Malpighian

Marcello Malpigi did extensive work on capillaries. I was trying to capture the ideas of microscopic visuals and the moving of oxygen and water. Ultimately, I'm unhappy with the poem as it is here. I've made my peace with it. Someday this will come back around in another form.


Malpighian (1/31)

Waxy seeds - wrinkling under water - peeling
The two halves hold a whole - a mover - a finger

It's a cave dwelling animal - an eyeless thing
unliving until the sunlight comes

A clapping shell - coconut halves making horses
This will pull and upright itself - make with the oxygen

This candle-colored thing will fix carbon - will
pull things from the earth - release like feathers into air

Tailor-made

Tailor-made (1/30)

The suit would still be sexy walking without the man inside it

The man would be less so in jeans but would still turn your eye

The suit and the man holding hands walking together would be creepy
            sexy
                        but creepy

Bash

Bash (1/29)

I keep a cricket bat in my closet
            just
                        in
                                    case

Buffet

I've watched a lot of bad action films in my day.
This one is actually a combination of that really crazy interrogation scene in Casino Royale and pretty much anything in Road House.


Buffet (1/28)

You were expecting foodstuffs - when you entered
the room it was dark and the tables were uncovered
You were not expecting the metal folded chair to
come at your stomach so fast that you couldn't move
You were not ready to be kicked about on the floor
when all you wanted was lunch or dinner or anything
It was all very pro-wrestling very Brad Pitt
You just wanted a sandwich

Misprision

Misprision(1/27)

...and she hit her son and he turned and hit her
He was 6 or 7 and no one on the train breathed for two stops

In my earphones was a song about things staying the same
how it always stings yet keeps on

At Canal Street they got off in a flurry of hurry up
Their arms were at funny angles and it resembled trees in storm

Why do people resemble trees in winter?
All elbows and knotty parts cranking in air

At Prince Street I walked up the stairs and into the night
the music switched to a song about lovers in love

Somewhere there are trees that resemble people arguing on subways

Combi

I couldn't find the original definition for this word. But the link will take you to something that applies.


Combi (1/26)

There is a Barbie doll on a quilt lying in a sun-drawn line

A cloud is crowned with sun and it looks like fingers reaching into space

I haven't seen enough to explain the color of the sky to a child
and I'm not sure I need to

The only remnant from my childhood are the images of sun on water
the color of fields in Wales

The straw way your hair goes after swimming

Barbecue

Barbecue (1/25)

Hog-tied?            Yes we are on a spit now - we are turning slowly
            What sort of sauce are we to marinate?
It's the kind that burns in the crevices - look - I'm sorry
I got us into this but the brochure looked nice


A poem about cannibalism!

And now a video about big ass Japanese bees killing smaller European ones. To eat the unattended larvae!

Haggis

Haggis (1/24)

Heart:
            In January I can barely stand my feet are sore all the time my chest burns because who could shake this cold - I declare myself tired of love - my body rejects

Lungs:
            In February my breathing slows to a painful fibrous depression - I am cicada crawling up a tree to the upper limbs singing my song loud

Liver:
            In March I walk furious the paths of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden - always coughing at he coming pollen storm

Matthew Barney is a FREAK

Can I just say that Matthew barney is a FREAK. I kind of love that he is. But seriously. I appreciate that someone is out there doing something crazy artistically...but...I have no words.

There are genitals in the video. I warned you.


Hoist de Matthew Barney

Alzothium | MySpace Video

Minimax

This is one of a few different poems I wrote with this title. Minimax is a concept in game theory that involves a lot of math. This poem was meant to be my turn in a game of trying to get you to see something clearly.


Minimax (1/23)

The avenue is a force line - a heavy vision
pushing its way down Manhattan to the sea

From here the street vanishes in a fuss of heat
and gloss - the road floats

It is a black strip of magic - ramp
The coming car tide - asphalt becomes air

The avenue is a steady climb - there
in your room you can see it up the walls

Now tell me what I see

Spa

Spa (1/22)

The line is surface tension - prose wave coming
Come - arthritic joint - soak in the word mineral

Cowboy

Cowboy (1/21)

You're ridin' - wind through your hair
over land - sea - on an ostrich

This is some serious cross-country - animal
between you

Salt on skin - everything blur - all
are watching you go

McQueen

Alexander McQueen never fails to impress. This is his Fall 2010 collection. Pics and link from Project Rungay.

Phrase

A long one today.


Phrase (1/20)

            Grass = greener

I am watching a couple holding hands - I am watching fingers
loop over then rub at the knuckles

This is on the Q train into Manhattan - it's one of those new
sanitary cars - chrome blue and ghostly

They are leaning into each other - tired - she is nodding
at his shoulder - his head bobs on hers

My gloved fingers are still cold beneath layers of leather and
fleece - it is a golden sunset as we reach the bridge

The water is glass - buildings are glass - it's all so reflective!

            A bird in the hand

The two weeping cherry trees stand sentry at two sides of the path

They touch the ground with thinning fingers - trace something there
in the dirt - unreadable to human eyes the sparrows hop about it
and seem to be nodding at each other - knowing

The trees will be black and bald all winter - laced in wet they weill
shine like horse eyes - oil on pavement - they will drag their knuckles
against the earth until April

Then they will be pink

            Eggs - counting

Rebirth
            re            birth

I'm trying to see it there - in the puddle of frozen grossness
on the corner of Bedford and Sterling

Inside that ice is paper, filth - things I don't want to know
            it is opaque with it

This ice is so full it cannot reflect - it is nanotube black
it is the darkest of dark matter

Re            birth
            I'm wanting to start over - but I want to keep my history

            Why put off -

They wake up as we reach Chinatown - hands tighten
they collective sigh

There between the fragments of skin a fire starts - invisible
to them - but it envelops my view of the city

As we slip underground they rest - the twig fingers relax
and the tiniest buds begin to form

I am looking at my own covered hands - deep in their winter
and I am unmournful - I am solidly waiting

Opaque - filled with things - waiting to reflect

Poker

I know it's become silly to discuss Lada GaGa in any way on los internets but I am so very very pleased that there is a pop star that can PLAY instruments and enjoys doing so LIVE.

Neck

Neck (1/19)

Reaching up to the leaves - grasping at them - sticks even

This giraffe is a maniacal machine - all black tongue stripping - all spotty
reaching wonderment

Does each generation get further into the canopy - pull ligaments that
much more

At what point does it all give out - what day - what hour
does everything get top heavy

Naturalize

Naturalize (1/18)

At this age we do this - our hands get bigger then our heads
so we cannot fit knuckles into mouths

There is a circumscribed alphabet on the wall
it repeats mostly consonants - makes no use - manages small grunts

Walking on our hands and knees is silly - easier
asses will drag and become wormy

When we reach adulthood our heads enlarge - stomachs
become the size of stadiums - we eat everything

Our hands are shovels - the writing becomes tedious
everything is rebuttal - we unplant - we scour

Haut-gout

Haut-gout (1/17)

Your lips rim peppercorns - laid out - a bed of crushed garlic

I am pouring sesame over your stomach
            rubbing balsamic on your feet until they black

You should be noodles curling in a stir-fry

You should be melting brie - blankets are an oven - my hand a dish

Stewpot

Stewpot (1/16)

Little bit of everything - peeled
pushing over the edge

A soft tomato - skin moving
vein-like - it is a tumor

cooking - Brains? Sure
This is a full silver space

A rolling carrot smell
It's a broccoli burning - all

little bits of potato going soft

FX

FX (1/15)

Lights in the hallway are acid
            refresh rate too fast and the hands trail...

Everything has a sickly glow
            a computer screen nightlight - full moon

What is it about nature/nurture?
            that we condition ourselves to fret over everything?

I'm walking up and down stairs
            I count the tiles - then paint them red in my mind

This is so everything is less green
            my eyes only see green - only acidic

Eyes blink too much
            it's cough syrup - it's shivers - it's itching...

Fireworks in the brain
            narcolepsy - I'm falling - I'm aware that I'm asleep

That I've been sleepwalking...

Monomode

I realize that this was yesterdays. I went to two short plays at The Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival. It's less an excuse as it is more a trying to have a real life like a real boy once in awhile.


Monomode (1/14)

I don't want any money - I'm from New Orleans - HIV positive
My wife's name was _____ - she died just before Christmas - my little girl
needs food - they spit on us - I don't want any money
Can you buy a bottle of formula - I don't want money - I see you
are in a hurry -

The clouds are pink - he does this every day at this time - I've given
him $30 over the course of a year - maybe sometime - maybe in New Orleans
a wife died sometime around Christmas - maybe - his daughter
always needs formula - she has been a baby for three years - she must have
a birth defect - I am in a hurry -

Fadge

Please note both definitions of today's word. The second is where I went in the poem. Sort of. Kinda.


Fadge (1/13)

Synchronicity kicks on Tuesdays in March
That's when cars roll red ten deep and buses come in threes

I'm looking into the East River trying to understand the Domino factory
They are putting up a waterfall on the Brooklyn Bridge

I take the second bus because I like the idea of sandwiches on wheels
I watch all the red flow and turn towards center

Really this is just a go at making it cohere
An attempt at making sense of a day like Jung like O'Hara like...

If the bus drops us off at the basin of the Dead Sea
And it continues onward north until it begins to go south...

I guess I'm circling my own globe my own drain
My head is on a spike rotating slowly in a gallery in Paris

Astrological maps across the surface create phrenology
You can trepan right through Orion's Belt

Tawny

Tawny is a color AND a type of port wine. It's a fact.


Tawny (1/12)

This is a honey drip
            your cock is - I want to walk with it

Hold it in my hand like a baton
            throw it in the air like a majorette

It will spindle in front of a purple sky

You are a bottle of port
            you are morning killing night

Spiritualize

Spiritualize (1/11)

Yet another poem about cruciform arms - yet
it's more about Napa Valley and drinking
It hasn't even begun yet - yet
it began centuries ago

If I begin by saying that a poem is a psalm -

Here - take this book - it is a hymnal
dedicated to my dead aunt my dead grandmother
my dead -

It's a prayer against forgetting -

Yet another cloudy day where crosses form
from the overhead wires and buildings - yet
another sleeping in late day - yet
another renunciation

If this is rebuttal I have forgotten the argument -

Here - let's decide on a stance - I am the antichrist
to your burning bush - I will play devil if you dig
a hole and don't talk -

This is a void filling -

Yet another empty room echoing - yet
it's got an organ so it's not empty really
It's not full of parishioners yet - yet
it is never really full

This congregation is a cipher - these arms hold nothing

Oorlam

Oorlam (1/10)

they took on Dutch...
still...speak with umlauts...
hold my hand...let's walk on beaches
...this is a port town...this was a port town...
we're speaking in mixed tongues...we're speaking...
let's not talk about it...they took on Dutch...
still...speak without your eyes...
don't look out to sea...don't
...it's all waves breaking...
all a faraway...

Ebola

Few things are more scary then the idea of your insides turning to liquid.


Ebola (1/9)

There is a swarm under your skin
            little black risings move with your beats

There is an inner drum attacking your meat

It is visual slippage at the peripheral
            your inner eye is infected with imagination

And your insides are huddled in awe

Liquefied

Liquefied (1/8)

I'm a hack - I've never been in love - never been to the ocean
seen a city walk out and shit a storm of jellyfish

I have walked a cliff - seen sunken ships in turquoise water

My love is a broken bee-hive - abandoned - contents cooling
a deserted town with every light on

There are faces at my windows - they are mannequins

Dawn is a cooling time - a place of breath misting - dew on feet
the wet toes of my sneakers leave little circles in the field

I wish I could see the sun as an omen for rebirth but -

it only begets night

Victim

Victim (1/7)

If they tie you up : this is how you know

Discharge

I forgot to post yesterday...which is just me falling over on the job.

I am in love with this song:



Discharge (1/6)

The delta is a floe - glacial - black
            it is an oil slick with mirrors for rivulets

The river is a fertile tear - a mother's
            dramatic opus - coming from her door

Inside is a dress of linen - her eyelids are lace
            the pupils are veiled spring beds

Horse eyes - this is the thought - black
            mouse-like marbles

There is the sound of a train in the distance
            see - this is underground now

Asubway - tunnel - a road to Paris
            ten years - bored the English Channel

It's the countryside now - Stonehenge - Bath
            there are things you cannot see here

There are rocks that were parts of her knees -

Organizer

I get mad about writing. It happens.


Organizer (1/5)

Actually I'm tired of it all - it's tedious trying to write
ballsy verse - anything really - how do we continue?

Doesn't the world have plenty?
Enough with all the whore-hounds peddling avant
Fuck these people - and the pen - it's

grating my nerves can't handle it anymore
hardships filtered through a lens - a glowing
incandescent eye - who can say what is the clearest image?

Jump - we do - we continue on some kinder path
Lamely we sit in rooms and debate 'work'

Motherfuckers

Noose around our necks - we've built them openly
we crave the tightness - praised the roughness
on our skin - I am through

quitting - only so much self-flagellation one can do
I am a page beating my own chest - an ocean of verbs
undulating without a shore to contain me

Nice image that - holding nothing as it does
We are a bunch of asses piling books up like stones
Yammering bullshit - we zookeep ourselves and tie

reigns on our faces - everything is alphabet
nothing is sensible

Cross-tree

Cross-tree (1/4)

Little legs claw then untense
on it's back the roach looks uneventful

On its back with broken legs
the mouse that's bothered us for months
looks like a stranger struggling with bags on the stairs

They aren't real people suffering
they are just scripted to look like crying

Tense then un

I will walk the rigging masts and you search for
land or signs of ships as we sail this sea
of uncharted worry - broken waves pity our oars

Tense then un

What do we carry when we leave Olmelas
when the glowing orbs of our eyes stop filtering
out the jump cuts from the huddled masses

Broken on the beach the horseshoe crab's back looks like a fissure
in the earth a crust open redness seeping from below

Paradox

Paradox (1/3)

There is that momentary break in the water
where everything is rock and glass and dry
It happens on the edges of islands in rivers
mostly it's on Tuesdays but sometimes Sunday

There are things that build houses on these breaks
and wait out the momentary lapse of rushing
The empty gourds that roof these beings are like
pumpkins are like bowls twice as filling

These things are like water bugs but spidery
the sound of their building is quick
This all takes only seconds and then it's been
centuries really

Those civilizations rise and fall and then
there is a moment where their idols tell lies
They talk about the end and it is true and
it is coming from the river they say

Here there are places for toes to grip the under
the feel is just like sand only it's confetti
A loud sucking of air and it all comes crashing
it all mini-apocalypses

And it's only been a moment in time a glance
those cities that the foam in rivers builds
as it leaves and comes back -

Earworm

It's been awhile since I posted something that made me smile.
This is a mix by DJ Earworm of every Annie Lennox single from her solo career to date.




This is his annual mix of the top songs of the year.

Euro

Euro (1/2)

History takes up so many volumes. Have you
seen the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire?
It's huge.

There is still a post German reunification glow
going on over there. Or at least the projection
of a glow.

Maybe they learned what they needed from us.
The art of looking good. While
fucking up spectacularly.

A Doing

This is a truish story.


Doing (1/1)

Red says he's fighting molemen
            at least that's what he says
We're on the 4 - it's midnight - he's been to jail for kicking the shit out of a pedophile
            at least that's what he says

Molemen eat your being
This is the last thing Red says
He's out the doors across the platform into Brooklyn
I'm left with a hug and neon

I switch to the 2
Exit at Grand Army
It's warm and Prospect Park is night time
70 degrees the doors to the library sentinel against the new Richard Meier

The walk to Franklin is a mess of post
I think about becoming a stripped body at the South Seaport
            becoming a robot stuffing ideas into boxes the stack tilting
It suddenly cools and goose bumps rise

What if the newspapers blared something other then who was drunk last night
            what if they mentioned the births only
The list of the dead is a catalogue stuffed into dream selves made from used cardboard
I am stuffing drawers

And all of it may be true
The rain comes just when you are thinking about it
            and Richard Meier reflects endlessly but absorbs none of Grand Army Plaza
In the end molement probably don't exist but Red's girlfriend is still gone

New Year's

New Year's (12/31)

Hope
            is something that I measure
in milliliters I pour it over my head in the shower
in bath houses
                                    I stand in steam rooms
                        and run it over the coals

Hope is a flower in a railyard
            thriving

                                    I'm trying to have more
                        Trying to collect it in jars

Some kind of insect emotion
that I can hoard

Hope
            is the new year coming up and opening
its arms             I am trying