Mud

Mud 5/31

The Golem sits next to a lake holding hands with a young girl – they are picking flowers counting the petals – X loves me X loves me not – Golem stares out into the water touches its toe to the surface and it melts away the girl touches her finger to her reflection and sifts the sand through her hands –

Worship

Worship 5/30

Neptune takes a pen and swipes
a cornflower into existence
The crushed indigo wraps in sugar
and slowly is Golem is a paper cup

Everyone temples and the sky opens up
tiny hands lower into the world
Calloused across the fields
there is an expanse of crushed diamonds

A universe of glittering eyeliner

Pencil-neck

I love unsolved mysteries.

I also love unsolved history. Rosslyn Chapel was featured in the Da Vinci Code. A book that is not the type of thing I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the real mysteries of Rosslyn Chapel. Mysteries like the weird angels and symbols covering the arches that two men think are a secret piece of music.

I'm talking about the weird case of Taman Shud and the Somerton Man :


Pencil-neck 5/29

In spring
a houri-like sweetheart
fingers a cup of wine
at the edge of a cornfield
If I mention any other Paradise
I'd be worse than a dog
helpless in this game
upon this board

The Moving Finger writes
continues on its way
leaving only empty branches
in winter
No piety nor wit
can cancel half a line
and all the tears
couldn’t wash a word of it

Taman shud

The glass would be empty
save for speculation
Earth could not answer
nor the Seas that mourn
The body of the Somerton Man
Death riddle without name:
                        MRGOABABD
                        MLIAOI
                        MTBIMPANETP
                        MLIABOAIAQC
                        ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Depression

Depression 5/28

It’s Thursday so they must be lining up for food
across the street at the church they are all
with shopping carts and bags

It’s raining so they have on jackets and some
have umbrellas but the one’s who don’t
are getting soaked

From this window they seem restless ill at ease
no one is talking the lady walks up and
down the line asking for numbers

They are all in their 30s and 40s and none seem
too positive about being there they aren’t
the shut-ins they aren’t handicapped

What is 2010 if not a bread line in Brooklyn
filling up by 10:00 and emptying by noon
there’s another one a block away

Secure

Secure 5/27

I slept well with you

Traduce

Traduce 5/26

Blue sky so dark it looks grey
A field that burns green impressionistic
Through it run horses dark velvet
Pulling a carriage of mahogany
There are silver lanterns and no driver
Behind clouds lightening and dust gathers…

Homework

Homework 5/25

I de-furred the cat
Look how clean the furniture is
You can lay me on the sofa
Slide off my pants
Test the hell out of the floorboards
And neither of us will have cat fur
Stuck to our thighs
With oil
When we’re through

Poplar

This is poem 660.

Which feels like a lot.

And a little.

I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone for reading. Please tell your friends about my poems. I like to get eyes on the words as much as possible.

Eyes on words y'all.


Poplar 5/24

Mona Lisa stretches across her poplar home – her DNA having been sequenced just the morning before

She crosses to a window – naked – she wants to go snowboarding

Etrog

Etrog 5/23

He comes at you with his dead eyes
He is blind and it is terrible to think about the non-staring white
He asks if you are Jewish and you can only tell the truth

I don’t mean to make it sound terrifying but it is

Madelung

Madelung 5/22

I want the world running in one direction
All sorts of order there – perpetual looping faces in windows
Smiles on every corner
If you push it fast enough the blur would be maddening

Millon

Millon 5/21

Hold your fingers to your ear lobes
press firmly and that stress will go away
melt into the gutter like that vomit shit
you just filled that area with

Hold my hand
our fingertips make nests of the air
the friction between our prints everything
will be all right it will be OK

Holy Ghost

Holy Ghost 5/20

1 : Water

I walk into the East River

The Brooklyn Bridge protects the mouth of this great country

Everything is sweeping lines – here is sky broken into angles, here is water rushing into the world

Gape and yawn – it is morning come down, shattered on every footpath and broken up for starlings to eat, greedy fuckers

The cold on my legs is so Atlantic – I remember this, it is the same water banging up against Wales, it is the same that got me in Virginia with those horseshoe crabs and jellyfish broken to pieces on the shore

It is the same storm


2 : Fire

Tongues as of fire – it is a field of dry stalks – it is burning – each bit going from straw to charcoal to that mute black that reflects no light – the hollow collapse as you break it in your hands – it all comes off under your nails


3 : Air

Starlings have oil slick feathers
They car alarm and pick at trash outside my apartment
Green, purple now night, silver

This city is the rush of a mighty wind
Each building a masted ship with sails blazing
Gulls glide overhead before they tilt towards sea

Arms to the side and marching
Eyes forward projecting armor, anger, interior calmness
I want to play airplanes with a child, but the mother runs them along

Here is a bench painted glossy black
Eyes reflect near the bolts, winking as leaves shadow puppet
I will sit until my mood comes off, until I molt and can fly

Nobble

Nobble 5/19

Take this crowbar
hit the kneecap
break it

Bulwark

Bulwark 5/18

The horizon is grey – rocking gently
This boat is holding and this guy is talking about 9/11

The water is grey – breaking on the sky
They are charging $4 for iced tea and $3 for water

The bridge is grey – rusting crossing
That is Manhattan and everything else is Brooklyn

The boat is grey – rocking gently

Pilot Hole

Pilot Hole 5/17

Hanging paintings you make a hole and blow away the dust there is light through the wall and you look into it and on the other side is a woman in a dress spinning slowly to an old recording of big band music she notices your eye and smiles the lights go out and then there is nothing but a space to hang a screw and then a painting

Remiss

Remiss 5/16

After Mount Tambora
there was snow in June
and many starved

Our collective arms were cold
our faces covered in coal dust
and the fires would out and on

Skies would be yellow
at sunset things would
get purple fog covered

Our fingers go purple and the
houses stand tired while trees
will not come out of their hush

Make a bridge Tambora
bring us all in from the air
remind us we’re grateful

Squally

Squally 5/15

Here dwells the direful Shark. Lur'd by the Scent
Of steaming Crowds, of rank Disease, and Death,
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny Flood,
Swift as the Gale can bear…
                                                            James Thomson


The sky is endless, is fire
it meets the sea, begins
throwing against the sides of the ship
threatening a breaking point

Small circles of blood
like ripples, petals in a pond
multiply and burst over the coming gales
they paint the water, soften, go clear

Who are these mouths
that go as buzzsaws, take the wood of the masts
make matchsticks and toothpicks
then dye them burgundy

Everything is open, then closed
everything is a mass of white-tipped cotton
striking against the ship
the world goes up in flames

Past History

Past History 5/14

This building is 105 years old

Over here was a shoe store that became a florists that became a hat makers that became a hardware store that is going to be a café

The fields were copper and blue then they were nothing but roads

What sort of breaking is done that makes it so we can remember these things

Are we meant to –

Normandy

Normandy 5/13

Claude Monet is walking in his garden

Blue is dominant with a hint of red

It is morning, flowers think about blooming

On the beaches of Normandy

Waves come upon the shore

Foam cold, sapphire and deep with longing

Nothing on this earth is content to be itself

Monet wanted to bend nature and bottle light

Until it broke across a canvas

And the oceans want to be gazelles, men

Men want to be fish, birds, stars

We froth with excitement, blow them all to hell

It’s a sort of comeuppance

If we can’t have it, no one will

They’d do the same if they had invented the means

Monet stands on his bridge

He looks out over his manicure, breath in, out

He counts poplars, makes sure they number the same

As yesterday

Underwork

Blogger was down for a bit. We are back


Underwork 5/12

Crooked fingers
in the floorboards

Black with the dust
and ash of the earth

What could be written
with the clouds

And leftover ash
from the funeral pyre

Bamboozle

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is a documentary about the Japanese obsession with insects.

The movie bounces around between historic reasons for the obsession and the modern multi-million dollar business of buying and selling bugs.



I don't want anyone to think that I am making light of this cultural fact that looks odd to Americans. I think I understand it. These are things that are not inherently 'pretty' but are 'strong'. Bugs are at their core easy. They have a purpose, they enact that purpose. It is single-minded and by the book. They make sense.

I'm not going to try and analyze Japanese culture.

Besides...

I have always wanted a cricket in a little cage. I think it traces back to Pinoccio and wanting my own Jiminy Cricket to sing to me about the ways of the world. And the idea of a small alien-looking thing that can make its own music or has a horn on its head or could kill with one sting is more then enough for me to want to get close to insects.


Bamboozle 5/11

When clouds move over the sun
make patterns on hillsides like age
spots on my Grandmother’s arm I am filled
with a sense of calm
that could never come from anywhere else

It’s in the hollow of the bones it comes
from the belly a darkness that fills
and cools like sudden rain in July
or August the sound of crickets
on a hot night or sudden rising
lightening bugs from the thick grass

The Japanese call them crying insects
crickets and it fits they do hold
sadness in their harps

Lightning bugs are a floating void
nebula forming then breaking
they are alpha omega are silent shouts at dusk

There is the calm coming up the sun
is broken for a moment and the world is unamde
then put back together the cracks filled with glue
it is the stop start the engines are
turning over are blowing clouds of smoke

Gapper

Gapper 5/10

Maybe it was the mugging – maybe you’ve always been a homebody
it’s not like the world outside scares you – more of a why bother to go out there
do something with yourself – more a break with everything everyone

Everything is an excuse

The heat – the rain – the cold – the sun – the clouds – the sound of sirens at 3AM
headaches come again and again like they used to and maybe you do wish
you had a ton of money and could just be X or Z

Maybe this is a second gap year

First of all there was that time leaving Santa Fe where you strapped yourself
into Pennsylvania for a year – into a grocery store stock boy job
into the life of small town gay small town driving small town friends

Parents are such crutches

Letting you live there for 12 months – paying for food – clothes – bills – you
put it down to the fact that your sister has things paid for her and you feel
like you paid for yourself for most of your time after high school

For fuck’s sake!

So New York wasn’t the life change it pretends it is
from its perch in the river it hangs loosely to the continent a bulbous shiny object
where dreams go to die – lives are made and sold – but mostly sold

Everything is excuse

The city is tired – there are few people here you relate to – the community
is broken and sad – the rivers of East and Hudson only serve to drain you from yourself
it is 3AM and a gunshot kills someone in the street – a car is set on fire

Pause – you stare into the sun – how do you advance the frame without breaking the reel...

Sheave

Sheave 5/9

The bread is a brick a loaf slicing itself
it is a wheel with a groove across its chest
it carries leather straps and makes the world
open and close

Lock it in the pocket of your jacket forget it
leave it and make peace with the forgetting

From the marshes of Louisiana will grow
a mud thick as lead and blocking the mud
is a swamp a quagmire deluge in itself
sticking cannily

The world is napalm a balm and burning
forest tracking sightlines a pathway forms
like wheat stalks it branches into labyrinths
it turns into the chaos of everyday

Process Art

On Kawara is concerned with time.

His Today series consists of paintings with a solid background and the date in white. The painting is completed on the date he is painting. If he cannot finish it, the painting is destroyed. The painting is housed in a wooden box with a newspaper clipping from the city Kawara is in at the time:



He has been doing this since 1966. There are over 2000 in the series. He is 78.


Process Art 5/8

Every day
I am every day
I am

Waking

Pulsing through
these pages
and the next

Every shelf
I am on every shelf
I am

Ages will
stare into my golden eye

Will know what I
had for breakfast this morning

A bagel
some milk
a glass of water

I am I am

Every second I am

Every single
goddamn person
I am
I am

Smiley Face

The Smiley Face has been around since the 1950s. The sad face predates it though. It appeared first in Ingmar Bergman's 1948 film Port Of Call

The iconic Smiley Face was invented by Harvey Bell in 1963:

Smiley Face 5/7

What are these unblinking eyes looking at

What does that face see that it is so pleased

You could
                        and will

fall into that face

Head-turning

Head-turning 5/6

On the train the old Polish ladies stare with large eyes rimmed in black liner their stockings crumple at their ankles and they carry large bags full of whatever old Polish ladies need for their day

The homeless man is giving his speech that he has given hundreds of times before there is a god there is a bad turn of affairs there is a plea for even the smallest amount of change for food for drink for whatever

Bleeping phones up and down the car games ringtones there is a guy wearing dark glasses listening to music loudly and now I know what Lil Wayne sounds like what he’s talking about what it means to know what it means to know

Noisy

Noisy 5/5

Everything comes in waves

Outside – on the street the two men
fight – scream – throw trash cans

It’s about a drug deal a woman whatever

I’m trying to sleep

I wait for the meat sounds of fists on face
for the cock of a gun for the bang –

I find myself wanting for the bang – sudden
quiet that comes after – the scuffle of
running feet and rush of
sirens

The room paints itself in that washed out
orange of street lights

Cool air crosses my face

It never comes –

Quinkan

Quinkan 5/4

Out of the dark spaces
long thin fingers will inch
and scrape your skin
while you sleep

Briefly

Briefly 5/3

Hold my hand

I am Michael J. Wilson

Come with me into the deserts of wherever you are right now

The mind is a cage and is also the universe

I know it feels endless I know the dark of night

Tears fill glasses beside my bedside too

Here is a lone pine tree twisting blankly in the night

The bark is shredded paper is dry it is skin

We can walk til dawn I will not leave you

You will not leave me

Methylmalonic

Methylmalonic 5/2

There are days I don’t remember my name

Jump

The corset is a fascinating bit of fashion. It was first popularized as a figure flattener. The idea was to create a stiff cone shaped torso that matched the shape of a dress. Modern corsets tend to be used for lingerie or for fetishes.

There are of course the Dita Von Teese's of the world, who are using the corset to advance a sort of throwback pinup look.

Alexander McQueen loved the corseted look. He used padding in many of his dresses to achieve the look without attempting to cinch an already tiny waist. A model really can't be corseted anyway. What would get cinched? What would be pushed up?

The Metropolitan Museum is opening a McQueen retrospective next week called Savage Beauty. Vogue ran a preview in the May issue. Tom and Lorenzo havve kindly uploaded those pictures here.

Of course the corset also radically altered a woman's internal organs. They caused many bone, stomach, posture, etc. problems. And still do today.

I have to say that the idea of being wrapped in boning and tied up for beauty, while certainly savage, is also appealing.


Jump 5/1

hold

                        your
            breath quickly
take another

            it
will

hurt

tight            laces            tight

hold

                        you
are
            going to look
amazing your waist will
be so damn small

                        quickly
take a sip of water

you can’t eat until it’s off

shallower

breaths

thoracic

top            of            the            lung
it’s about
                        to get
            tighter