"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."

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

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?

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

& 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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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—

I tried to get there...

I tried to get there and I couldn’t
find the things that could happen,
the Things that are
Happening.
You can fit in a car.
Santa’s in lot B and its cold out.
The grass between the landing strips was almost as grey
As the landing strips—
Or the sound of pianos in the upstairs hall, My old man
on the phone in his office,
The world in compartments,
the color of sand.

we were both taking the elevator...

we were both taking the elevator
& we were both going to the fourth floor,
only i got out at the third floor
because i was nervous, and also,
because i thought it was the fourth floor,
so i took the stairs and hoped
you thought i had some brief sort of business on the third floor.
once before that, i thought i'd seen you
at the grocery store & for some reason
i thought you'd seen me, too. i had headphones around my neck
when i got in the elevator
& you could hear paper back writer, because the music
was on loud and the headphones weren't very good.
you talked about guitars & the first time you'd heard the song.

then i watched you disappear into your mind for a minute.

you know, i read in this book that autistic children can't stand

being touched because they become overwhelmed with emotion and it feels a lot like drowning but at that time i hadn't read it & i didn't know as much about dairy cows & i'd never even heard of a squeezing machine.

Titles for Revision (25 strongest to weakest)

Things I have not said in cold weather
Backwards: redemption
I built a little businessman…
& a clean kitchen
Notarize mine
“Coffee? I think we can do better than that.” –John Wayne
At the upper deck…
I tried to get ther and I couldn’t…
Someone’s dead and we’re all sad about it
On pity & the state of things (a good man moves to texas)
A textbook case of fine & beautiful
On electricity
I forgot I’d even known his name & definitions
Half a thought on clockwork
Some, but not all things…
There’s this picture of you and me I keep seeing
On electricity
Two rooms
This one time
This is a love song
All I want in life is a dance partner with an affected accent
Throw me down frankly
Here’s where I asked for modernity and was handed a damp tuna sandwich in a zip lock bag:
The gas stations
Foolish & constant: the forgetting of endings
Or a better title, at least
Farm factory
On feng-shui
They came back looking different, acting different…
Odetta & tomorrow is a long time
It is always this way, isn’t it?
Just imagine that one
There was a small brown hole
There I go too long
The impossible appearances
Partly cloudy in the front room

interesting edgar huntley quotes

Yet am I sure that even now my perturbations are sufficiently stilled
for an employment like this? That the incidents I am going to relate can
be recalled and arranged without indistinctness and confusion? That
emotions will not be reawakened by my narrative, incompatible with order
and coherence? Yet when I shall be better qualified for this task I know
not. Time may take away these headlong energies, and give me back my
ancient sobriety; but this change will only be effected by weakening my
remembrance of these events. In proportion as I gain power over words,
shall I lose dominion over sentiments. In proportion as my tale is
deliberate and slow, the incidents and motives which it is designed to
exhibit will be imperfectly revived and obscurely portrayed.

The impulse was gradually awakened that bade me
once more to seek the elm; once more to explore the ground; to
scrutinize its trunk. What could I expect to find? Had it not been a
hundred times examined? Had I not extended my search to the neighbouring
groves and precipices? Had I not pored upon the brooks, and pried into
the pits and hollows, that were adjacent to the scene of blood?

so why arrest me now for a pre-existing condition? why boycott the circus when the liger's on board? there was a shift in the air and a loud thump as if some invisible thing above me was trying to break through it. i kept walking and thought about a How-To-Phrase. but it did he said and i believed him. but it didn't he said and i did not.