture, and how Gregory Bem is Deserving of the Jacket, and how he must confess that the City Year Jacket is for Him

Every culture has different symbols that represent the values, procedures, and operations from each branch of the culture. Some cultures are spiritual, some are governmental; some are bureaucratic, while some lack overarching structure. As a long-running, well-established non-profit organization located in a diverse collection of urban hubs throughout the United States of America, City Year has developed a culture of its own, and with its culture comes a set visual symbols that are prophetic, empowering, and noticeable by both members of City Year and members of the society in which City Year finds its home. Some of these cultural symbols, like the City Year logo, reflect the history of City Year’s formation, the founding principles, values and ideals of City Year’s existence, the year-long life of City Year’s presence in the cities, and the diverse group of people involved under City Year, who are celebrating through participation. For example, the font of the logo is derived from the Civilian Conservation Corps, who as a precursor to City Year led the service movement in the United States of America during the 1930s; the logo has circles that “symbolize community and equality” (Idealist Handbook, pg. 25) and represent the “power circle” concept, which is a way for City Year Corps Members do communicate on an inclusive basis. There are many pieces of this powerful and effective logo, which all perform their individual, visual parts to comprise a “whole” that can be received by City Year and outside members of greater city communities with an understanding of all associative benefits that City Year provides for the society. Like the logo, another manifestation of the City Year experience is through uniform, which each and every member is required to where while they serve under City Year[1]; this uniform is as complex as its logo, if not more so. There are many parts of the uniform: the boots that are worn on each City Year Corps Member’s working feet, provided by the company Timberland, which promotes an awareness between non-profit work and corporate sponsorship; the khaki pants, which are to be pressed and starched for professionalism, and the variety of City Year shirts, which also show sponsors, the logo, and color coordination amongst the Corps Members. But there is nothing greater in all of the City Year uniform, and the entirety of the culture for that matter, than City Year’s red jacket. The red jacket is a masterful symbol. It is worn by each member of the Corps, as well as stakeholders of City Year, and holds in each of its fibers the strokes of energy, effort, and service that City Year has given, is giving, and has the potential to give. The red jacket has many layers of meaning that make it up as an effective symbol, as a representation of the City Year culture. Red is love, courage, sacrifice, and power. It has many meanings across many cultures, but most importantly it is like the inner red circle of the City Year logo, which is designed to portray energy, idealism, and warmth. The red jacket is the primary component of an attire that can truly and utterly be identified from a distance, with the red jacket’s bright hues and strong reflective qualities. The red jacket is a jacket, which means the red jacket covers the entire upper torso of the working, servicing body that wears the red jacket. But as a symbol the red jacket has social significance too: the red jacket is a symbol of unity. With every City Year member wearing the red jacket, the red jacket demonstrates cooperation, coordination, and community; the red jacket represents a joint effort to bring forward the ideas of the organization; the red jacket in unison with each and every other red jacket is a powerful sight indeed! It brings that ideals of City Year—spirit, discipline, purpose, pride, and power—into fruition. It is striking but balanced; attractive but sturdy and functional. The red jacket is an extension of our humanity and our humanistic, functional prowess that can be attributed allegorically, metaphysically to our body parts that warm, bake if you will, under the jacket’s gentle caress—from the weight on our soldiers to the beating heart of love in our chests to the directional control of our necks—the red jacket serves us better so that we may serve the communities we work in better and serves the communities we work in as a presence that may help us serve better. The red jacket is like the apple, which lingers on the end of the apple tree’s twig in September, waiting to be plucked, but always, always, always a smaller unit in a larger picture, a picture of other apples on their respective twigs, stems atwitter, the branch aging healthily, the sky blue in the distance, the human being and animals coming to watch the ripened fruit and pick it up knowing the fruit’s purposes to flavor the mouth and fill the belly. The red jacket is like this.[2]

So you may be wondering why I want to wear the red jacket. You may be, in your curiosity, intrigued as to how I relate to such a symbol. Well, the potential is quite high that I may get to don the red jacket in the near future as a reward for my concentrated work-shopping and the vast learning procedures I have engaged in and processed since joining City Year. The honor is undeniable. To wear the City Year jacket means to be part of something greater than the self; the red jacket is indeed a token of community, togetherness, and Values[3], but to be more specific it is a recognizable cause that will allow me to better identify myself with those I have the pleasure of serving with, no matter how much along the surface such identity is through uniform relationships, and no matter how far deep the symbolism stretches, like a rabbit hole going on and on, with surprises waiting around every bend, but the concept of the rabbit hole being unbroken, being true as a concept, as an idea, to whatever depths may be discovered. And on the inverse of the equation, the jacket becomes important because people can lean on me for support, see me as someone in their shoes, or moccasins that can demonstrate we all come from our own lives, moving along wonderfully at our own pace, as we are individuals, and we are moving in directions that others may gain from. When I imagine myself putting on the red jacket zipping up for the first time, I imagine myself becoming a new being, a being had energies necessary to change the world, but needed the capstone to seal the deal; the red jacket completes the multi-component uniform, and thus completes the symbolism of a culture that can be installed within the neighborhoods, streets, blocks, and people we are working with. And when I see a facet of the society recognize me for who I am from a distance or from up close, for the first time or the thousandth, I will know that I am receiving such joy for the greater group as a whole as well, which will only further thrust me into the most important and complex situations that an educator, a service-leader, may face. For the jacket will turn its wearer into a leader, into a believer of the self. For what is a king or queen without a crown? For what is a policeman without his sky-blue top, or an astronaut without his helmet? Like City Year, these people all have important, symbolic finales to their uniforms that will complete them and allow them, and everyone else, to be aware of their role, their presence within the world. I look forward to the moment when I will put on the red jacket and will feel the completion begin to take place and assure me that, even if the service year is going in a chaotic direction, a direction I cannot trust, I will be able to have faith in the power of the red jacket.

[1] While the uniform is required to be worn during all City Year hours under City Year’s policies, wearing the uniform is seen as an honorable, respectable privilege that only serves to supplement the greater good that City Year is performing. Among City Year’s goals during the Basic Training Academy portion of a Corps Member’s service year is to ensure a well-rounded, holistic view of the uniform and its many cultural functions.

[2] Please, though, dear reader, understand that this metaphoric escapade is not to demean or reduce the value of the red jacket in the City Year organization; it is a poetic statement serving to better bring the values of the red jacket into view, as we humans can perhaps better relate to an idealistic visage than to the abstract socio-cultural banter of a college-educated intellectual.

[3] A set of overarching Values (capital “v” intended) which includes the following mantra-chant: spirit, discipline, purpose, and pride—all qualities of a program that will lead each member and those that each member interacts with to future success and expansive opportunity. To have “spirit” within City Year means that one is in sync with the energy that can be harnessed to propel the individual into a period of service; to have discipline means that one is able to put aside obstacles and remain true to one’s training and one’s directional standards; to have “purpose” means that one is aware of the problems facing the society—including but not limited to social equality/inequality, the issue of rights between the oppressed and the privileged; and the uneducated masses that have been left in the darkness of ignorance and left without any knowledge of how to get out of the darkness; and to have “pride,” which at its most rudimentary and primal form means a liking and sense of ownership over one’s actions, or one’s group actions (group being the greater City Year group, the city that one is serving in, or the smaller group of one’s school).

For more City Year updates, start going here: http://penumbrae.wordpress.com/

Get Lost So You Don't Have to Pay Attention

2009-09-26T23:10:00.005-04:00

Diphenhydramine citrate
Speed-Stick
jeroboam
air conditioning
Gewurztraminer
three day waiting period

Hulu
hummus
Guantanamo Bay
United Arab Emirates
Eucalittino
three day waiting period

dietary fiber
the blood and the moon
Lydia Davis
sympathetic ophthalmia
intentional grounding
three day waiting period

This Is What We Talk About When We Talk to Ourselves

2009-09-26T22:27:00.013-04:00

After David Foster Wallace's "Good Old Neon"

at the worst possible time
lay the doctor

Louis Braille's coffin
can read bones now

the word alloy
means eight similar things

note the scarecrow:
so faded and flammable

faded, faded
and flammable

The Borders at the Philadelphia International Airport

2009-09-24T20:03:00.006-04:00

After an anxiety attack during the worst week in recent memory
We're going on a bear hunt
the widower, with child
an amber alert we noted
from the highway we imagined
our seat-belts off

the retarded girl
screaming laughs, arms
from blue wheelchair
"I haven't seen them
thinking about you..."

Home is senseless
(due to caring being
impossible/despair mounting)
the courteous panic
of a collision course

the heart assimilates the bones
as you ring blood from your work-socks

Sucker Punch

2009-09-19T20:30:00.000-04:00

((zaz)z(bo)t)

2009-09-19T03:11:00.004-04:00

In my heel were the blood worms' child foot-fungus
feasting on the eighth leaf'd clover. Dingusing as lovers.

I could hook your nose's smile with new Gringo vestibule.
The longer the hatchback, the more latent the bagged fries.

People eat French Fries Unknowingly. Like Con. Rice.
Like the way C. Pow. looses his grip tape. Remember that Romance?

On the television backwards our eyes were like hooks.
You sinker, you stinker, begging with lines of life. I'll say. Lifelines.

Bigger than the bourgeoisie brand; more powerful than electric hearts:
the Japanese sink pump churns and curdles, coins and curfews.

But in back of or behind throat a clapping horse doES the twin shuffle.
You're cool in cancer; comes in equines as fast Djinns screaming for rape.

Two-throated and big too working in that hot sun, skin paling and pealing,
pears performing quick-shimmies under roller coaster Christ watches.

You combine your words and I'll form dough.
Can you imagine metallic pots made out of grain?

I'll serve you an uppercut the same reverse way D. C. Van D. jived
when the giblets started their breathing process. Look to sweatbags.

You outcast. You phosphoric brandywine. You sophomore.
It will be a dousing before it gets too late; before train-keeps break chains.

Before our favorite progressing Prestons swifted their espresso eyes.
Before the boom flash of a thousand Molotov bombs reach hotel cracks.

Follow me through the burning black grass since you're allergic too.
Tsunami breath will rub one out and ditch evidence to gravel.

Guy Debord's Litter (or EEK-Nom-Mix/Micks)

2009-09-14T03:07:00.004-04:00

The post-modern had a locker near the institute that was also prohibitive based solely on it’s location, the demographs (-gods) around it, the sociologists that would visit with their head lamps and their ideas that dragged down that shook out the skeleton babies from strange tree-bellies.

I want you to hit me in the mouth and in my face at the same time but using the same physics you remember from birth.

We sealed the end of the world in a bottle and then mass produced it after securing a grant from the bank we started with our profits from the election fund-raiser dinners we hosted in the green-zone of a proxy war we fought with ourselves

And black was invented in Kenya and our waste disposal is two blades and a toilet and the girls without cups have knives for a reason and your cat is named Guy Debord and the best babe is gone and dust is more white than dead skin and Abraham Lincolns anyways which is what we ALL are!

Brief transposition of ideographic logic with linear English grammatical form and Kenneth Rexroth:

One hundred poems from the Chinese
From the Chinese, one hundred poems
The Chinese from one hundred poems…
One hundred Chinese, the poems from
From one hundred poems…THE CHINESE!!!

When he died, the coroner found three hundred species of insects thriving in Karl Marx’s beard in a just, post-capital, collectivist society wherein the workers controlled the means of production, from each according to his own ability, to each according to his need, which was sucking blood out of Karl Marx’s neck flesh and eventually up to his hair near the end of his life as dialectic reveries ran bonish and the money ran in.

You are roughly as physical as Andre Agassi (and roughly as gorilla).

I heard you found honey in your house, the same house you bought from the boss in the second world of donkey kong 2 and the madness you feel at not being able to remember any of the names of any of the characters other than the eponymous in fact you only really remember the varieties of alligators (Donkey Kong’s natural predators) and the old father-time version of Donkey Kong who spins the phonogram machine at the end when you die or that you see when you switch that fat, semi-sticky purple bar upwards on your SNES (afterthought: if you can bounce THAT high on tires then you need some deflation/an intervention/reinvention as American Gladiator),

Caution: if you paint your walls red, blue, and green you will always feel like a test-pattern-souled neo-Hegelian nothingmaster playing fantasty football in rare dreams.

Hook Search

2009-09-03T07:14:00.002-04:00

Was waitin' in my bed for the bugs to stop bitin'
before my time to put in to the clock would start
but I had only been watchful for five minutes
when the alarm buzzed with alcoholism and my
knees tightened through charlie horse spasm.

why don't you blend titles more often, thought.
why don't you do remixes, remakes, peace plans.

I tasted blood on my tongue before falling back down
and closing my eyes to wake up in the dream of
the alarm clock once more, the fiction of it all more
extraordinary than de-pee-viewed once more.

Take your arms from around your back and shout
equality before making way down the wooden steps.
I was in my apartment for five minutes after a bomb
exploded outside in the blacktop, outstretched hand.

Don Delillo - White Noise (or Late to the Party)

2009-09-03T04:48:00.002-04:00

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here. We're now."

He seemed immensely pleased by this.

Statuary

2009-09-02T23:30:00.001-04:00

Thanks to your best night's attire
it's time to engage in another blood sit.

Yes, the knees are aching to explode
again and it's only the second rise.

Before long you realize sicknesses
are as boring as the worlds around them.

There is an exhaustion below these falls.
Exhaust fumes. Lingering pinwheels.

I would hurt you if I knew where
to find you, if I knew your address.

All I've got right now is what's implied.
It's a faith worth wearing. Like sand burials.

Must stomach it first. It comes out at night.
The nose holes would drip vomit for days.

In which the Atom witnesses the dying breaths of a friend in winter . . .

2009-08-27T11:04:00.000-04:00

ocean snow, the gas stations a necessary design

luminal and homeless
outpouring exploits for unnecessary function

thoughts settle on the rose crux
the creases of unwashed sheets form written in wires, turning
dusted cocaine mirror
the color of blood runners

a small razored smile could a grail or
remainder of the ant infestation became you

could a sparkle
damn your friends and claim you a hotel room

horizontal limit, vertical position,
district of the poor cosmic particles
spectral as police warlocks who
charge & flutter like bats and heal?

the coal smudged on the train tracks is
pressed against her breasts like a dagger
unsealing various arterial rhythms

swerve of atoms through headlamps of cars
& patience while taking the mother’s fingers;
knots tied & broken like the fire that became the bodiless crucible
meanwhile untied from the handcuffs

entropic surge of a pretzel or donut,
rabbit hole of hungry mouths awaiting
maturation from a few & the action, the word, the breath--

A poem by Kenneth Patchen and with a photo by me

2009-08-17T22:42:00.005-04:00

"O Howling Cells"

I protest against the manner of these ruins.
That their streets are soft with the dried hair
Of murdered children is not outside
The order of our speckled activity; even
The here recorded delight of the citizenry
In self-mutilation and impious sport,
Involving the real nature of human desires,
Can be condoned without loss to our earthly intent:
But that these very rocks and caked walls
Vomit a deeper evil; that this sorrowful wood
And impenetrable stone are witness
To unimaginable hells; and that not survivor
--Unless we except the insane--can share
The full horror of man's cruelty to the things
He could not kill; this cannot be forgiven.

(from Collected Poems; New Directions 1968; NDP 284)

Herpes Incorporated

2009-08-14T03:01:00.004-04:00

an overheard conversation at Dos Segundos

We're herpes incorporated
the name wrote itself
like a sluggy tumor made of summer
all five hundred days of it
in the meatiness of the preseason

we cut each other off like door locks
"does anyone know where mercury is right now?"
vintage stores, boutiques, come back world!
                        we miss you...
you're the only magic act we're putting through

Leftover Windows and Their Chills

2009-08-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

Originally written in March of this year. Much revised.

I wonder if the woman walking along finds love in her end.
There is a profit in it like with the pigs who police the laws of aesthetic.
Those who are nurturing discard thy artistry with bundles of wind hisses.

I wonder if the woman walking along fears her fear when it comes.
The trash of the hysterical. A race of ants to the door. The endless supply of
children left behind to rot as perished in an instant in this system of allowed lies.

Wondering. To be idiots, to be lied to, to be force into thinking.
To focus or write or think or remember—guns recoiling and shoving.
As you have fired so have they. Their bullet is a thousand being burned.

I think of the ritual sacrifices on Mayan monuments and all the fierce lovers,
and the Aztecs of yellowed teething and hunger, propped up like giant snakes.
Syringes of the scaled and horrifying embargoes mandated by grueling fatsos.

Snot is running thick down the face and is to be crusted over through the breeze.
It is a love that is concrete and can be heard with the smack of our boots on curbs.

Another Morning Stomach

2009-08-03T15:09:00.002-04:00

the wires were barbed
with that sick-mouth taste

fluids, said the conductor
in essence, everything

we heard our child
behind us, breathless now

it was then that the greens organized
into a big-top tarp, awaiting erection

Caution: I Live in a Crime Scene

2009-07-31T05:23:00.005-04:00

my smoking cloud is a mushroom gun
overheated bridges becoming other bridges

grimace was our brother, a bond stronger
than the moon (before the war)

he discovers himself on the blue-line
Philadelphia. Island avenue exit.

i want to blow you up
so just pretend it's sexual

With Love Philadelphia, XoXo

2009-07-31T05:20:00.002-04:00

We all know
you involves shadow

where you
you round
you grab
crazy, you

we have lots of
benjamin franklins
oh wait, we still say
of the declaration
there's a copy
so to speak
to ride the carousel

the rest gran
a dirty of delish

Did I mention you look fabulous?

It's me
that includes a show

the sun comes up
every season. Anyway,

At the top
the world
your breath

Summer's lovely
I enclosed a picture
stuffing in a problem

Braille is Beautiful

2009-07-31T05:18:00.004-04:00

the elegance of an empty root
stationary, your curtains slumber
happens that the slump ended on July 29th
but the internet calls things differently

run. the ninjas have found religion
their sourdough paradigm clashes
with the plaid of a country we started
that we named after your confederated beauty marks

2009-07-11T20:59:00.000-04:00

From Custom and Ache

2009-06-30T09:49:00.003-04:00

Some fragments from a short series I put together. Other fragments are going to be used on fortune cookie paper, and others are going to stay buried on this hard drive until the cows come home to Philadelphia. Originally written on 06-23-09. Typed up, and revised on 06-30-09.

*

Slip up. Toward the street where dawn unravels her cloak.
Chance was your upper-lip’s unseen canker.
It was hiding behind the protusile flesh flaps
hanging like airplane storage—overhaul—
covering up great flights and silencing miscreant pilots.

The double-up is for the bubble butt.
The chancellor has some great rain,
some wide-eye stares and a slipping down
along the avenue in his green shoes.

Munching on questions: crisps, popped corn.
Digestables come to be used like robins basking,
or Dutch Homes. Dutch footwear. This is how we walk.
This is how we walk on the moon.
This is how to saunter into Pennsylvania.
This is the land of the grouper fish, the sock puppets.
Socket shadows and sockeye theatres. Origami postcards.

Did you:
underestimate the power of the parcel?
place faith into gaunt grips?
figure on the arithmetic of ebullience?

To quote Well and move on. Marriage’s subtle catastrophe.
One word spliced to two voices. One conversation.
Polydipsia; heavy breaths beneath; held back in concrete.
Like barbed-wire. Like highways. Like mountains. Like towers.

Lunar Headaches Above Your Damp Umbrella

2009-06-20T20:08:00.003-04:00

One

When I held you close
you were screaming “closer.”
The toast was burning, so
I let you go (a shove toward
the veranda’s finish).

Gloria yanked. Open. Wide. The Door.

You cried “let me see your hands.”

“They are so scalded and smeared—
how did this happen? And those nails!”

File!

Two

You see, I like my eggs over-easy.
A cup of soy sitting on the side, too,
for taste: mmm . . . yumm . . . errr . . .

Some day’s Gloria’s presence reeked.
Wrecked, I mean.

Under the setting sun—sounds.

The setting wild life
being back at our roots.

The theft of lawn ornaments,
mother proclaimed, beaming like peacock
or paprika or Cyclops just finished with the lambs,
is like forgetting to lift the seat.

Down, I said, Down into the depths
of your soul which we must obliterate anyway
because it’s only bathrooms.

And it’s only Red Sox programming
with you with you with you.

Three

Before we get started I think of Maine wild life:
flat bump flat-flat bump flat bump-bump

Four

Trees along the highway:
debts to pay, says the ranger.
We’ve all got debts.
I can’t stop getting drunk.
This highway’s got me mad.
This city is a corpse.
Wait a second, I roll:
Wait one god damned second!
All cities are corpses!
Don’t tell me about scapegoats!

Five

Ash coat on fallen cedars.
Don’t leave without buying me a drink.

I took out a bap-progue-ram,
told him to get his act together.
Somewhere else, preferably.
Bang went the drums, like
the color of a new outlet.

Six

(i)

You tasted good enough to lick.
We were walking back to the car
‘cause we both own only one.
The sky was a purple cat color.
I wore my pastel cap.
You had on the basketball wig.
At the corner an old woman
wanted to nibble a lobe.

(ii)

Her hands were like ice cream.
The noir world was melting.
We were walking to a protest.
The woman died suddenly.
TVs showed the Nicks scoring.
Gimme my margarita, she said.
First cash. Want tattoo.
Welts to be concerned about.

Seven

There is not enough ice on my salt wound.
I peek at your arm and think of Himalayan sunset:
in a past life maybe we were a bike courier.

There was an obsession for DIY lit and pizza slices.
There was a secret obsession for Thai pornography.
Building bombs inside LEGO bricks.
Fantasies about beating up other white folks.

You would think of me, your false future life,
and say: “we’ll never kill the cops, the cops, the cops."

But then you’d jump right into that pool.
Swim around a tad, a bit. Teach the butterfly.

He choked on his butterfinger while
performing the dead man’s float
remembering the credit card companies.

And so many dead languages, too. Yes,
he thought about those.

He passed on to me while keeping track of time.
It all took seconds, took in the seconds, I mean.

And dreaming of drowning one day
after dreaming of murdering black presidents:
thoughts going over and over and over and over—

The third time he attempted, he would kill himself.
That was decided, a sniper to the neck. But he did want:

adoptions, crew cuts, crew lead.

Big, big, biggest LCD with channels all over the place.
Blue jeans that fit. The perfect check cashing station.

So back to my arm. Transformation. Salt ice.
Brim locks; one time in my childhood I got dragged.

Outside there were moths in the dewy grass awaiting
the wind. I walked through to a tree
and set it on fire.

Today the gas would cost me $2.60.

Eight

Well, it’s that time of the year again.
An iron prod. Calcified tooth. Zero erections.
Traffic. Traffik. Phlasshhhh.
The purple nurple bum bus.
Day layers with curb pillows.
In hand. Heat Sink.
Putting gum in your hair.
Chewed gum. Heat sunk.

Sucked you up like a ceramic
bowl filled to brim with JELLO.

Trip Expenses

2009-06-16T10:17:00.006-04:00

Transcribed from the great road trip that happened in late May of this year, 2009. A little late, yes.

05-24-09

New York the State of the Empire

Warsaw sprung wind mills
in the safe red dusk.

Buffalo. To search for wings.
We never went to the East Side.

All the marshmallow farms:
memories.

Hay fields.

White guy like Dan Deacon lookalike.

Three Dead Deer

Critters overturned (bellies expunge)

We can use the highways wisely.
The sunken airports just never took off.

Smoking room at Comfort Inn.
Northern PA all rolling hills:
all greenwash.

Waiting for the taxi.

Anne Marie Russian Vodka Drink Er
Cops babe on upscale monitor:
smoking room but not for inside.

Do not smoke anywhere but in the smoking room.

Cops in Fort Worth.
Orange tooth paste.
Waiting waiting.

A dead wolf on the highway.
Crows swooping on the highway.

No narcotics deals on
Cops in Fort Worth.

What carrion on the HW!
18W--17--81N

GPS machine. No memory.
Just sky god.

Broken. Finally. Finale.

Plenty of hot water.

Biggest carrion:
picnic table. Judging swerve.

This American Life.
Through Painted Post.
30m-p-h in Village.

BBQ Sunflower Seeds.

Dirty PA bathroom.
Small coffee. Thick syrup moon.

Salmon clouds filled the sky.
Another evil mass:
we are the penumbra.

Every NY highway lets you go 85 mph
without a single copy; even the rest
areas are paradisiacal. Militia-men
hide in the shadowlands. This is the
age of Obama foreclosures. We must
escape. Taste a different centrum.

Explorations.

A journal called PRINTS.

05-25-09

Toronto.

Stationed between downtown below that blooming tower.
Blown foam with Amazon Obsession.
Twin showgirls along Bada Bing fence.
Walking through Buffalo's streets left us
with a sense of callous abandonment.
It was where Jeff's parents grew up.
We could never live in it.
Stay away from the East Side, they said.
Saw on Allen Ave (and Chippewa)
cool babes crouching low.
A gay neighborhood with drag queens.
Bigger than Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Nietzsche's Bar an utter disappointment.
Imagining the streets with 15 feet
pure white snow.
A man needed a quarter and may have spat on my pants after I rejected.
In Niagara Falls other disappoints.
No cab driver. No cobs.

----

In Kensington Market.
Ronnie's local 069.
Enzinger beer in tall glasses.
Or was it Kenzinger. Does it matter.

Rimmed with lemon. Tongue.
The counter culture shop
and ideas of the drum circle.
Empire. Hope. Obama shirts here.
Coffee from the nut house.

Vintage clothing and vintage Asians.
All along the Memorial Day cusp.

Tuesday a pattern.

Italian Job--star cast starless plot.
Hot Box weed cafe but no weed only blues.

Must find the gayborhood.
But this cafe. Empire Empire.

Chinatown. Not enough grid iron.
Not enough Negro.
Streets are trash boxes:
a punch to the day face.
Must find the theatre.

Before the GPS god derailed us:
Black shades on women hankering
like French maidens. Bicycling
on through this transition residence.
5.99 for 24 batteries.
Drug arts. Internet game cafes.
Public art for public artists.

This is all better than dropped
collar Italians with their babes.
Babes as appendages. Babes as clothing.
Lack thereof. Nouns. Noons.
Babes as language. Lack thereof.

Black glass turnover.
Token homeless man.
Token with chill less summer.
Aired and conditioned.

We ate chocolate and cookies
and Wendy’s and wondered about
that apple at the border
and the bogus Tim Horton’s addiction.

Soft Rock

2009-06-13T03:48:00.006-04:00

after Darling's Music, Northern Liberties


Vanessa Williams
           dreamt
                          The Right Stuff
          and told us all about it

You were in my dream last night
           trying not to laugh

Paul Carrack-slash-Don Henley
               don't want to hear anymore
               about when Celine Dion
               Falls in Love
                          with Clive Griffin's
                                  backing vocals

              this song appeared in
              Beethoven's 2nd
              but that's all I'll say
              about the matter

carbon=links=carbon=links=carbon
breaths slowly rumble slow legato'd
pitch blood from the black platter

copper wirers reconstruct your surgery
while waterboarding polyphones

Didn't we almost have it all,
              Whitney?
Didn't we almost have it all?

Sulimay's Barbershop, Fishtown

2009-06-12T17:30:00.005-04:00

"WOW, he barely cut

              anything off at all"

We're celebrities, get us
         out of here

notes for the floor

           fall like hair

   swept like hair

as an economist, I know
about being smart with
my money, which is why
we are being handcuffed
together

                    in our wounds
which are more like grooves

stands a blue fluid
meant for combs