"...as the gods decompose into their elements (cultic, etiologic, theurgic, physiological, euhemeristic, iconographic, cosmic), they continue to give off from below, together with the smell of decay, an aroma od Olympian ozone that communicates danger..."
-gordon teskey, "irony, allegory, and metaphysical decay"
sound of six seeds
snapped by strong white teeth:
red dress girl,
sitting on a burial mound.
up from mould, mulch,
that stuff that releases
that rich smell
at a touch.
it was a cross-
roads
nearby atlan-
ta. red dress girl
six rubies ringed
her throat.
up from mold, mulch.
that stuff lets go rich smell
at a touch.
i would have been
nuts
to take that hand,
take that hand
and crawl
through the dusk--
up from mold, up from mulch,
the stuff with that smell,
that smell loosed at a touch.
___________
peel that thick mottled-gray bark
off the tree.
break it in half
for me.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
sempre fidele 2
subjective taint
"not faithless":
low-whistling wind
within the words,
breath
hot
from the roof of your mouth:
the ivory teeth
the arced tongue.
the "t" like a knocked
door;
the "s" like snaketongue:
in and out,
in and out,
speaking what's required.
"not faithless":
low-whistling wind
within the words,
breath
hot
from the roof of your mouth:
the ivory teeth
the arced tongue.
the "t" like a knocked
door;
the "s" like snaketongue:
in and out,
in and out,
speaking what's required.
Monday, December 17, 2007
semi-memoriam
touch base
fingers
feel
skull.
smooth skin,
yellow fat beneath,
then red meat,
the white bone below.
irreducible
like all
hidden things:
the frailty of flesh,
the darkness called night.
fingers
feel
skull.
smooth skin,
yellow fat beneath,
then red meat,
the white bone below.
irreducible
like all
hidden things:
the frailty of flesh,
the darkness called night.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
sempre fidele
how you undo me
o cluster of stars
in an intimate sky.
i imagine falling:
the manner in which
i could have tripped--
splay of hands on the bright-lit
flooring.
cupped, the object
of that imagining.
that cluster of stars
with its dim cloud of meaning,
held. and holding.
o cluster of stars
in an intimate sky.
i imagine falling:
the manner in which
i could have tripped--
splay of hands on the bright-lit
flooring.
cupped, the object
of that imagining.
that cluster of stars
with its dim cloud of meaning,
held. and holding.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
mambo number 5
i'm arguing that it wasn't a choice for you. i'm contesting the notion that you had a choice.
but then again why you would have needed one is a little beyond me. so you didn't get one, and that's fair.
i'm contesting the memory of your eyes and how you made me feel.
set yourself against the memory of lips, c. set yourself against the memories of cats and lips and not knowing what it was you felt. 5 in a mirror. dry hump on a beach and writing someone's sonnets in the sand... love and geography.
is there a way to define a memory, especially ones as overplayed as these? some sort of teardrop crystallized into a diamond, mid-cheek, or something equally derivative? hard as the road in santa cruz, riding a bike and throwing roses at your house? judging? red fishnets?
i don't want to eradicate these traces; they are what make me me now. for now. sometimes.
but then again why you would have needed one is a little beyond me. so you didn't get one, and that's fair.
i'm contesting the memory of your eyes and how you made me feel.
set yourself against the memory of lips, c. set yourself against the memories of cats and lips and not knowing what it was you felt. 5 in a mirror. dry hump on a beach and writing someone's sonnets in the sand... love and geography.
is there a way to define a memory, especially ones as overplayed as these? some sort of teardrop crystallized into a diamond, mid-cheek, or something equally derivative? hard as the road in santa cruz, riding a bike and throwing roses at your house? judging? red fishnets?
i don't want to eradicate these traces; they are what make me me now. for now. sometimes.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
donc je suis
love poem
and the wind
and the necessity for a jacket.
your waist in my hand
a cigarette.
your berry lips.
i walk past a field
studded with stargazers on blankets: casseopeia.
your hands by my sides
the wind. i wait
to see what i've breathed into:
your hair
the night sky.
and the wind
and the necessity for a jacket.
your waist in my hand
a cigarette.
your berry lips.
i walk past a field
studded with stargazers on blankets: casseopeia.
your hands by my sides
the wind. i wait
to see what i've breathed into:
your hair
the night sky.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
woodcuttin'...we're woodcuttin'...oh isn't it wild
llama of the report:
a drama
(no it's not)
article 1:
there shall be no playthings,
no hinging anything on anything.
love will be achieved, if it is achieved,
by sense, touch sound and smell, and feeling,
sound and vision--
a knowledge in the anterior crock.
rulings and their aftershock.
in a time of cholera, love is
what we make it:
awaken.
article 2: winter shall be exiled.
article 3:
stars shooting in a sky like black hair:
your eyes against your face and those
sweet vermilion lips you painted on.
roses blooming on the left hand side of the fence.
soft sweet calumny: i did not exist,
until your visage
told me i did.
*notes to this poem: (to be read carefully)
"face" and "fence" rhyme about as much as "visage" and "i did." there is a connection to the parts: notice how in the first the author eschews the claims of "playthings," whereas in the third she relies only on vision to describe the object. the critical reader has to assume that the title, therefore, has something to do with this juxtaposition: does it constitute the "drama" referenced? in a post-9/11 context, the llama can be interpreted as representing the middle east, pretty obviously. and "winter" in the second part must reference the cyclical nature of seasons, ergo life, which is backed up by the star imagery in the third part.
-e.k.
a drama
(no it's not)
article 1:
there shall be no playthings,
no hinging anything on anything.
love will be achieved, if it is achieved,
by sense, touch sound and smell, and feeling,
sound and vision--
a knowledge in the anterior crock.
rulings and their aftershock.
in a time of cholera, love is
what we make it:
awaken.
article 2: winter shall be exiled.
article 3:
stars shooting in a sky like black hair:
your eyes against your face and those
sweet vermilion lips you painted on.
roses blooming on the left hand side of the fence.
soft sweet calumny: i did not exist,
until your visage
told me i did.
*notes to this poem: (to be read carefully)
"face" and "fence" rhyme about as much as "visage" and "i did." there is a connection to the parts: notice how in the first the author eschews the claims of "playthings," whereas in the third she relies only on vision to describe the object. the critical reader has to assume that the title, therefore, has something to do with this juxtaposition: does it constitute the "drama" referenced? in a post-9/11 context, the llama can be interpreted as representing the middle east, pretty obviously. and "winter" in the second part must reference the cyclical nature of seasons, ergo life, which is backed up by the star imagery in the third part.
-e.k.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
in general
this never happened/bathroom things
making myself cum on your toilet seat.
outside a car blew by singing an eagles guitar solo.
wind into white curtains that had probably hanged there since the nineteen fifties.
a blue light; a little bit cold; an unsteady lock on the doorknob.
however i rarely get caught at such things.
using the soap in the library bathroom.
that foreign scent sticks to the hands,
sometimes for
hours.
washing my hair in my shower.
i had to stretch back to get my head under the nozzle.
if you do something every day, you can learn to
ignore the
way it makes you feel.
later i was
making myself cum on your toilet seat.
outside a car blew by singing an eagles guitar solo.
wind into white curtains that had probably hanged there since the nineteen fifties.
a blue light; a little bit cold; an unsteady lock on the doorknob.
however i rarely get caught at such things.
using the soap in the library bathroom.
that foreign scent sticks to the hands,
sometimes for
hours.
washing my hair in my shower.
i had to stretch back to get my head under the nozzle.
if you do something every day, you can learn to
ignore the
way it makes you feel.
later i was
Monday, August 27, 2007
un-fancy
hyacinth
things that germinate and burst through rock,
growing, with red flowers. and how the rock
holds them down. and how they turn faces
to the stars. and how the wind tastes.
and how it is cold. and how the stars are nothing
but bright salts, chemistry in the sky.
and how the night is a sheath
and i walk through it a knife.
and how the knife is a heart.
and how the heart is a beat.
beat beat. how the heart is a beating.
--
gasping in the sun.
the rate at which the sore runs.
the rate at which the rain
tears the hair apart, strand from strand.
these things are sad, very
sad, and i don't know why:
a frame, pictureless. on a driveway.
in detroit. on sale for ten dollars.
things that germinate and burst through rock,
growing, with red flowers. and how the rock
holds them down. and how they turn faces
to the stars. and how the wind tastes.
and how it is cold. and how the stars are nothing
but bright salts, chemistry in the sky.
and how the night is a sheath
and i walk through it a knife.
and how the knife is a heart.
and how the heart is a beat.
beat beat. how the heart is a beating.
--
gasping in the sun.
the rate at which the sore runs.
the rate at which the rain
tears the hair apart, strand from strand.
these things are sad, very
sad, and i don't know why:
a frame, pictureless. on a driveway.
in detroit. on sale for ten dollars.
stabbing at honesty, unskillfully, with some sort of dinner knife for children
one day he'll come along
the sun has gone down but not yet the light.
i think in why's and ex's--that epic night
we talked on the porch where the bugs threw themselves
at the light,
that madly uncomfortable breakfast,
slathered in sour cream, stiff and white, men i didn't know
everywhere. i wasn't drunk but i said i had to go.
what i had to do, though, was walk in dark along the path
i'd trod red-hooded with that other wolf,
gathering strange red flowers and watering them.
still seeing you. your hair down and lips lined. your eyes
and voice. the shirt you gave me. things i never had and
knew i'd never have, things i told myself i didn't want and didn't.
but wanted to want them. wanted you to want them.
williams' escaping rose: i twirled the stem.
memory, a leaf:
crush it and smell the deep scent
of autumnal nights.
the sun has gone down but not yet the light.
i think in why's and ex's--that epic night
we talked on the porch where the bugs threw themselves
at the light,
that madly uncomfortable breakfast,
slathered in sour cream, stiff and white, men i didn't know
everywhere. i wasn't drunk but i said i had to go.
what i had to do, though, was walk in dark along the path
i'd trod red-hooded with that other wolf,
gathering strange red flowers and watering them.
still seeing you. your hair down and lips lined. your eyes
and voice. the shirt you gave me. things i never had and
knew i'd never have, things i told myself i didn't want and didn't.
but wanted to want them. wanted you to want them.
williams' escaping rose: i twirled the stem.
memory, a leaf:
crush it and smell the deep scent
of autumnal nights.
Friday, August 24, 2007
little femocentric
proem
watching it spiral red down the toilet and im like, im all,
eew, but eews a blanket statement, a tarapulin for the soul
of the matter.
its a horror movie in the pants. death, rejected life, that is,
heimlichs essence--blood, blood--uprooted, exposed,
outfloooowing, outpoooouring.
its what makes women women. its what makes
lesbians so hard to date: show me a woman without mystery
and ill show you a blind idiot, and itll be you.
im thinking of ridiculous things: footee pajamas, shrimp,
and at the core of me still lingering a font
of mystery. how great we are.
watching it spiral red down the toilet and im like, im all,
eew, but eews a blanket statement, a tarapulin for the soul
of the matter.
its a horror movie in the pants. death, rejected life, that is,
heimlichs essence--blood, blood--uprooted, exposed,
outfloooowing, outpoooouring.
its what makes women women. its what makes
lesbians so hard to date: show me a woman without mystery
and ill show you a blind idiot, and itll be you.
im thinking of ridiculous things: footee pajamas, shrimp,
and at the core of me still lingering a font
of mystery. how great we are.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
freaking yeats
i'm sorry about the emo. i'm hoping to find a new point from which to depart, something in between concepts, utter nonsense, and stain'd lyrics. thus far i don't seem to have managed it...but, hey, not managing things is what i don't not do best!
i mean, i'm not a visionary. i do nothing if not ride the wave. and the wave currently seems to be telling me that emotion, and something representative, is more artistically valid than hiding from crap behind a mountain of words. but is this any valider than other such "artistic" "understandings" i've come to?
in some wierd way i feel like i'm becoming a machine--empathy churns out understanding, understanding churns out poorly chosen words, and the outside crust is made up of some unappetizing conglomerate of ego and fantasy. i mean, my mental lanscape will improve. but how? toward what? slouching, possibly, in the direction of some birthplace, and i don't even know it?
i mean, i'm not a visionary. i do nothing if not ride the wave. and the wave currently seems to be telling me that emotion, and something representative, is more artistically valid than hiding from crap behind a mountain of words. but is this any valider than other such "artistic" "understandings" i've come to?
in some wierd way i feel like i'm becoming a machine--empathy churns out understanding, understanding churns out poorly chosen words, and the outside crust is made up of some unappetizing conglomerate of ego and fantasy. i mean, my mental lanscape will improve. but how? toward what? slouching, possibly, in the direction of some birthplace, and i don't even know it?
bizarre and emo.
symmetry.
like a woman
weaving her hair
into the water
of a stream--
it flows dark
over rocks.
the arc of
her neck, the
trajectory of
a thought.
break me, break me open,
split down the centerfold like
rock.
i'm still
so close to
what you
made me. break me,
break me.
like a woman
weaving her hair
into the water
of a stream--
it flows dark
over rocks.
the arc of
her neck, the
trajectory of
a thought.
break me, break me open,
split down the centerfold like
rock.
i'm still
so close to
what you
made me. break me,
break me.
Monday, August 13, 2007
encrustation: a song
i give out my joy, i give out my joy
i give out my joy to girl and boy.
i give out my joy to man and wife
i give out my joy to sheath and knife.
i give out my joy to north and south.
i give out my joy; it's given out.
i give out my joy like grapes off the vine
i give out my joy--it's not even mine.
i give out my joy like pen on ink
i give out my joy with the kitchen sink.
i give out my joy in the lengthy grass
i give out my joy somewhere up the ass.
i give out my joy somewhere black and red
i give out my joy in the wet wet bed.
i give out my joy on the corner street
i give out my joy in the sweet sweet meat.
giving out my joy so tell your friends
i give out my joy till the bitter end.
i give out my joy, i give out my joy
i give out my joy to girl and boy.
i give out my joy to man and wife
i give out my joy to sheath and knife.
i give out my joy to north and south.
i give out my joy; it's given out.
i give out my joy like grapes off the vine
i give out my joy--it's not even mine.
i give out my joy like pen on ink
i give out my joy with the kitchen sink.
i give out my joy in the lengthy grass
i give out my joy somewhere up the ass.
i give out my joy somewhere black and red
i give out my joy in the wet wet bed.
i give out my joy on the corner street
i give out my joy in the sweet sweet meat.
giving out my joy so tell your friends
i give out my joy till the bitter end.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
certainly very bad
a prayer
joy is not all that i have to give.
i have more than joy in me--more than happiness--
more than cloudless days, more than night
soft and liquid with moonlight.
fingers deep in earth. dirt to bear the dirt.
fire flickering on stone walls and a strange wide-berthed mouth
calling strange cries. small heavy eyes beteemed
with strange needs--i have more than life in me.
but i hope i gave you joy. even
a little: smiles like weak plum blossoms and a vapid laugh.
pieces, half-pieces of my parts--
embroidery, unmade easily, but yours...
my brain is hemmed with shadows. soul, heart,
all parts, hemmed in, woven in. sickness, wrong, shame,
fecund, sopped with overtones: a wail a dog would hear. but
this would have been a finer gift
than what i gave.
perhaps, though, less appropriate.
joy is not all that i have to give.
i have more than joy in me--more than happiness--
more than cloudless days, more than night
soft and liquid with moonlight.
fingers deep in earth. dirt to bear the dirt.
fire flickering on stone walls and a strange wide-berthed mouth
calling strange cries. small heavy eyes beteemed
with strange needs--i have more than life in me.
but i hope i gave you joy. even
a little: smiles like weak plum blossoms and a vapid laugh.
pieces, half-pieces of my parts--
embroidery, unmade easily, but yours...
my brain is hemmed with shadows. soul, heart,
all parts, hemmed in, woven in. sickness, wrong, shame,
fecund, sopped with overtones: a wail a dog would hear. but
this would have been a finer gift
than what i gave.
perhaps, though, less appropriate.
Friday, July 27, 2007
esmeralda
archduke 2
because i was good all day i took her out for a spin. revving for me, for me she took the pavements, because i'm good with her, good for her. before me who did she have? who did she have?
when i'm in her i know sometimes i take the curves too fast, i stop too fast, because i want to go. i want to feel her move. she's my secret, my witch.
sometimes when we turn my wrists cross above the wheel--sometimes, heh, i almost question who's driving.
because i was good all day i took her out for a spin. revving for me, for me she took the pavements, because i'm good with her, good for her. before me who did she have? who did she have?
when i'm in her i know sometimes i take the curves too fast, i stop too fast, because i want to go. i want to feel her move. she's my secret, my witch.
sometimes when we turn my wrists cross above the wheel--sometimes, heh, i almost question who's driving.
one more color now
communicable
harbor, baby. it's in the details,
babe:
waving knotgrass.
early gray morning.
the shiny grass.
like a plough
against a stone,
like a stone split
against a plough.
endlessly furroughing.
with earnestness
trying to explain
what the fuck it's
talking about.
harbor, baby. it's in the details,
babe:
waving knotgrass.
early gray morning.
the shiny grass.
like a plough
against a stone,
like a stone split
against a plough.
endlessly furroughing.
with earnestness
trying to explain
what the fuck it's
talking about.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
doing it and doing it
a history of collapse
navigate through
my several parts
o mind, o heart,
like a gondolier
under stone archways
on muddy waters:
bits of blue sky
and grey sky above.
navigate through
my several aspects
like physical anthropologists
in search of mayan gods.
navigate through the river of me;
unearth me. dig me out.
it must be here somewhere, under all this.
Monday, July 16, 2007
stand by me
this poem's dirt
5. this poem's dirt
because it was glassy and wanted wear
though as for that the passing there had worn them
really about the
same.
if you know what i mean.
glassy. like new york
at christmas
or was it fucking new year's?
when did vomit
become castronomic?
on the left hand of morning
lies evening sitting standing and lying again.
lying down. on the left hand
(it feels like someone else
it feels like someone else)
i can't, the walrus said.
i can't talk shit. i feel fine.
we all feel
fine.
yesterday was yestered.
sequester-ation and ration.
on the headlines drips black
ink because yesterday's veins
of news are to let.
yesterday's news is collapsing itself.
3. fibonacci
lay down your branch,
your rood, rod, and staff,
cuz they comfort me.
covet ye my people,
covet it all. it's up in there.
i want this to be over.
yesterday had a middle and end
but no beginning.
we sang about shit,
jenny lind, oprah, rosecrucians (sp?),
yesterday, wrongdoing,
like bullfrogs in the bullrushes.
don't touch me with that shit.
i don't want to be comforted by your fucking rod,
papiols.
4. gastronomy
highlights of the field trip included
grass, weeds, dirt, worms, core, iron, saffron--
which i was just MAD about--yesterday, and persephone
coughing up mortal meatsack.
narcissus, hyacinth, let's face it,
were they ever going to procreate anyway?
and who did put the bom in the bom she bom she bom?
what about the dip in the dip de dip de dip?
yeah, who dipped that?
need i metion that whole rockland thing,
or can i just leave it to small children, cherubim,
tannis root, and mercury rising?
on the left we found darkness and mist.
on the right we found communist-style glyphs:
someone's head and a day-old sun.
carved in stone.
emotion: can it get even darker
than diahrrea, that storm raging inside you?
you let it all on out now, you hear?
don't let that shit fester as so:
2. plasticene fuckers in mulberry courval (sp?)
twomp-headed angels in fat come on a ladder
and someone smears oranges on someone else on film.
where electric naked children sit on streetcorners
waiting for white heat and dredge rivers for unbroke bottles.
squeezing out juice, out juice out juice.
this isn't helping.
where ma and pa of paterson go left at the light
because mapquest said so: hedons, here we come.
where willie tyler and lester are often mentioned
on mst 3000. yeah, no.
1. scenic view
there's a vista inside me. it opens up like it's got curtains. grief's pure, man, uncut, 100%, and i was in love once. i banged my head on the pavement and i died. later, there was a man in a trenchcoat who threatened to burn me up like a fish if i said anything. earlier, there was a memory of primroses. like it's got grecian pillars: fibonacci. rock back and forth. encounter a marmot. don't say anything more:
5. this poem's dirt
because it was glassy and wanted wear
though as for that the passing there had worn them
really about the
same.
if you know what i mean.
glassy. like new york
at christmas
or was it fucking new year's?
when did vomit
become castronomic?
on the left hand of morning
lies evening sitting standing and lying again.
lying down. on the left hand
(it feels like someone else
it feels like someone else)
i can't, the walrus said.
i can't talk shit. i feel fine.
we all feel
fine.
yesterday was yestered.
sequester-ation and ration.
on the headlines drips black
ink because yesterday's veins
of news are to let.
yesterday's news is collapsing itself.
3. fibonacci
lay down your branch,
your rood, rod, and staff,
cuz they comfort me.
covet ye my people,
covet it all. it's up in there.
i want this to be over.
yesterday had a middle and end
but no beginning.
we sang about shit,
jenny lind, oprah, rosecrucians (sp?),
yesterday, wrongdoing,
like bullfrogs in the bullrushes.
don't touch me with that shit.
i don't want to be comforted by your fucking rod,
papiols.
4. gastronomy
highlights of the field trip included
grass, weeds, dirt, worms, core, iron, saffron--
which i was just MAD about--yesterday, and persephone
coughing up mortal meatsack.
narcissus, hyacinth, let's face it,
were they ever going to procreate anyway?
and who did put the bom in the bom she bom she bom?
what about the dip in the dip de dip de dip?
yeah, who dipped that?
need i metion that whole rockland thing,
or can i just leave it to small children, cherubim,
tannis root, and mercury rising?
on the left we found darkness and mist.
on the right we found communist-style glyphs:
someone's head and a day-old sun.
carved in stone.
emotion: can it get even darker
than diahrrea, that storm raging inside you?
you let it all on out now, you hear?
don't let that shit fester as so:
2. plasticene fuckers in mulberry courval (sp?)
twomp-headed angels in fat come on a ladder
and someone smears oranges on someone else on film.
where electric naked children sit on streetcorners
waiting for white heat and dredge rivers for unbroke bottles.
squeezing out juice, out juice out juice.
this isn't helping.
where ma and pa of paterson go left at the light
because mapquest said so: hedons, here we come.
where willie tyler and lester are often mentioned
on mst 3000. yeah, no.
1. scenic view
there's a vista inside me. it opens up like it's got curtains. grief's pure, man, uncut, 100%, and i was in love once. i banged my head on the pavement and i died. later, there was a man in a trenchcoat who threatened to burn me up like a fish if i said anything. earlier, there was a memory of primroses. like it's got grecian pillars: fibonacci. rock back and forth. encounter a marmot. don't say anything more:
synerjize
in rocklandisum
2. and cagney on the screen
romeo is bleeding. but not so's you'd notice.
hey, man. romeo is bleeding.
i wanted to be ute lemper, or beatrice arthur.
i wanted to be pam grier, and kim novak.
i wanted sticks and stones. i wanted huge rocks,
trees the size of city blocks.
tree bolls revealing mayan glyphs.
carved in stone but it was soft. ironic-esque.
jam handy to the rescue.
i'm jam handy.
3. in times of cholera
fog like pea soup in baker street:
hansom cabs, flickering gastric lamps,
holocaust.
freeze-dried mashed potatoes
in silvery packets, iodine packets, fork packets:
leftovers from spaaace. a seatbelt most of alll.
anyone could do this shit.
anyone could do that shit but would they want to:
dredge around in split-level infinites for some sort of
sludgemonkey. there's money to be made
in this business if you know which gastric
tract to line. i'm lying. i have no idea.
i got fucking peach juice on the bedspread
and they took away my fucking allowance:
prufrock, be afraid. be very afraid.
4. the yellow river
episodic? suuuure. whyyy nottt?
it's a snarky river of death
sludgemonkey. yesterday's liver is
tomorrow's too.
forget it. it's like
talking to a monkey.
gastronomy: study of planets
in a certain solar system.
at a certain time,
on a certain channel.
with certain aids to rambunctiousness
i've heard it on the radio:
broadcast this hamlet.
he knew a guy named yorick, and the audience
has to suffer for it.
itch harder pinocchio
itch off that wood. i couldn't go to the mall for a week
and they were having a sale on this shit i really wanted.
so watch it prufrock. you check yourself.
sunburn.
5. what happens to her happens to me (doo dee doo doo dee)
if you play this backwards
it says
WHAT THE
FUCK YOU
FUCKING FUCKERSON
FUCK FUCK FUCK
SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK.
we don't play
it backward
much.
keep yesterday on
the left-hand side.
opium. opiate.
unstable is my hot sauce.
unstable like my dredgemonkey.
FUCK SHIT FUCK
SHIT FUCK SHIT SHIT
keep it on the splitlevel, opius,
prometheus, we're sleeping on
this level. it's live-in.
cuz it's live-able.
give to me your poor,
your tired, your charted,
your batshit insane,
and that guy who keeps waving at his own shadow.
1. uh-hunh, uh-hunh
give me your nikes
give me your hand grenades
give me hand-grenade head over there
give me omission by threat of satan.
give me fucking rest mc resterson.
give me bitches
give me niches
give me niche markets
give me yesterday again
and again and again
give me pie and maybe give me marvin gaye
give me albatross
give me a wife mistaken for a hat
give me a list, a bowtie, a ten-inch snake
give me waterfowl.
give me hatdinger
give me hate
smack it around
give me leftovers
give me hangovers
give me wrongdoings
give me wingdings
give me bugles
give me stranglers pumpkins noodle
give me sweet exhaustion
GIVE ME GOLD
CUERVO OR OTHERWISE
GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING MUSIC PAPIOLS
FUCKING GIVE ME ANYTHING
GIVE ME NICENE CREED
GIVE ME ROSEMARY'S OFFSPRING AND SOME TANNIS ROOT
GIVE ME FUCKING FLESH
GIVE ME A LONG BOX, A BLACK COAT. ENLUMBER ME. PUT ME IN DIRT.
AAAUGH GRAAAUGH MRAAAUGH HHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWW
2. and cagney on the screen
romeo is bleeding. but not so's you'd notice.
hey, man. romeo is bleeding.
i wanted to be ute lemper, or beatrice arthur.
i wanted to be pam grier, and kim novak.
i wanted sticks and stones. i wanted huge rocks,
trees the size of city blocks.
tree bolls revealing mayan glyphs.
carved in stone but it was soft. ironic-esque.
jam handy to the rescue.
i'm jam handy.
3. in times of cholera
fog like pea soup in baker street:
hansom cabs, flickering gastric lamps,
holocaust.
freeze-dried mashed potatoes
in silvery packets, iodine packets, fork packets:
leftovers from spaaace. a seatbelt most of alll.
anyone could do this shit.
anyone could do that shit but would they want to:
dredge around in split-level infinites for some sort of
sludgemonkey. there's money to be made
in this business if you know which gastric
tract to line. i'm lying. i have no idea.
i got fucking peach juice on the bedspread
and they took away my fucking allowance:
prufrock, be afraid. be very afraid.
4. the yellow river
episodic? suuuure. whyyy nottt?
it's a snarky river of death
sludgemonkey. yesterday's liver is
tomorrow's too.
forget it. it's like
talking to a monkey.
gastronomy: study of planets
in a certain solar system.
at a certain time,
on a certain channel.
with certain aids to rambunctiousness
i've heard it on the radio:
broadcast this hamlet.
he knew a guy named yorick, and the audience
has to suffer for it.
itch harder pinocchio
itch off that wood. i couldn't go to the mall for a week
and they were having a sale on this shit i really wanted.
so watch it prufrock. you check yourself.
sunburn.
5. what happens to her happens to me (doo dee doo doo dee)
if you play this backwards
it says
WHAT THE
FUCK YOU
FUCKING FUCKERSON
FUCK FUCK FUCK
SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK.
we don't play
it backward
much.
keep yesterday on
the left-hand side.
opium. opiate.
unstable is my hot sauce.
unstable like my dredgemonkey.
FUCK SHIT FUCK
SHIT FUCK SHIT SHIT
keep it on the splitlevel, opius,
prometheus, we're sleeping on
this level. it's live-in.
cuz it's live-able.
give to me your poor,
your tired, your charted,
your batshit insane,
and that guy who keeps waving at his own shadow.
1. uh-hunh, uh-hunh
give me your nikes
give me your hand grenades
give me hand-grenade head over there
give me omission by threat of satan.
give me fucking rest mc resterson.
give me bitches
give me niches
give me niche markets
give me yesterday again
and again and again
give me pie and maybe give me marvin gaye
give me albatross
give me a wife mistaken for a hat
give me a list, a bowtie, a ten-inch snake
give me waterfowl.
give me hatdinger
give me hate
smack it around
give me leftovers
give me hangovers
give me wrongdoings
give me wingdings
give me bugles
give me stranglers pumpkins noodle
give me sweet exhaustion
GIVE ME GOLD
CUERVO OR OTHERWISE
GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING MUSIC PAPIOLS
FUCKING GIVE ME ANYTHING
GIVE ME NICENE CREED
GIVE ME ROSEMARY'S OFFSPRING AND SOME TANNIS ROOT
GIVE ME FUCKING FLESH
GIVE ME A LONG BOX, A BLACK COAT. ENLUMBER ME. PUT ME IN DIRT.
AAAUGH GRAAAUGH MRAAAUGH HHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWW
Sunday, July 15, 2007
prometheus is my personal jesus
kentucky-fried poem
5. they hunted the snark for days. its image took on in their minds a red glow, fangs dripping and mass of dark fur and a bright bacon-esque eye. each one brought something different with which to do the dark snark in: a calorie-laden meat pie, a ruby hat, a kid on a leash decalled on the side of a bowl, a smashed up storage unit, a recalcitrant waistline, a bowling pin hollowed by gnomes.
basTET, icarus, lillian shapiro,
thoth, horace, robert de niro,
leonardo dicaprio and the girl who came back from napoli.
carmen elektra, carmen jones,
carmine, carbine, double turbo super-engine,
stella and the gay who gave her groove back,
grover cleveland.
i have a zit on my back.
4. the bowling god
MOLOCH MOLOCH MOLOCHI
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND THE IRON CELL CIELING
RUBY TUESDAY, WHO COULD HANG A NAME ON YOU ASIDE FROM "RUBY TUESDAY"?
DOES THAT MEAN SOMETHING? IS IT DRUG-RELATED?
MOLOCH, YOU'RE AROUND.
I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND, WOMAN IN THE DUNES.
3. with sand in your hair
windy like the willows--the feast of st. kermit
the blood on the asphalt and prometheus hanging off the cliffs.
fire fire, my heart, blood sweat and fat.
ahi tuna trembling at the touch
waiting for swallowing, that final consumation.
strafed by eagles.
the coroner seemed friendly, i liked him quite a lot.
if i hadn't of been a woman i'd never have been caught.
they gave me back my house and car and nothing more was said...
2. if you ever need a ride there be sure to let me know
tears contain pain-killers.
encepelopathy: a certain globality of consciousness.
the mind is a lonely hunter-and-pecker,
peckinpah on drugs on a soundstage with his sunglasses on at night.
scent of camelia, mung beans, drugs, drugs, drugs:
a menacing refrigerator.
ice her.
pack her in ice.
put her in the ice capades.
deep-fat-fried movie.
clackity clack: don't come back, jan or dean.
fat. fat fat fat.
they said her heart was weak in the first place because she'd been hospitalized for anorexia in her youth. they didn't say that precisely. i assumed it. nobody said it. but we were all very white.
1. minatory redux
frito lay. feed me with your brussel sprouts, cauliflower, sunflower seed...
liver.
5. they hunted the snark for days. its image took on in their minds a red glow, fangs dripping and mass of dark fur and a bright bacon-esque eye. each one brought something different with which to do the dark snark in: a calorie-laden meat pie, a ruby hat, a kid on a leash decalled on the side of a bowl, a smashed up storage unit, a recalcitrant waistline, a bowling pin hollowed by gnomes.
basTET, icarus, lillian shapiro,
thoth, horace, robert de niro,
leonardo dicaprio and the girl who came back from napoli.
carmen elektra, carmen jones,
carmine, carbine, double turbo super-engine,
stella and the gay who gave her groove back,
grover cleveland.
i have a zit on my back.
4. the bowling god
MOLOCH MOLOCH MOLOCHI
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND THE IRON CELL CIELING
RUBY TUESDAY, WHO COULD HANG A NAME ON YOU ASIDE FROM "RUBY TUESDAY"?
DOES THAT MEAN SOMETHING? IS IT DRUG-RELATED?
MOLOCH, YOU'RE AROUND.
I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND, WOMAN IN THE DUNES.
3. with sand in your hair
windy like the willows--the feast of st. kermit
the blood on the asphalt and prometheus hanging off the cliffs.
fire fire, my heart, blood sweat and fat.
ahi tuna trembling at the touch
waiting for swallowing, that final consumation.
strafed by eagles.
the coroner seemed friendly, i liked him quite a lot.
if i hadn't of been a woman i'd never have been caught.
they gave me back my house and car and nothing more was said...
2. if you ever need a ride there be sure to let me know
tears contain pain-killers.
encepelopathy: a certain globality of consciousness.
the mind is a lonely hunter-and-pecker,
peckinpah on drugs on a soundstage with his sunglasses on at night.
scent of camelia, mung beans, drugs, drugs, drugs:
a menacing refrigerator.
ice her.
pack her in ice.
put her in the ice capades.
deep-fat-fried movie.
clackity clack: don't come back, jan or dean.
fat. fat fat fat.
they said her heart was weak in the first place because she'd been hospitalized for anorexia in her youth. they didn't say that precisely. i assumed it. nobody said it. but we were all very white.
1. minatory redux
frito lay. feed me with your brussel sprouts, cauliflower, sunflower seed...
liver.
blanche ingram has dark hair damnit
because sometimes i understand things about the way that i "write" in a sort of really really toned-down saul-on-the-road-to-damascus kind of way, i'm going to make a note as to a thing i just realized here and now:
repetition in my "stuff" functions, i think, in the same way that it functions in my mind, which is that it can be a blessing or a curse. that sounds stupid. let me try again: on the personal emotional level, repetition, i think, is the closest that a person can come to emulating meat in art, the actual processes of feeling-in-meatsack as opposed to what we think feeling means in words (i've made this point before, but i'm repeating it [heh!] because i don't understand it). like i think that the way forster described emotion, sometimes, was just as alienating as the way that, say, nora roberts describes emotion (and i'm not knocking nora roberts--i'm just saying that she is, more than other authors, within a genre, one in which she shines often, that uses certain types of description)--with forster it's alienating because it's too cerebral, too controlled, too intentionally new, and with roberts it's alienating because it's too cliched so that one's own personal experience comes as an actual surprise to one when one has something like what the books describe, right? i don't think that repetition comes in and fills the gap between over-cerebrality and over-reliance on forms. i think it approaches the problem of personal physical emotion from a different standpoint. and i'm too stupid to be able to pinpoint what that standpoint is. but the point isn't that--the point of this particular entry is just to say that this lanthorn is the moon, i the man in the moon, this thornbush my thornbush and this dog my dog. no it isn't. now i'm deeply confused and will have to start over.
comprehension of the power of repetition is something that i don't have much background or experience in trying for (hey, once again, i don't know what i'm talking about! who saw that coming?). from what i understand of o.c.d. (which isn't much), repetition's intensely comforting and just as intensely driving--i don't have o.c.d., but i get it, or what i think is it, to a certain extent. because my mind repeats words, phrases, melodies, ideas. like gertrude stein, i understand them as different each time the same word or whatever is spoken in my mind--they gain form, feeling, depth, in the same way, i feel, that my understanding of what is the body gains form, feeling, and depth: they become incomprehensibly deep objects. and i personally think that's a good thing--or not necessarily good, but true, and realer than either forster's or roberts' approach...though not necessarily better. i mean, the point of emotion-depiction-through-repetition is, in part, to divest what's felt of its cerebrality and its clichedness, but that's not necessarily desireable. it's just necessary, for me. maybe.
hmm. what i maybe mean is that i don't like these poems. they're stupid. they've gone beyond the point of the lorca poems, which were over-obvious, over-personal, and have kind of gotten into laughing idiot god territory. they aren't saying anything. there's no flow, no arc; at the point of the last one i'm not even playing with concepts. they're heartless; they're not t.s. eliot fragmented, but fragmented in an even dumber way. none of this may be visible to the naked eye. i should probably revise them. but they don't mean enough for me to do so on any but the most basely instinctual plan... (what else is new?) the point is that i don't want to be writing what i've been writing. it's trite, stupid drivel. but the repetition is driving. because i can only allow myself to feel a very certain type of thing, because everything else offends my sensibilities, and yet i have to feel something. god, that sounds ridiculous.
repetition in my "stuff" functions, i think, in the same way that it functions in my mind, which is that it can be a blessing or a curse. that sounds stupid. let me try again: on the personal emotional level, repetition, i think, is the closest that a person can come to emulating meat in art, the actual processes of feeling-in-meatsack as opposed to what we think feeling means in words (i've made this point before, but i'm repeating it [heh!] because i don't understand it). like i think that the way forster described emotion, sometimes, was just as alienating as the way that, say, nora roberts describes emotion (and i'm not knocking nora roberts--i'm just saying that she is, more than other authors, within a genre, one in which she shines often, that uses certain types of description)--with forster it's alienating because it's too cerebral, too controlled, too intentionally new, and with roberts it's alienating because it's too cliched so that one's own personal experience comes as an actual surprise to one when one has something like what the books describe, right? i don't think that repetition comes in and fills the gap between over-cerebrality and over-reliance on forms. i think it approaches the problem of personal physical emotion from a different standpoint. and i'm too stupid to be able to pinpoint what that standpoint is. but the point isn't that--the point of this particular entry is just to say that this lanthorn is the moon, i the man in the moon, this thornbush my thornbush and this dog my dog. no it isn't. now i'm deeply confused and will have to start over.
comprehension of the power of repetition is something that i don't have much background or experience in trying for (hey, once again, i don't know what i'm talking about! who saw that coming?). from what i understand of o.c.d. (which isn't much), repetition's intensely comforting and just as intensely driving--i don't have o.c.d., but i get it, or what i think is it, to a certain extent. because my mind repeats words, phrases, melodies, ideas. like gertrude stein, i understand them as different each time the same word or whatever is spoken in my mind--they gain form, feeling, depth, in the same way, i feel, that my understanding of what is the body gains form, feeling, and depth: they become incomprehensibly deep objects. and i personally think that's a good thing--or not necessarily good, but true, and realer than either forster's or roberts' approach...though not necessarily better. i mean, the point of emotion-depiction-through-repetition is, in part, to divest what's felt of its cerebrality and its clichedness, but that's not necessarily desireable. it's just necessary, for me. maybe.
hmm. what i maybe mean is that i don't like these poems. they're stupid. they've gone beyond the point of the lorca poems, which were over-obvious, over-personal, and have kind of gotten into laughing idiot god territory. they aren't saying anything. there's no flow, no arc; at the point of the last one i'm not even playing with concepts. they're heartless; they're not t.s. eliot fragmented, but fragmented in an even dumber way. none of this may be visible to the naked eye. i should probably revise them. but they don't mean enough for me to do so on any but the most basely instinctual plan... (what else is new?) the point is that i don't want to be writing what i've been writing. it's trite, stupid drivel. but the repetition is driving. because i can only allow myself to feel a very certain type of thing, because everything else offends my sensibilities, and yet i have to feel something. god, that sounds ridiculous.
Friday, July 13, 2007
possibly the worst poem ever written
e questo
5. constellating
red scharlach, conan o'brien,
i'm with you in rockland.
mr. ed, mr. parker,
watermelon man, i'm with you. i'm with you.
i tried on black, black, black,
black this and black that:
a black coat and black shoes and a black hat.
i lost some cities once.
my fingers smell like cranberries.
it's a red smell, that cranberry smell.
it's so like candy (so like candy).
cogwheels, i'm with you.
tchaikovsky and nephew, brian littrell,
you, guy in the subway with your crazed violin,
e.t.a. hoffman, i'm with you in rockland.
4. x =
i tried on black all day--all day and night.
i have been to the chain store--and the other chain.
i have outwalked the furthest city light.
black dress black gloves black tights.
space.
it's the place.
i chased down emmet kelley, lillian shapiro
and william h. macey.
i gave my entire family problem gas.
3.
menotti, i'm with you in rockland.
i'm with you, prokofiev, and sartre, reluctantly.
freaking pour names down on me like sand, fill me with sandlike names.
libatum me, domine, something something...
in die illa tremendousness, something something.
over-arcing, the sweet scent of narcissus-white jasmine
riding the soft image of clouds at a summer sunset so that
pink becomes a smell,
transmutated into a time and place,
fixed down like prometheus on the rock.
blood, fat and ashes.
i'm with you in rockland sirius the dogstar
and cerberus, sisyphus and persephone and the
shades in the asphodel named as such. fertility and its overtones of death:
narcissus. white. with smooth petals. i've got you in rockland.
2. pantywaist
the smells of summer:
kettle corn, vodka, heat.
rich in color like camelias or
someone else's tanned shoulders.
reach down into it with mouth and
taste that fat. plunge tongue into it.
open it with beak and talons. repeat, god, repeat.
i have a zit on my upper lip.
i'm with you in rockland, anyone i know or have ever heard of.
5.
she's fucking dead papiols. lay off the tambour.
5. constellating
red scharlach, conan o'brien,
i'm with you in rockland.
mr. ed, mr. parker,
watermelon man, i'm with you. i'm with you.
i tried on black, black, black,
black this and black that:
a black coat and black shoes and a black hat.
i lost some cities once.
my fingers smell like cranberries.
it's a red smell, that cranberry smell.
it's so like candy (so like candy).
cogwheels, i'm with you.
tchaikovsky and nephew, brian littrell,
you, guy in the subway with your crazed violin,
e.t.a. hoffman, i'm with you in rockland.
4. x =
i tried on black all day--all day and night.
i have been to the chain store--and the other chain.
i have outwalked the furthest city light.
black dress black gloves black tights.
space.
it's the place.
i chased down emmet kelley, lillian shapiro
and william h. macey.
i gave my entire family problem gas.
3.
menotti, i'm with you in rockland.
i'm with you, prokofiev, and sartre, reluctantly.
freaking pour names down on me like sand, fill me with sandlike names.
libatum me, domine, something something...
in die illa tremendousness, something something.
over-arcing, the sweet scent of narcissus-white jasmine
riding the soft image of clouds at a summer sunset so that
pink becomes a smell,
transmutated into a time and place,
fixed down like prometheus on the rock.
blood, fat and ashes.
i'm with you in rockland sirius the dogstar
and cerberus, sisyphus and persephone and the
shades in the asphodel named as such. fertility and its overtones of death:
narcissus. white. with smooth petals. i've got you in rockland.
2. pantywaist
the smells of summer:
kettle corn, vodka, heat.
rich in color like camelias or
someone else's tanned shoulders.
reach down into it with mouth and
taste that fat. plunge tongue into it.
open it with beak and talons. repeat, god, repeat.
i have a zit on my upper lip.
i'm with you in rockland, anyone i know or have ever heard of.
5.
she's fucking dead papiols. lay off the tambour.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
brahms
1.
the art of losing isn't hard to master.
did i do it wrong?
left left and right and then left again at the light.
commentating upon the process with a cork on the screw.
i'm the cool coper.
like a story: whither shall i follow follow thee?
narrative arcin' like nuit over the nile.
star-spangled and whatnot.
1.
to the waist: minatory.
rebellion open on pavement: the dark hand of the, left side of the, the dark-underbellied complement, the component of the./ /// ////
let x'd equal x'd. firestarting: drew barrymore with angelhair.
i can't get down on it.
--libera me, ma, pa. you hope that's a cry you're hearing in the night of your soul.
lycanthropy is the hairy man's excuse to stop shaving.
the moon.
2.
but it might have been indigestion. nuit. full-frontal. that barque of stars spangled across her funzones. god, i don't want to have these doubts.
havey-caveat. if you confess it it's like it never happened.
there is no it there to get down on, is that it? der rosenkavalier?
how godlike is the form she bears.
never interrupt me when i'm lunching.
head against pavement.
i made it out of clay. and when it's dry and ready,
shit is going down.
3.
break.
tender is the buttons. playa. hold me down.
steak sandwich. head against pavement.
what the hell have i done wrong to get this turkish treatment?
from the inside out lady. otaku and out.
will he ever come again? he will never come again.
to the greenwood, to the greenwood, to the greenwood, greenwood tree.
nuit: fucking materials.
pinprickin' like i.v. the absence of the heart to grow fonder of.
it's like it never even existed.
4.
i'm with you in
michigan
carl whatsis.
orni...
something something.
line here.
scoop out the seeds and that white stuff. scoop out all the clay.
...tologia.
5.
story arc.
because the ending is a filter. proust said so.
de kooning painted pink.--tologia.
maybe he painted the molly ringwald advance copy:
po tee wheet?
scritto in ciel e il mio dolor. -nuit
denn alles fleisch ist wie gras
head against pavement.
set your face. use your left hand. it feels like someone else...it feels like someone else.
5.
music, ho.
it's like it's slipping away. it can't do that.
the art of losing isn't hard to master.
did i do it wrong?
left left and right and then left again at the light.
commentating upon the process with a cork on the screw.
i'm the cool coper.
like a story: whither shall i follow follow thee?
narrative arcin' like nuit over the nile.
star-spangled and whatnot.
1.
to the waist: minatory.
rebellion open on pavement: the dark hand of the, left side of the, the dark-underbellied complement, the component of the./ /// ////
let x'd equal x'd. firestarting: drew barrymore with angelhair.
i can't get down on it.
--libera me, ma, pa. you hope that's a cry you're hearing in the night of your soul.
lycanthropy is the hairy man's excuse to stop shaving.
the moon.
2.
but it might have been indigestion. nuit. full-frontal. that barque of stars spangled across her funzones. god, i don't want to have these doubts.
havey-caveat. if you confess it it's like it never happened.
there is no it there to get down on, is that it? der rosenkavalier?
how godlike is the form she bears.
never interrupt me when i'm lunching.
head against pavement.
i made it out of clay. and when it's dry and ready,
shit is going down.
3.
break.
tender is the buttons. playa. hold me down.
steak sandwich. head against pavement.
what the hell have i done wrong to get this turkish treatment?
from the inside out lady. otaku and out.
will he ever come again? he will never come again.
to the greenwood, to the greenwood, to the greenwood, greenwood tree.
nuit: fucking materials.
pinprickin' like i.v. the absence of the heart to grow fonder of.
it's like it never even existed.
4.
i'm with you in
michigan
carl whatsis.
orni...
something something.
line here.
scoop out the seeds and that white stuff. scoop out all the clay.
...tologia.
5.
story arc.
because the ending is a filter. proust said so.
de kooning painted pink.--tologia.
maybe he painted the molly ringwald advance copy:
po tee wheet?
scritto in ciel e il mio dolor. -nuit
denn alles fleisch ist wie gras
head against pavement.
set your face. use your left hand. it feels like someone else...it feels like someone else.
5.
music, ho.
it's like it's slipping away. it can't do that.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
redhead (this is by no means a literary production--i am barely writing this)
my eyes hurt. my teeth are throbbing gently in the gums. i feel very heavy. and i'm starving. i can't talk to anyone--i don't deserve to talk to anyone.
you know what dylan thomas said. they used it in 4 weddings and a funeral. i don't feel like that. it's possible i just don't have the capacity. it's possible i'm doing it again--pushing myself, testing out how far i can go before i break. but i've never broken yet. which means i've never gone far enough.
stop all the clocks. i don't feel like that. i mean, i want to know. i want to break.
i broke once. on the street corner next to city hall. it was kind of like something out of lermontov. this is why a hero of our time is one of my favorite books, even though i will probably never read it again.
i broke a little in boswell's.
i broke in controlled swells in the bathroom at the california theatre. i guess that doesn't count.
i'm so sorry. i hope you know how sorry i am. i hope you know how extremely sorry i am.
you know what dylan thomas said. they used it in 4 weddings and a funeral. i don't feel like that. it's possible i just don't have the capacity. it's possible i'm doing it again--pushing myself, testing out how far i can go before i break. but i've never broken yet. which means i've never gone far enough.
stop all the clocks. i don't feel like that. i mean, i want to know. i want to break.
i broke once. on the street corner next to city hall. it was kind of like something out of lermontov. this is why a hero of our time is one of my favorite books, even though i will probably never read it again.
i broke a little in boswell's.
i broke in controlled swells in the bathroom at the california theatre. i guess that doesn't count.
i'm so sorry. i hope you know how sorry i am. i hope you know how extremely sorry i am.
Friday, June 29, 2007
interests
1.
hell or high water
on the twelfth day o' december
i'm with you in rockland,
carl wethers and
lillian shapiro shapiro shapiro
and william h. macy
and that guy over there the one standing up
on a promontory strafed by the wine-dark surf.
it was screaming all day long
into the rain
there was no matter, clarice--
you already knew she was going to die.
(twelfth day o' december.)
shut up and take it like
it was meant to be taken.
stop whining like a little rat dog
with its little rat tail in a little pink purse and the tail thumps the sides.
(twelfth day o' december.)
glass eyes and a clockwork tail
that thumps on the floor.
(twelfth day o' december.)
thump thump.
thump thump.
2.
it likes to be stoic.
it makes itself a daisy chain out of fucking daisies
and little hopes and dreams and a dress with an apron.
and it's like ooh i'm so stoic check out my apron.
god damnit i want it to die
i want to hit it over the head with a frying pan
and make up for 24 years of lost time.
3.
GRAUGH AUGH MRAUGH AURRR CRAAH AURDGH MORGGRAH
I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND MIKE McCLURE.
I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND SADIE HAWKINS.
I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND DAYS OF OUR LIVES
LUCY SNOWE
JIGOKU HEN
THE REAPERS WITH THEIR SILENT SWINGING
OUR HUNTING FATHERS
WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON
THE DAY THAT LADY DIED
SKETCHES OF SPAIN
WINTER WHEN NO FLOWER
MISHIMA'S ST. SEBASTIAN
RED SCHARLACH
AND THAT GUY IN SPIDER-MAN WHO WAS MADE OUT OF SAND WITH A FIST LIKE A BOMB.
YEAH, I'M WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND, BOMB-FISTED SAND GUY.
4.
neophyte angels with tongue-twisting names
on the sun-cracked streets of laredo looking for a bit of play
space space
dendribium orchids
and dendrobiums and phylliums and ondridiums
concupiscent
on a scented pillow
like something out of anne rice.
fuckin' music, papiols, come.
play on, bitches. play on.
(twelfth day o' december.)
to have a billion-track mind.
jimmy cracked corn and
unleashed the dogs of war and
his eyes were green as leeks.
and yellow cowslip cheeks, lady,
i barely knew ye.
5.
she was so beautiful and so talented.
where the hell is that fucking music?
Monday, June 18, 2007
blah blah-ologist
it interests me nearly that van gogh could know the potato eaters for a masterpiece. (because everything i hear, see, read, taste, smell or touch--everything i experience, in fact, except for pain--gets processed through me at an alarming rate--i'm not bragging; it is alarming; i continuously have to go back for obscure pieces of my comprehensions that i didn't realize i'd absorbed in order to get to where i've got, consequentially my ratiocination is not so much full of holes as just soaked, you know? jumbled? doing something quickly doesn't entail doing it well. anyway, because of this, finding out about van gogh means something to me, and i recognize that it's something not necessarily intrinsic to van gogh. like janie with her meshes, i'm checking it out.)
i realize that a lot--most--of the things that are on this blog are crap. they aren't always unnecessary crap, i guess, but they lack dimension. i write them because i think someone would like to see them, or because they relieve a piece of consciousness that sits heavier than a denny's meal on my insides (i do like denny's; i just don't like how it makes me feel). poetry's hard because it's like singing: i have to superintend the feeling. the process is by no means obvious. and every once in a while i get it, but most of the time i fuck it up.
my point is thus: i'm no van gogh, but i know--i'm fairly sure--that the "dream leaven and dream" poems are, not good, but the best i've done thus far. it's quite possible they're not publishable. they don't make any sense; they're overly self-involved; the words in them are like stones in a field under the jackhammer (but, you know, less good than that would imply). hopefully they pass the point of comprehension without being incomprehendable. what they mean is a flavor, a texture, something past the point of "meaning," right? but they're furry, like a lollipop in a couch. they're improper. they're not good. they're too personal--they're like laura riding's in that sense.
i have no idea, in short, how to quantify the fact that i believe in them more than i do in other stuff i've done. even ed wood, even that "facets IV," which i like alot, is just goofing around. i believe in "facets V," but you can't have that without the first 4, and 1 and 2 are playthings, and 3 is overly, stuffily portentous.
i did some poems before i came on here, after i'd...gotten mused, i guess (did you know that v has a wonderful plan for your life?), and some of those were good. but i abandoned them because i thought that they were too traditional. can you stand it? of course nothing exists in a vacuum. millions of people more talented than i have things to say. if i can't run with the curve, i'd probably best get out the kitchen (way to mix a metaphor).
i don't know. i just don't know. (i'll have to take it up with my sales manager). h.d. meant every word of "helen of egypt." but niedecker might not have meant every word of her thomas jefferson poems, and those are just as beautiful.
the point is, it's okay if my poems are unacceptable. i'm not saying that's what makes them great, but i'm taking leave to believe in them--only a select few, however--despite probably-deserved rejection. does that make any sense? maybe i only believe in the state of mind i was in while writing them? self-doubt, with bells on, ladies and gentlemen.
i realize that a lot--most--of the things that are on this blog are crap. they aren't always unnecessary crap, i guess, but they lack dimension. i write them because i think someone would like to see them, or because they relieve a piece of consciousness that sits heavier than a denny's meal on my insides (i do like denny's; i just don't like how it makes me feel). poetry's hard because it's like singing: i have to superintend the feeling. the process is by no means obvious. and every once in a while i get it, but most of the time i fuck it up.
my point is thus: i'm no van gogh, but i know--i'm fairly sure--that the "dream leaven and dream" poems are, not good, but the best i've done thus far. it's quite possible they're not publishable. they don't make any sense; they're overly self-involved; the words in them are like stones in a field under the jackhammer (but, you know, less good than that would imply). hopefully they pass the point of comprehension without being incomprehendable. what they mean is a flavor, a texture, something past the point of "meaning," right? but they're furry, like a lollipop in a couch. they're improper. they're not good. they're too personal--they're like laura riding's in that sense.
i have no idea, in short, how to quantify the fact that i believe in them more than i do in other stuff i've done. even ed wood, even that "facets IV," which i like alot, is just goofing around. i believe in "facets V," but you can't have that without the first 4, and 1 and 2 are playthings, and 3 is overly, stuffily portentous.
i did some poems before i came on here, after i'd...gotten mused, i guess (did you know that v has a wonderful plan for your life?), and some of those were good. but i abandoned them because i thought that they were too traditional. can you stand it? of course nothing exists in a vacuum. millions of people more talented than i have things to say. if i can't run with the curve, i'd probably best get out the kitchen (way to mix a metaphor).
i don't know. i just don't know. (i'll have to take it up with my sales manager). h.d. meant every word of "helen of egypt." but niedecker might not have meant every word of her thomas jefferson poems, and those are just as beautiful.
the point is, it's okay if my poems are unacceptable. i'm not saying that's what makes them great, but i'm taking leave to believe in them--only a select few, however--despite probably-deserved rejection. does that make any sense? maybe i only believe in the state of mind i was in while writing them? self-doubt, with bells on, ladies and gentlemen.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
heimat
persephone redux
1. english breakfast
i said i hate to beat a dead horse but i'm freaking lying. i love it. i can't get enough. i see a dead horse and i just go to town.
2. whiplash
i like ice cream but it's more a second date sort of dessert. first date dessert is like pussy. no, it's like vodka. yeah. it's the drink you have after you get home from the date and go oh my fucking god what did i just do?--that's the true first date dessert. you savor that drink. pussy's, like, a third date dessert.
3. i love you, vicky/vicky, i you love/you love vicky, i
when picknicking in the park an effluvia, an excess of fizzy drinks is necessary at the outset. to defray the expense i reccomend a pencil sharpener, a wallet, a lava cake, some dark receptacle. a train tunnel, maybe. sometimes i'm at work snapping on my latex gloves and all i really want to be is one of the tongue depressors in the jar on the counter, all wooden and ready for tonguing.
4. player
hold me down.
5. in the sky with diamonds
lately i'm not half the man i used to be. fortunately this isn't a problem because people want me to be this other guy, this new man, who's, like, basically equivalent to approximately one half of the former me, so it all works out. i think. i'm not great at math.
1. english breakfast
i said i hate to beat a dead horse but i'm freaking lying. i love it. i can't get enough. i see a dead horse and i just go to town.
2. whiplash
i like ice cream but it's more a second date sort of dessert. first date dessert is like pussy. no, it's like vodka. yeah. it's the drink you have after you get home from the date and go oh my fucking god what did i just do?--that's the true first date dessert. you savor that drink. pussy's, like, a third date dessert.
3. i love you, vicky/vicky, i you love/you love vicky, i
when picknicking in the park an effluvia, an excess of fizzy drinks is necessary at the outset. to defray the expense i reccomend a pencil sharpener, a wallet, a lava cake, some dark receptacle. a train tunnel, maybe. sometimes i'm at work snapping on my latex gloves and all i really want to be is one of the tongue depressors in the jar on the counter, all wooden and ready for tonguing.
4. player
hold me down.
5. in the sky with diamonds
lately i'm not half the man i used to be. fortunately this isn't a problem because people want me to be this other guy, this new man, who's, like, basically equivalent to approximately one half of the former me, so it all works out. i think. i'm not great at math.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
words without thoughts
poor v. that's sort of the gist of what i have to say on that subject--that to a certain extent, despite personal ineptitude and undeservingness (nice word, there, c), i've taken part in orphic riddling, that to orpheus, eurydice was no more than a means to his end, to a certain extent. if i were better with words and concepts, if my understanding were stronger and smarter than it is or ever will be, i could maybe hope to express what is almost assuredly my guilt in the matter of v...that it's not fair, not right, to subject a living, vital being with its own problems, its own thoughts and feelings, its own meat, a being i only fleetingly touched and that not for long, a being i was never honest with, one that barely knows me, and one that ought not to have been drawn so deep into myself, one to whom i am completely insignificant, a brief codicil at the end of a rather uninspiring chapter (possibly--i'm not sure what a codicil is), to the incomparably inane burden of being the augustinian signifier around--against--which my "poetry"...uh, revolves? mechanizes, maybe?
v, i manipulate a you that i have no right to claim even exists. and it's creepy. and i feel bad about it. but i keep doing it. so maybe i shouldn't even acknowledge my guilt in the first place, right? if my life were hamlet, i'd be claudius. guilty-ass claudius. i'm not sure what to do about it. so, heh, maybe i'm hamlet. and it's possible i see myself as protesting too much. so i might be gertrude. or i might just be crazy, and ophelia, or a dumbass, hence polonius, or, hell, all of these options sound accurate to some degree or another, so i guess if my life as v's manipulatress is hamlet, it's basically a one-woman show. the point is that for the pitifully small amount that it's worth, i acknowledge my guilt as regards you.
what a crappy point.
v, i manipulate a you that i have no right to claim even exists. and it's creepy. and i feel bad about it. but i keep doing it. so maybe i shouldn't even acknowledge my guilt in the first place, right? if my life were hamlet, i'd be claudius. guilty-ass claudius. i'm not sure what to do about it. so, heh, maybe i'm hamlet. and it's possible i see myself as protesting too much. so i might be gertrude. or i might just be crazy, and ophelia, or a dumbass, hence polonius, or, hell, all of these options sound accurate to some degree or another, so i guess if my life as v's manipulatress is hamlet, it's basically a one-woman show. the point is that for the pitifully small amount that it's worth, i acknowledge my guilt as regards you.
what a crappy point.
specificity
persephone redux redux
1.
what's not to love about the red cresting the hillsides--the way the poppies, those tonal glories, set each other off like bells clustered in a steeple, shivering from one shape to the next, residual as income, the distortion of a carefully healthy formality of sorts becoming pellucid, volatile?
2.
close the window against the sound of the wind, lupus-waldsworth. scythe through its meaning like a dark red reaper swinging.
3.
pressed into the stone, that sound: a shot hart's blood creates the location of the new steeple. vellum. things are living and dying in that wind: the sound of bells, the sound of bells cresting against the window like waves.
4.
shivering, residual
from one stone to the next: lime, slate, mica, ore, cedar.
like water to water,
red runs into red.
5.
a dark red god breathes rust into a soft red bowl.
six seeds between slow white teeth.
the poppies shake, pellucid, volatile.
Friday, May 25, 2007
first attempt.
persephone redux
1. still life
with a pre-raphaelite coloring, a sheath of copper-red hair
arrested mid-bound, smiling on her face like an ad for butter
weather flung around her with an over-arching deployment of sheer blue joy
those pink arched feet mid-bucaholism, poppy petals raining down
red as juice from where they'd been flung overhead by pillow-soft hands.
2. enciente
it ripped the canvas.
III. misfile
but there was no data.
4. reconciliation
facts rubbed against words like mint leaves under a pestle.
she could stand this.
watching granite creep closer.
dust rubbed into her shift.
and enraged dark.
5. every valley
six seeds stained her lips.
1. still life
with a pre-raphaelite coloring, a sheath of copper-red hair
arrested mid-bound, smiling on her face like an ad for butter
weather flung around her with an over-arching deployment of sheer blue joy
those pink arched feet mid-bucaholism, poppy petals raining down
red as juice from where they'd been flung overhead by pillow-soft hands.
2. enciente
it ripped the canvas.
III. misfile
but there was no data.
4. reconciliation
facts rubbed against words like mint leaves under a pestle.
she could stand this.
watching granite creep closer.
dust rubbed into her shift.
and enraged dark.
5. every valley
six seeds stained her lips.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
and/or void
st. exupery is something else. i was reading flight to arras in the hospital while my dad had heart surgery, which kind of screwed the pooch as far as appreciating it went, plus i was too freaking young, i think, but night flight's just blowing my mind. s-e flows from image to image in a manner that is like skin over muscle, or real skin over imaginary muscle. it's a little bit like dissonance, or richness, or richesse (which might not actually be a french word, but it's taken on a slightly separate meaning from "richness" in my head and so i'll use it, realities of the language be damned) in music, copeland or turandot being the examples i have in hand, where these harmonies just freaking become not lines but great piling swells (think "pines of rome" but less ganked from butterfly and with less freaking birds)--moments in which music gets the piles, that's what i'm talking about. and s-e does it with his writing, creates that feeling that your brain is swelling like a double-time melon and eventually will burst in sunset colors...creates that feeling that your heart's about to explode with the sensation of it.
that's a pretty awkward description. first of all, it may not be applicable to people who can actually experience emotion about their real lives (if such people exist). but more importantly, it just doesn't do its job (of, you know, describing). it's not a feeling of explosion, it's a feeling, maybe, of inward hum--an effect of resonance. yeah. all these things (notes, words) on top of each other create a...an arch, yeah, each object (stone) in tension with the other. something. the point is it's awesome.
and, hey, to bring it back to meam, the point is i don't know how to do it. and i should work on that. ashbery knows how to do it (i get the feeling that it's a different sensation for different people, hence the feeling created in me by the poets and authors and musicians and painters that i love gets created in other people by different poets, authors, musicians, and painters)--puccini always does it (to my mild shame)...then there are these things that do other things to me which aren't quite the same but are equally awesome. however i think i should stick with working on the first effect. now i've gone and confused myself, and should probably just quit while i'm only mildly behind (in self's comprehension of what self is writing, not in the comprehensibility of what self is writing, which i'm sure is pretty much nul).
Monday, May 21, 2007
it's a picture of a borgia
expense of x/
it must cry heigh-ho
for two, pellucid two.
/waste of y
it isn't really my fault, cuz hello last time i sang the body fuckin' electric you plugged your ears. bitch.
is x1 y1'd; and
bored to tears with thomas edison, rodney dangerfield ruled the dirty city.
something something
last name was fuckin' dangerfield, bitch.
nothing electrifies my body but you pellucid two.
tumty-tum
i'm livin' in an empty room with all the windows smashed, won't you pick the pieces up cuz it feels just like i'm-a walkin' on broken glass.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
if they were making a movie of jane eyre, i'd be blanche ingram
sorolla y bastida: valencia, two children on the beach
richard diebenkorn: cityscape 1 (landscape no. 1)
sorolla y bastida: corner of gardenfor some reason i once randomly picked up a print of walk on the beach, i think because it was on sale. i like sargent--why wouldn't i?--but for some reason sorolla y bastida appeals to me slightly more, kind of like the difference between loving, i don't know, renee fleming and leontyne price (here i go again). bearing in mind, as always, that i have not the slightest information regarding what the hell i'm talking about, what i think is later sargent, with the brushstrokes and the incomplete hands, is not only awesome, but kind of up-my-alley (ahrem) awesome (cuz what can i say, i love the brushstrokes); however the sorolla y bastida, whose brushwork and method i am comparing to sargent's (possibly INCREDIBLY INACCURATELY) seems to use the light he paints in a different way. it's like with sargent you get your gray light but the gray light is kind of a counterpoint, almost ironical, to the joyousness of the figures he paints (i mean, even when they're, like, sallow angry people, they're always somewhat flamboyant, you know? taking a scrooge-like glee in their own sallowness and anger?). whereas with sorolla y bastida the light, though significantly less dusty-blue-toned than sargent's, vergin', even, on the cassat palette (oh, i said it), expresses, to me, something sad, slightly grim, somewhat in pain... the light's an isolating force. but this is based on two years living with walk on the beach and five minutes of yahoo searchin'. looking at that valencia painting, i'm tempted to think that maybe the isolation i'm talking about is actually just his painting of wind. on the other hand, the look on the little girl's face is just very inward. you know?
hrrranyway.
something about corner of garden reminded me of the diebenkorn. it's probably nothing more than the colors. but it might be the structure--or maybe maybe maybe it's the brushwork?
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
frankly ridiculous
agony, agony, dream, leaven and dream
I. and dog will have his day
concave, pale
with loss,
veins collapsed on themselves
like shells:
pellucid, cupped, emptied.
II. a vampire lover
telescoped in and out,
it became the sand on a
somewhat grotesque shore,
grainy, legionate and wary.
everything rolled into one oversimpled
gaze, becoming like silhouettes
(red over black [black
over red]) against a satin backdrop.
III. said v may not have existed// / / /
red like hair,
hair scattered, reddened
over redgold.
according to the diary of pembroke
yesterday's middle is
today's end. in dirt. it was a riddle
without an answer:
he was in a forest. there was green.
gold light fell, fell, fell to the ground.
IV. ([dream])
when it is dead,
bind its wrists in your hair,
about the skin
that held in tidal blood,
as if indivisible,
it commands,
at the wrists, infinite
at the wrists, in your black hair.
V. acrostic
AGONY there are never to be two in meat// / / /only one
AGONY meat bound
DREAM in your hair
LEAVEN x = 2 pellucid 2
DREAM 1 x'd against pavement. a fetid yellow streetlamp.
Monday, April 30, 2007
precious
agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
1. typeface
it gives up questioning
the meat.
it eats whatever's dead on the ground.
2. a noteable source
a dish of kings:
liver and
fava beans.
tell-tale detrius: red,
its repository the face
of what's-its-name.
3. not to say i didn't enjoy it
(purple
over red)
pigeon-toed
over the graves of
some of our finest dead.
(red
over black) the object-rich
dirt: lightless earth
and the raw meat.
4. (dream)
your hair
about
my wrists,
lover,
when i
am dead.
blue veins
that beat
for you only:
tie their stillness
together, tie it
in that// /black/// / /river.
5. (break)
e questo?
songs piecemeal
in the wind--
e questo?
is it still singing,
precious?
e questo?
(wind against
a face)
e questo?
(pellucid
in meat)
e questo?
and this one?
god, and this one?
Thursday, April 26, 2007
m'easjg;geska;
agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
I.
with irony as its mistress, agony as its guiding principle, it wanted to write something a little dark--a little off--with a soft glow to it, like a prom dress--on a beach, with a large drink--in siena, named after paint.
humbled in silver or glorious in gold, like a worked mask for a face: some kind of cheap ceremonial of death, things going into the ground and not coming out, and the psychological chicanery of closure.
II. foaming at the chops
yesterday
it asked little more from you
than a nod
for the pants
to come off,
vespucci.
III. schleppin'
insignificant details of the highway at night:
the crossroads
the indiscriminate meat,
the headlights
strains of meyerbeer on the tape deck,
the house on the left,
the mastabatory bag on the seat
IV. dream
i am full of pain
when i die,
i demand,
tie your black hair
about my wrists
wrap my wrists
in your black hair
V. from the diary of pembroke:
it loves it. and will love it. the ground is unyielding.
Monday, April 23, 2007
propriete
agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
with your hair bound about these wrists
jespeth.
it is demanded.
opened at diverse points:
the mouth, wrist.
the raw flesh riding
over the brittle bone
like a horse ridden
over a waterless plain.
why did its white salt take you in
if it could not draw you down?
sunset driven to the hilt
into the horizon's dirt--
why did not it drown itself
in the black river of your hair,
wreck itself like wind
against the song of your face,
open itself like splitting forms
against you?
it gives up questioning
the meat.
it eats whatever's dead on the ground.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
everyone steals from puccini
agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
1.
i did have a vampire lover once. he came out of the night with blood like rubies on his lips, blood glistening on his mouth like micated silt at the bottom of a wine-dark sea. he liked to kiss me on my pulses. and he brought me white roses. my purity, he said, attracted him like a death's-head hawkmoth to a vestal flame. anyway i slept with him. but i was drunk when i did it.
2.
since all forms
broke.
loosed
like oil
from a split lamp.
3.
the apocryphal pembroke was, it has been determined, in a forest. moths and serpents abounded, apparently; the green trees and the dappled ground were both present as was requisite. lupine bloomed exquisitely* and from tree to tree hanged strung spanish moss as if it were catgut spun out and slack on a lute's rosewood fingerboard. he wrote thus:
with the world as my bier.
he was crazy; the squirrels ate his parts. but my eyes are raw for him.
4.
it demands of you:
wrap its wrists
in her black hair
when it is dead.
5.
[excitedly]
...sent to me from Heaven
Straight from the throne of Glory,
Take one last and careful
look At its poor face!
That its memory may linger,
One last look!
Farewell, beloved! Farewell, my dearest heart!
Go, play, play.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
all my trials, lord
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
when you look at it, capital R is a pretty character. i wish i were less of a failure at everything. whinety whine whine.
when you look at it, capital R is a pretty character. i wish i were less of a failure at everything. whinety whine whine.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
i develop my own vocabulary
agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
we went walking in the supermarket
with walt whitman.
there were peaches.
there may have been innuendo.
it's a big world.
it was a good time.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
low res
candylandthe way sweat
glistens
on the lines of a palm
etched
the press
of a multifaced
coin
i will buy such
things
i know not yet
what
they are.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
caught fire white fire
from the diary of pembroke:
...leads, in its execution, to an excess of self-reflection. the seeds of my madness are in fact contained in what i can finally describe, at this late date, as the parameters, the x and y axes, if i will, of said "it": the heterocletian phylogeny of ex versus for example why, the infinitely split horticulturalist of the mind for example, the house of wax for example or for example the ecumen of the encepalopath.
i continue to think i shall die, because i have been made according to the parameters of meat. however it is possibly a vain comprehension of said existence to insist upon its period. instead it may spiral ever-inward like a pinwheel, gaining on itself.
i am rotting
as i speak
Monday, April 02, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
they pull, they are free
anabasis means a journey inland from the sea, according to wikipedia.things that in a touchingly wierd way have something to do with each other:
bring on the empty horses -david niven
horses in my dreams -p.j. harvey
this is a picture of constance bennett. according to niven, she gleamed all over.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
just wild beat communication
am i careless? am i stupid? am i just scrabbling 'round this darkness with a blunt instrument hoping to score some kind of points like in sports?
my brain moves at, like, tortise-speed, and that may be an insult to tortises. because i'm self-obsessed, and if there's any way to get around that i don't know what it is. over-honesty is freakin' painful to the observer, the one who's being honested at, because abstraction is less consuming. and frankly i'm on abstraction's side. but i can't seem to get control of myself as a "poet."
i have a working theory, don't get me wrong. the theory is that if i reframe and reframe and reframe this one noun that took place, like, three years ago now, it'll eventually end in some kind of surgical-style comprehension. but that's a joke, a scaffold, by now. the single noun extends outward, aquinas-style (i think), proust-style, until everything references it and it references everything.
which is fine. it's not horrible...it's not ridiculously horrible. it's not horrible past all comprehension. but what significance it has in the context of anything beyond the exact limit of my own skin is less easily defined. and until i know if there is a justification for its existence, i am so freakin' selfish.
this is not whining. it's just cleverly disguised as whining.
my brain moves at, like, tortise-speed, and that may be an insult to tortises. because i'm self-obsessed, and if there's any way to get around that i don't know what it is. over-honesty is freakin' painful to the observer, the one who's being honested at, because abstraction is less consuming. and frankly i'm on abstraction's side. but i can't seem to get control of myself as a "poet."
i have a working theory, don't get me wrong. the theory is that if i reframe and reframe and reframe this one noun that took place, like, three years ago now, it'll eventually end in some kind of surgical-style comprehension. but that's a joke, a scaffold, by now. the single noun extends outward, aquinas-style (i think), proust-style, until everything references it and it references everything.
which is fine. it's not horrible...it's not ridiculously horrible. it's not horrible past all comprehension. but what significance it has in the context of anything beyond the exact limit of my own skin is less easily defined. and until i know if there is a justification for its existence, i am so freakin' selfish.
this is not whining. it's just cleverly disguised as whining.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
these poems are not math. i'm sorry for that.
(as the ascent beckoned)
1.
i saw a white-haired man escort a white-haired woman
from a catholic church with large wood doors.
the cross on the brown sign outside was white
and the inside was lit bright with gold light.
i sighted one tiny sliver of the life
of this woman and man with hair of silver-white.
2.
what the hell good does this shit do me? what meaning meant it to extrapolate? am i like the reaper with his scythe sheathing bits of golden meaning into bales or something? do i pile golden bits around me until this obscure opacity of flesh collapses under the pressure? death? sex? the red and the black of meat and bone dark?
one angstrom of catastrophe does not make a man culpable for his lovecraftian weavings on paper or in plastic. it must be several. and i have a paucity. folliculous!
3.
it is a push or a pull against what must be death.
(the sound of waves).
(clarice, my delicacy, clarice)
it must be thus, or we're left with love.
and--christ, and nothing but.
4.
AS THE ASCENT BECKONED, BITCHES
AS THE ASCENT BECKONED
AS THE ASCENT BECKONED
AS THE ASCENT BECKONED, BITCHES.
5.
spendthrift.
brown head against plastic desktop.
with irony as my mistress.
i wanted to write a dark poem.
it's a constant tautness, isn't it? isn't it? isn't it?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
bete noir
from the diary of pembroke:
everything continually comes to the point of total illumination, and then, as though controlled by some massive and unseen machinery, it stops and flows backward into dark inexorability. so that, if i am ever asked to account for these things i have done in the light of day, i am close to certain that no reply will be forthcoming in my mouth. there were reasons that i did them, god what reasons, but there is no answering for them. my state is such that, though i have spent years in this forest, during those hours between sunrise and sunset i am unable to describe a single tree, shrub, blade of grass...
under these revised circumstances, almost any door in the world is open to me. but i step through none. this is reality at its most supervised. lupus-waldsworth seems to have burnt the squirrelmeat again and requires assistance.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
lovecraft
the sound of a knock drifting
i saw a bird flying low
over the freeway in the purple dusk.
it looked something like
a storm-tossed frigate in a painting,
or something else
moderately large and
taut against a pitching wind:
possibly a plastic grocery sack.
wrap deep, wrap deep around me, deny
that form or sense have any meaning beyond
what i can give them. block out
this pounding and this horror at the threshold.
f.5 (irony soundtrack)
when the night has come / and the land is dark / and the moon is the only light we'll see, / no, i won't be afraid, /no, i won't be afraid, / just as long as you stand, stand by me, stand by me, darling, darling, stand by me, oh stand by me oh stand stand by me stand by me stand by me stand by me stand by me
when the night has come / and the land is dark / and the moon is the only light we'll see, / no, i won't be afraid, /no, i won't be afraid, / just as long as you stand, stand by me, stand by me, darling, darling, stand by me, oh stand by me oh stand stand by me stand by me stand by me stand by me stand by me
facets 5 of 5
dissolute on the branch--compounds reconforming wantonly, segment on segment, juices intermingling, taste shadowed rich with rot, the green and white pledge blossoming on the skin.
the startled awakening of the garage door's grinding machine sounds.
ed wood's pulses throb; he spreads out his hands and it sucks at each finger; his throat is taut against it like a bending red stem.
an orange is rounded and meant to be handled.
o res mirabilis! manducat dominum pauper, pauper, servus, et humilis.
dissolute on the branch--compounds reconforming wantonly, segment on segment, juices intermingling, taste shadowed rich with rot, the green and white pledge blossoming on the skin.
the startled awakening of the garage door's grinding machine sounds.
ed wood's pulses throb; he spreads out his hands and it sucks at each finger; his throat is taut against it like a bending red stem.
an orange is rounded and meant to be handled.
o res mirabilis! manducat dominum pauper, pauper, servus, et humilis.
facets 3
the hushed lop of substances on the carpet.
there's a semi-carrionate taste to the over-ready citrus.
even ed wood, even where the sensation touched him, the skin of both his hands and his lips, his legs, below his skirt.
its membrane so fine.
when he looks into your spanish eyes, and the world seems so beautiful tonight.
there's a semi-carrionate taste to the over-ready citrus.
even ed wood, even where the sensation touched him, the skin of both his hands and his lips, his legs, below his skirt.
its membrane so fine.
when he looks into your spanish eyes, and the world seems so beautiful tonight.
facets ii
he's loosened up his buttons.
a seville orange is red with its own juices.
ed wood went down into liquid like jacques cousteau and hardly came up for air...but was he desperate or greed-filled, what was he throbbing with.
the rain-thrashed branch--the wet black bough and the flowers on it.
the bright, labored hum of water in the faucet.
he's loosened up his buttons.
a seville orange is red with its own juices.
ed wood went down into liquid like jacques cousteau and hardly came up for air...but was he desperate or greed-filled, what was he throbbing with.
the rain-thrashed branch--the wet black bough and the flowers on it.
the bright, labored hum of water in the faucet.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
carnis angelicus
most poetry, especially modern poetry, used to annoy the shit out of me. the same went for opera--i distinctly remember thinking that the stuff would sound okay if the singers would just stop vibrating so damn much. i guess a person builds up a tolerance, and eventually the stuff that was too strong for them becomes the stuff they can't get enough of.
as always i wish i could break things down further. i wish the match between what i feel and what i might feel were stronger, more exact, more perfect. the fact that i never tire of restating, reforming, re-arriving at this hope comes as something of a comfort... or it means that the hope is a blanket covering for a mass of unknowables that my weak brain x's as being within each other's scope...
blather blather yammer yammer rubies rubies lips.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
con carne
temptation by tom waits
1.
i can't resist.
2.
there were fools who lasted about three months on that trip before disease or starvation killed them: pembroke, to whose diary we are indebted for the details, lupus-waldsworth the surgeon, and tripnose, the minstrel. except that he was killed by squirrels. they went for the nuts. pembroke, i find, spoke most eloquently for himself and lupus-waldsworth, however, when he wrote the following on the twenty-fourth of november that year:
v v v v v
v v v v v
v v v v v
v v v v v
...this v, it is a fever of the brain, a cypher from which all else hangs, all else hanging over-saturate and supreme, gloating, glowing, spinning, rotting... the innocent apex, the crux of most salvation. on a doily.
he was raving by that time, you see. six months later the body was found. nutless.
3.
don't be ridiculous, clarice.
you don't want to put that there.
(my delicacy hold me)
*pants*
*defenestrates depressed body as metaphor for fire extinguisher*
4.
for instance, we only have pembroke's word for it that lupus-waldsworth ever even existed. or v, for that matter.
untenable:
stained glass
sans lead.
5.
there was a body
on a sidewalk.
there were shapes and sizes.
there was a breathing.
there was a dripping.
1.
i can't resist.
2.
there were fools who lasted about three months on that trip before disease or starvation killed them: pembroke, to whose diary we are indebted for the details, lupus-waldsworth the surgeon, and tripnose, the minstrel. except that he was killed by squirrels. they went for the nuts. pembroke, i find, spoke most eloquently for himself and lupus-waldsworth, however, when he wrote the following on the twenty-fourth of november that year:
v v v v v
v v v v v
v v v v v
v v v v v
...this v, it is a fever of the brain, a cypher from which all else hangs, all else hanging over-saturate and supreme, gloating, glowing, spinning, rotting... the innocent apex, the crux of most salvation. on a doily.
he was raving by that time, you see. six months later the body was found. nutless.
3.
don't be ridiculous, clarice.
you don't want to put that there.
(my delicacy hold me)
*pants*
*defenestrates depressed body as metaphor for fire extinguisher*
4.
for instance, we only have pembroke's word for it that lupus-waldsworth ever even existed. or v, for that matter.
untenable:
stained glass
sans lead.
5.
there was a body
on a sidewalk.
there were shapes and sizes.
there was a breathing.
there was a dripping.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Monday, March 05, 2007
facet
cold and windblown like the scent of your hair.
saltpeter.
the honey, the bee.
(i think this facet thing is formal, in the formin'-est sense of the word; it's a little bit about that borges story where the mystic decides to dream a man into existence, but while borges' mystic dreams a progress starting with a flesh heart and moving on to other parts, eventually creating in a sense himself, i'm doing something else...and will end up with a man nothing like me. because frankenstein sure managed it. or maybe i'm just making up an excuse to write really short poems.)
cold and windblown like the scent of your hair.
saltpeter.
the honey, the bee.
(i think this facet thing is formal, in the formin'-est sense of the word; it's a little bit about that borges story where the mystic decides to dream a man into existence, but while borges' mystic dreams a progress starting with a flesh heart and moving on to other parts, eventually creating in a sense himself, i'm doing something else...and will end up with a man nothing like me. because frankenstein sure managed it. or maybe i'm just making up an excuse to write really short poems.)
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Friday, March 02, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
careless
now
we called sam, ron, dana.
now we stopped
for beer
her father collapsed
on the floor.
now nothing.
now left
and yeft.
now i had no heart.
now it was mine
to give and she didn't need it.
there's a dark-furred beast lying out there.
we called sam, ron, dana.
now we stopped
for beer
her father collapsed
on the floor.
now nothing.
now left
and yeft.
now i had no heart.
now it was mine
to give and she didn't need it.
there's a dark-furred beast lying out there.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
communism
song of soloman
left and right, left and right,
we could go on like this all night.
death comes on those who don't fight,
am i right? am i right?
didn't screw my harlot's parts
on for people without hearts.
crawling in my underwear:
i'm the sheep and you're the bear.
creepy-type people and the sounds that make them sleepy
you know how little there is radiating off this thing? it's like dark-ass matter. it's like a play for one, a play for all, you know? it's like eyewear.
i hate my life, gosh it. and that truth cuts like a knife. into a
melon.
i rage against the dying of the light.
i've totally lost my way. yesterday i watched eleven hours and twenty minutes of t.v. by the time someone dug me out of there with a knife i could barely tell left from right.
i'll tell you what's fierce. pride. yeah. and gum. when you've chewed it too long.
fragment me, bitches.
euthanized on a table
shostakovitch. it's what i say to war--
shostakovitch said it all before.
eleven hours of t.v.
in front of me, in front of me.
i'll tell you what else is red:
the beast with two backs.
Friday, February 16, 2007
christ! christ! christ!
we were running from the middle of the road to the sides (left and right) and then back to the center again, sort of in the manner of a wave from a physics book: maybe a, um, a redshifted frequency. just peakin' and troughin'.
i was fucking bawling by the end of snow falling on cedars and it wasn't even a good movie.
normal people, everyday people like you and me find money to feed their habits.
death's pretty imminent, yeah. we look up and the sky is blanketed with night, people, and fucking stars. doesn't this stink of unwashed metaphor to you? in the poems and songs, the stars come out at night--
a manifest of destiny. stars come out as we say they shall.
we were running from the middle of the road to the sides (left and right) and then back to the center again, sort of in the manner of a wave from a physics book: maybe a, um, a redshifted frequency. just peakin' and troughin'.
i was fucking bawling by the end of snow falling on cedars and it wasn't even a good movie.
normal people, everyday people like you and me find money to feed their habits.
death's pretty imminent, yeah. we look up and the sky is blanketed with night, people, and fucking stars. doesn't this stink of unwashed metaphor to you? in the poems and songs, the stars come out at night--
a manifest of destiny. stars come out as we say they shall.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
a picture and some memorandae
things to remember to see: bring me the head of alfredo garcia.
things to remember to read: lorca, st. augustine, hart crane.
wow, the sunset just shot me through. hey, like a peckinpah character! this sky is mad! and high!
i haven't been thinking poetically at all recently, which is why i haven't been writing poetically. fortunately, like tobias and the cut-offs, i'm back on the novel. oh, couden, silly, nobody cares about your novel. there is officially waaay too much junk food in my system right now for anything to come out of it that isn't crap...
Friday, February 09, 2007
nothing nothing nothing
"constellation" connotes something absurdly mystical, childish, or philosophical, though it's definitely the mysticism i object to most: i'm not writing about any universal whatnot, covered in timeless obscurity, bending under the weight of its own archetypes. a graph, however, assumes a pre-created continuity, which, though slightly more satisfying because not overloaded with sky, stars, space, infinites, universal truths, and seventh-degree removed physical mumbo-jumbo, is, from my perspective, which is generally the one i attempt to write out from under, pretty much entirely inaccurate. (i mean it's possible that, like dirk gently tells us, "insert dirk gently quote that has something to do with the interconnectedness of all things here," and so there is a graph, but i have no knowledge of it, hence the above "my perspective" thing.)
i'm talking about the interconnection of factors. yeah. factors works. there was something mentioned in lit 101 about this, something i didn't read, something to do with rhizomes, maybe?
man i gotta go back to school. i'm like isis searching for her husband's parts, except i'm not a goddess and it's possible there never was a body.
i'm talking about the interconnection of factors. yeah. factors works. there was something mentioned in lit 101 about this, something i didn't read, something to do with rhizomes, maybe?
man i gotta go back to school. i'm like isis searching for her husband's parts, except i'm not a goddess and it's possible there never was a body.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
post-created
a first try at constellation
later, the sole of my foot
rubbed raw against the red leather of my shoe-sole.
the blood in the underwear
looked like a rorsarch inkblot, a fearful symmetry.
earlier, i was raw
before you.
not wanting to turn into
a cautionary tale about the dangers of walking at night.
you were the catalyzing agent
in this love that runs on its own--i apologize.
earlier i had not eaten.
in a dream you hooked up
the back of my dress.
earlier you had the profile
of a handsome cadaver.
later the whole thing remained
incomplete
later, the sole of my foot
rubbed raw against the red leather of my shoe-sole.
the blood in the underwear
looked like a rorsarch inkblot, a fearful symmetry.
earlier, i was raw
before you.
not wanting to turn into
a cautionary tale about the dangers of walking at night.
you were the catalyzing agent
in this love that runs on its own--i apologize.
earlier i had not eaten.
in a dream you hooked up
the back of my dress.
earlier you had the profile
of a handsome cadaver.
later the whole thing remained
incomplete
Saturday, February 03, 2007
happiness
a wordy poem
but the fragilities such joy is based upon
are in themselves so lovely:
a constellation of equations spread exact
upon the so-finite space of one graph:
it is itself a space of fine permeation.
i would have never known this
if i had not been in it.
but the fragilities such joy is based upon
are in themselves so lovely:
a constellation of equations spread exact
upon the so-finite space of one graph:
it is itself a space of fine permeation.
i would have never known this
if i had not been in it.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
bawd to an ewe lamb
i. SINPATICO
i was too full of SIN for fetishes.
even the localization of desire to any specific within the generally conceptual was without the scope of my VICE. so i kept it (desire) whole and slowly writhing like a giant pink baby echidna parade balloon, knubbed and lightly haired and rubbed with unguents to keep it slightly glistening.
until you came along.
then there was this giant pink nascent echidna balloon versus the black-haired red-lipped parade balloon that in me represented you. if there had been mud enough and handlers' skills, these two enheliumate structures, lady, might have duked it out for my soul in a wrestling extravaganza.
but what i was really hoping for was a great swallowing, either by you of the echidna of my desire, or by the echidna of you that you might wear the face of it, a localized suspension (because in midair), an apex of its focusless name.
OH HELL OF MY SOUL, this treatise unbreach'd,
this tract unfurrowed,
this torch unburned,
this potato not yet mashed and check that ain't been cashed.
ii. FACTS
the echidna has an unusually large thrombosis, which is the part of the brain responsible for r.e.m. sleep, recycling, and waking dreams. it is the most evenly-distributed metonym in all austria but bears its eggs in a pouch and feeds them off milk patch-holes. when just hatched it looks like something that forcibly burrowed its way out of painter francis bacon's gray and slimy brain--athena, but without either zeus or the looks. it's ugly, pink, and damnably formless.
i remember seeing you before i knew you. it was the flop of your thick hair, the way you held your chin, your glasses, and your walk that were most remarkable to the uninitiated. the eyes, smile, and voice remained secreted into patches i was to know only later when i sat next to you kind of by accident and you ate a salad.
i don't think you know i write this stuff. is that why it's all online? do you hate me, five? does this count as history?
iii. SOFT WITH REFLECTION
niether the honey nor the
the pink desire wields little arm-nubs
against the cold and post-egg world.
like winter on wallace stevens' brain,
i am weighty, airless. there are various
places at which all things touch down,
SIN, for instance,
SIN,
SIN,
or SIN.
iv. IT'S COLD AND I'M STUPID
v. NOTHING IS RESOLVED BUT THIS:
lover, you...
lover, you...
in the couch the kittens mew.
did you and my desires touch?
not so much.
not so much.
i thought love would be a grander thing.
it's nothing but a deepening.
an opening of black and red
when you were gone, my placeholder.
Monday, January 29, 2007
like yours, lady, like yours
gravum recordum veritavum
i'll give you a dollar for every day you don't touch me,
in vitrus aquibutes or otherwise,
di ceste beronicus tua. if you know what i mean.
soft-skinned. yes, like that. don't just like that.
you are the tigris and wild-ass euphrates
of my soul, o my vamparbicus alfinza voe muliarbibus.
even the earth rebels,
o my sole mio.
under our love the ore flows.
in questo voi siete non voglio
non vedete senza ricardi
tuo, tuo mein angelo mio,
mein scapulum,
mein scapulorum.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
they whose names begin with letters in mind
rough pasturage
it was dumb to think
i'd ever take the impression you
made on me,
vanna,
sitting on the couch upholstery
with someone else's children,
staring at the sargent
printed on the wall and
thinking of something. i told you
i wrote a paean to someone walking
by the other day and you nodded.
i will keep you safe.
i will keep you hearty.
i will have you drink ten gallons of warmed milk
at each breakfast if you will just look at me.
one song...glory...one song...glory...one song...glory...one
somepath
mr. director i
honestly see myself as
fierce, proud, and racy enough for
daytime t.v.
if you have a cat and
you put the litterbox in
the kitchen there'll always be
crap in the kitchen.
i liked scanners because
it was so meaningless within
itself. you have to craft a meaninglessness
like that--
not unlike god, with a mealworm
in the palm of his broad hand, on the
first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day.
that shit's inevitable.
mr. director i
honestly see myself as
fierce, proud, and racy enough for
daytime t.v.
if you have a cat and
you put the litterbox in
the kitchen there'll always be
crap in the kitchen.
i liked scanners because
it was so meaningless within
itself. you have to craft a meaninglessness
like that--
not unlike god, with a mealworm
in the palm of his broad hand, on the
first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day.
that shit's inevitable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)