Backwards, he kept saying,backwards. I thought of the red-haired Australian woman who'd used that word. I thought about her Italian husband and a murder in the non-descript mountains and her newly published novel cover-- how they'd changed the title. You just have no say in a thing like that, she'd said. Its all backwards out there.
And here I am writing in a new pen. And here I am in my new handwriting, my old rooms. I'd been down in their basement, stacking t-shirts.
I'd been down to the river, where was I? I looked up at the city of Richmond. This was all Bob's idea, of course. He didn't trust the water there.
I was driving to Boston and off the highway a tractor trailer caught on fire like a raw animal. The treetops singed and curled under around it. The highway went silent. The fire hoses spritzed and dribbled at the thing, which passed me by clear as a photograph-- real as it could manage.
There was a change, then, and we all had to crawl along on our stomachs for hours. Philadelphia came on full of Christmas tree lights. It looked like a dream. Only later did we see it was a factory. A man was saying "engine" like "injun". All I heard was injun, injun. Nobody saw her coming.
The cats are panting cadillacs. It drives a U-haul around town, pays 50 cents for red feathers and sticks them in its hair. I'm not good at these things, said Bob. And Bob, we can stay in our rooms, I said, we can read all these books! Oh, spine and brain, old whether or not...
This is how it felt underwater: like a tunnel. like its green.
Now keep moving. Take a left, sure but keep driving. The brickman lays his bricks down and you expect arrangements to be made for your shoes, don't you? What makes it so hard to say things straight is the peculiar shape of your pockets? To Ramona, you say, as if this means anything.
Ramona would not notice you on fire in her kitchen, dear. What does anyone mean by sickly, to Ramona? A man waters his plants and dries his kitchen counters with a dish towel. If the sheets had been there when we'd said they were, we'd have remembered. We are forever picking up these glass jars, saying heavy.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The truth was I'd been fired from my waitressing job on Wednesday morning the week before, information I was still guarding from my mother but joking about regularly with the woman who took care of my grandmother, Josephine, and lived on the third floor of our building. Both my Uncle and mother were coming in on a Tuesday to take Josephine to see the neurologist. I was still a bit high when my Uncle arrived and then my mother, who came in and immediately peered through the door into the living room where I was caught standing, waiting for her to walk toward the kitchen. She could see my feet I guess and stood there a moment, saying tersely "Hello Jess, come out and say hello" as if I had been hiding in the room all afternoon and had not come out to greet my Uncle and if not for her instruction would probably have stood silently in the room until they both left with Josephine.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Love's advice
Love's advice, he called it
pithy. He mixed his paints in
empty cardboard tubs
of popcorn. If it wasn't that
it was at least very close
to that. The tubs themselves
were always neon blue and orange
but he didn't mind much, talking
about them. My neurologist
had thought I was attractive,
but we don't see eachother anymore.
Sort of squirrelly, thin...and handsy,
one might say.
Beth sits at home and thinks of
terrible things. She places things
in lead jars and lifts them,
saying, heavy.
pithy. He mixed his paints in
empty cardboard tubs
of popcorn. If it wasn't that
it was at least very close
to that. The tubs themselves
were always neon blue and orange
but he didn't mind much, talking
about them. My neurologist
had thought I was attractive,
but we don't see eachother anymore.
Sort of squirrelly, thin...and handsy,
one might say.
Beth sits at home and thinks of
terrible things. She places things
in lead jars and lifts them,
saying, heavy.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
the orange cat, impeccably sawed in half, who keeps herself surgically groomed-- in the dying hours of sunday down, down and tucked well in, her teeth out on the table-- four times i called and heard the noise before the voice came back again...again...again. we are all here for the same thing, he'd said. we are all here to make money. does anyone disagree, he asked like a bullet aimed, his charm coming down all around him. inside a large room i once looked down.
Monday, November 1, 2010
i'm out on the street and emptied, free.
the empty street is like a vacuum. i play the zombie-part, the last one alive, so i thought or thought of believing-- out of all the many ways to say and to not say i love you, you asked that i not go scaling mountains, then you took it back. i returned to sleep like a cat laid open on the table, the rat they leave beside my bureau surgically gnawed in half. The orange cat keeps herself impeccably groomed. the grey cat bats at her food with both paws. i am alone, i say. onto the doorstep of failure: william, i need a costume. cigarette ashes fall in circles. ten thousand forgotten thimbles. a swig of whiskey in your sister's old car, your mother and father sliding on coats. we fall in two. i am curled in the chest of something where i can forget myself. i make the bed for the first time in years, startled at the ease of things. i am filling my high heels with blood-soup. do not make it dark, dear. i am shelled in flourescent lighting, counting the dropped breaths. arm in arm all the way to the zoo, truman capote goes to feed the yaks, and there is warhol by the deer cage. there i am in the deer cage, darling, relying on peripharies, leaving rings on my mother's furniture. is it back into the cringe again? i take long cold walks to offset the sundowns. girls in paper hats are twirling in the gutters of south boston while my grandmother sleeps and argues with the dead. she travels back and forth through her mind like a tricked fuse. i maintain the space ship, feed and water the cats and the space-plant. antique figurines orbit the rooms. the great piano sleeps like death, an injured lion crouched in the corner. the green leather chair days slumped in the half-door closing of it. the mighty snore of death but a whimper, a dead rat. the color coming through and coloring everything. my dear is here and gone again.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
In their secret rooms
I wrote down each turn, every street name, all the way to the library at Copley Square. It was a grey fogged up evening made for walking. When walking, I kept glancing down at the hole in my arm where another arm could have fit right through it. It kept feeling like a hole. When I crossed the bridge home, this woman in gym clothes walking towards me and her small girl waddling behind her and calling out, her on the telephone saying "don't ever have children, i swear", and its starting to rain. Its been long, time walking and walking all day; Arlington, Abington, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The library at Copley Square, it was much too large, and I hadn't known what to do there. I looked for the books. They were all hiding, in their secret rooms.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
me and my little jar of marajuana-- at the public library, the goodwill store, the corner mart. Everything I buy is small and non-reusable. My grandmother sleeps in her daughter's bed now. She does not know her middle name and I cannot tell it to her. Somedays I sleep past shame and wake up ready to run. I put my sneakers on. I have nowhere to run. I watch the news even when I try not to. The television stays on like a warning signal. A young man the cops shot down in New York. He's dead now. I shouldn't have to think about him. If I weren't here, I wouldn't. And she's fallen again when they wake me up, and I wake up shameful. She's fallen. In the hall near the bathroom. The nurse shows me her bruises. I don't care, I can't care. I need to use the bathroom badly. These are our sad little human conditions. The children at school Sharon tells me about, who wake up with crusted milk on their upper lips, whose mothers don't teach them to wash their hands or wipe their asses. These kids, she says. And where are my children now? All of them bright-eyed and listening, old enough to drink and laugh at such things. They think I'm crazy, they miss me, they've forgot me now entirely. And what if I didn't re-enter the world? What would anyone think of that. The girl with her jar of marajuana, walking herself like a dog through South Boston, scanning the beaches for broken glass. A plastic bag I keep things in.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
At first he was much possessed to howl at me
from his post inside the garden, as if invoking
me to enter, and knowing that I could not.
The birds sprinkled outwards from his direction,
his howl like an icy shiver through the yard.
No, I would not enter, though i saw him
and i sometimes watched him
walking in circles around the sick and dying
tomato plant. Once a deer got caught in the wire
mesh enclosures my father had made
to keep the snakes out of the blueberries,
and I could not see him behind this huge
panicked deer. I admit then, I almost ran out
unthinkingly, to free him. But my father appeared instead,
and he will not howl at my father. He runs and hides
in the compost pile when he sees my father.
My father, who freed the deer and rescued
countless toads from the imminent jaws of his sit-down
lawn mower. There's a wolf in the garden,
I told him one night, and he laughed as he stroked
the top of my head, like a small pet's.
from his post inside the garden, as if invoking
me to enter, and knowing that I could not.
The birds sprinkled outwards from his direction,
his howl like an icy shiver through the yard.
No, I would not enter, though i saw him
and i sometimes watched him
walking in circles around the sick and dying
tomato plant. Once a deer got caught in the wire
mesh enclosures my father had made
to keep the snakes out of the blueberries,
and I could not see him behind this huge
panicked deer. I admit then, I almost ran out
unthinkingly, to free him. But my father appeared instead,
and he will not howl at my father. He runs and hides
in the compost pile when he sees my father.
My father, who freed the deer and rescued
countless toads from the imminent jaws of his sit-down
lawn mower. There's a wolf in the garden,
I told him one night, and he laughed as he stroked
the top of my head, like a small pet's.
Friday, October 15, 2010
I am looking quite a lot like Thomas Jefferson these days...
I am looking quite a lot like Thomas Jefferson these days. My hair is a long knot behind my back. There is a red blemish on my left cheek. It looks distinguished there so I leave it. I rearrange the photos of my mother atop my grandmother's old piano, the photos of her as a child, a teenager. Here she stands between her two brothers, her hair red and huge about her. Here she is dressed as a child in a catholic school uniform, my mother, she wears a tie. At home she is wearing eyeglasses, thick black pointed rims. I've heard her recall them so many times. In the photography rooms she can see without them, she can smile half-way. Then beside and in front of her, I've placed a new favorite. I call her the nun. She is a nun. I never knew this woman, this nun of my family. I thank her, I love her for that. She was not a cheerful woman, said my mother. But she is such a wonderful photo, sitting on the right in a white and wooden chair, the most joyfully spectacled woman beside her. Another woman I do not know sits beside her. She is holding a baby in her lap. She is wearing a pink or a faded red dress and sitting with this nun on someone's lawn. A tree fills the whole frame behind her. She is so lovely in her pink, with her baby and her nun. And I don't give a damn who she is.
anne sexton- 45 mercy street
45 Mercy Street
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign -
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down -
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign -
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down -
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
Monday, October 11, 2010
For Shits & Sweeteners
Well, yes!, I say to the ice cube tray,
who spills three solids on the hardwood
floor. Yes, you once-were,
you once were water,
weren't you? You frigid bitch!
Now you're frozen and hard
as a brick, you old hag-
I can't drink you like that! No, I can't,
and I won't! I will dip you
in coffee (not-cold-enough coffee) and bathe you
in milk (not some poor old cow's milk),
let the cows eat hay! I'll soak you in soy!
And sugar, why sugar,
you just sit right there, sugar,
on the shelf, there, sugar,
in the pantry, there
sugar.
who spills three solids on the hardwood
floor. Yes, you once-were,
you once were water,
weren't you? You frigid bitch!
Now you're frozen and hard
as a brick, you old hag-
I can't drink you like that! No, I can't,
and I won't! I will dip you
in coffee (not-cold-enough coffee) and bathe you
in milk (not some poor old cow's milk),
let the cows eat hay! I'll soak you in soy!
And sugar, why sugar,
you just sit right there, sugar,
on the shelf, there, sugar,
in the pantry, there
sugar.
Friday, October 8, 2010
note from will granberry
just woke up from a nap
you were in the dream
in a pool in los angeles i said "im gonna get room service alllll week"
then i went to the bathroom and realized i had a vagina
and my bellybutton was falling apart
it was awful
you were in the dream
in a pool in los angeles i said "im gonna get room service alllll week"
then i went to the bathroom and realized i had a vagina
and my bellybutton was falling apart
it was awful
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
from stop me if you heard this by jim holt
Schmulowitz: "Liberty, Laughter, and the Law" he spoke ringingly of how jokes have "detected and exposed the imposter and have saved man from the impression of false leaders."
Voltaire: "Those who know why this kind of joy that kindles laughter should draw the zygo-matic muscle back toward the ears are knowing indeed."
Alfred North Whitehead: "The total absence of humor from the bible is one of the most singular things in all literature."
"Of the three theories of humor, it is the incongruity theory that is taken most seriously by philosophers today. It too, however, is open to objections. Why should incongruity be a source of pleasure? Shouldn't the asymmetrical, the disorderly, and the absurd cause bewilderment and anxiety in rational creatures like ourselves, not merriment? The nineteenth-century philosopher Alexander Bain observed:
There are many incongruities that may produce anything but a laugh. A decrepit man under a heavy burden, five loaves and two fishes among a multitude, and all unfitness and gross disproportion; an instrument out of tune, a fly in ointment, snow in May, Archimedes studying geometry in a siege, and all discordant things; a wolf in sheep's clothing, a breach of bargain, and falsehood in general; the multitude taking the law into their own hands, and everything of the nature of disorder; a corpse at a feast, parental cruelty, filial ingratitude, and whatever is unnatural; the enitre catalogue of vanities given by Solomon-are all incongruous, but they cause feelings of pain, anger, sadness, loathing, rather than mirth.
(Bain was a dour Victorian Scotsman, with little capacity for the darker forms of humor; but one sees what he is getting at.) Some forms of incongruity, moreover, have aesthetic value without being the least bit funny: the ironies of Oedipus Rex, for example, or the dissonances in Mozart's String Quartet in C major.
Even if not all incongruities are funny, nearly everything that is funny does seem to contain an incongruity of one sort or another. For Kant the incongruity in a joke was between the "something" of the setup and the anticlimatic "nothing" of the punch line; the ludicrous effect arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." (In the Critique of Judgment, Kant illustrates the point with a story: An Indian who is dining with an Englishman looks astonished when a bottle of ale is opened and the contents come gushing out in a wave of froth. "Well, what is so wonderful in that?" asks the Englishman. "Oh, I'm not suprised at its getting out," replies the Indian, "but at how you ever managed to get it all in.") Schopenhauer thought that at the core of every joke was a sophistical syllogism. But some jokes simply defy syllogistic analysis. (Lily Tomlin: "When I was young I always wanted to be somebody. Now I wish I had been more specific.")"
Voltaire: "Those who know why this kind of joy that kindles laughter should draw the zygo-matic muscle back toward the ears are knowing indeed."
Alfred North Whitehead: "The total absence of humor from the bible is one of the most singular things in all literature."
"Of the three theories of humor, it is the incongruity theory that is taken most seriously by philosophers today. It too, however, is open to objections. Why should incongruity be a source of pleasure? Shouldn't the asymmetrical, the disorderly, and the absurd cause bewilderment and anxiety in rational creatures like ourselves, not merriment? The nineteenth-century philosopher Alexander Bain observed:
There are many incongruities that may produce anything but a laugh. A decrepit man under a heavy burden, five loaves and two fishes among a multitude, and all unfitness and gross disproportion; an instrument out of tune, a fly in ointment, snow in May, Archimedes studying geometry in a siege, and all discordant things; a wolf in sheep's clothing, a breach of bargain, and falsehood in general; the multitude taking the law into their own hands, and everything of the nature of disorder; a corpse at a feast, parental cruelty, filial ingratitude, and whatever is unnatural; the enitre catalogue of vanities given by Solomon-are all incongruous, but they cause feelings of pain, anger, sadness, loathing, rather than mirth.
(Bain was a dour Victorian Scotsman, with little capacity for the darker forms of humor; but one sees what he is getting at.) Some forms of incongruity, moreover, have aesthetic value without being the least bit funny: the ironies of Oedipus Rex, for example, or the dissonances in Mozart's String Quartet in C major.
Even if not all incongruities are funny, nearly everything that is funny does seem to contain an incongruity of one sort or another. For Kant the incongruity in a joke was between the "something" of the setup and the anticlimatic "nothing" of the punch line; the ludicrous effect arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." (In the Critique of Judgment, Kant illustrates the point with a story: An Indian who is dining with an Englishman looks astonished when a bottle of ale is opened and the contents come gushing out in a wave of froth. "Well, what is so wonderful in that?" asks the Englishman. "Oh, I'm not suprised at its getting out," replies the Indian, "but at how you ever managed to get it all in.") Schopenhauer thought that at the core of every joke was a sophistical syllogism. But some jokes simply defy syllogistic analysis. (Lily Tomlin: "When I was young I always wanted to be somebody. Now I wish I had been more specific.")"
Monday, September 27, 2010
from ellen degneres' "the funny thing is..."
It's terrible when you forget what you're going to say after two words, but what's worse than that, really, is forgetting what you're going to say when you've been talking for a while. You know, like when you're at a dinner party and a whole group of people are talking, discussing some heavy subject matter, and you don't really have an opinion on it. Then suddenly you think you do, so you jump right in there to share your opinion, and you realize you've actually got a pretty good opinion to share! When your friends hear this opinion, they're going to be blown away by how smart you are. They had no idea that you were so smart, and they will be shocked and impressed that you would come up with such an interesting point of view. And you start congradulating yourself, and suddenly, since you're feeling so good and you're celebrating too soon, you completely forget the point you were going to make. And you're still talking. And they're looking at you like you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't, but you can't let them know that. So you just keep talking, praying that the point will come back to you. And not only does the point not come back, but now you've completely forgotten the subject everybody else was talking about. You really start sweating. You loosen your tie-- if you're a man or Diane Keaton or Avril Lavigne-- and then you try to jump out of it by saying any sort of generic statement that comes to mind. "Well, six of one, half dozen of the other. It's a slippery slope, my friend. Teach a man to fish. And you know, there's no 'I' in team...Is there any more Merlot?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
its absolutely criminal. the way they throw the word around these days. genius. artist. everyone's an artist now. t didn't used to be that way. there was some kind of level of division. there was competition. there was me a small child and you a young man and there was love so big between us, perhaps. there was a glimmer of hope. there was a short and endless lifetime which i missed by going to highschool and getting fucked up on public beaches. there was an atanomy class taught by a gym teacher. this was a joke, i had often thought.
Friday, September 3, 2010
backwards
Backwards, he kept saying, backwards. I thought of the red-headed Australian journalist who'd used that word, and about her Italian husband and the murder in the mountains and her newly published novel cover; how they'd changed the title. You just have no say in a thing like that, she'd said, it's all backwards there. And here I am writing with a new pen. Here I am in my new handwriting, my old rooms. I'd been down in their basement, stacking t-shirts. I'd been down at the river treading water and I looked up to see the city of Richmond lurking over us. This was all Bob's idea, of course. He didn't trust the water there. I was driving back to Boston and off the highway I saw a trailer tractor on fire like a raw animal. The tree tops singed and curled under in flames. The highway was silent. The fire hoses hissed and saved no one. It all passed by clear as a photograph, real as it could manage to be. Believable. We had to crawl along on our bellies all the way to Philadelphia. When we got there it was full of christmas lights. It looked like a dream. Only later could we tell they were factories. And a man I know says "engine" like he's saying "injun". All I hear is injun, injun. Nobody saw her coming. The cats were panting hot. It drives a U-haul around town, pays for red feathers. I'm not good at these things, said Bob. I really did. And Bob, I said, we can stay in our rooms, Bob. We can read all these books. Oh, but the spine tires and the feet itch whether or not the brain moves. This is how it feels underwater; It feels like a tunnel. It looks like its green.
it takes along time sittng
Henry sometimes maybe lied or so I began to think. He sat in his corner and smoked, his eyes darting. What's the difference between these two hands? There was no difference. Maybe the girl is schizophrenic, I said, and he looked at me as if maybe I were the one. It's a horror movie, he said. I know.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
from the art of war:stichomancy
my adversary to pursue and crush me; it would be far better to encourage my men to deliver a bold counter-attack, and use the advantage thus gained to free myself from the enemy's toils." See the story of Ts`ao Ts`ao, VII. ss. 35, note.]
10. Reduce the hostile chiefs by inflicting damage on them;
[Chia Lin enumerates several ways of inflicting this injury, some of which would only occur to the Oriental mind:--"Entice away the enemy's best and wisest men, so that he may be left without counselors. Introduce traitors into his country, that the government policy may be rendered futile. Foment intrigue and deceit, and thus sow dissension between the ruler and his
10. Reduce the hostile chiefs by inflicting damage on them;
[Chia Lin enumerates several ways of inflicting this injury, some of which would only occur to the Oriental mind:--"Entice away the enemy's best and wisest men, so that he may be left without counselors. Introduce traitors into his country, that the government policy may be rendered futile. Foment intrigue and deceit, and thus sow dissension between the ruler and his
Friday, August 6, 2010
The way my father told it,
cousin Alan
was a gunshot wound
through the back of his stomach.
Ant Karen
was a smoker. She died
last winter
without our noticing. No one had seen her
for years. She died
in a condo
somewhere in Florida,
where she left her parents
to arrange the funeral
chairs. My mother had turned to me
and said this,
in the parking lot outside
Salvation Army.
When the fuse went out
with a bang, then
a flare of light,
It felt as if the sun
had exploded
off the upstairs porch
where We were all smoking cigarettes,
and Alex
was drunk and sprawled
across the floorboards. Will
was claiming to have seen God
in the moment of the flash.
The power stayed out for hours,
and the sun died
its usual, casual death
while the house could not turn itself
back on and so
The house grew thick,
then quiet.
cousin Alan
was a gunshot wound
through the back of his stomach.
Ant Karen
was a smoker. She died
last winter
without our noticing. No one had seen her
for years. She died
in a condo
somewhere in Florida,
where she left her parents
to arrange the funeral
chairs. My mother had turned to me
and said this,
in the parking lot outside
Salvation Army.
When the fuse went out
with a bang, then
a flare of light,
It felt as if the sun
had exploded
off the upstairs porch
where We were all smoking cigarettes,
and Alex
was drunk and sprawled
across the floorboards. Will
was claiming to have seen God
in the moment of the flash.
The power stayed out for hours,
and the sun died
its usual, casual death
while the house could not turn itself
back on and so
The house grew thick,
then quiet.
stepping into a quiet space
outside the library this afternoon
was the smell of salamander
and the familiar voice inside
my electronic communications box
held to my ear.
The picnic benches were wet then.
It must have rained
while I was in the bathroom.
And earlier a woman had folded out
a book
for me to look at
and she
had talked of maps and the art
of map-making. We were poets, you see,
her and I.
An arrangment of peacocks
was placed against the wall to my right,
her left.
She knew I would be leaving, she said,
she was also going away.
She would have to return
and she also knew
I had no placemats left
to return to, and that
alongside all of these things
and even supposing the existence
of a various assortment
of other, unseen things,
there is still this afternoon
outside the library to attend to.
And there will be tomorrow afternoon
to attend to as well as the next afternoon
after that.
was the smell of salamander
and the familiar voice inside
my electronic communications box
held to my ear.
The picnic benches were wet then.
It must have rained
while I was in the bathroom.
And earlier a woman had folded out
a book
for me to look at
and she
had talked of maps and the art
of map-making. We were poets, you see,
her and I.
An arrangment of peacocks
was placed against the wall to my right,
her left.
She knew I would be leaving, she said,
she was also going away.
She would have to return
and she also knew
I had no placemats left
to return to, and that
alongside all of these things
and even supposing the existence
of a various assortment
of other, unseen things,
there is still this afternoon
outside the library to attend to.
And there will be tomorrow afternoon
to attend to as well as the next afternoon
after that.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
On Sylvia Plath
Her voice floats out through the speakers and she does not sound how I imagined she would. She sounds like a parakeet. She sounds cheerful, even. I imagine her nose by the way she speaks, all I can think of is the shape of her nose. The sound of her voice is the shape of a nose or she speaks through her nose. The interviewer asks his questions slowly and his voice is like a cup of half-cold coffee or a dark bed sheet. The orange cat wishes I would scratch her head. I always feel guilty when they ask to be pet, like they shouldn't have to ask in the first place since I'm the only one that keeps them here. But the orange one always wants me to scratch her head when I am at the green desk. She likes the sound of typing. Maybe when she hears my hands typing all she can think about is what the typing sound would feel like behind her ears, like me with the interview and the sound of her nose. The grey cat comes to see me when I lie down on my lumpy bed and it is usually much easier to be courteous with her. The whole time i was listening to her voice and the man asking questions, I was trying to write down my dream. I have been trying to document all of my dreams and mark them so that one day I will have the most marvelous collection of my dreams and everything will all of a sudden make sense. Maybe I will find how I've been telling the future all the time for everyone, and they'll all be marked by date so that no one can say I'm just making things up now in my old age. But when I heard her voice I couldn't remember any of the dream anymore. I couldn't get past the first sentence and even after In turned the interview off I couldn't remember a thing. It had been a long stringy dream, marvelously odd and complex. I had been excitedto document it but now I haven't even a sketch of it. The trick is to tell someone out loud about it if you aren't going to write it down right away but I mucked it up and it was all because of that nose and that cold coffee voice too asking which foot she leaned her weight on as she stretched across the Atlantic. It was a horrible metaphor but she eventually said that she talked like an American and all I could think was that she talked like a nose even when she was bringing up torture and her voice was not at all what I had pictured it being.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Some men think they never forget anything but they are wrong. They always forget things and they usually only say that they never do when they have forgotten something and are being indignant about it.
That was the first time I ever saw a fresh water otter, that was in Chincoteague island. There are alligators here they say and I have never seen them. I have never eaten alligator but last night on the back porch at a birthday party a few boys went talking about alligator meat. It was a point of comparison to how eating armadillo is similar to alligator in a way, only there is the shell still there with the meat hanging off. I guess the only part of the alligator anyone is supposed to eat is the tail. Its the fleshiest bit they said. It all came about because there was a possum running across the fence right beforehand and then he climbed a thin branch into a tree in the next yard over and just stayed there forever looking at us. The boys said an armadillo is the same thing as a possum only it has armour and lives in Florida and gets run over a lot more. One of them said that a possum can travel across a river by walking under it. They just hold their breath. I asked if anyone had ever eaten turtle soup becuase my father had once eaten turtle soup and I have never eaten anything, not even duck. The one boy who brought up armadillos said no he would never eat a turtle because turtles are his spirit animal. I wonder who decides these things and how people get so funny about them. I told him about my russian tortoise Fiona Apple and how my dad had accidentally frozen to death the russian tortoise I'd had before that. He had been hibernating her through the winter. It was a honest mistake. My father grew up raising turtles. He also ate one in a soup onetime.
Just then a tall skinny rake of a guy walked onto the porch and I thought I was seeing things. I'd been in love with him once over a cup of coffee. He didn't know me but he knew my friends. I'd had to run off to class. I'd been rambling on like a crazy person, I was trying so hard to make him love me. I made an utter fool of myself when he asked me my name on the porch. He didn't remember of, course, but I did and I'd written a poem and the lines of it spilled out of my mouth before I could think better of it. I've met you before and we were outside and you were eating chocolate cake and you'd said it used to be from Costco but it wasn't anymore and I was talking about a guy who was buried with bells in his coffin because he was afraid he might be buried before he was really dead and he wanted to be able to get out again. He stopped and unfocused his eyes like he was thinking who that guy might have been and I said you couldn't think of who it was, which was also true. Then I asked one of the other boys if they had a hard bit of identification that I could use to go break into my house for a minute and grab my cigarettes. Someone gave me a sonic card and I hopped off on my bike. I had to leave immediately after that and I thought about not coming back at all but I did. I stayed and talked to everyone and had my cigarettes, thank god. And the rake looked at me sometimes but I couldn't speak to him directly after that. On the front porch he stared at me with his hands on his knees the way another man had done when I was in Italy and waiting outside the cafe for my girlfriends to finish buying icecream and wishing I had a cigarette. I was looking around at people and decided that this man with the grey hair was peculiarly attractive and he was having a conversation so I didn't think he'd notice me watching him but he did. I looked away when he noticed but had to turn back eventually and this went on for a while. I think he wasn't sure if I was watching him now or if he was watching me. Then the girls came out and we started walking over to the van one of our teachers had brought us there in and the man must have ran around behind me because he popped up ahead of me and turned around as he was walking and just stared straight at me to see if I would stare back and I did. I never saw him again. That was the way the rake looked at me on the front porch around 3 in the morning and I tried to stare back without twitching but I did twitch a few times. I still stared back for the most part and I just had to leave after that without saying goodbye.
That was the first time I ever saw a fresh water otter, that was in Chincoteague island. There are alligators here they say and I have never seen them. I have never eaten alligator but last night on the back porch at a birthday party a few boys went talking about alligator meat. It was a point of comparison to how eating armadillo is similar to alligator in a way, only there is the shell still there with the meat hanging off. I guess the only part of the alligator anyone is supposed to eat is the tail. Its the fleshiest bit they said. It all came about because there was a possum running across the fence right beforehand and then he climbed a thin branch into a tree in the next yard over and just stayed there forever looking at us. The boys said an armadillo is the same thing as a possum only it has armour and lives in Florida and gets run over a lot more. One of them said that a possum can travel across a river by walking under it. They just hold their breath. I asked if anyone had ever eaten turtle soup becuase my father had once eaten turtle soup and I have never eaten anything, not even duck. The one boy who brought up armadillos said no he would never eat a turtle because turtles are his spirit animal. I wonder who decides these things and how people get so funny about them. I told him about my russian tortoise Fiona Apple and how my dad had accidentally frozen to death the russian tortoise I'd had before that. He had been hibernating her through the winter. It was a honest mistake. My father grew up raising turtles. He also ate one in a soup onetime.
Just then a tall skinny rake of a guy walked onto the porch and I thought I was seeing things. I'd been in love with him once over a cup of coffee. He didn't know me but he knew my friends. I'd had to run off to class. I'd been rambling on like a crazy person, I was trying so hard to make him love me. I made an utter fool of myself when he asked me my name on the porch. He didn't remember of, course, but I did and I'd written a poem and the lines of it spilled out of my mouth before I could think better of it. I've met you before and we were outside and you were eating chocolate cake and you'd said it used to be from Costco but it wasn't anymore and I was talking about a guy who was buried with bells in his coffin because he was afraid he might be buried before he was really dead and he wanted to be able to get out again. He stopped and unfocused his eyes like he was thinking who that guy might have been and I said you couldn't think of who it was, which was also true. Then I asked one of the other boys if they had a hard bit of identification that I could use to go break into my house for a minute and grab my cigarettes. Someone gave me a sonic card and I hopped off on my bike. I had to leave immediately after that and I thought about not coming back at all but I did. I stayed and talked to everyone and had my cigarettes, thank god. And the rake looked at me sometimes but I couldn't speak to him directly after that. On the front porch he stared at me with his hands on his knees the way another man had done when I was in Italy and waiting outside the cafe for my girlfriends to finish buying icecream and wishing I had a cigarette. I was looking around at people and decided that this man with the grey hair was peculiarly attractive and he was having a conversation so I didn't think he'd notice me watching him but he did. I looked away when he noticed but had to turn back eventually and this went on for a while. I think he wasn't sure if I was watching him now or if he was watching me. Then the girls came out and we started walking over to the van one of our teachers had brought us there in and the man must have ran around behind me because he popped up ahead of me and turned around as he was walking and just stared straight at me to see if I would stare back and I did. I never saw him again. That was the way the rake looked at me on the front porch around 3 in the morning and I tried to stare back without twitching but I did twitch a few times. I still stared back for the most part and I just had to leave after that without saying goodbye.
Friday, July 16, 2010
A Traveling Apology
A Traveling Apology:
“I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work.”- Thomas Edison
We have hijacked a train unknowingly. We stay calm and no one kills us. I have washed my hair. We are only babies. We have reached Orte and passed on the first class biscotti. What more can be asked? I am not asking.
May 30th, 2010
“Oh my land/ it ain’t beneath me/ cause I got my head in the sand/ Oh my land”
–Dr. Dog
Buddha said it is better to live one moment in the way beyond the way. It is always better to live one moment. Jacobi said Ancona is the only city in the world where the sun rises from the hills and sets into the ocean. This happens in June and only in June. In Ancona we see the ocean, the hills, the sun, the sunset, the sunrise...but we do not see this! It is May 30th.
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes”- Lewis Carroll
A peacock has said its ok. She will remember this now the rest of her life. She will learn to make a right angle. He was speaking to me through a buffer of six. It’s the eye contact that gives him away, always away. It took six people between us to say anything more about it. He was right, always right. I tried to say anything back without saying anything but it can be so very difficult to talk back to a peacock.
“If you get one hundred percent of mud on you, you turn into a mud monster.” –Gus Varallo
I was once a mud monster too, kid; stuck in the mud in my own backyard, kicking the dirt for feeding me dirt. Everyone loses a shoe or two eventually. If you never lose a shoe, you get stuck in your shoes. You become a shoe monster, which is much worse. A shoe monster cannot wash the shoes off its feet, not even with a power hose!
“Maybe she go/ Maybe she don’t go/ Many time she afraid to go/ many, she do go”
–Odetta
You can tell a bird from a bat because a bat’s wings are in constant motion. A bird flaps its wings three or four times before coasting, and then coasts, and then flaps its wings again. If you throw a rock in the air with enough momentum, a bat will detect the motion and chase it. The bird will not.
On Sheepishness
A sheep cannot shave itself. If it could do you think that it would? Do you think it would learn how to knit itself a sweater?
“Dreadfully sorry/ Apple scrumping/ born in a war/ birthday punching”- The Who
If you are clever no one will ask you the wrong question at the wrong time or when you do not have an answer either, or else if they do by the time you answer they will already have forgotten the question. This is only if you are clever, though.
“I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one—hit me” –Jay-Z
I dream we are all on vacation. We wander off and we get a little lost. We end up in what they call a “bar-bar”, the most authentic bar on the trip, so they say. I get a coffee and the waitress says Americans like peanut butter in their coffee and would I like that? I say yes and yes it is delicious. I tip the waitress ninety cents.
“Keep on with the living/ you’ll soon enough be dead”—Dr. Dog
We are entering Roma and we are going to be fine. We are reading the signs and unclenching our thigh muscles.
“You can call me crazy/ you can call me anything you like...even rivers ask for rain”
–Dr. Dog
How strange they are: the shapes of trees separating through a window. The anxious motion of the train feeling anxious and about to vomit. A thing held in will often pass.
Piazza del Gesu: Naples, Italy
“Did she wake you up to tell you that/ it was only a change of plans”—Neil Young
We decide we will go to Napoli. We will ride the train to Napoli. We will get off the first train in Roma. We will get on a train we think goes to Napoli in Roma. We will decide it does not go to Napoli and we will get off. Someone opens the window. We will decide it does go to Napoli and we will get back on. We will end up in Napoli, down a row of skyscrapers. An old man walks us a mile to the metro. He counts the stops out on his fingers, saying every stop before and then: Mergellina, Mergellina. He flies down the staircase. We try to show him our tongues where they’ve gone numb. We try to thank him.
“And the promise of finding a cat you can count on is more than just reading the comics.”—F.D. Reeve
The awnings were all coming down around us. The street pajamas, which had not sold were being pulled & roped into cardboard boxes. The fish were being washed and boxed. Their heads were being all cut off. We ended up in a room of bunk beds. We bumped eachother’s heads. We washed our feet off in the ocean.
Il Grotto Azure (Capri)
A man lays back flat against me through a tunnel & we end up in a cave.
The bluest water in the world is half-green.
Pompeii
“Nor can I go on, without a reflection on those accidental meetings, which, though they happen every day, seldom excite our surprize but upon some extraordinary occasion...How many seeming accidents must unite before we can be cloathed or fed.”
—The Vicar of Wakefield
We are going to Pompeii to see the people who died there; to go into their houses. I do not say I have met these people once before; that I have stood in their kitchens on a grass carpet and seen a purple flower growing there, as a lizard skitters quickly to the wall.
Napoli: Piazza del Gesu (& beyond)
“No, I don’t need no doctor/ to tear me all apart”—Dr. Dog
L’Oriental University is where they learn the languages, says the travel agent we meet outside a bar called Blue Moon. He wants to move to America, maybe he can live with me? To go there forever, that is my dream. He watches MTV. There is no money. It is my home. But the money here is no good. The most important moment in history of Napoli is this church. This is a church and a monastery. Across the street is a Tabacchi machine. I feed the machine five euro and it spits out a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Ostello Mergellina
“The radio was blasting/ someone’s knocking at the door/ I’m lookin’ at my girlfriend/ She’s passed out on the floor/ I’ve seen so many things I ain’t ever seen before”- Odetta
Old folks (I am guessing) from a home sit in a row. Their backs and the backs of their chairs watching Italian soap operas, sit in the lobby of our “Ostello Mergellina”. The espresso machine drops a cup down but misses the cup with the spoon. A pigeon is heard murmuring through a halfway opened window. The two girls spend an hour pushing buttons for a Coca-Cola.
Il Grotto Azure
“but its calm under the waves/ in the blue of my oblivion”—Fiona Apple
Inside the cave a man rows the boat in a memorized pattern; lazy, slow. He is singing an operetta. His voice booms and echoes around us. Il Grotto Azure is half-green.
The train to Pompei
The train to Pompei is staying put. It sits around and does not leave. At every station they play the same song. It is in English and it has one verse. The verse goes: “I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok/ I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok.”
--So what was the big crisis?
Mergellina
“And what you thought was a hurricane/ was just the rustling of the wind”—Dr. Dog
In Mergellina we find the Ostello hidden inside a hill and through a tunnel. Inside it is orange. I think of Max and everything is orange. The window does not open. The door never really locks. We live in a room of bunk beds. We collect our bed sheets at the front desk. It is a relief that everything is orange.
Spoleto
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”—Pablo Picasso
Before we leave Spoleto, we are walking down the hill. A bird’s nest is lying in the road. I want to show it to my father and tell him how I found it here. I want him to see the lightning bugs that come out at night all along the path to get here. I hide the bird’s nest in the bushes off the road.
“I’ve been around a long time/ It’s more than I can say/ I’ve searched for the truth/ I’m looking today” -Odetta
I forget to buy apples for the horses. If the horses were cows they would eat stale bread. They would love it. We could stand at the fence for hours. If you just stand still enough, they will always come up to you.
“The engine of curiosity is a lack of knowledge” –Brett Lott
I’ve seen them scared off so many times. They can’t take the rapid movements. You should stop moving. You should become quiet and listen.
Dear Bob,
“You skinned my cat and donned it!”—ferry tanka
I have brought your sweater somewhere it’s never been to before. I have worn it there. I have thought of you.
Dear Bob,
Have you been very alone there, Bob? Would you tell me honestly if you were? I can’t see into your room from here.
Sincerely,
What do you think of when you think of me, Bob? I won’t ask you. There is this one question I have tired of answering here, though. No one believes me. Some of them are answering for me and they are answering wrong but I won’t say it. You know me, Bob. I guess I didn’t want them to know, Bob. Every time they ask the question they think they do not know me yet. They are so very innocent then and I can’t lie to them so it kills me. They ask and I answer. They say why kind of, why really? I pinch my arms.
“And you found another way to tell the truth”—The Morning Benders
I want to be a fox again and also for you to be here. I want to go home and I want the house to be swallowed in a black hole and be gone forever. I want to wipe things clean. I want to forget things. But there are things I would like to remember!
On the train to Feligno
“My voice is climbing walls/ its smoking and I want love”- Jeff Tweedy
I want to feel my own bones and organs with my own un-washed hands. I want the high pitched bell on this train to stop singing. I want to know what your plan is, William. I want to know if you have one. I want to be the cat I see in Mergellina, walking towards us as if out of the sea across the rocks & like a sea-cat.
In the bathroom on the train to Feligno:
I am a cigarette smoker
“Out of my brain on the 5:15” –The Who
Cigarette smokers are restless & cigarettes rest together in packs of twenty on shelves in convenience stores. The stores can be easily found; there is at least one on almost every street that anyone has ever been on. Cigarette smokers spend their money on cigarettes, maybe for this, but maybe for the nicotine, and maybe just to appear a bit more like a dragon.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work.”- Thomas Edison
We have hijacked a train unknowingly. We stay calm and no one kills us. I have washed my hair. We are only babies. We have reached Orte and passed on the first class biscotti. What more can be asked? I am not asking.
May 30th, 2010
“Oh my land/ it ain’t beneath me/ cause I got my head in the sand/ Oh my land”
–Dr. Dog
Buddha said it is better to live one moment in the way beyond the way. It is always better to live one moment. Jacobi said Ancona is the only city in the world where the sun rises from the hills and sets into the ocean. This happens in June and only in June. In Ancona we see the ocean, the hills, the sun, the sunset, the sunrise...but we do not see this! It is May 30th.
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes”- Lewis Carroll
A peacock has said its ok. She will remember this now the rest of her life. She will learn to make a right angle. He was speaking to me through a buffer of six. It’s the eye contact that gives him away, always away. It took six people between us to say anything more about it. He was right, always right. I tried to say anything back without saying anything but it can be so very difficult to talk back to a peacock.
“If you get one hundred percent of mud on you, you turn into a mud monster.” –Gus Varallo
I was once a mud monster too, kid; stuck in the mud in my own backyard, kicking the dirt for feeding me dirt. Everyone loses a shoe or two eventually. If you never lose a shoe, you get stuck in your shoes. You become a shoe monster, which is much worse. A shoe monster cannot wash the shoes off its feet, not even with a power hose!
“Maybe she go/ Maybe she don’t go/ Many time she afraid to go/ many, she do go”
–Odetta
You can tell a bird from a bat because a bat’s wings are in constant motion. A bird flaps its wings three or four times before coasting, and then coasts, and then flaps its wings again. If you throw a rock in the air with enough momentum, a bat will detect the motion and chase it. The bird will not.
On Sheepishness
A sheep cannot shave itself. If it could do you think that it would? Do you think it would learn how to knit itself a sweater?
“Dreadfully sorry/ Apple scrumping/ born in a war/ birthday punching”- The Who
If you are clever no one will ask you the wrong question at the wrong time or when you do not have an answer either, or else if they do by the time you answer they will already have forgotten the question. This is only if you are clever, though.
“I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one—hit me” –Jay-Z
I dream we are all on vacation. We wander off and we get a little lost. We end up in what they call a “bar-bar”, the most authentic bar on the trip, so they say. I get a coffee and the waitress says Americans like peanut butter in their coffee and would I like that? I say yes and yes it is delicious. I tip the waitress ninety cents.
“Keep on with the living/ you’ll soon enough be dead”—Dr. Dog
We are entering Roma and we are going to be fine. We are reading the signs and unclenching our thigh muscles.
“You can call me crazy/ you can call me anything you like...even rivers ask for rain”
–Dr. Dog
How strange they are: the shapes of trees separating through a window. The anxious motion of the train feeling anxious and about to vomit. A thing held in will often pass.
Piazza del Gesu: Naples, Italy
“Did she wake you up to tell you that/ it was only a change of plans”—Neil Young
We decide we will go to Napoli. We will ride the train to Napoli. We will get off the first train in Roma. We will get on a train we think goes to Napoli in Roma. We will decide it does not go to Napoli and we will get off. Someone opens the window. We will decide it does go to Napoli and we will get back on. We will end up in Napoli, down a row of skyscrapers. An old man walks us a mile to the metro. He counts the stops out on his fingers, saying every stop before and then: Mergellina, Mergellina. He flies down the staircase. We try to show him our tongues where they’ve gone numb. We try to thank him.
“And the promise of finding a cat you can count on is more than just reading the comics.”—F.D. Reeve
The awnings were all coming down around us. The street pajamas, which had not sold were being pulled & roped into cardboard boxes. The fish were being washed and boxed. Their heads were being all cut off. We ended up in a room of bunk beds. We bumped eachother’s heads. We washed our feet off in the ocean.
Il Grotto Azure (Capri)
A man lays back flat against me through a tunnel & we end up in a cave.
The bluest water in the world is half-green.
Pompeii
“Nor can I go on, without a reflection on those accidental meetings, which, though they happen every day, seldom excite our surprize but upon some extraordinary occasion...How many seeming accidents must unite before we can be cloathed or fed.”
—The Vicar of Wakefield
We are going to Pompeii to see the people who died there; to go into their houses. I do not say I have met these people once before; that I have stood in their kitchens on a grass carpet and seen a purple flower growing there, as a lizard skitters quickly to the wall.
Napoli: Piazza del Gesu (& beyond)
“No, I don’t need no doctor/ to tear me all apart”—Dr. Dog
L’Oriental University is where they learn the languages, says the travel agent we meet outside a bar called Blue Moon. He wants to move to America, maybe he can live with me? To go there forever, that is my dream. He watches MTV. There is no money. It is my home. But the money here is no good. The most important moment in history of Napoli is this church. This is a church and a monastery. Across the street is a Tabacchi machine. I feed the machine five euro and it spits out a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Ostello Mergellina
“The radio was blasting/ someone’s knocking at the door/ I’m lookin’ at my girlfriend/ She’s passed out on the floor/ I’ve seen so many things I ain’t ever seen before”- Odetta
Old folks (I am guessing) from a home sit in a row. Their backs and the backs of their chairs watching Italian soap operas, sit in the lobby of our “Ostello Mergellina”. The espresso machine drops a cup down but misses the cup with the spoon. A pigeon is heard murmuring through a halfway opened window. The two girls spend an hour pushing buttons for a Coca-Cola.
Il Grotto Azure
“but its calm under the waves/ in the blue of my oblivion”—Fiona Apple
Inside the cave a man rows the boat in a memorized pattern; lazy, slow. He is singing an operetta. His voice booms and echoes around us. Il Grotto Azure is half-green.
The train to Pompei
The train to Pompei is staying put. It sits around and does not leave. At every station they play the same song. It is in English and it has one verse. The verse goes: “I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok/ I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok.”
--So what was the big crisis?
Mergellina
“And what you thought was a hurricane/ was just the rustling of the wind”—Dr. Dog
In Mergellina we find the Ostello hidden inside a hill and through a tunnel. Inside it is orange. I think of Max and everything is orange. The window does not open. The door never really locks. We live in a room of bunk beds. We collect our bed sheets at the front desk. It is a relief that everything is orange.
Spoleto
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”—Pablo Picasso
Before we leave Spoleto, we are walking down the hill. A bird’s nest is lying in the road. I want to show it to my father and tell him how I found it here. I want him to see the lightning bugs that come out at night all along the path to get here. I hide the bird’s nest in the bushes off the road.
“I’ve been around a long time/ It’s more than I can say/ I’ve searched for the truth/ I’m looking today” -Odetta
I forget to buy apples for the horses. If the horses were cows they would eat stale bread. They would love it. We could stand at the fence for hours. If you just stand still enough, they will always come up to you.
“The engine of curiosity is a lack of knowledge” –Brett Lott
I’ve seen them scared off so many times. They can’t take the rapid movements. You should stop moving. You should become quiet and listen.
Dear Bob,
“You skinned my cat and donned it!”—ferry tanka
I have brought your sweater somewhere it’s never been to before. I have worn it there. I have thought of you.
Dear Bob,
Have you been very alone there, Bob? Would you tell me honestly if you were? I can’t see into your room from here.
Sincerely,
What do you think of when you think of me, Bob? I won’t ask you. There is this one question I have tired of answering here, though. No one believes me. Some of them are answering for me and they are answering wrong but I won’t say it. You know me, Bob. I guess I didn’t want them to know, Bob. Every time they ask the question they think they do not know me yet. They are so very innocent then and I can’t lie to them so it kills me. They ask and I answer. They say why kind of, why really? I pinch my arms.
“And you found another way to tell the truth”—The Morning Benders
I want to be a fox again and also for you to be here. I want to go home and I want the house to be swallowed in a black hole and be gone forever. I want to wipe things clean. I want to forget things. But there are things I would like to remember!
On the train to Feligno
“My voice is climbing walls/ its smoking and I want love”- Jeff Tweedy
I want to feel my own bones and organs with my own un-washed hands. I want the high pitched bell on this train to stop singing. I want to know what your plan is, William. I want to know if you have one. I want to be the cat I see in Mergellina, walking towards us as if out of the sea across the rocks & like a sea-cat.
In the bathroom on the train to Feligno:
I am a cigarette smoker
“Out of my brain on the 5:15” –The Who
Cigarette smokers are restless & cigarettes rest together in packs of twenty on shelves in convenience stores. The stores can be easily found; there is at least one on almost every street that anyone has ever been on. Cigarette smokers spend their money on cigarettes, maybe for this, but maybe for the nicotine, and maybe just to appear a bit more like a dragon.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
bill bryson:here nor there/ a sense of place
a sense of place:
Shapiro: ...but the other thing is that Seinfeld had a bit about the show being about nothing. Now I mean this in the most complimentary way: Is there a similar thread in your work?
I have a kind of travel I do which is very limited. I'm a motel traveler. And if you have a really successful book, then you get really pigeon-holed because publishers want you to do the exact same book, part two.
One of the things I find most gratifying about what I do is once you really get into a subject you reach a point where you're almost insatiable in your curiosity. You just want to know more.
...I really like the idea of setting off and just walking. I'm pretty sure that I'll never tire of that.
Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and recieving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset...
All human beings do essentially the same things everywhere on the planet. We all eat and drink and procreate and watch a little TV in the evening. And yet, there's such a variety of ways in doing these things. And I love that.
I don't think travel is the least bit broadening unless you want it to be.
Part of the reason English is such a great language for humor is that there are so many opportunites for puns. Words have so many different meanings and how you arrange them is particularly fruitful in that way.
Neither Here Nor There:
Hammerfest
...I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself a source of merriment for the world, and I had come close to scaling new heights with a Russian hat.
Sometimes I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands on my knees and just gazed about me. Often I talked to myself. Mostly I went for long, cold, walks...
Oslo
I don't want to know what people are talking about...Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
"And you have sex with all these creatures, do you?" the host was saying.
Paris
In halting french you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter.
Brussels
I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, "You want to go where?" The center of Brussels? Boy, are you lost. This is Lille, you dumb shit."
Belgium
I did just that and never once saw a street I wouldn't want to live on, a bar I wouldn't like to get to know, a view I wouldn't wish to call my own.
Shapiro: ...but the other thing is that Seinfeld had a bit about the show being about nothing. Now I mean this in the most complimentary way: Is there a similar thread in your work?
I have a kind of travel I do which is very limited. I'm a motel traveler. And if you have a really successful book, then you get really pigeon-holed because publishers want you to do the exact same book, part two.
One of the things I find most gratifying about what I do is once you really get into a subject you reach a point where you're almost insatiable in your curiosity. You just want to know more.
...I really like the idea of setting off and just walking. I'm pretty sure that I'll never tire of that.
Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and recieving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset...
All human beings do essentially the same things everywhere on the planet. We all eat and drink and procreate and watch a little TV in the evening. And yet, there's such a variety of ways in doing these things. And I love that.
I don't think travel is the least bit broadening unless you want it to be.
Part of the reason English is such a great language for humor is that there are so many opportunites for puns. Words have so many different meanings and how you arrange them is particularly fruitful in that way.
Neither Here Nor There:
Hammerfest
...I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself a source of merriment for the world, and I had come close to scaling new heights with a Russian hat.
Sometimes I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands on my knees and just gazed about me. Often I talked to myself. Mostly I went for long, cold, walks...
Oslo
I don't want to know what people are talking about...Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
"And you have sex with all these creatures, do you?" the host was saying.
Paris
In halting french you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter.
Brussels
I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, "You want to go where?" The center of Brussels? Boy, are you lost. This is Lille, you dumb shit."
Belgium
I did just that and never once saw a street I wouldn't want to live on, a bar I wouldn't like to get to know, a view I wouldn't wish to call my own.
group morale
"It felt so magical I couldn't help myself from singing and lighting cigarettes on fire while running figure eights down the street."
We had been on the euroline for what felt like fifteen hours but probably came closer to five. Maria and I turned to Kim (whose idea the whole trip had been) and began to wonder aloud about her trip-planning skills. So what do you really know about Naples? We wondered in her general direction..."Nothing!!",(as if for her to know anything was a gross and innapropriate expectation) she returned, "It was in the guide book." Are we there yet? we began to wonder out loud in five minute intervals. "I think its the next stop," Kim said, at least three times, before ceasing to answer. Naples was not the next stop, nor the next next stop, nor the next next next stop after that, but we kept up our questioning without the hope for an answer.
Two or so hours later, after passing a beautiful ocean surrounded by promising hilly cities which we all assumed must be Naples or very nearly Naples (but as it turned out were not Naples), we arrived at a stop overlooking the Industrial Revolution of Italy gone awry.
"Ah, and here we are in the city of Naples," joked Maria. We all laughed and turned to look out the window in jest, only to see the sign which silenced our giggles and confirmed our darkest fears. Welcome to Naples, said the sign...only it didn't say Welcome to Naples, it just said Napoli (in a desolate manner).
We consulted our euro line pamphlets. This was the last stop on the rail. We were here. We turned to Kim. "I dont know!" She shouted.
Warily, we exited the train. It was around 6 o clock. Somehow, we had believed we would arrive in Naples shortly after 3 pm, where surely, a youth hostel would inevitably appear directly across from the train station...where we would conveniently drop our things and jet off into the city. Coming out of the station into the hazy light of Napoli, we were immediately and narrowly avoided by a stream of cars and pedestrians; a current which streamed constant through the trash filled streets. "This is great," I said, "its like New York." Maria and Kim had either hopped the first train back to Spoleto or had fallen into a resigned silence behind me, so I lit a cigarette. "Well then, where to?"
"Maybe we should find a place to stay," Kim (the travel agent) suggested.
We looked directly in front of us, where our place to stay was supposed to be as it had genially been in the last Italian city we had mistakenly visited, but there was no hostel, hotel, or enterable builidng facing back at us. "We'll find something," I said in my most assured tone. With Kim obviously in defeat, I was resolved to now pretend to know my way around Naples. In a pinch I can be great at pretending to know things I do not know about a person,restaurant, event or town until some kind of desirable outcome occurs. Often this requires some minor, less desirable events as well, but in my experience, things usually work out. The key is to not give up, and often, to not let on either.
Soon enough a squat man riding a motorcycle pulled up and offered us assistance. The good thing about being an American girl in a non-American city is that you are frequently very obviously American and often everyone assumes you are lost. This is good because you usually are. We told the squat man we were looking for a place to stay. He looked a bit discouragingly at us before instructing us to meet him three stores back down, on the opposite side of the street, assuring us that he would pull around on his bike and have a friend make a call for us. He owned a bed and breakfast, and for a minute I wondered if his job was involved poaching clients from off the street (those looking desperately lost around station Garibaldi). Unfortunately, the B&B was booked to capacity.
I started off down the street, following his directions, when I heard Kim making strange guttural noises behind me. "Whats up, Kim?" I asked, "We're in your dream city." "I don't think this is a good idea," she murmured into her handbag. "Do you have a better one I asked?" (not at all peeved). "I think we should just walk down the street back at the stop light," she said. This would have been fine if I did not feel a horrible, horrible guilt in promising anything to complete strangers without fulfilling that promise. I lie to my friends and family all the time; strangers, however, I hold in higher regard, especially old men, especially old men who ride motorcycles, and this one had been all three. The concensus was that we would go it alone, however, and I was not about to start an argument now, when team spirit was already dwindling. "Ok, Nicoteam!" I shouted thinking we could all stick our cigarettes into a huddle before taking off farther into the abyss but my hoo-rah was met with half-laughs and drudgery. Instead we quickly turned down a side street and I instructed the others that we were now in hiding from the old man and anyone who happened to catch his eye would be responisble for the immense shame such an occasion would cast down upon us all.
We proceeded down a series of narrow streets that did not look promising in terms of finding a place to stay, but which did look vastly more interesting. This change in course may have been my fault. The first thing immediately apparent about Naples, is that everyone owned a motorcycle. Everyone. Teenage girls, old men, grandmothers, theives, all on motorbike and maybe about to hit you.
We had been on the euroline for what felt like fifteen hours but probably came closer to five. Maria and I turned to Kim (whose idea the whole trip had been) and began to wonder aloud about her trip-planning skills. So what do you really know about Naples? We wondered in her general direction..."Nothing!!",(as if for her to know anything was a gross and innapropriate expectation) she returned, "It was in the guide book." Are we there yet? we began to wonder out loud in five minute intervals. "I think its the next stop," Kim said, at least three times, before ceasing to answer. Naples was not the next stop, nor the next next stop, nor the next next next stop after that, but we kept up our questioning without the hope for an answer.
Two or so hours later, after passing a beautiful ocean surrounded by promising hilly cities which we all assumed must be Naples or very nearly Naples (but as it turned out were not Naples), we arrived at a stop overlooking the Industrial Revolution of Italy gone awry.
"Ah, and here we are in the city of Naples," joked Maria. We all laughed and turned to look out the window in jest, only to see the sign which silenced our giggles and confirmed our darkest fears. Welcome to Naples, said the sign...only it didn't say Welcome to Naples, it just said Napoli (in a desolate manner).
We consulted our euro line pamphlets. This was the last stop on the rail. We were here. We turned to Kim. "I dont know!" She shouted.
Warily, we exited the train. It was around 6 o clock. Somehow, we had believed we would arrive in Naples shortly after 3 pm, where surely, a youth hostel would inevitably appear directly across from the train station...where we would conveniently drop our things and jet off into the city. Coming out of the station into the hazy light of Napoli, we were immediately and narrowly avoided by a stream of cars and pedestrians; a current which streamed constant through the trash filled streets. "This is great," I said, "its like New York." Maria and Kim had either hopped the first train back to Spoleto or had fallen into a resigned silence behind me, so I lit a cigarette. "Well then, where to?"
"Maybe we should find a place to stay," Kim (the travel agent) suggested.
We looked directly in front of us, where our place to stay was supposed to be as it had genially been in the last Italian city we had mistakenly visited, but there was no hostel, hotel, or enterable builidng facing back at us. "We'll find something," I said in my most assured tone. With Kim obviously in defeat, I was resolved to now pretend to know my way around Naples. In a pinch I can be great at pretending to know things I do not know about a person,restaurant, event or town until some kind of desirable outcome occurs. Often this requires some minor, less desirable events as well, but in my experience, things usually work out. The key is to not give up, and often, to not let on either.
Soon enough a squat man riding a motorcycle pulled up and offered us assistance. The good thing about being an American girl in a non-American city is that you are frequently very obviously American and often everyone assumes you are lost. This is good because you usually are. We told the squat man we were looking for a place to stay. He looked a bit discouragingly at us before instructing us to meet him three stores back down, on the opposite side of the street, assuring us that he would pull around on his bike and have a friend make a call for us. He owned a bed and breakfast, and for a minute I wondered if his job was involved poaching clients from off the street (those looking desperately lost around station Garibaldi). Unfortunately, the B&B was booked to capacity.
I started off down the street, following his directions, when I heard Kim making strange guttural noises behind me. "Whats up, Kim?" I asked, "We're in your dream city." "I don't think this is a good idea," she murmured into her handbag. "Do you have a better one I asked?" (not at all peeved). "I think we should just walk down the street back at the stop light," she said. This would have been fine if I did not feel a horrible, horrible guilt in promising anything to complete strangers without fulfilling that promise. I lie to my friends and family all the time; strangers, however, I hold in higher regard, especially old men, especially old men who ride motorcycles, and this one had been all three. The concensus was that we would go it alone, however, and I was not about to start an argument now, when team spirit was already dwindling. "Ok, Nicoteam!" I shouted thinking we could all stick our cigarettes into a huddle before taking off farther into the abyss but my hoo-rah was met with half-laughs and drudgery. Instead we quickly turned down a side street and I instructed the others that we were now in hiding from the old man and anyone who happened to catch his eye would be responisble for the immense shame such an occasion would cast down upon us all.
We proceeded down a series of narrow streets that did not look promising in terms of finding a place to stay, but which did look vastly more interesting. This change in course may have been my fault. The first thing immediately apparent about Naples, is that everyone owned a motorcycle. Everyone. Teenage girls, old men, grandmothers, theives, all on motorbike and maybe about to hit you.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
the start of a film...
one: would you like to know what im gonna do with my future?
two: yes...
one: so would i !
two: yes...
one: so would i !
Friday, July 2, 2010
text from last night: john-its-ma-birthday
Sooo, remember a charming black guy you met last night at Upper Deck?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
art history 101
dearest dearest edward darley boit, dearest dearest edward darley boit and all your daughters and john singer sargent. i am not in love with you, daughters of edward darley boit. I am not in love with you.
whistler nocturne in black and gold, art for arts sake
whistler arrangement in balck and grey, WHISTLER, YOUR MOTHER!
moulin de la galete, moulin de la galet, le dejeuner sur l'herbe manet
the temptation of saint anthony, cezanne, seven apples, great bathers, great bathers
whistler nocturne in black and gold, art for arts sake
whistler arrangement in balck and grey, WHISTLER, YOUR MOTHER!
moulin de la galete, moulin de la galet, le dejeuner sur l'herbe manet
the temptation of saint anthony, cezanne, seven apples, great bathers, great bathers
Friday, June 25, 2010
beside me is beside me is:
Beside me is beside me is:
An oblong canoe and beside it
a walking man’s trousers, bright blue.
On the diamond of a toad’s back
is it sizzling in a pan of oil—
but smoother torn slightly at the edge;
my parents first house in Hanover,
Massachusetts.
A pigeon sheds its feathers,
brown as dirt is brown;
it lives on a cigarette burn,
a porcelain cow for pouring creamer,
& jumping back— it is not fur.
Covered with small holes & filled with hair,
(a white line through the center of me)
I am Drums, The James Library & Up the Staircase;
a shoe made for the left foot,
I have worn on the right.
A pilgrimage of ants crossing the gravel walkway,
empties itself into a snail shell:
And here is the shag rug, smelling of mold,
the brim of a gentleman’s hat as it curtsies,
& spoons at her ice cream
alone on the stone of a fountain, a penny drop, dropping:
Here is myself as a child or a once-was.
A man who was once, Once-Was
My Great Great Great Grandfather
riding by me on a motorcycle.
Who is bigger than this house?
He is smoking his pipe.
He is bigger than this house smoking
a cigar outside the pastry shop.
(& drunk around noon)
(& wrinkling the newspaper)
He cannot understand, (his now being a horse)
How business day floats
down the sheets
(not made of bricks, not made of anything)
more than this old blue cow
in the middle of my plains, chewing silent
straight through
the white cud, a feather cap
line center.
An oblong canoe and beside it
a walking man’s trousers, bright blue.
On the diamond of a toad’s back
is it sizzling in a pan of oil—
but smoother torn slightly at the edge;
my parents first house in Hanover,
Massachusetts.
A pigeon sheds its feathers,
brown as dirt is brown;
it lives on a cigarette burn,
a porcelain cow for pouring creamer,
& jumping back— it is not fur.
Covered with small holes & filled with hair,
(a white line through the center of me)
I am Drums, The James Library & Up the Staircase;
a shoe made for the left foot,
I have worn on the right.
A pilgrimage of ants crossing the gravel walkway,
empties itself into a snail shell:
And here is the shag rug, smelling of mold,
the brim of a gentleman’s hat as it curtsies,
& spoons at her ice cream
alone on the stone of a fountain, a penny drop, dropping:
Here is myself as a child or a once-was.
A man who was once, Once-Was
My Great Great Great Grandfather
riding by me on a motorcycle.
Who is bigger than this house?
He is smoking his pipe.
He is bigger than this house smoking
a cigar outside the pastry shop.
(& drunk around noon)
(& wrinkling the newspaper)
He cannot understand, (his now being a horse)
How business day floats
down the sheets
(not made of bricks, not made of anything)
more than this old blue cow
in the middle of my plains, chewing silent
straight through
the white cud, a feather cap
line center.
Roberto Forieri, TI AMO (final?)
Roberto Forieri, TI AMO
Roberto Forieri, TI AMO is written over
a grey patch of paint, washed over
the ochre stone of a Spoleto apartment,
as if to rub away what’s underneath.
Here some lover of Roberto Forieri
has dated him 09-10-2009,
a new born scrawled into an ancient city.
Around the corner above the iron-gated archway
of a small brick church; the fresco
--a term meaning freshly and quickly
painted— rubs the sleep from its eyes.
Nightly is the nun there, coming quickly.
She climbs her ladder up to face it, sponge in hand.
She returns each night to scrub the faces;
her hands circling slowly across the stone forever.
Until one day the Virgin Mary appears without a nostril,
then only one eye, then none at all.
She recedes into the instinct of a thin black line,
the four men who stand on either side; their faces too
rubbed thoroughly.
The one who stands nearest her, holding his brow still, a vague trace
of earlobe in his old age. He turns to abstraction for meaning,
while the smallest remains on the wall, freshly painted—
a child whose household, a painted stone,
is disappearing or elsewhere returning.
It leaves you here. It leaves you,
a fixed stare,
a blue iris.
Roberto Forieri, TI AMO is written over
a grey patch of paint, washed over
the ochre stone of a Spoleto apartment,
as if to rub away what’s underneath.
Here some lover of Roberto Forieri
has dated him 09-10-2009,
a new born scrawled into an ancient city.
Around the corner above the iron-gated archway
of a small brick church; the fresco
--a term meaning freshly and quickly
painted— rubs the sleep from its eyes.
Nightly is the nun there, coming quickly.
She climbs her ladder up to face it, sponge in hand.
She returns each night to scrub the faces;
her hands circling slowly across the stone forever.
Until one day the Virgin Mary appears without a nostril,
then only one eye, then none at all.
She recedes into the instinct of a thin black line,
the four men who stand on either side; their faces too
rubbed thoroughly.
The one who stands nearest her, holding his brow still, a vague trace
of earlobe in his old age. He turns to abstraction for meaning,
while the smallest remains on the wall, freshly painted—
a child whose household, a painted stone,
is disappearing or elsewhere returning.
It leaves you here. It leaves you,
a fixed stare,
a blue iris.
John Ashberry: Paradoxes and Oxymorons
Paradoxes and Oxymoronsby John Ashbery
John Ashbery
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
John Ashbery
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
At the upper deck II
At the upper deck, I tell Ankit its not my hat & be careful.
Back then,
we were looking for anything
we could get away with--connect four, pretzels,
pizza, fries,a car ride,
a finger puppet, a downtown movie theater,
anything we could fit
inside a backpack.
But as it turns out the bingo jokes
are mostly bad
and even if you do win its embarrassing.
In the hall today is a postcard, stamps,
unturned & then slipped over.
The space of a thumbtack
points out where the keys weren't put.
In between existing then and not then
existing now,
I get lost in the folds of my own skin.
I forget how to build even a sentence.
I wake up to find my legs are missing,
that my whole family went down to the North River
and drowned.
They'd forgotten how to swim.
And I notice my own legs are missing.
And I notice a weight in my hand.
Back then,
we were looking for anything
we could get away with--connect four, pretzels,
pizza, fries,a car ride,
a finger puppet, a downtown movie theater,
anything we could fit
inside a backpack.
But as it turns out the bingo jokes
are mostly bad
and even if you do win its embarrassing.
In the hall today is a postcard, stamps,
unturned & then slipped over.
The space of a thumbtack
points out where the keys weren't put.
In between existing then and not then
existing now,
I get lost in the folds of my own skin.
I forget how to build even a sentence.
I wake up to find my legs are missing,
that my whole family went down to the North River
and drowned.
They'd forgotten how to swim.
And I notice my own legs are missing.
And I notice a weight in my hand.
Someone's dead and we're all sad about it II
But we move apartments and adopt new pets.
We forget things.
The onetime your dog bites the head off a turtle,
you don't hate the dog for it.
After seventeen years in the same position, they tell you
it is now safe to move about the cabin
& the bent spine of things calls for a stretch,
you move limbs you forgot were yours.
But the thing is they aren't finished with you yet.
Over the megaphone they are calling your name,
they are calling us back to our seats, they are saying come back, come back
we have refreshments,
How could you leave so strong a hut?
come back, let us buckle you in
but then again when weren't they,
...Was there not always this?
a turbulence, a blind pacing dark,
the kind of laughter no one talks about,
a kind of label barely sticking to a tincan, a brief glimpse,
your tongue against its ceiling, also blind,
bicycle spokes spitting across a screen,
and the lights coming up.
We forget things.
The onetime your dog bites the head off a turtle,
you don't hate the dog for it.
After seventeen years in the same position, they tell you
it is now safe to move about the cabin
& the bent spine of things calls for a stretch,
you move limbs you forgot were yours.
But the thing is they aren't finished with you yet.
Over the megaphone they are calling your name,
they are calling us back to our seats, they are saying come back, come back
we have refreshments,
How could you leave so strong a hut?
come back, let us buckle you in
but then again when weren't they,
...Was there not always this?
a turbulence, a blind pacing dark,
the kind of laughter no one talks about,
a kind of label barely sticking to a tincan, a brief glimpse,
your tongue against its ceiling, also blind,
bicycle spokes spitting across a screen,
and the lights coming up.
A poem to You: We, You & I
Four of Cups (Luxury), when reversed: New and unusual relationships and opportunities. The reawakening of your appetite for life or love. The path of excess leading to spiritual rejuvenation and the appearance of novel ambitions.
Love is a shelf where I've kept you in pickle-juice,
next to a sign which says please
next to a sign which reads do not touch.
When I applied to be your piano teacher,
it felt as if no one was watching it happen.
You named the chords.
I swung at the minor lift.
It was a duel of-sorts we turned our backs on
and left like a body rolled in sand.
I purchased a ticket to another city & flew there.
I arrived alone and said little
of the large white elephant that stood in the walkway, the lobby,
the pitiless smell in the hall.
Everyone I knew was heading off to work.
No one would hire me to play your piano.
No one would tell me the names of instruments,
a continuous silence played on the radio.
I was trying to remember the name of your city.
I was thinking I could get a job, ask for a transfer, show up
shuffling around in my purse--
they needed me here, i could say
when I happened to see you
and under my breath--
you needed me.
Love is a shelf where I've kept you in pickle-juice,
next to a sign which says please
next to a sign which reads do not touch.
When I applied to be your piano teacher,
it felt as if no one was watching it happen.
You named the chords.
I swung at the minor lift.
It was a duel of-sorts we turned our backs on
and left like a body rolled in sand.
I purchased a ticket to another city & flew there.
I arrived alone and said little
of the large white elephant that stood in the walkway, the lobby,
the pitiless smell in the hall.
Everyone I knew was heading off to work.
No one would hire me to play your piano.
No one would tell me the names of instruments,
a continuous silence played on the radio.
I was trying to remember the name of your city.
I was thinking I could get a job, ask for a transfer, show up
shuffling around in my purse--
they needed me here, i could say
when I happened to see you
and under my breath--
you needed me.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
"muscles conracted by muscles, pulling in opposite directions, and every property balanced by another of a contrary nature"
"as to liberty it is difficult to say in what it really consists. men having not yet affixed any precise idea to the word."
"what a european would call liberty, a cherokke indian would consider as a most cruel restraint."
..."an imaginary state of nature in which men are supposed to have lived without control" (16)
britain 17 18 "we should have nothing more to do, than to pay when called upon, and obey when commanded."
"poverty incites industry and industry is the mother of health and contentment."
"that no one can justly complain of an injury he never suffered"
"but independence, cries the american: what have you to say against independence?"
"as it would be dishonourable, and even wicked, to evade the duties laid by our own laws, and for the support of our own government."
"as to liberty it is difficult to say in what it really consists. men having not yet affixed any precise idea to the word."
"what a european would call liberty, a cherokke indian would consider as a most cruel restraint."
..."an imaginary state of nature in which men are supposed to have lived without control" (16)
britain 17 18 "we should have nothing more to do, than to pay when called upon, and obey when commanded."
"poverty incites industry and industry is the mother of health and contentment."
"that no one can justly complain of an injury he never suffered"
"but independence, cries the american: what have you to say against independence?"
"as it would be dishonourable, and even wicked, to evade the duties laid by our own laws, and for the support of our own government."
francis hopkinson...on quarreling
"and like other authors, to depend more on a fortuitous possession of the public caprice than on the intrinsic methods of my own performance"
..."is a device to render it not only expressive of an author's narrative, opinions, or arguments; but also of the peculiarities of his temper and the vivacity of his feelings."
"his project is only calculated to ascertain the fortes and pianos, and various slides of the human voice in speaking; whereas mine is contrived to designate the fortes and pianos, and various slides of the temper in writing."
"a person in a fright or in passion, exerts his lungs according to the quantum of terror or rage with which he is affected."
[double pica italics]
..."everyone striving to be heard in preference by a superior magnitude of types."
"there is no looking at the first page of the daily advertiser without imagining a number of people hallowing and bawling to you to buy their goods or lands, to charter their ships, or to inform you that a servant or serf or horse hath strayed away"...i turn over to the articles of intelligence as quick as possible lest my eyes should be stunned by the ocular uproar of the first page"
"and at last the contest swells up to Rascal, Villain, Coward in five line pica; which is indeed as far as the art of printing or a modern quarrel can conveniently go."
"it will satisfy me if my scheme should be adopted and found useful."
pg. 187 -sir john
..."as if the author stood at the door of his edifice, calling out to everyone to enter and partake of the entertainment he has prepared; and some even scream out their invitation in red letters."
"For what, alas! are a few Capitals and Italics in the hands of a vigorous author?"* ..."and yet these are the only typographical emphatics now in use."
pg. 189
"I hereby give public notice (in English Roman N. I) that having nothing else to do, and having no wife or child to lament the consequences of my folly, I propose to take up any gentleman's discontent, animosity or affront, and to conduct the same in public contest against his adversary as far as Great Primer, or even French Canon, but not further, without the special leave of the original proprietor of the quarrel, provided."
..."not without sanguine hopes that it may prove the lucky hit I have been so long pursuing, and procure me that public renown and popular favour, which, hitherto, I have in vain laboured to acquire.
"dont be alarmed: i am not going to discuss this intricate subject at large; I wonder how I got so far into it: I have neither leisure, inclination, or ability to pursue it." (jefferson)
pg 202- guilty/ not guilty
pg 210 fairness
america "i believe this is more owing to to the abilities and integrity of their judges than to the infallinility of their system. A bad judge might be a curse to the people, without directly violating the legal rules of his official conduct."
..."more upon their national character than their form of government" (jefferson leaves president off his tombstone)
222- begotted
"inexorable bigotry and rooted superstition lock up the doors of knowledge and preclude reformation"
pg 223 (american famer)
pg 14
..."is a device to render it not only expressive of an author's narrative, opinions, or arguments; but also of the peculiarities of his temper and the vivacity of his feelings."
"his project is only calculated to ascertain the fortes and pianos, and various slides of the human voice in speaking; whereas mine is contrived to designate the fortes and pianos, and various slides of the temper in writing."
"a person in a fright or in passion, exerts his lungs according to the quantum of terror or rage with which he is affected."
[double pica italics]
..."everyone striving to be heard in preference by a superior magnitude of types."
"there is no looking at the first page of the daily advertiser without imagining a number of people hallowing and bawling to you to buy their goods or lands, to charter their ships, or to inform you that a servant or serf or horse hath strayed away"...i turn over to the articles of intelligence as quick as possible lest my eyes should be stunned by the ocular uproar of the first page"
"and at last the contest swells up to Rascal, Villain, Coward in five line pica; which is indeed as far as the art of printing or a modern quarrel can conveniently go."
"it will satisfy me if my scheme should be adopted and found useful."
pg. 187 -sir john
..."as if the author stood at the door of his edifice, calling out to everyone to enter and partake of the entertainment he has prepared; and some even scream out their invitation in red letters."
"For what, alas! are a few Capitals and Italics in the hands of a vigorous author?"* ..."and yet these are the only typographical emphatics now in use."
pg. 189
"I hereby give public notice (in English Roman N. I) that having nothing else to do, and having no wife or child to lament the consequences of my folly, I propose to take up any gentleman's discontent, animosity or affront, and to conduct the same in public contest against his adversary as far as Great Primer, or even French Canon, but not further, without the special leave of the original proprietor of the quarrel, provided."
..."not without sanguine hopes that it may prove the lucky hit I have been so long pursuing, and procure me that public renown and popular favour, which, hitherto, I have in vain laboured to acquire.
"dont be alarmed: i am not going to discuss this intricate subject at large; I wonder how I got so far into it: I have neither leisure, inclination, or ability to pursue it." (jefferson)
pg 202- guilty/ not guilty
pg 210 fairness
america "i believe this is more owing to to the abilities and integrity of their judges than to the infallinility of their system. A bad judge might be a curse to the people, without directly violating the legal rules of his official conduct."
..."more upon their national character than their form of government" (jefferson leaves president off his tombstone)
222- begotted
"inexorable bigotry and rooted superstition lock up the doors of knowledge and preclude reformation"
pg 223 (american famer)
pg 14
Sunday, April 25, 2010
pat & jessica
Clear Chat History
12:07pmPatrick
lady
y must i allow myself to go so crazy
12:09pmMe
ON THE INTERNET
WHAT THE SHIT ARE YOU DOING
12:10pmPatrick
laying around smelling my own pits with the bubba child
12:10pmMe
o course
12:10pmPatrick
what in heavens are u up to?
12:10pmMe
why you bee reclusin'?
i have to go do school work in a minute
im eating rice soaked in beet juice
12:10pmPatrick
hmmmmm
i want ot take a beet juice bath
12:10pmMe
you can come over and we could get high before i go if you want
i want to beet a bath into juice12:12pmPatrick
whats the difference in bath water and human tea?
i dont think anything
12:13pmMe
i think the difference is one you don't drink usually or pour milk into
yea i would never want my human tea to be tainted by milk
do u have coffee?
12:07pmPatrick
lady
y must i allow myself to go so crazy
12:09pmMe
ON THE INTERNET
WHAT THE SHIT ARE YOU DOING
12:10pmPatrick
laying around smelling my own pits with the bubba child
12:10pmMe
o course
12:10pmPatrick
what in heavens are u up to?
12:10pmMe
why you bee reclusin'?
i have to go do school work in a minute
im eating rice soaked in beet juice
12:10pmPatrick
hmmmmm
i want ot take a beet juice bath
12:10pmMe
you can come over and we could get high before i go if you want
i want to beet a bath into juice12:12pmPatrick
whats the difference in bath water and human tea?
i dont think anything
12:13pmMe
i think the difference is one you don't drink usually or pour milk into
yea i would never want my human tea to be tainted by milk
do u have coffee?
Friday, April 23, 2010
uh oh
My father spent most of each day in his office.
at around nine thirty in the evening,
He would suddenly remember the broke ignition
in a car he’d owned for thirteen years.
He would take five or so short trips a day
from his office to the coffee pot in the kitchen & back.
and he spent the summer in a corner of our backyard.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he would sometimes string my brother to the ceiling fan,
and toss him his meals while he spun in a circle.
Then one year there was this pale grey that came
and just hung all over everything.
There was just this pale grey cracking eggs over the sink.
And Eventually we had to do it in. At the dinner table one night
it was passed around & chewed--My mother
going slightly red at the mention of apple juice,
was stringing our baby teeth onto a thin chain,
While crouched in the privacy of smallness,
I was pocketing an unkempt phrasing of things;
"Shirtsleeves pinned their cuffs up on the clothesline!" I shouted to no one in particular.
"While the pine trees shook their fists at us!" I said while I shook my fists.
And We pushed our feet down through it! down through the lazy earthworm smell of it, down damp into the very mud of it!
And It was so altogether there, so lovely and alive--
I tell you,
it was better than a saffron curtain!
at around nine thirty in the evening,
He would suddenly remember the broke ignition
in a car he’d owned for thirteen years.
He would take five or so short trips a day
from his office to the coffee pot in the kitchen & back.
and he spent the summer in a corner of our backyard.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he would sometimes string my brother to the ceiling fan,
and toss him his meals while he spun in a circle.
Then one year there was this pale grey that came
and just hung all over everything.
There was just this pale grey cracking eggs over the sink.
And Eventually we had to do it in. At the dinner table one night
it was passed around & chewed--My mother
going slightly red at the mention of apple juice,
was stringing our baby teeth onto a thin chain,
While crouched in the privacy of smallness,
I was pocketing an unkempt phrasing of things;
"Shirtsleeves pinned their cuffs up on the clothesline!" I shouted to no one in particular.
"While the pine trees shook their fists at us!" I said while I shook my fists.
And We pushed our feet down through it! down through the lazy earthworm smell of it, down damp into the very mud of it!
And It was so altogether there, so lovely and alive--
I tell you,
it was better than a saffron curtain!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
my father each day in the office III,
My father spent most of each day in his office.
He held the door closed with his teeth.
At around nine in the evening,
he would suddenly remember a broke ignition
or a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
there were squirrels pressing on the floorboards. Somewhere out in Michigan
a winter’s hitch hike kept a revolver in the glove apartment.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string,
and tossed him his meals.
I saw him there, a long while after.
He was a pale grey, cracking eggs over the sink.
We passed him around & chewed--
My mother,
going slightly red at the mention of apple juice,
was stringing our baby teeth onto a thin chain,
while I was crouched in the privacy of my smallness,
pocketing an unkempt phrasing of things;
Shirtsleeves pinned their cuffs upon the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists at us.
We pushed our feet into the mud of it.
A rain swept lazily,
the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
He held the door closed with his teeth.
At around nine in the evening,
he would suddenly remember a broke ignition
or a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
there were squirrels pressing on the floorboards. Somewhere out in Michigan
a winter’s hitch hike kept a revolver in the glove apartment.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string,
and tossed him his meals.
I saw him there, a long while after.
He was a pale grey, cracking eggs over the sink.
We passed him around & chewed--
My mother,
going slightly red at the mention of apple juice,
was stringing our baby teeth onto a thin chain,
while I was crouched in the privacy of my smallness,
pocketing an unkempt phrasing of things;
Shirtsleeves pinned their cuffs upon the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists at us.
We pushed our feet into the mud of it.
A rain swept lazily,
the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
my father each day in the office II
My father,
who spent most of each day in his office,
held the door closed with his teeth.
At around nine in the evening,
he would suddenly remember a broke ignition
or a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
squirrels pressing on the floorboards, somewhere out in Michigan
where a winter’s hitch hike kept a revolver in the glove apartment.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string,
watched him spin a perfect circle and tossed him his meals.
I saw him there,
cracking eggs over the sink, a long while after.
He was a pale grey. We passed him around & chewed--
My mother going slightly red
at the mention of apple juice,
she was stringing our baby teeth onto a chain.
In the privacy of my smallness,
I pocketed an unkempt phrasing of things;
Shirtsleeves pinning themselves to the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists.
We pushed our feet into the mud of it.
A rain swept lazily,
the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
who spent most of each day in his office,
held the door closed with his teeth.
At around nine in the evening,
he would suddenly remember a broke ignition
or a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
squirrels pressing on the floorboards, somewhere out in Michigan
where a winter’s hitch hike kept a revolver in the glove apartment.
In order to prove an existence of sorts,
he strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string,
watched him spin a perfect circle and tossed him his meals.
I saw him there,
cracking eggs over the sink, a long while after.
He was a pale grey. We passed him around & chewed--
My mother going slightly red
at the mention of apple juice,
she was stringing our baby teeth onto a chain.
In the privacy of my smallness,
I pocketed an unkempt phrasing of things;
Shirtsleeves pinning themselves to the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists.
We pushed our feet into the mud of it.
A rain swept lazily,
the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
my father each day in the office
My father, each day in the office,
held in his teeth
a broke ignition,
a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
Michigan squirrels
pressing on our floorboards,
a winter’s hitch hike & thumbs,
a denim jacket.
We braized him together with a little steel wire,
we bent & watched him,
spinned him a perfect circle.
When nothing was expected to arrive most afternoons,
we strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string.
We knew where he was at all times.
Cracking eggs over the sink in the privacy of my smallness,
I saw him there, a long while after.
He was a pale grey we passed around & chewed solemnly,
My mother going slightly red
at the mention of apple juice,
our porcelain teeth strung on a chain,
an unkempt phrasing of things.
She did not throw her arms out,
Or tuck her hands away.
Pinning our shirtsleeves to the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists at us,
and a rain swept the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
We hung each other up like soaked linen.
We pushed our feet our from under it (hunge achother up and soaked our linen to the bones)
In soaked linen, bones
held in his teeth
a broke ignition,
a car he’d owned for thirteen years,
Michigan squirrels
pressing on our floorboards,
a winter’s hitch hike & thumbs,
a denim jacket.
We braized him together with a little steel wire,
we bent & watched him,
spinned him a perfect circle.
When nothing was expected to arrive most afternoons,
we strung my brother to the ceiling fan with string.
We knew where he was at all times.
Cracking eggs over the sink in the privacy of my smallness,
I saw him there, a long while after.
He was a pale grey we passed around & chewed solemnly,
My mother going slightly red
at the mention of apple juice,
our porcelain teeth strung on a chain,
an unkempt phrasing of things.
She did not throw her arms out,
Or tuck her hands away.
Pinning our shirtsleeves to the clothesline,
while the pine trees shook their fists at us,
and a rain swept the damp smell of earthworms through the yard.
We hung each other up like soaked linen.
We pushed our feet our from under it (hunge achother up and soaked our linen to the bones)
In soaked linen, bones
a foolish poem
The foolish & constant forgetting of endings—
“paintings are almost like breathing organisms—“
says Frank Kossa, “they respond to everything around them”
in my 11:00 handwriting—
Sometimes I think I should just live with women
is Annie Hall, interrupting,
from the VCR we found in an alley
one night
after a sandwich and beer
at the bar,
Now a lifetime ago it seems-- A bowler hat
I saw once through a window & the glass strewn across the linoleum—
the hands my hands have emptied into & the cat
once again & already half asleep.
“paintings are almost like breathing organisms—“
says Frank Kossa, “they respond to everything around them”
in my 11:00 handwriting—
Sometimes I think I should just live with women
is Annie Hall, interrupting,
from the VCR we found in an alley
one night
after a sandwich and beer
at the bar,
Now a lifetime ago it seems-- A bowler hat
I saw once through a window & the glass strewn across the linoleum—
the hands my hands have emptied into & the cat
once again & already half asleep.
late for an appointment at 4:30
Late for an appointment at 4:30, while David Bowie sings ‘rock & roll suicide’
I like to drive over bridges,
drive underwater through fishes,
and coral is the name of a rotting tube
of lipstick.
Here he is a boy still, dancing
across the street to find my friends and lose them
Twice before they’re found again-
drunk down the aisles of a CVS
where you can buy wine after the bars are closed, make strange decisions
while we laugh and pull another lever, find the one
that has a lighter & spend too much time between
the brands of cigars. (Big decisions, these). Long & full
sway in the big easy
notions of it big & easy
danced across the street. Another hour
we can forget to be hungry
and hangover our laps, look silly at one another
in a big red hat at karaoke singing david bowie, david bowie
& time takes a cigarette.
I like to drive over bridges,
drive underwater through fishes,
and coral is the name of a rotting tube
of lipstick.
Here he is a boy still, dancing
across the street to find my friends and lose them
Twice before they’re found again-
drunk down the aisles of a CVS
where you can buy wine after the bars are closed, make strange decisions
while we laugh and pull another lever, find the one
that has a lighter & spend too much time between
the brands of cigars. (Big decisions, these). Long & full
sway in the big easy
notions of it big & easy
danced across the street. Another hour
we can forget to be hungry
and hangover our laps, look silly at one another
in a big red hat at karaoke singing david bowie, david bowie
& time takes a cigarette.
is is always this way, isn't it?
it is always this way, isn't it?
this morning i read jack lemmin was born in an elevator. before that i watched the front page. i didn't sleep, but could have. it is always this way, isn't it? i smoked a cigarette in the snow and pondered a fake-stone turtle on the back porch balcony- his plaster face peeking out from the snow on a rail. i pulled a red coat towards my chin. has it ever been any other way?, i asked the tortoise but he did not say a word, not even shivering. you are stronger than i, i said, pulling the door closed and wrapping the butt in a napkin. what hadn't been packed yet?...too much, I’d forget. i came in loud, i left loud
and in between, i slept. i did not think of leaving.
this morning i read jack lemmin was born in an elevator. before that i watched the front page. i didn't sleep, but could have. it is always this way, isn't it? i smoked a cigarette in the snow and pondered a fake-stone turtle on the back porch balcony- his plaster face peeking out from the snow on a rail. i pulled a red coat towards my chin. has it ever been any other way?, i asked the tortoise but he did not say a word, not even shivering. you are stronger than i, i said, pulling the door closed and wrapping the butt in a napkin. what hadn't been packed yet?...too much, I’d forget. i came in loud, i left loud
and in between, i slept. i did not think of leaving.
i forgot i'd even known his name & definitions
I forgot I’d even known his name & definitions
My new name is Lucy, see,
its written on my Starbucks cup
(large, black, a skinny girl wearing a thick coat,
singing) I remember Mama & my new name is Lucy,
my old name is saw
dust on the basement floor—a miniature chair & table.
Matt Aizenstadt drove his car with the windows down all the way and the heat on full blast— Norwell, Massachusetts—
Matt Aizenstadt smoked cigarettes and thought about swinging a bat. (swinging, practice, swinging, polo, marco, polo) on the fourth of july, green sloped on a hill and today
when my new name is Lucy, & I’ve just remembered today it felt
up to the plate and swinging.
My new name is Lucy, see,
its written on my Starbucks cup
(large, black, a skinny girl wearing a thick coat,
singing) I remember Mama & my new name is Lucy,
my old name is saw
dust on the basement floor—a miniature chair & table.
Matt Aizenstadt drove his car with the windows down all the way and the heat on full blast— Norwell, Massachusetts—
Matt Aizenstadt smoked cigarettes and thought about swinging a bat. (swinging, practice, swinging, polo, marco, polo) on the fourth of july, green sloped on a hill and today
when my new name is Lucy, & I’ve just remembered today it felt
up to the plate and swinging.
here's where i asked for modernity
Here’s where I asked for modernity and was handed a damp tuna sandwich in a zip lock bag:
The next time I hear the sound of paper crinkling I’ll have moved away and failed an IQ test. I’ve just remembered a bathroom cabinet where I tucked a glass jar of cigarette ash beneath a stack of unused bath towels—a button in the coat of Massachusetts, & very little time—
a marble statue of an elephant, Ganesha, lord of obstacles. If I am trying to trick you then don’t eat the cheese. This red hat is my favorite American product & it does it matter if I meant it— the severed goat’s hoof is a real hoof or a fake hoof— but the severed goat’s hoof is also an ashtray.
I watched her as she leaned to blow pot smoke into the ear of a dog. Eventually, the dog moved away— it was her sister’s dog anyway.
The other day we met within six feet of a fountain & we were drinking coffee. You held a piece of chocolate cake—said it wasn’t from Costco but it used to be.
I said There’s this guy I can never remember who was afraid he’d be buried alive— he wore bells on both his shoes and he had bells rigged in his coffin. He’d been a scientist, maybe, a history book type—
And you tried to remember his name with your eyes closed so I thought maybe we were in love
but I was wondering why I’d thought of death, then, too.
The next time I hear the sound of paper crinkling I’ll have moved away and failed an IQ test. I’ve just remembered a bathroom cabinet where I tucked a glass jar of cigarette ash beneath a stack of unused bath towels—a button in the coat of Massachusetts, & very little time—
a marble statue of an elephant, Ganesha, lord of obstacles. If I am trying to trick you then don’t eat the cheese. This red hat is my favorite American product & it does it matter if I meant it— the severed goat’s hoof is a real hoof or a fake hoof— but the severed goat’s hoof is also an ashtray.
I watched her as she leaned to blow pot smoke into the ear of a dog. Eventually, the dog moved away— it was her sister’s dog anyway.
The other day we met within six feet of a fountain & we were drinking coffee. You held a piece of chocolate cake—said it wasn’t from Costco but it used to be.
I said There’s this guy I can never remember who was afraid he’d be buried alive— he wore bells on both his shoes and he had bells rigged in his coffin. He’d been a scientist, maybe, a history book type—
And you tried to remember his name with your eyes closed so I thought maybe we were in love
but I was wondering why I’d thought of death, then, too.
half a thought on clockwork
Half a thought on clockwork
two maybes scamper in a field
as i lie in between things. i look up from under them.
i am soil. i am grass. i am air. i am feet.
(& do not ask me how many)
i know all these people, they tell me
tick tock tick tock.
they turn to each other and they say tick tock tick tock.
i sit in between them. i lay down and pat my sleeping bag.
at night i dream my love into smithereens--
i wake up an unoriginal thought
and no new words—
is this life now the old life has died? i would ask frank o'hara and his love,
but (how cruel) to expect an answer, (how cruel), even, to answer.
the cuckoo bird never asks the time but the cuckoo bird never shows up late.
the cuckoo bird isn't even a bird, really & i am soil.
i am grass. i am air. i am feet.
(do not ask me have many,
how many, or how).
two maybes scamper in a field
as i lie in between things. i look up from under them.
i am soil. i am grass. i am air. i am feet.
(& do not ask me how many)
i know all these people, they tell me
tick tock tick tock.
they turn to each other and they say tick tock tick tock.
i sit in between them. i lay down and pat my sleeping bag.
at night i dream my love into smithereens--
i wake up an unoriginal thought
and no new words—
is this life now the old life has died? i would ask frank o'hara and his love,
but (how cruel) to expect an answer, (how cruel), even, to answer.
the cuckoo bird never asks the time but the cuckoo bird never shows up late.
the cuckoo bird isn't even a bird, really & i am soil.
i am grass. i am air. i am feet.
(do not ask me have many,
how many, or how).
things i have not said in cold weather
Things I have not said in cold weather
i didn’t shout at him or shake my head as i was leaving,
when he said he’s tried it again, i drew
sharks & airplanes on bits of paper. made jokes.
make jokes, for the love of god, make jokes.
it was the best remedy for everything, including gout
and back pain—so my analyst wants to be a photographer…
& there is a book i saw
we'd parked the car at the beach and debated
whether the sand was really snow or the snow
was really sand & we left without agreeing the world was blue
and whipping at our throats,
but it was. In new york the cold caught up
inside us & the cigarettes are too much.
so we ran out quickly, jonathan & i.
jonathan who lives in a basement,
in a room without a door & across the street is park slope
gourmet deli—& the curtain rod keeps falling down,
so we ran out quickly.
they cut a line down my father's face
and they'd called it a cancer & they cut it out quickly—
consider a run, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, depressing
he says- ridiculous. move into these stretched
& useless arms. they call you up & no one answers.
so we ran out quickly after that-- should've seen you & i'm sorry.
to avoid all talk of babies & make bad jokes
as i'm leaving, i sleep late & through goodbyes. i leave things
behind. i dont blame you. i should've met you in the city that night & i'm sorry
but maybe not so sorry as I’d like to be & I’m sorry..
they cut a line down my father's face.
There was a bird skimming the water & the water
& the world was grey,
he says, depressing and i make bad jokes about leaving
things behind me. it is hard to be here and always leaving.
help me build a dog in the snow & this is important,
i'll say, when you want to go in. we'll sleep foot to head
in a room with no door & i'll leave before the snow dog melts,
say, I’ve missed the party for the third time. say I tried
to get there and couldn’t find it. say hello to ankit
when he’s drunk at the bar & eventually, I’ll go to touch you
& you will go rolling
backwards through the chairs but I’ll understand it is hard
to be anywhere & always leaving.
i didn’t shout at him or shake my head as i was leaving,
when he said he’s tried it again, i drew
sharks & airplanes on bits of paper. made jokes.
make jokes, for the love of god, make jokes.
it was the best remedy for everything, including gout
and back pain—so my analyst wants to be a photographer…
& there is a book i saw
we'd parked the car at the beach and debated
whether the sand was really snow or the snow
was really sand & we left without agreeing the world was blue
and whipping at our throats,
but it was. In new york the cold caught up
inside us & the cigarettes are too much.
so we ran out quickly, jonathan & i.
jonathan who lives in a basement,
in a room without a door & across the street is park slope
gourmet deli—& the curtain rod keeps falling down,
so we ran out quickly.
they cut a line down my father's face
and they'd called it a cancer & they cut it out quickly—
consider a run, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, depressing
he says- ridiculous. move into these stretched
& useless arms. they call you up & no one answers.
so we ran out quickly after that-- should've seen you & i'm sorry.
to avoid all talk of babies & make bad jokes
as i'm leaving, i sleep late & through goodbyes. i leave things
behind. i dont blame you. i should've met you in the city that night & i'm sorry
but maybe not so sorry as I’d like to be & I’m sorry..
they cut a line down my father's face.
There was a bird skimming the water & the water
& the world was grey,
he says, depressing and i make bad jokes about leaving
things behind me. it is hard to be here and always leaving.
help me build a dog in the snow & this is important,
i'll say, when you want to go in. we'll sleep foot to head
in a room with no door & i'll leave before the snow dog melts,
say, I’ve missed the party for the third time. say I tried
to get there and couldn’t find it. say hello to ankit
when he’s drunk at the bar & eventually, I’ll go to touch you
& you will go rolling
backwards through the chairs but I’ll understand it is hard
to be anywhere & always leaving.
someones dead & we're all sad about it
Someone's dead and we're all sad about it
But we forget things, you know, we move apartments and adopt new pets.
Like the onetime, your dog bites the head off a turtle and you don't hate the dog for it.
We went to school for this kind of thing. we went to school for so long we forgot where we went
before that & no one sells directions on walking backwards or through one another--
you learned the year in a song, maybe, you got sick a few times
& you stayed home...
did they let you eat soup in the big bed? did you watch the daytime soaps?
you weren't sick a few times & you still stayed home, did they let you eat soup
in the big bed, then?...or did they know and make you wash the dishes?
When no one was home would you break eggs over the sink and run
the yoke between your fingers
until it broke?
did you think of slug puddles?
mucus?...
or where you would put the shells?
But we forget things, you know, we move apartments and adopt new pets.
Like the onetime, your dog bites the head off a turtle and you don't hate the dog for it.
We went to school for this kind of thing. we went to school for so long we forgot where we went
before that & no one sells directions on walking backwards or through one another--
you learned the year in a song, maybe, you got sick a few times
& you stayed home...
did they let you eat soup in the big bed? did you watch the daytime soaps?
you weren't sick a few times & you still stayed home, did they let you eat soup
in the big bed, then?...or did they know and make you wash the dishes?
When no one was home would you break eggs over the sink and run
the yoke between your fingers
until it broke?
did you think of slug puddles?
mucus?...
or where you would put the shells?
odetta & tomorrow is a long time
Odetta & Tomorrow is a long time
love is a shelf where i've kept you preserved,
next to a sign which says please
do not touch.
i applied to be your piano teacher
and you taught me to play the piano.
we said little of the time apart.
we said little as we described the shape
of the large, white elephants we could never name &
still, i did not feel we were lying.
but you would leave me
in the house with too many rooms
while everyone around me left for work.
i stayed home.
i played your piano & no one would hire me
to play your piano.
no one would tell me the chords.
i would ask them the names of the chords, i would tell them
i quit the guitar to hide my loneliness,
i would press you into the long white keys.
love is a shelf where i've kept you preserved,
next to a sign which says please
do not touch.
i applied to be your piano teacher
and you taught me to play the piano.
we said little of the time apart.
we said little as we described the shape
of the large, white elephants we could never name &
still, i did not feel we were lying.
but you would leave me
in the house with too many rooms
while everyone around me left for work.
i stayed home.
i played your piano & no one would hire me
to play your piano.
no one would tell me the chords.
i would ask them the names of the chords, i would tell them
i quit the guitar to hide my loneliness,
i would press you into the long white keys.
on pity & the state of things
On pity & the state of things (a good man moves to texas)
he spent three days in a coma and when he woke up, he knew
he wouldn't be here forever. instead, he would move to texas.
there would be no pity there,
he would take loud deborah with him, he would take the train,
and we would call the train loud deborah--
we would wave our hands and tremble from the platform.
there would be no regulars at the bar. mostly, there would be no pity
and none of the old bathroom stalls. the bands would come through
the new town, same as the old one, especially loud Deborah
who shows up everywhere and who shows up singing
through a mouthful of hamburger meat. we'd play a song about her
and pass the whiskey, screaming sorrow is a joke.
later on, after we'd fallen over and into eachother
& our abandoned belongings filled the empty spaces, loud deborah chugged on
like a train with no stops, she sang
go to sleep you little baby and she clapped her hands--
she was right there with us, the whole time
recording it all:
a good man was leaving us here
so loud deborah slammed the door open for the good man,
who let the cat out and the cat came back too quickly
because there is no pity & the cat won't move now there is no pity
& no one gets abandoned when a good man moves
to texas.
he spent three days in a coma and when he woke up, he knew
he wouldn't be here forever. instead, he would move to texas.
there would be no pity there,
he would take loud deborah with him, he would take the train,
and we would call the train loud deborah--
we would wave our hands and tremble from the platform.
there would be no regulars at the bar. mostly, there would be no pity
and none of the old bathroom stalls. the bands would come through
the new town, same as the old one, especially loud Deborah
who shows up everywhere and who shows up singing
through a mouthful of hamburger meat. we'd play a song about her
and pass the whiskey, screaming sorrow is a joke.
later on, after we'd fallen over and into eachother
& our abandoned belongings filled the empty spaces, loud deborah chugged on
like a train with no stops, she sang
go to sleep you little baby and she clapped her hands--
she was right there with us, the whole time
recording it all:
a good man was leaving us here
so loud deborah slammed the door open for the good man,
who let the cat out and the cat came back too quickly
because there is no pity & the cat won't move now there is no pity
& no one gets abandoned when a good man moves
to texas.
partly cloudy in the front room
Partly cloudy in the front room
There are children outside. they are screaming and running around. they move like a train through my yard, across the wall, under the wallpaper, between the boards. They disappear.
One of the cats scratches at something in the corner and the heater talks back. i remember more forks than this—one glass, two mugs, green, an empty bottle. This is not my desk, I guess. It belongs to Will. But it looks so much like my desk…
I wonder where my desk went.
A girl lives on Broad street with all my furniture—I forgot that, but I’d rather be a suitcase. I’d rather not the rain today, but if the street floods I’ll like that.
The frogs come out in choruses, then. God— remember how much he hated that?
When it would flood?—He’d be all surly and pathetic about it, holding his pants up around his knees…hated getting his feet wet and I always loved it. I just couldn’t stop laughing
then, God. It was bad. It was so bad but it was so funny and I never splashed him!
There are children outside. they are screaming and running around. they move like a train through my yard, across the wall, under the wallpaper, between the boards. They disappear.
One of the cats scratches at something in the corner and the heater talks back. i remember more forks than this—one glass, two mugs, green, an empty bottle. This is not my desk, I guess. It belongs to Will. But it looks so much like my desk…
I wonder where my desk went.
A girl lives on Broad street with all my furniture—I forgot that, but I’d rather be a suitcase. I’d rather not the rain today, but if the street floods I’ll like that.
The frogs come out in choruses, then. God— remember how much he hated that?
When it would flood?—He’d be all surly and pathetic about it, holding his pants up around his knees…hated getting his feet wet and I always loved it. I just couldn’t stop laughing
then, God. It was bad. It was so bad but it was so funny and I never splashed him!
& a clean kitchen
& a clean kitchen
stay here,
keep
a safe place
and
die,
remember
a
wide notebook
long,
went to sleep
& used up
the papers. Somes
dreamed
nothing--
planes
without proper
luggage- rolls, rolls,
behind
you
away & hung
limp,
a dead thing.
-jessica jarva
stay here,
keep
a safe place
and
die,
remember
a
wide notebook
long,
went to sleep
& used up
the papers. Somes
dreamed
nothing--
planes
without proper
luggage- rolls, rolls,
behind
you
away & hung
limp,
a dead thing.
-jessica jarva
so i said i'd call her & its the world at times
So I said I’d call her, its the world at times
It’s the liar and the liar who knows my home phone, my middle name, My SAT score & isn’t
impressed. It’s the chalk and the hamster in half, the shirt tied around it, the can and that thing
your mom called them, the help, was it? an interest in charting your smoking habits, your sleep
regiments…if you were a bagel and you had to choose between three shmears…its our friend
but we have to ignore him, look down, does he see me? Look down. I was supposed to look great
today, it never happens, or the one day it does then it rains. There’s a picture I need them to
take. Got the popcorn kernels, but we left the pot in Colombia, don’t Worry, we remembered
almost everything else. It’s the liar and she’s just trying to sing, you don’t need her sad jazz
routine, it’s a one hit wonder, cheesy, really & he’s a fool. Does this say Whey? right here, does
that say milk ingredient or do I need a new left eye, haha. All day with this one, poor me. You
know how many times I said I’d call my mother? Could you just call my mother for me, she
likes you! The two of you, I tell ya. Who says I’m cold? I’m a shy little lamb! I’m a singer, Alvy,
I’ve always been a singer, Alvy…what do you mean can he have my guitar? Can he have my
guitar, are you kidding? Of course I know your last name isn’t Zeigfreid anymore, it was never
really Zeigfreid, was it. Always did have a thing for the Catholic church, saved all sorts of
wrapping paper, she’s a bat now, but lovely, says oh, you go to hell and all that, yells at Uncle
Andrew, just lovely and never at me, nope, I’m like her favorite ‘cause I touch her, rub her back
& junk, sometimes she loses her teeth, its great. We handle all her old jewelry and she asks me
to put my hair up.
It’s the liar and the liar who knows my home phone, my middle name, My SAT score & isn’t
impressed. It’s the chalk and the hamster in half, the shirt tied around it, the can and that thing
your mom called them, the help, was it? an interest in charting your smoking habits, your sleep
regiments…if you were a bagel and you had to choose between three shmears…its our friend
but we have to ignore him, look down, does he see me? Look down. I was supposed to look great
today, it never happens, or the one day it does then it rains. There’s a picture I need them to
take. Got the popcorn kernels, but we left the pot in Colombia, don’t Worry, we remembered
almost everything else. It’s the liar and she’s just trying to sing, you don’t need her sad jazz
routine, it’s a one hit wonder, cheesy, really & he’s a fool. Does this say Whey? right here, does
that say milk ingredient or do I need a new left eye, haha. All day with this one, poor me. You
know how many times I said I’d call my mother? Could you just call my mother for me, she
likes you! The two of you, I tell ya. Who says I’m cold? I’m a shy little lamb! I’m a singer, Alvy,
I’ve always been a singer, Alvy…what do you mean can he have my guitar? Can he have my
guitar, are you kidding? Of course I know your last name isn’t Zeigfreid anymore, it was never
really Zeigfreid, was it. Always did have a thing for the Catholic church, saved all sorts of
wrapping paper, she’s a bat now, but lovely, says oh, you go to hell and all that, yells at Uncle
Andrew, just lovely and never at me, nope, I’m like her favorite ‘cause I touch her, rub her back
& junk, sometimes she loses her teeth, its great. We handle all her old jewelry and she asks me
to put my hair up.
the impossible appearances
The impossible appearances
I was wearing a teal rosary and now there is this crick in my neck and I’ve been thinking
about stigmata…all these things are true & I’m not trying to say anything.
I’d like to fly to California and not wonder why. I’d like to fly. I write these things down
in scatterplots & then I lose the scatterplots…I’ve been looking all over the ground for loose
change & my love is a bright copper dime.
I was wearing a teal rosary and now there is this crick in my neck and I’ve been thinking
about stigmata…all these things are true & I’m not trying to say anything.
I’d like to fly to California and not wonder why. I’d like to fly. I write these things down
in scatterplots & then I lose the scatterplots…I’ve been looking all over the ground for loose
change & my love is a bright copper dime.
on the day i cry in front of a television set
On the day I cry in front of a television set
Maybe I make a pie, maybe you make a stew.
Maybe we don't instead and order chinese food.
Maybe we crumple up the menu or return it to the register.
Maybe there are two white cars and then a black SUV,
and we are naming them and then the cab says yellow,
and maybe I think the cab says yellow because I said the first two weren’t yellow,
but maybe the company is called yellow cab.
I've been in a lot of cabs before but never once was I found in a limousine.
Its true one time I drove the cab.
Its true I have this way of getting along with junkies and also old men.
Maybe the cabbie that time was both.
Maybe he kissed me on the cheek & handed me a five.
Maybe he was full of it or tired or neither.
I lost all my belongings then.
It was all I had. It was hilarious. Markers, pens, receipts, crayons—
some thief with a fistful of watercolors,
5 cigarettes or so, a 20 dollar bill I hadn't planned on spending,
it was my whole life! I lost it—
every receipt, every stolen coaster, every delicatessen in Paris.
After the pie explodes and the stew has burnt a hole in the ceiling,
we get to the bottom of a brown paper bag.
Maybe at the bottom of the brown paper bag there is just one fortune cookie & this could be something
cut in half.
Maybe the fortune in the cookie says "your winsome smile will be your sure protection."
If saying things casually can make them happen, then everything was beautiful & nothing hurt.
Then, no i take it back.
Then, bring me to the money-man pawn and notice my back is sealed with clear electrical tape.
Give me back to myself.
You know, Andy Warhol made more religious paintings than any other American artist?
He kept them in a secret room.
You know my dad once ran a road race alongside Larry Bird?
You know you're wearing my pants and I thought I'd lost them.
I can tell by the two small blotches of gesso by the knee,
So I guess I spend time looking at knees and not just my own since you're wearing my pants.
No smell has stayed in my left nostril longer
than the smell of a dead puppy that I couldn't keep from dying.
My neighbors lived on a farm & came from Ireland. They knew
There is more than one thing in this world that reeks of dead puppy.
I knew that puppy was dead right after I got off the school bus.
I knew it right when I got there, I knew it right when I smelled it.
So maybe I make a dead puppy-pie, eh?
Maybe you make a cat-stuck-in-the-fence stew?
Between the two of us we come across like a full meal.
I thought maybe there was an outhouse in the upstairs hall
because I saw it in the middle of the night.
It was a genu-ine outhouse, went all the way down,
through what, I don't know.
I'm not sure I said much of anything.
We are never sure is what I wanted to say.
There is an urge in me, I know it.
It was nice though the way it played with your eyelids & pantomimed time travel and you got it on the first guess. I was imagining the apocalypse.
There were three scenes I couldn't sleep through.
I was thinking about art, about instruments of art, about decisions, limitations, decisions, what little change I'd ever have sparing.
I saw a fire & the mountains made of paper,
They gave up like they enjoyed it,
the paintings, all gone in a fell swoop, easy.
I thought of a life’s work, of instruments breaking and burnt guitar strings,
I thought of voices singing and the words left,
to remember,
to sing.
I thought of voices singing without strings and the rest of it gone. I thought of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Bye, bye, miss American pie, and if I'd bet on poor Stewball, I'd be a rich man today.
These are the things I remember.
Every sight I'd ever seen lives in this naked space— there is color here,
there is an old man pumping gas in a yellow cardigan,
a black lab crossing through the pine trees,
stewball and I on the front porch saying GOD & god,
my mother traipsing across the backyard with a half empty bottle of gin,
my mother sloshing towards my father's back bent over in the garden,
my father's back bent over in the garden,
your face on the floor through the dark
moving in & out with the glow from some far-gone commercial
on the t.v. set—
and you're shaking you say, its ok.
This is real, can i tell you?
Maybe I make a pie, maybe you make a stew.
Maybe we don't instead and order chinese food.
Maybe we crumple up the menu or return it to the register.
Maybe there are two white cars and then a black SUV,
and we are naming them and then the cab says yellow,
and maybe I think the cab says yellow because I said the first two weren’t yellow,
but maybe the company is called yellow cab.
I've been in a lot of cabs before but never once was I found in a limousine.
Its true one time I drove the cab.
Its true I have this way of getting along with junkies and also old men.
Maybe the cabbie that time was both.
Maybe he kissed me on the cheek & handed me a five.
Maybe he was full of it or tired or neither.
I lost all my belongings then.
It was all I had. It was hilarious. Markers, pens, receipts, crayons—
some thief with a fistful of watercolors,
5 cigarettes or so, a 20 dollar bill I hadn't planned on spending,
it was my whole life! I lost it—
every receipt, every stolen coaster, every delicatessen in Paris.
After the pie explodes and the stew has burnt a hole in the ceiling,
we get to the bottom of a brown paper bag.
Maybe at the bottom of the brown paper bag there is just one fortune cookie & this could be something
cut in half.
Maybe the fortune in the cookie says "your winsome smile will be your sure protection."
If saying things casually can make them happen, then everything was beautiful & nothing hurt.
Then, no i take it back.
Then, bring me to the money-man pawn and notice my back is sealed with clear electrical tape.
Give me back to myself.
You know, Andy Warhol made more religious paintings than any other American artist?
He kept them in a secret room.
You know my dad once ran a road race alongside Larry Bird?
You know you're wearing my pants and I thought I'd lost them.
I can tell by the two small blotches of gesso by the knee,
So I guess I spend time looking at knees and not just my own since you're wearing my pants.
No smell has stayed in my left nostril longer
than the smell of a dead puppy that I couldn't keep from dying.
My neighbors lived on a farm & came from Ireland. They knew
There is more than one thing in this world that reeks of dead puppy.
I knew that puppy was dead right after I got off the school bus.
I knew it right when I got there, I knew it right when I smelled it.
So maybe I make a dead puppy-pie, eh?
Maybe you make a cat-stuck-in-the-fence stew?
Between the two of us we come across like a full meal.
I thought maybe there was an outhouse in the upstairs hall
because I saw it in the middle of the night.
It was a genu-ine outhouse, went all the way down,
through what, I don't know.
I'm not sure I said much of anything.
We are never sure is what I wanted to say.
There is an urge in me, I know it.
It was nice though the way it played with your eyelids & pantomimed time travel and you got it on the first guess. I was imagining the apocalypse.
There were three scenes I couldn't sleep through.
I was thinking about art, about instruments of art, about decisions, limitations, decisions, what little change I'd ever have sparing.
I saw a fire & the mountains made of paper,
They gave up like they enjoyed it,
the paintings, all gone in a fell swoop, easy.
I thought of a life’s work, of instruments breaking and burnt guitar strings,
I thought of voices singing and the words left,
to remember,
to sing.
I thought of voices singing without strings and the rest of it gone. I thought of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Bye, bye, miss American pie, and if I'd bet on poor Stewball, I'd be a rich man today.
These are the things I remember.
Every sight I'd ever seen lives in this naked space— there is color here,
there is an old man pumping gas in a yellow cardigan,
a black lab crossing through the pine trees,
stewball and I on the front porch saying GOD & god,
my mother traipsing across the backyard with a half empty bottle of gin,
my mother sloshing towards my father's back bent over in the garden,
my father's back bent over in the garden,
your face on the floor through the dark
moving in & out with the glow from some far-gone commercial
on the t.v. set—
and you're shaking you say, its ok.
This is real, can i tell you?
a description...
A description to ring your bell tower: Chelsea
Since you were not going to die that night, Chelsea,
casually, in Tucson, Arizona, though you said it might happen—
that night of six and a half valium,
I thought it appropriate to tell you—I felt in love some,
then many times pushed out—tired, breathing.
All night up drunk and talking, Chelsea,
while you were turning your head around things.
While you spoke to yourself like a used car—but they've stolen my things, you say,
I've mistrusted my own eyes, my own dying—
The hotel rooms, West Texas, your mother,
art books on the kitchen counter, the dishes left un-rinsed,
or a drive across the bridge, a drunken parentheses,
love’s description written as if it were an address, as if we could send ourselves away
like that.
On the back of a tea-stained postcard…
look at me quickly now, Chelsea, quickly now, the postage is at our backs—
send me that yellowed Polaroid, Motel Six— fold me back against the creases—
give me each one of your limbs, Chelsea
lay them out flat as a sheet if you’re hungry,
Here then, Chelsea, take this bread, Chelsea,
take this soaked-in-lime apology,
lend me some lungs to fill with blood, and lend me your hands to hold—
your hands to assure my hands, hold me, these curling edges,
and forgive me,
emptied out in cigar-smoke, leaves.
Since you were not going to die that night, Chelsea,
casually, in Tucson, Arizona, though you said it might happen—
that night of six and a half valium,
I thought it appropriate to tell you—I felt in love some,
then many times pushed out—tired, breathing.
All night up drunk and talking, Chelsea,
while you were turning your head around things.
While you spoke to yourself like a used car—but they've stolen my things, you say,
I've mistrusted my own eyes, my own dying—
The hotel rooms, West Texas, your mother,
art books on the kitchen counter, the dishes left un-rinsed,
or a drive across the bridge, a drunken parentheses,
love’s description written as if it were an address, as if we could send ourselves away
like that.
On the back of a tea-stained postcard…
look at me quickly now, Chelsea, quickly now, the postage is at our backs—
send me that yellowed Polaroid, Motel Six— fold me back against the creases—
give me each one of your limbs, Chelsea
lay them out flat as a sheet if you’re hungry,
Here then, Chelsea, take this bread, Chelsea,
take this soaked-in-lime apology,
lend me some lungs to fill with blood, and lend me your hands to hold—
your hands to assure my hands, hold me, these curling edges,
and forgive me,
emptied out in cigar-smoke, leaves.
a letter
A letter
I keep getting messages. there are people upset with me. they write me letters,say, you never respond to my messages. they send more than one letter,so i send one back,
I say soda water, chipmunk.
They send me another letter, they say- that is no response.
So, i send a letter back saying soda,water, chipmunk (s). Eventually will write me off forever.
I would say i love you i love you i love you, forgive me but it is not the kind of thing you can say in a letter. I've been thinking about California, I'll tell them—
you wrote me on the day i was thinking about California and a chipmunk was on the wire and he was electrocuted right in front of me. He fell onto the sidewalk outside the library. no one else noticed.
Or maybe they did and they pretended not to. Can you imagine? forgive me.
I smoked a cigarette in Paris while staring at a dead pigeon. I am cruel and unbelievable.
Nobody wants this in the mail. My ears are so small it must mean something. My parents have normal sized ears, I've seen them. My parents used to have a rotary telephone next to their toilet in the master bedroom. Can you imagine? I used to listen in, can you believe that?
Of course you can,
Sometimes I don't even know if California exists.
Onetime I saw this pigeon dying outside a record store in Paris. I'd just been to see Picasso. I was buying my parents Billie Holiday records for Christmas, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, a crummy gift,
and anyway this pigeon was dying, just sitting there. Strange how a bird is just sitting there and everyone knows its dying just because it’s just sitting there. I couldn't leave and I couldn't save it. I just stood there and stared at it. I looked at other people to see what they would do.
What should we do? I wanted to ask them. I didn't even know how to say "what should we do” in French, can you imagine? If you move to a foreign country you should know how to say what should we do in French. There was a woman with a furred collar.
Paris was either beautiful grey or tragic grey, always,
one or the other and I wish I knew how to say that but i don't.
soda, water, chipmunk (s).
I keep getting messages. there are people upset with me. they write me letters,say, you never respond to my messages. they send more than one letter,so i send one back,
I say soda water, chipmunk.
They send me another letter, they say- that is no response.
So, i send a letter back saying soda,water, chipmunk (s). Eventually will write me off forever.
I would say i love you i love you i love you, forgive me but it is not the kind of thing you can say in a letter. I've been thinking about California, I'll tell them—
you wrote me on the day i was thinking about California and a chipmunk was on the wire and he was electrocuted right in front of me. He fell onto the sidewalk outside the library. no one else noticed.
Or maybe they did and they pretended not to. Can you imagine? forgive me.
I smoked a cigarette in Paris while staring at a dead pigeon. I am cruel and unbelievable.
Nobody wants this in the mail. My ears are so small it must mean something. My parents have normal sized ears, I've seen them. My parents used to have a rotary telephone next to their toilet in the master bedroom. Can you imagine? I used to listen in, can you believe that?
Of course you can,
Sometimes I don't even know if California exists.
Onetime I saw this pigeon dying outside a record store in Paris. I'd just been to see Picasso. I was buying my parents Billie Holiday records for Christmas, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, a crummy gift,
and anyway this pigeon was dying, just sitting there. Strange how a bird is just sitting there and everyone knows its dying just because it’s just sitting there. I couldn't leave and I couldn't save it. I just stood there and stared at it. I looked at other people to see what they would do.
What should we do? I wanted to ask them. I didn't even know how to say "what should we do” in French, can you imagine? If you move to a foreign country you should know how to say what should we do in French. There was a woman with a furred collar.
Paris was either beautiful grey or tragic grey, always,
one or the other and I wish I knew how to say that but i don't.
soda, water, chipmunk (s).
this is a love song
This is a love song
Birth of birth, my convincer of number thirteen is wearing a hair shirt;
Long proportions, a parcel mostly made up of figs and stuffed
around the edges with the funnies, sos not to break it
and also because your mother thinks you’d think its funny.
The doctor at home with his cats & you’re fucking shit up everywhere!
Birth of Venus, birth of ginger, and ok that was the last slide.
You cannot turn back. Stand up and hold a piece of paper.
Lose the paper. Walk out. This is the story of three friends
And Billy the goat killer, who once killed a goat, so he says,
it all happened so quickly.
This is a love song: the three friends were named Sydney, Syd, and Nancy.
He was talking about contrast. They were killed in the kitchen.
Birth of birth, my convincer of number thirteen is wearing a hair shirt;
Long proportions, a parcel mostly made up of figs and stuffed
around the edges with the funnies, sos not to break it
and also because your mother thinks you’d think its funny.
The doctor at home with his cats & you’re fucking shit up everywhere!
Birth of Venus, birth of ginger, and ok that was the last slide.
You cannot turn back. Stand up and hold a piece of paper.
Lose the paper. Walk out. This is the story of three friends
And Billy the goat killer, who once killed a goat, so he says,
it all happened so quickly.
This is a love song: the three friends were named Sydney, Syd, and Nancy.
He was talking about contrast. They were killed in the kitchen.
there was a small brown hole
There was a small brown hole
Turns out, I’d bit the filling out of my tooth and I had to go to the dentist.
the dental assistant talked to the dentist, "did you see in the paper
the guy who killed the guy
worked at Butterfields?"
"yeah" said the dentist.
what is Butterfield's?
I like the feeling of my novocaine tooth.
the dentist rests his hand casually on my face and I’m glad i don't have to talk at all.
where is my tongue?
the dental assistant asks the dentist, "did you get a new paper boy?"
(continuous soft rock)
"i don't know if i got a new paper boy but i got the paper."
“resin?” she'd asked in the beginning.
I'd thought maybe it was about smoking but they didn't even ask.
Turns out, I’d bit the filling out of my tooth and I had to go to the dentist.
the dental assistant talked to the dentist, "did you see in the paper
the guy who killed the guy
worked at Butterfields?"
"yeah" said the dentist.
what is Butterfield's?
I like the feeling of my novocaine tooth.
the dentist rests his hand casually on my face and I’m glad i don't have to talk at all.
where is my tongue?
the dental assistant asks the dentist, "did you get a new paper boy?"
(continuous soft rock)
"i don't know if i got a new paper boy but i got the paper."
“resin?” she'd asked in the beginning.
I'd thought maybe it was about smoking but they didn't even ask.
on feng shui
On feng-shui
The secret to growing long hair is very simply
not to cut it. Very few people will tell you this.
Popcorn kernels are one of the great secrets of the Universe,
and there are few things I say with certainty.
They are all simple.
Those who cannot do, cannot teach me to! is a thing I would like to shout
at the sharp end of a no. 2 pencil. What ever happened to lead poisoning?
is another.
I have been addressed frequently with the phrase right up your alley,
so I begin to think
why do you people think I live in an alley?
and then I imagine my alley.
I imagine my alley in width and length,
decaying brick, a Tomcat I'd have named Edna with only one eye
who rails at the moon each evening,
a woman on the 6th floor who aims for my head
with potted plants and chipped china plates--
the sound of these things breaking, the woman
old and lonely, the red wallpapering her kitchen, she always misses
except for the one time, and the cat goes on railing
like a faucet drips.
The secret to growing long hair is very simply
not to cut it. Very few people will tell you this.
Popcorn kernels are one of the great secrets of the Universe,
and there are few things I say with certainty.
They are all simple.
Those who cannot do, cannot teach me to! is a thing I would like to shout
at the sharp end of a no. 2 pencil. What ever happened to lead poisoning?
is another.
I have been addressed frequently with the phrase right up your alley,
so I begin to think
why do you people think I live in an alley?
and then I imagine my alley.
I imagine my alley in width and length,
decaying brick, a Tomcat I'd have named Edna with only one eye
who rails at the moon each evening,
a woman on the 6th floor who aims for my head
with potted plants and chipped china plates--
the sound of these things breaking, the woman
old and lonely, the red wallpapering her kitchen, she always misses
except for the one time, and the cat goes on railing
like a faucet drips.
At the upper deck...
At the upper deck. I tell him its not my hat.
It was connect four & looking for pretzels,
Pizza, fries, a car ride, a finger puppet, a movie theater—
Its been 14 years & she doesn’t leave the house.
Nobody wins at bingo & the bingo jokes are mostly bad.
Frederick the landscape landscape landscape painter— in the hall
a postcard, stamps— unturned & then slipped over,
A thumbtack in the space where the keys weren’t put—
20 a day, where didn’t the fork go, Tomorrow,
tomorrow, & so on, Tuesday’s
the week in its lost count, drowning fingers. He let the arms fall off,
poor Frederick, half my alphabet
is a grey soup & 12 out of 8 participants
can’t do it. I’ve been lost in a tunnel,
I’ve been building.
I have lost my legs, my family, & more importantly
my keys.
It was connect four & looking for pretzels,
Pizza, fries, a car ride, a finger puppet, a movie theater—
Its been 14 years & she doesn’t leave the house.
Nobody wins at bingo & the bingo jokes are mostly bad.
Frederick the landscape landscape landscape painter— in the hall
a postcard, stamps— unturned & then slipped over,
A thumbtack in the space where the keys weren’t put—
20 a day, where didn’t the fork go, Tomorrow,
tomorrow, & so on, Tuesday’s
the week in its lost count, drowning fingers. He let the arms fall off,
poor Frederick, half my alphabet
is a grey soup & 12 out of 8 participants
can’t do it. I’ve been lost in a tunnel,
I’ve been building.
I have lost my legs, my family, & more importantly
my keys.
II. some but not all things,
II
Some, but not all things
have happened already. Where I’ve put away my wardrobe—
We can all wear hats
For heads and wear cereal boxes for hats
and eat hats with spoons and milk,
Neat, she says, a book I’ve read before
and asleep in corners. What if it were slightly sour?
There is Death, playing poker,
Woody Allen, in the grass.
Some, but not all things
have happened already. Where I’ve put away my wardrobe—
We can all wear hats
For heads and wear cereal boxes for hats
and eat hats with spoons and milk,
Neat, she says, a book I’ve read before
and asleep in corners. What if it were slightly sour?
There is Death, playing poker,
Woody Allen, in the grass.
they came back looking different...
I
They came back looking different, acting different.
This time a sweet potato Max cooked in the microwave. Bramble,
who almost lost his life, also Tabitha
who is very stiff.
Hungry I said, not thirsty, you were standing in the yard,
like I’d kill you.
It was kind of an important moment to blame on that island there.
On the news of a good friend,
Say, how are you,
Listen, this time has come down with it, a cold they say,
coughing,
Say, I’ve missed the party
for the third time,
Or someone took all the black pieces from our board game,
small advice on wanting to dance & not saying so—
They came back looking different, acting different.
This time a sweet potato Max cooked in the microwave. Bramble,
who almost lost his life, also Tabitha
who is very stiff.
Hungry I said, not thirsty, you were standing in the yard,
like I’d kill you.
It was kind of an important moment to blame on that island there.
On the news of a good friend,
Say, how are you,
Listen, this time has come down with it, a cold they say,
coughing,
Say, I’ve missed the party
for the third time,
Or someone took all the black pieces from our board game,
small advice on wanting to dance & not saying so—
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