Hogmanay

I became obsessed with entropy in 2007. My thesis paper in grad school was about it. This poem is about it.


Hogmanay (12/20)

There is death in this world - asphyxia - cotton
On the horizon everything levels into line
Mountains become plains become valley become oceans

And our bodies - yours mine - become less bodies
that feel nothing but the coolness of water then not even that
Our hands will smooth will become rocks in a river

My electrons will separate will form evenly spaced fields
Matter heaping and never touching
The universe will expand until it doesn't

Some Mary Tyler Moore Dick Van Dyke sleeping patterns
A safe sex video - static at the dirty parts
You take the left bed Mary I'll take the floor

Weakness

Weakness (12/29)

That I'm easy - that my emotions get away from me
travel to the other end of the country- get jobs

My mind seems to creep up on me - with a knife
I'm some lady in a shower with a bar of soap

It's all going to spiral down the drain eventually
This is the secret - I'm a jetty in a salt lake

Being covered with saline - washed in fry larvae
bodies floating on foamed surface tension

Apparently I am ephemeral - a vacant lot in Manhattan
There is a condensing happening in my stomach

The knots run up my spine - tension fill and
nothing - there is never release here

My weakness is that my mind latches onto the very idea
of being unit - the concept of snuggling up to love

Legendary

A bunch of these poems turned into poems about poetry. Or about 'muse'


Legendary (12/28)

Arms spread - the mountains I make will glacier
leave a plain of rubble and sadness behind

I am expanse - force meandering
I am the great wall of silence
inching in the back of your throat - a voice beckoning

That itch causes you to stir in your sleep
My fleas are in your ears

My thunder levels all playing fields - makes oceans
of your bodies

I am void - a star dying
I am the magnificent lie - entropic evidence of leveling off

Rhapsody

Rhapsody (12/27)

The sun is up I am walking
            along the break of land - the cliff
                        is a finality -

Here one thing ends while another carries away

The last of night builds
            itself into angry dots on the horizon
                        they melt inward -

Pink of morning seeping - tentacles reaching

The glorious sun is taking its hands
            sweeping the corners - its oozing
                        resentment -

I am walking in a wind now - I am coming up -

Upstanding

Upstanding (12/26)

And we're walking - on two legs all right
            through some sparse desert expanse - it's night
you can see the Milky Way - it's clear
            dark and the sky is velveteen but not soft
really - looks more like marble spotted with
            white paint

And we're starting up a fire
            making the pit and dumping the bones
of cactus - whatever tree we can find
            you've got some matches in that pocket
and they keep dry when we cross a river
            they keep their little heads covered

And we're bedding down on rocks for real
            walk all day - sleep all night
we're some sort of Conestoga train us two
            going as long as legs will take us
we're moving west - east - south - north
            as long as we're moving

We're not going back - that's for sure
            we're taking whatever we see - we're eating
every last bit

Boxing-day

It's weird sometimes. Since the OED updates from England if I check the word a little too late in the day I get tomorrow's date. Sometimes it doesn't matter. Holidays are hit and miss. I like the odd future-tense of this though.



Boxing-day (12/25)

It's a must - a sealed universe

Int he back of the shed - marked toys

Instant 1992 - the smell of California

Christmas-tree

Christmas-tree (12/24)

Pretty - not even Christian - we all know that I suppose
As far as arguments go it comes down to falling needles - that smell
I don't even bother - I go home and look at my parents'

Santa Claus

I apologize to all children. Everywhere.

Santa Claus 12/23

Eye you up form across the street and ask you to service him while he looks into the lights of the Gowanus at 3 in the afternoon his name is Fred and he'll be all jelly rolled and big-dicked and say things like 'good boy' 'taste that for me' 'like the precum boy' it will smell like crotch and sweat and his skin is pink hairless except for his stomach where the line jumps over his bowling ball gut to the root of his prick lips will slide easy cause it's cut and smooth and you should just cross the damn street and not talk to strangers and don't look him in the eye because it's way too fucked up to think about

Noscitur A Sociis

"Noscitur A Sociis" is a latin phrase that means: It is known from its associates. The phrase is used mainly in law where it applies to the meaning of words. I use it here as a way to imply that one cannot be distinguished from its 'hive'. It's also a poem about the subway.


Noscitur A Sociis (12/22)

            The swarm is halved - then thirds

You are running in a bowler and overcoat
            a train slowly leaves you behind

            The individuals stop - stunned - from the air
                        pebbles shocked over sand at night

The platform is empty
            your shoes clicking on cement
            you kick at the chipping yellow paint
            the edge slopes into void

            The swarm are periods - falling loosely - eighths

What do the calcite formations speak of?
            that this is a lonely underground?
            that the R train will never come again?

            The swarm has become a trail of ink
                        the world is littered with stoppages

Tap out the Morse of your thoughts
            that is a wing-tip sound

Poincare

Poincare (12/21)

Stars turn into diamonds
            when they die - they

            implode or
the matter condenses - they
become diamonds

Balls of ice
            glacial drifts - they
cease to radiate

Stars become reflection
            they turn into mirrors

Majorana

Majorana (12/20)

They lowered helium until it made a universe in a tube
the major and minor ions doing an alignment dance

Everything pointed the right northward

I'm imagining little rods and cones circling
a pattern forms an inner eye at absolute zero

My window condenses the universe every night in February
the water bubbles and slides in its closed system

A fog of light will fizz the wooded pane

Look through and it is space from the mountain top
a milky smear across everything making haze of Brooklyn

The sound of airplanes landing at JFK is the sound of entropy
it is the full on expansion of everything the epic pull

Everything is aligning everything is dancing their asses off

Nassanoff

Nasonov (12/19)

bread crumbs on petal road
        you dart in trumpet mouth
                make with the buzz
covered in glaze then remove
and trail to another

Merchandise

Merchandise (12/18)

What do you need?

This silver bit can pop and spend - think about it
and count the divisions you can make

How many of whatever can you get
for half of a half of a half?

And can you get it for half of that?

Edge-ways

Edge-ways (12/17)

Bridge of the nose a sluice across the room

You part the waves of people and become a cube

Each cheek a concave where shadow becomes reality

Your ears place themselves edge-ways and bore holes

This is wood on a broomstick drinking amaretto

You make the room geometric

Everything will become grids before you

You are floating over the stool in pieces held with string

Span of catilage and tunnels of endless smoke and stars

Plunk

Plunk (12/16)

Let me set Iraq down on the table and refuse to bring it up again
a loaded gun that will never go off

Politics wrap the room in ivy
that will take over our arms and keep us from gesturing

Or maybe it will just sit there jamming itself
become a coin toss that we call wrong

Will it sink into the table-top and leave rings on the linens
it may make everything black and burned in the shape of a finger

Does it point at us or into some vacant space
out the window at the shed where animals could be skinned

Let me just say that I appreciate the sentiment of it and acknowledge
that it exists I hear it humming over here where my knife and fork should be

Macromodelling

Macromodelling (12/15)

She wears theatre mountain well and wonders theatre fields
becoming theatre marsh - her skin is liquid running
Theatre rocks arecoline tumbling and bones - her fingers
become branches woven into chairs
Rocking she wears theatre sky - hurricane her lips
her eyes are coated grass - she marches to theatre sea
she moves a glacier carving theatre landscape

Droop

Droop (12/14)

Decline and go
into the hills - hide
my bones in the rocks

Root the nerve endings
at the cliff base - I will lean
a lone pine threading the wind

Decline and wear
smooth with rain rising
Fine lines across my face - a doll

Decline and end
a wilted sunflower husk
a boneyard of red lines over stone

I will bend once and turn shadow

Monochromatic

Monochromatic (12/13)

Everything is pink - opening
Unfolding everywhere
Wet paper with bruised edges

Nature is refilling
Spring is a violent season
All breaking redness

Peonies pop their leather seals
Dogwoods uncurl then die
The rupture of ice - thrusting grass
Everything a greeness that insists

A knife to the throat
A sheet of blood over the body
A sandpaper rub that callouses

Cereal

Perfective

Part of what I love about this project is the surprises I find within my own writing. This poem is a surprise to me. Which is always nice.

I included a link to the Wikipedia article on jicama. I realize most people know what it is...but some might not.


Perfective (12/12)

Tongue this grain
of sand into a diamond - the edges must
perfect themselves - become cumulus-nimbus
We have to become moisture
crystallizing in the atmosphere
our rationalizes thoughts becoming
snowflakes - reaching
out with feathered points - a tree - a root system
A nervous energy of highness rolling this muscle
We must become eroding
beach in calm mouth
Here - this slice of jicama in lemon - Here
a pomegranate seed - roll this until it goes clear
Until the juice is water and it can be worn

Overexpressed

I'll be honest. Some of the words just didn't grab me. This was one.

Overexpressed (12/11)

Cock roaches are
horrible dirty creepy crawlies and will
outlive
us all

Visiting

Within a period of a few years both of my grandmothers and my aunt died. So began a long period of writing poems that dealt with the issue at hand while trying to deal with the cliche of the issue at hand.


Visiting (12/10)

It should be raining. Where is that great wind?

This is all wrong
there should be a hill to climb
a lone tree
a great gaping void with a box
there should be that humid smell of flowers

I should be alone in a long dark coat tears running
I should be offering words that no one understands
I should be speaking in tongues in sobs
I should be on my knees in the dirt

I can hear trucks coming from the quarry
the road runs ten feet from here
you are flat against some other dead grave
everyone here is packed like garlic in oil
sardines in some terrible DMV

Shouldn't this be reverent? Where is the hush that stops the world?

No one threw themselves on your plastic corpse
Our faces are pink and swollen
I looked on your face and felt in the pit of my stomach
something
Why didn't I throw up?

Shouldn't someone slip? Where is the permanent grass stain?

A rain should be falling. Where is the pain of nature?

Shouldn't we all be drunk and screaming?

Uganda

The bill introduced in Uganda to 'execute' and then amended to 'punish' homosexuals is a horrible human rights violation on its own. Add to it the virtual acceptance of the proposed law by several American politicians and I start to wonder where I live.

Here are two videos:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Olive Branch

Olive Branch (12/9)

A man climbs a hill
carrying an olive branch
It is waxy
and held in the teeth - crushed
berries send oil
down the chin

He is tired
trying to plant the universe
A modern Theseus - his weight
a barren field

What flood destroyed? - he
reaches the top
It is a rock - windless
He pours his blood
into the earth
and waits -

Unattended

This started as a poem in response to reading a bunch of Emily Dickinson. It evolved a bit.


Unattended (12/8)

There is a carriage moving in the wood with no passengers no driver no horses -

The metal wheels bump off roots and rocks the curtains spindle in no wind -

A suitcase falls loose and white things fly into daylight then muddy themselves -

The carriage is moving through countryside animals flee it carries -

Relict

Relict (12/7)

The ring sits on the shelf
A knot of dust - worn band

The mirrors are tilted away from my face

All the tile in the bathroom is cold

It is a museum - reliquary
Some thumb sealed in glass
        for three hundred years

Turning a light on is like taking a photo

Every surface will have red-eye

Nutty

Nutty (12/6)

The ginger is full of roaches - I scoop them out
            one    by    one

with a long handled spoon        they are growing
into palmetto bugs - are translucent - are humming
the
            ginger is a pile of beads - buttermilk necklace
            the    thread is        floss
a    chain    of teeth

around your neck
                        they are my baby teeth
roots are knuckles clawing your clavicle

In the dream where we are ninjas in a bank - a bank!
            we have katana
and sleep on couches

The roaches become dragons - scales tilting like solar panels
            one    by    one

They absorb all light - focus their eyes

            are    shooting        lasers

Pink

As cheesy as something like this



is, I can't help but smile a bit.

Parse

Parse (12/5)

A love despairing is not a despairing love
            is not a pineapple on a table separating endlessly

The room splits and the walls are peel
they slide and remake as an origami lotus

A table of glass is only sand after all
            is only a Ocean City beach re-purposed as Jesus

Books will melt again and again
show themselves to be molting winter fur

A fur coat is not a coat of fur

These pages are bodies and the will never keep you
you warm they are oil slicks on beaches

They are contrails diffusing quickly

Snowball Theater

Late post tonight. I was at Meg's New Friend. Which is a great play written by my good friend Blair Singer showing in the west village at Manhattan Theater Source. Go see it if you are in the area.

Speaking of plays. Tomorrow night I am going to see THIS. Be jealous if you must.

Today's poem is very seasonal even though the weather is not. It's also tiny.


Snowball (12/4)

Ice on wool palms - pushing round
forming tightly - until the sting
Tossing into the expanse - the cotton sound of impact

Profession Advent

My internet is back up.
So here is a poem for today:

Profession (12/3)

The labyrinthine mold of my brain aims to be the sun
It’s darkest corners alight over lands yet to be founded

I knowledge a room into existence
Purely to break it apart into microns

This particle of sand was a chair and it is now fodder
A tree was once a lily or a bedpost

I upright the world along a horizon that I cut from void
The maze will trick everyone in the end

It will pull you towards center then reveal nothing
There is no center that can possibly hold

This sun is a Milky Way spiraling outward alarmingly
Pulsing with the quickness of my heart and blinking

with my drumbeat eyes my mind is a guillotine
snapping at the necks of anything that comes close


And one for yesterday:


Advent (12/2)

New York opens its arms
The spreading expanse of Brooklyn pulling
Across the waters of the East River an aunt dies

Somewhere a leaf shivers on a bough – not having the good sense to fall
Snow drifts lazily and the bosom of winter is a subway ride at 5am

New York screams at all hours
A hushing sound more in line with an ocean than people
The leaf is still holding as buds begin to unwind

In the botanic garden the magnolia bloom
Each a teacup collecting water – a fragrant ivory curve

The arms are open but the breast is cold
Stony – she is too busy with the millions others
Across the waters of the Hudson more family drift silently away

Smiling and full of hope – dripping like the buildings
New York is a quiet succubus

Monoidal Popper

Internet should be back up Thursday. So here are the poems for today:

Monoidal (12/1)

Michael Wilson is sleeping through the day
He is dreaming about being a ninja - in a bank - in the rain
He is sleeping on a couch in a foyer - wrapped in down comforters
Michael Wilson is eyes closed

Michael Wilson is running a fever for weeks
He is feeling the pressure of skin on skull
He is watching snow - rain - wind - pile in the vacant lot
Michael Wilson is petting a cat

Michael Wilson is a geometric equation
He is a network frame with a cybernetic skin - a concept realized
He is walking through walls and magnetized
Michael Wilson is a recording of himself

Michael Wilson is walking dizzy in the city
He is unsure of the past and future - weary of this concrete - anxious
He is sleeping while awake and sees everything in pink Michael Wilson is becoming a closet of ghosts


And yesterday:

Popper (11/30)

- to enjoy the threesome - I pull
the string - a crown a fortune a
little plastic unicorn - lubricant
sheets over the floor - the sound
snapping fingers - a dick pulls out -

Saltire Side-step

I am without internet at home so unfortunately things may be delayed. So, here are todays:

Saltire (11/29)

Crux decussata – X bound and flying
Andreas – fisher of men – Patras martyr
Against a blue field – swipe of white
Crux of lines – void of clear – a hole
An eye staring out – hooking curiosity
Andreas – brother – X bound and blue
Two swords crossing – sudden moment
Scales interlocking – armor plates – men
Patras martyr – you crux – tied starving
Against the blue ocean – apostle white


And yesterdays:

Side-Step (11/28)

The problem is not that the paint is not dry – that the stirs are un-mended
But that you walked away from the mending

I peel the layers of lead and take each communion-like on my tongue

The carpet is threadbare and pearls of moisture on the walls whip our salts
into a fog of crystal that slices our throats

Our house is a shot loon hanging from a rafter – its windows are clouded
over and closing

The problem is not the paint that drips water – is not the buckets filling
But that you leave the buckets until they rust

That you pull curtains over our eyes and fill our rooms with insulation rolls

The problem is that you are gone – that this is a ghost house – that it’s my chest
empty and filling with water

Sovereign

Sovereign (11/27)

Out of the corner Constantine stares
Tireless stone-cut eyes of watching

What does he purvey?

Impeccably preserved coffins vases
Hercules with his broad everything and tiny head
A space fills with people snapping pictures

How many note him alone in his corner?
Does his name catch in the corners of their minds?
Oh ten foot tall head on a pillar! You are here!

They keep you dust free and cool so you will never crumble
They filter your air and fan you as if you still ruled over the known world
With a whole body with a voice

Your sights familiar and artfully arranged this Met keeps masses
interested moving rebuilding endless Byzantiums

Microinject

Microinject (11/26)

America is a withered cactus - a succulent in rocks - it's roots tumbling for water

It is a wrinkled scrotum - aged and sprouting gray hairs

Instead of rain - a moisturizer a botox - harsh winter is coming up in gales in furies

The wind of forgetting knocks leaves from the trees - the heady bone fragments fall
silently and weakly - the naked limbs bend for their clothes

America is a tired whore

She is standing on a pedestal holding a damn light and no one will look - we have killed
Pertinax and sold off the empire for slightly better wages

Our progress in the desert - our springing forth water where there was none - has led us
to salt veins that are toxic

We become pillars in our suits

Vacant lots become the only lots with substance - the plants whip furious

There is only so much ink available to hide the aging - only so much plaster to
cover cracks

America needs an enema - an injection at the cellular level - some sort of clean water - a
de-ionized hyper-mineralized love-fest to ourselves

We need a cozy blanket and some hot chocolate - a mother with a thermometer -
someone should shake their finger at us and say 'no' - anyone? - we need a time out

Roots flow over rocks - an over pruned bonsai - leaves grow stunted and clear - plastic -
breaking as they fall on pavement - slicing under feet

What rebuilding could un-desert the sand - could un-lot the vacancies - what let's us
lower our lights?

America we should turn around and look at our shore - shine a beacon into our own dark
contents

Carnic

Carnic (11/25)

When I was little I had Dinosaur sheets
Red Tyrannosaurus and purple Brontosaurus against a white field
Red being the color of anger and all things predatory
Purple being feminine and the color of eating plants
White the calm neutral place to plant them all
There were out of place palm trees tilting like Hawaiian Tropic commercials
And they felt like old t-shirts

The last time I slept in someone's bed the blankets were too hot
And the dog was all over us when we slept and when were awake
They were scratchy and starchy and smelled like sand
They were dark red the color of wine
And we wrapped ourselves around each other
The radiator hissed so loud I stared at the ceiling all night and smelled dog breath
I only thought about Dinosaurs roaming endlessly

Parget

Parget (11/24)

When I say that you are my friend - that we are in the same boat
That our oars are spoons and this is a bowl in a turbulent ocean...

I am putting up wall-paper in the rooms that you left

A can of paint and some plaster remake my emotions - turn
blue ones red and whiten the purples

I cover over the thought that I was wanting us to be perfect with the face of an owl

Curtains cover the window that condenses universes in winter
The heat of a laying body - breaking nebulae swirling endless above heads...

I smooth over the wrinkles of past papers - teach myself 'without'

There are new sheets to bed - carpets put down
Our little boat is cracked in the sink scuttled and washed

I watch movies that we watched and think 'what the hell?'

When I say that you are my friend - that the universe we made collapsed
That our old big bang became rapid drifting apart...

I mean that you have left us -
            That I want to see 360 degrees -
                        That I see cracks in the surface of everything -

Cavalier

Cavalier (11/23)

Oliver Cromwell is riding the hills - we throw about this idea that kings are made and then unmade - he is not hunting but wandering - kings are suddenly there - one day you wake up and someone older has died and someone younger is wearing a cape with jewels on their head - Oliver Cromwell took his cape and went riding - sometimes the old are not old but just boring or out of date - 'elections' might be held - coups held - will is rarely involved - it is an act of time - of the spheres moving as they do - he is not hunting but wandering - kings rarely know what they are doing when they are doing it - they just continue -

Non-labour

Non-labour (11/22)

Oh to be one of those men in suits!
            carrying their leather cases of paper
So fucking important - so filling those pointed shoes so well

Their crotches are filling their pants as well - slide
            fingers over wedding bands they
post annonymous on websites looking for hairless ass

So important - so on my televisions
            telling me how important they are
Oh to be idle in a penthouse - non-labour and bored to tears

Oh to be so bored - so unmoored - so shiny - so thinking
            how fun!
to be a mass huddled cold - a waitress - a cleaning woman
            carrying a canvas bag of groceries
So fucking tired of weeping buildings - of running eyes

Sich - bleeding - puss filled canker

Oh to be one of those men!
            teeth blinding and insides turning to mush
A tomato in a fridge - a goddamn Christmas tree in January

Pumpkin

Pumpkin (11/21)

Patch is filled with leaves - wet
crunching The smell of clouds
flits on the tongue -

I carve and make a nose - squish the tendrils
It is slasher fun

Walking late it's cold dark
and our pillow cases are filling with candy

The first snow - leaves go mush
a hush falls over melting corpses of Halloween
It's getting colder things start to smell
like cinnamon

I light a candle - it smells like cathedrals like
winter coming on

Chagga

My favorite part of this project is coming across words I don't know. It forces me to do research. There are days though where I am happy to sit in my ignorance.

There are also things that I don't feel like making up.


Chagga (11/20)

I don't know anything about Tanzania or its people I have tasted coffee
doubtful if from this region Americans like their Arabica from places
like Ethiopia It makes us feel reparations

Maybe I saw something on a travel program

I'm sure there was a nature special

The things I don't know about Tanzania fill a large room with leather furniture
I have written books to line the shelves about the things I don't know about Tanzania
They are free of words but picture themselves nicely with children's drawings of the imagined wonders of Tanzania I could look it up
make educated guesses

But I don't know even know where to begin so I room and book

Outliner

Outliner (11/19)

I draw a line around my eye and dot out the iris
I make tears in the corner of my mouth
I patchwork my fingerprints into new skin

There is a moment when I feel skin dulling blade
There is the smell of iron and other ores, of pennies
It is distant, like static

I draw a line around my eye dot the iris
I notice how white the roots of teeth are
I roll flesh

Transpose

This is actually a translation of the Lorca poem The Dawn.


Transpose (la aurora despues lorca) [11/18]


The dawn of New York has fourteen columns of dirt
            a hurricane of black doves that wade in rotted water

The dawn of New York moans on enormous stairwells
            searching between angles for relief from poverty

Dawn comes - no one takes it - it their mouths
            mourning and hope are impossible :

            Sometimes money clusters furiously
            drills - devours the homeless - the stray cats

Light is chained and buried in the white noise of cars
            a tantrum against science without root

Sleepless peoples wander through their lives
            it is like they have escaped a shipwreck of blood

Multicopy

Multicopy (11/17)

The leaf is leathering
                        It is a bosice on the sidewalk
arching its back
                        The skin is pulling
away from the bones
                        It is a deer
along the side of the road
                        The skin is moving plastic
going brown then black
                        The leaf is an exposed process
a fixed idea
                        It is a quickening

Picture Message (anasazi)

Picture Message (11/16)

Spirals all over the walls - outwards
Did old peoples live in whirlpools in these cliff cities

In New Mexico they left the plain and climbed the walls
Perched on ledges like puffins in Wales
They orchard themselves and slept in small rooms of mud

Above the spirals - a flute - shaft - filling with bats
They crayon the flight plan - map the winged rats?

Deep in their eyes are sucking pools
Hypnotized - moving - they leave their holes in rock

Fly-through

Fly-through (11/15)

There is a mirror universe
A mirror earth with 5 less days in its mirror years

In the bathroom with the pink walls my face looks healthy

There is a device called The Ghost Mirror that relfects everything except the viewer
You can see things behind you

Each thing on this world works because of distance

Inches
      A few feet
            Several thousand miles

The product of light dancing on skin is a mirror in your hands
Glowing fingers smoothing a cheek

In the ghost mirror you can't see yourself
You must face everything else in your world

And on that mirror earth with 5 fewer moments to deal
Everyone moves faster and takes things less for granted

Or they notice things even less
Or they are used to it and don't even know it

Fathoms over water
      Spaces between houses
            Nano seconds inside of skin

They don't know

Doubler

Doubler (11/14)

The branches are shooting in straight lines
In parallels - fathoms - across the smoothing ground
Arms pulling in opposite directions

It's leaves are fingers - grooves on hands
Writing - slipping - from your grip

This tree is needing

But it splits itself - intends to go down both roads
Kick up every piece of dirt in the way
Those branches are leveled and dancing

Praising its roots coming up - dirt rushing down

This tree is one person dividing
Becoming twins - a shadow - that is also the object

Big One

Big One (11/13)

There's that lie that is told about how much you miss how it was.

It's actually a missing of how you felt.

How eyes can only rest on something once.

There's the lie of snow on windows at Christmas at Thanksgiving.

The family sitting around a fire or television.

It's the missing of a holiday without cancer without coughing without illness.

That's the Big One, the one told constantly.

That it used to be better that it was ever something else.

It never was, it was just everyone's last time.

Principally

I finally figured out how to indent in a post. So now you will be seeing the poems how they were actually meant to be seen.


Principally (11/12)

The goal is to burn - break all the bars

It is not enough to mark

There must be indentations
tattooings

         it must bleed like hell

The goal is to hurt - to scar
your heart

It needs to be difficult for you to breathe

You have to feel
the spike
         inserted in your skull

Perspective

Perspective (11/11)

The glass has paint on it - a scratch - grease
but on the other side is snow and the darkness of late fall

So there's that

It makes the paint whiter looking - it was bluish to gegin
against the bruise of sky it's pale

The sky isn't really bruised - it's cold as steel - a sheet of
oxidized stainless left on a burner too long

There's that scratch - which looks like someone with
hard grating knuckles - tried to claw their way out the 4th floor

The grease is from hair - a head leaning on the pane

Not sure where the snow is coming from

Bad Romance

Honestly...has anyone been so fashionable and plain old crazy in the music scene lately like Lady Gaga? I know that she's derivative, bubblegum dance but she seems to know and use the hell out of it.

And she is waring those creepy as hell hoof shoes form the Alexander McQueen 2010 collection.

And she somehow gets away with it.

Armistice

Armistice (11/10)

Page - I ask you to leave me be
And by page I mean mind
I ask the blankness to melt

Mind - I ask you to cease whirring
Your gizmos are magnificent distractions
But tire me out

Ebola

Ebola (11/9)

A swarm of gnats
under your skin
Little black risings
move with your beats

This is an inner drum attacking your meats

It is visual slippage
at your peripheral
Inner eye infected
with imagination

And your insides huddle for lack of attention

A Single Man

A Single Man looks amazing:



It was directed by Tom Ford. Fashion man and fellow Santa Fe transplant. I couldn't think of anyone else to make a weird, stylish, AWESOME movie based on a Christopher Isherwood novel. AND, the art direction was done by the Mad Men folks. I mean...I'm there. Already.

For serious.

Antipodes

Antipodes (11/8)

40.673144105995654, -73.95416736602783

-40.67314410599565, 106.045832633397217

Overthrow

Overthrow (11/7)

Alone in wonder err I throw
and weave and drunken-ly go

I mist myself in piss and rain
crawling through alley ways

Each night I draw blood rare
and cut a language coat to wear

To keep my bones warm safe dry
the coat leathered history ribbed

I attach my thoughts to my blood
and weave a golem - mud

xkcd Common Weal

xkcd is an odd comic that regularly makes me feel good. This one is a perfect example.

Common Weal (11/6)

The crowd is the wing of a great bird
They are the undercarriage of an ox

The feathers surge and spread
Air wrapping around each rachis

There is lift - a hovering quiet
A moment paused

There is heavy wood on massive shoulders
Yet they carry the country on their backs

The crowd is a vast sprawling ocean
Beating against concrete shores

There is lift - hulking
Weightless it drifts up to the troposphere

The bird defied gravity - coasting
Sunlight and the back of people shining

But there is a spinning heavy feeling
Feet that still plant the ground - they are going nowhere

The crowd is a rooted tree - centrifugal
Is gravity coming

Photo-finish

Photo-finish (11/5)

Horse's eye
Pool of oil filling with light
Now they are mocking a blur
Now they are etched on your corona
They are nostrils
Holes into pure
Unblinking moments dripping
Melting currants
Hyphenated chess pieces
Covered in felt that burns
Sienna tails
Now they winnow the fields
Now they are driving too hard

Bonfire

Bonfire (11/4)

Upturn and break
across your knees this limb

The trees are blighted

Nooses magnolia
heavy and full of scent

We walk broken-legged
knotted one-legged racing

The leaves are daggers?

Everything is red today

Paradox

Paradox (11/3)

There is a break in the water
everything is rock and glass and sky
It happens on the edges of islands
mostly on Tuesdays sometimes on Sunday

There are things that build houses on these breaks
wait ouot the momentary lapses of rushing
The empty gourds of these houses are like
pumpkins are like bowls and twice as filled

Here there are places for toes to grip the undersides
the feeling is sad like sand but more like confetti
A loud sucking of the air heralds the arrivals and it comes
crashing back - this water that returns - a miniopocalypse

One Life To Live

I have to admit that I am entirely suckered in by this:





Once again in case you missed it
Michael J. Wilson = Hopeless Romantic

Fox

I'm a hopeless romantic, everyone go AWWW.

Fox (11/2)

I want a man who is creative but not pretentious
I want a man who is stable but not boring
I want a man who makes me think about wanting a man
I want a man who makes it easy
I want a man who is everything nothing and I don't expect more
I want a man who wants me
I want a man who will spend the day in bed
I want a man who I want to be honest with
I want a man who appreciates leaves
I want a man who likes my cat and likes that I like my cat
I want a man who will sit in silence
I want a man who likes bad horror movies and dresses up at Halloween
I want a man who dreams about Escher
I want a man who makes me forget that I want anything
I want a man who makes lists of things he wants to forget
I want a man who wears plaid and suspenders and isn't ironic
I want a man who goes on vacations to cold overcast places
I want a man who kisses like dying
I want a man who has eyes that glitter in certain light in the afternoon
I want a man who thinks in submarine
I want a man who names colors

Mellin

The Mellin Transform involves inversion and expansion. Perfect concept for fall. Though fall could be characterized as an inversion and contraction of things. Which also applies to the poem below:

Mellin (11/1)

Leaves touch the surface become boats for the Ibis to play sea monster to
Eyes have that way of reflecting a person as a lover and then you are sitting on a leaf in a bowl
Even when you are just friends suddenly you may be holding hands and feathers will pull
Water will act like ice and each will run in opposite directions buy only for so long
The Ibis will sit black-eyed he will be thinking about fish not about your succulent flesh
Leaves pull themselves back to their limbs and then re-green then bud

Marquise

Marquise (10/31)

In the corner table her legs are resting she is raising tonic

Gin smells of moth balls and the table is sticky

She's smoking or would be if she did and her tits look great

The corner is dark enough you can't tell how old she is and she can't either

It's late someone needs to go home with her

Her torso is leaning and her head is watching the room cycle

Her fingers slide over glass but think skin on skin

The air clings and waits a moment before separating

Zombie

Zombie (10/30)

Tracing ourselves we reinvent the wheel then fire

We reorganize our closets by season then color

Gravity only exists because we start recognizing its existence

Our eyes roll endlessly as we talk about our newness

Blood in out and over they say lick their wounds lick

This circle is for believers only this other one is for something else

Gravelly

Gravelly (10/29)

Late at night I am walking through the kitchen
always bare feet and stepping on cold tiles
Just before the fridge and after the oven there is
always the push of sand on toe
There are always the bathroom paw prints of cat litter

Forget

I often wonder if poetry can exist in a similar realm to John Cage.


Forget (10.28)

Imagine everything you have forgotten -

repeat until it rains
if it's raining repeat until it snows
if it's snowing repeat until it is August 25th
if it's August 25th repeat until an eyelash falls on the page -

right here ___

Sturdy

Sturdy (10/27)

Even on three legs even
on a sloping plane

They say sheep are infected
with the sturdy

And I do get giddy when
touching your surfaces

The tilting bedchamber is
antecedent to our lying

Even on three legs this
table top rests our elbows

We eat then fuck
endlessly flat against -

Microscreen

Microscreen (10/26)

Light in the puddles makes rainbows and again each drop arches a thousand times then sinks
The slick of road turns everything milky the oil stretches and brightens
The don't walk sign flashes its message a muted attempt at language that manages

Rachis

I've discovered it is very hard for me to update on the days I work late...I will get better at this.


Rachis (10/25)

1.
from each finger tip a spine - a jab
hollow - that fills with ink

2.
I become a sparrow - soot covered flapping
making a dust bath of this bowl

there are spots spreading over my wings
darkening - alphabets appear on feathers

3.
in the wind some
leaves unlatch

only the yellowing
of paper and skies

acknowledges that
some passing occurred

4.
each spine is a detuned plucking - filling
the room with unnamable noise

with the sounds of trees - wind in trees
each pinion is bone on concrete

these spots - spreading - burn holes
iron-filled red - each a whisper

they flap incessantly about the room
they cannot understand their own language

Denude

Denude (10/24)

Under the inscriptions there are bricks - uneven and ugly
cracking - there are pieces on the sidewalk turning to dust

The thing about inscriptions - that enraptures - infuriates
is the finality - the supposed enveloping intelligence

the bubble of space around them - that space
is fragile - is a film of soap over a wire

A bending universe that stacks itself - possibility and emptiness
It all pushes into one small spot of time and melts into foam

We cover that spot with stucco and want and desire
The houses in our minds are creaky with it - haunted with it

Flummery at BAM

Yes, another late post yesterday. I was sad.
I went to BAM for "Songs of Ascension" by Meridith Monk.
And it was kinda dull and pretentious.

Which is what this is about, in a way.
How does it relate to "flummery"?
Well...I guess in my mind pretension is bland, like oatmeal. And it's always nonsense.


Flummery (10/23)

His honor is still king - prancing nakedly
going on about how it was back in the day

The always melting yet never melted deity whispers
'I paid for all of this with borrowed money'

There is laughter - sudden quiet - then a band
Waltzing Matilda - and the boat sinks on the horizon

Because the best parties happen on boats
The best parties happen as the world ends

They always slink over the red line of the sunset
Never coming back into view once twilight takes hold

90s

90s (10/22)

1990 was 19 years ago and it feels lost - feels like an end
There is something coming? - something

I stand at the corner of 13th and 6th and watch people
going into the bagel place
I wonder what kind of fresh hell this is

I know that slowly my body conspires to turn against me
I bullet - racing just as everyone else - towards death
I make some gesture at longevity - page immortality - I take vitamins
I make metallic balloons and then conspire ways to pop them

I am the sun - I repeat myself too often to actually be immortal
Those that survive say everything once

This flower will barely prepare its nectar - and a bee - if any are left
will only just be able to make out the sex from across the fields - if there are any left

If I call this square I stand on perfection - this watching the bagel square
Does it make perfection real

I leave it to the waves - which are coming - if the movies are to be believed
I leave nothing to myself -

Puffy

Puffy (10/21)

Your eyes are wounded - I would balm over your pains -

In the mirror your face watches - a ritual - I take your hands and run
them under cold water - I clean the cuts

The reflection studies the process - a surgeon inside yourself

My reflection also - writing it down

The four of us wrap the room in walls


Later I paint your portrait as you watch re-runs of the Golden Girls - it takes a lot of
effort to think of you nude and smiling

Pinion

Pinion (10/20)

My heart is a rope - around my ankles - wrists
It prevents me - I can see the world moving outside
All I can do - is struggle - against interminable beating

Caesar

I liked the idea of everyone looking up the words themselves...but starting today I will link to the lesser (but unlike the OED, free) Dictionary.com definition of each poem's word.


Caesar (10/19)

I am the sun.

My arms create fields of wheat.

The smell of damp grass right after plow - it is October
everything is muting in the throat of the swallow
are travel songs.
Red vibrates the trees.

I am the universe.

My voice invents the name of stars - I breathe the dark cosmos
nebulae inside my gaping maw are going to planet
sooner or later each will swirl.
A blue eye - vortex calling itself earth.

I am everything ever ever.

The words fall off my tongue and are water - taste the clear
of the mountain's highest peak in glacier
pack of centuries huddled for warmth.
They are men in dark coats waiting for me to say 'go on

climb'.

Background Rankine

Surreal poem today.
Yes, I know it's late, I can explain.
I was on a bus tour of the Bronx.
A bus tour of the Bronx led by Claudia Rankine.
That was a poem.


Background (10/18)

There is a road that goes over a bridge - it begins
on your shoulder - wonds among the dusty shoals of your collar
The dirt kicked up by travellers moves behind your ears
they will come out from under the lobes and cross
It is a stone-arched one-lane townie sort of bridge

The river is wider going back - it hovers
oddly placed onthe horizon
Your hair waves and rolls like foam and treats
your neck like boulders
Wide but soft spoken this river

Somewhere high up a forest begins and brushed
the sky and everything recedes into cream
All of this happens while you sit still watching a man
with a paint brush doing your face on a canvas
He's put a mirror on the back to keep you entertained

You make faces at yourself and watch pilgrims fall from your ears

Performance

Performance (10/17)

They wear top hats with peacock feathers and do the Volta
After wards retire to the loft of some Bernard and smoke till the windows curl
They read Apollonaire out loud and talk about the New York School like churches
There are Banksy's on the walls and frames with nothing in them
Here they all sleep on piles of red velvet blankets in footie pajamas
Their asses hang out they make toast over kerosene camp stoves int he bathroom
It's all so tre so something ambient and adorable
They powder themselves and pretend to be fops while sunning on a roof
Breeches and high heeled in the park in late October they eat ironic hot dogs
They talk in isms and manage a smile only for Facebook
So wonderfully tedious and so beautifully perfect - let's raise our glasses
Everyone - put your hand on the pubis and lift now -
no -
now

Span and Maddow

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It has nothing to do with my poem...or maybe it does:

Span (10/16)

You
are orbiting

The gulf opens
around our heads

Between us

a golden thread

Pintupi

Pintupi - A Blue Streak (10/15)

It soon became clear that ballistics were essential.

The missiles used liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants.

Missiles take 15 minutes to fuel.

To protect the missiles against pre-emptive strikes underground sites were developed.

The best sites for silo construction were in southern England.

Enormous economic, social, and political cost.

A test site was established at Woomera, South Australia.

The last aborigine populations were relocated.

Around 84m had been spent.

The British purchased Polaris from the Americans, carried in British-built submarines.

Everything was abandoned abruptly.

Rustication

Rustication (10/14)

The hills are piled blankets are broken teeth
The hills are piled of broken teeth on messed blankets

Grass is fluxing in the wind is a steady green smile
Grass is a steady smile fluxing happily and menacing

A shack a hovel a log cabin
leans into the wind mostly managing to stay upright

The periods between gusts is enough for mice to remake
Enough time for a baby to be born and grow to have children

Where the rock lays bare everything goes quiet
A sudden upturn in the weather turns to storm at sea

Iftar

A lot of these poems become caught up in whatever I was thinking about at the time of writing. In the fall of 2007 I was very dissatisfied with relationships. Romance. Cliched love. I guess I still am, this poem still resonates.

Iftar (10/13)

We hold hands and walk in the park- it becomes a joke
I tire of this back and forth - my feet hurt
It all lost appeal years ago became a must a do

But here we go locking fingers like vines on telephone poles
And we walk in some park near some fountain
We may as well be on a beach - really get those cliches going

I've convinced myself that your eyes were all I've known
That I could swim in them - goddamn that's dull
I don't know how to swim - I scream about floating

Somewhere a field is sighing as winter sets in - without us
A sort of joke I leave unanswered - a field of dying
It all lost its appeal years ago - became a must do

Here take my hand and lets walk counter clock around the park
Instead of clockwise
You know - for a change

Whirligig

Whirligig (10/12)

This pen winds up the world
clocks the birds and makes heaven tilt

On the back the key slowly spinning
A hole is an iris then an opening then a flower in bloom

Inside the world are springs
this language is making the universe darken
then lighten

It comes back on itself
this pen will write into a corner then invent
the corner and then make a door then invent
the opening of the door

This pen is its own key
it has teeth and eyes and knows

This pen is a deluge of piranha in your bathtub

Trolley

Trolley (10/11)

Over Brooklyn the metal grooves are listing
are mapping out where people used to go

A clacking happened here

There were wood carts and wheels and people
moving over this land

A bell was ringing and there was such a great moving

The grooves list there is no end to the listing they want
their history to end

They are old men in rocking chairs being ignored at family reunions

Modulation, dance dance dance

On Thursday I went to BAM to see Decreation by William Forsythe. From BAM's website :

"a work that challenges our notions of dance in the 21st century and asserts his place as one of the world's most innovative choreographers. A piece on love, jealousy, and the soul, Decreation explores the forces that shape and rend our relationships—with one another and ourselves."

The show was all kinds of amazing. It's hard to explain in words. Which is equally amazing. The work is based on the essay "Decreation" by Anne Carson (my favorite living writer). The essay is about a trio of women dissecting God, love, jelousey, heartache, etc. The dance is definitely about these same things, BUT it holds to a fairly straight-forward narrative of two characters int he midst of a breakup/breakdown.

The show's use of language and space definitely recalls the forms of Carson. The dancers moved about on stage in broken thought patterns, they swapped rolls, they suddenly yelled. They had mics. The room would vibrate from the noise one moment, then go deathly quiet for huge periods of time. The entire cast froze silently for what felt like eternity.

It was all over the place, a storm, but a perfect one.

65min, no intermission
Tickets: $20, 35, 50, 70

Go. Now.

Modulation (10/10)

I hear that you are telling me this -
See that park over there - the one with the yellow bars and the fence
I know a man who was beaten in that park -

I hear that you are telling me this -
Have you seen the blood - it was a clear day really shockingly beautiful
He was wearing a blue sweater -

I hear that you are telling me this -
Move - sit on the swings with me and let's never talk about it again
Hold my hand and swing -

Microlens

Microlens (10/9)

The leaf is a field cupping the air

Beetle back is grooved vinyl a hair is needling the sound out

Inside the drop of water a universe expands then falls

A city is collapsing under the forces the buses are with child

There is one giant eye floating overhead - passive

Turkey!?!

This is up late because I went to a show. I will discuss later.

Turkey (10/8)

You are a mister aren't you all spread out showing foliage
Mister brown mister tumor-neck mister pin spiked stepper

You hobble and your fly is heavy but puff that shit out anyway
This is a fly bird and a gracious forest buzzer just try to un this mother

Multistate

Multistate (10/7)

Folding in we take this place and push it into playdoh molds
It gets flowers on its ass and smells like plastic and salt
Thos little crumbs of green are sticking hard and are crumbling

This is where the flower shapes mash and the petals go clear
There are thousands of feet going crazy marching like footsoldiers
We are taking this storm to the oceans to the front doors of everybody

Taking this storm folding pressing we will have lightbulbs over every head
It's turning off and on a meal on every plate and then an empty plate to clean
The molds are breaking there will be no more salt lick shapes in any color anywhere

This place folds nice and neat an origami of stains on table linens
Lick your fingers and come into the other room let us smoke this day
Look at that globe in the corner and pick a dusty spot with your fingers tomorrow there -

Snarling

Snarling (10/6)

I am trying to be angry about post-modernism

Trying to get my hands dirty again - put the thorns under my nails

I am kicking clay into my own face

I am trying to be angry about post-post-modernism

What if it's all gone on ahead of us ? - our eyes will be red with sand

There will be pearls forming in our ducts

I am trying to be angry about confessionalism

Trying not to admit to liking the Dixie Chicks - not be culturally frozen

I am trying to be angry about poems about poetry

What if there is a loop forming ? - the thorns will run red then will grow

I am picking something from my head it is rotten

I am trying to be angry about meta

Tring to smell ink in the computer - I press my face until it bends

Strand it all together and make a necklace make a -

Skoosh

I rarely go there in my writing. But this is one of those times. Adult moment ahead ya'll.

Or not...guess it's perspective


Skoosh (10/5)

If the dick is wet it is sliding well

Your ass will flatten - turn pink
will open a rotten spot
will hollow

Then there moans a sky

Your balls will purple - rise
prunish - tender - then

The bed will soak in water
blood
shit

Returnable

Returnable (10/4)

Eternity is not in keeping with paper
Horizons too melt into haze - this lead
goos with envy

Or -
I die like everyone else - kept long
on shelves dusting myself hording paper lice

Eternity will envy only eternity plus one

Every line portraits eventually
You can focus hard - squint
Like hands out of the fog - birthmark

Architecture ain't just buildings folks

I am a fan of fashion and architecture. Call me shallow but beautiful things make me feel good. I especially love when the two come together somehow. Structure in fabric, art in buildings...wonderful stuff.

The Atelier Versace fall 09 collection is both of these things. Click that link at look hard at the structure in the fabric. The cut-outs. Everything. The way the clothes form to the body and then suddenly fall away into air.

The green dress I included above obviously looks Chrystler Building-ish but there a re a few there with tiny details that remind me of buttresses and staircases and all sorts of building elements. Not to mention that they are all just awesome to look at.

If I were a rich woman with a perfect body I would wear all of these daily.

Seriously.

Side Note :
I linked to Tom and Lorenzo's blog. I stole those images from them. They are hilarious guys who post about fashion. The blog started life as a Project Runway fan deal and has evolved into a forum for world-wide fashion critique. Interesting place to get a dose of interesting fashion images.

Narrow

Narrow (10/3)

Palms almost touching
the lines make channels
pushing sweat

Fingers rim salt crystals
the ice melts holes
into themselves

Paling, a long one

Paling (10/2)

1.
Again trees

2.
Rounded hills
covered
A yellow blanket, its
shock
colors cause the eyes to
dart

3.
Body remembers waking

3am naked toe touches

First fall leaf, first rain

4.
yellow
drops
the sky is busy being orange

everything is mulled wine
spices over butternut squash

mostly
everything looks ending
a deepish bruise

5
All of this is cliched
Cycles, colors, seasons.
Death, death, death...

But -

When leaves start their jumping,
like baby birds from the nest,
it is hard not to think about
a slow darkening.

The way soil turns
smooth, black.

That damp smell,
subtle chocolate,
parts around leaf veins.

6.
You pull up the blankets.

You pray for smoothness.

Chocolate is the new 80s

This video from Cadbury's is all sorts of awesome.

List as train of thought

This was an experiment. I started out thinking about an episode of Mad Men that featured a Mark Rothko very prominently. In keeping with the nature of the poems I am posting I decided to enter a random color with Rothko into Google. I followed that with the first thing I thought of after that...oddly Jell-O.

Here are the five searches I did, in order:

Rothko Blue
Stained Glass Jell-O
NYC Subway Tiles
Train Maps
Maps Are Art

Exoenzyme

The link in the title takes you to an article about Amylase, which is a protein in saliva that starts to break down food into sugars in the mouth. This is as clear an explanation for the poem I have.

Exoenzyme (10/1)

Take off your shirt let me hold it to my chest

There
is a taste as I spoon you into my mouth

From your ___ to my ___

Beautiful - anything could be sitting
filling those blanks

Ghosts are a metaphor for headaches

Ghostly (9/30)

It's fog over valley - a warm day - pressure
on my skull filling in every crack
I know it's some weather - pressure drop - a
hung-over lecture rattling
It drills - a curtain over eyes that buzzes lightly
cicadas with glassine features
they break at the first sign of breathing -


I get headaches. Often. They happen at season changes, temperature changes, pressure changes, weather changes. I have learned to live with the dull ache inside the lobes. Yes, I have taken pills. Yes, I have mentioned it to doctors. I take ibuprofen when it gets really bad. Two do the trick for a few hours. If all fails, I go to bed early after drinking a ton of water.

Cheapen, poetry readings make me sad

Is it true of all artists that they feel like they are lacking in their art?

This question plagues me. If I fear anything, it is giving all of this up and it somehow being ok with me. The idea that I could go on with my life not thinking about writing. Not answering 'writer' when asked what I do. This scared the shit out of me.

I went to a reading at the New School tonight. This was after an obnoxiously long day at work tearing apart a failed branch of our business. All vacuuming couches and boxing used dishware. I was tired to begin with is what I'm saying.

So I go to this reading. A reading for the winners of a chapbook contest at the New School. And I am genuinely happy for the woman I know who won. Because she is a writer I actually like, who I believe deserves a little credit. She has a book coming out. Again, deserved. I will buy it. I don't want this to seem like an angry letter to X about X. It isn't at all.

The whole thing makes me sad beyond belief. The reading, the clapping, even the little chap books they published. I cannot place the sadness. It is ambiguous and larger then a feeling of 'shoulda been me'. After the reading everyone seemed a bit down in general, maybe it is a state of the world moment?

Sad, tired, hungry I ended up at a Quiznos eating alone in NY. I wonder the aisles of The Strand and then head home on the 4.

What sort of point is here Michael?

None. I have no point. Do I wish I had a book coming out, sure. But I don't know what that would mean to me. If it would mean...that is also something that scares me. Getting what you think you wanted all along and finding out that it didn't mean anything to you.

Here is today's poem. It started out about pennies...it ended up about death or something like it.


Cheapen (9/29)

Pennies tarnish - turn green the
milky waters of the bay

There are barnacles that look like Lincoln
on hulls of schooners

His nose smells all seven seas and in
Times Square they have a bit of curtain

From the Ford theater - history
under glass - untouchable

Eventually all faces are left to pictures only
just masks

Of paper
there is a thickness to blood lacking in paper

That copper taste and the red that seals brown
that softens in water

Black

Black (9.28)

Burn - there is
a break in wood it's a charcoal mess in here

My heart is a breathing organ with an unblinking eye

Breathing is painting
burning through the torso

That heat feel in the cells - in there like spontaneous

Makes you want to put your head down
some chopping block - reach out

With some limp-wristed faggot hands
go down on this blade - eh? - this one here

Here -
take the creaking - it is the sound of hate in your chest

My heart is a hearing organ - a kneecap breaking on a tire iron

Colors are a bore - spreading vine making
your body becomes abandoned temples

The shears are breaking on lead - the turn aluminum

In a kitchen in Green Point it is 3am
a chamber burned - the outline of a body left behind

Unworthy ya'll

Starting this week I am going to try and find something interesting to post along with the poems. It may have something to do with the poems going up or it may be random.


Unworthy (9/27)

I fear that I am unattractive
That I am always going ot be alone
Everyone is disinterested - taken - and crazy

I fear that I am never going to be a good writer
That I will be a ma-have
Inside those bars you can see them all networking

I fear I have genetic disorders
A bad heart, ASL, cancer, gum disease
My head is going to decide that sanity isn't for it

I fear the divide between reality and dreaming
It blurs sometimes
It's an oceanliner - I'm a bit of wood

I fear tomorrow will be the same as today and so on
That the sun will rise and the sky will be blue
I fear not being afraid

Tout

Tout (9/26)

This is a strange sort of watching
a sitting on a pole sort - a bird kind of state

You are dressed in your fall camoflage
are wood ducking the season - attempting to catch cool

Who are you with your sitting buck
high-hatting matching my gait - a wing thumping a leg

You seem to be motion sensored
in a tree - you want everyone to ignore you walk by you get shot

Buildings are only images too

The Blur Building is fascinating.

It was built in 2002 for the Swiss Expo. It was meant to convey a sense of a whirling cloud over the lake. Visitors were given raincoats.

I love the idea of a building that is amorphous, that cannot be focused on. Almost like a true object...always changing and never looking the same to each person who views it. A visual representation of Plato's Analogy of the Cave.

Beautiful.

Beldam

So this is going to be a bit of an experiment.

Over the course of a year from 2007-2008 I wrote one poem every day. Each was based on the OED word of the day. The project began as a stop-gap after a long period of non-writing. It was nice to have the topics taken out of my hands. Each day I received an e-mail with a word and a definition. I had 24 hours before I got the next. There was little wiggle room, if I got backed up I had to get in gear or be left behind.

The word became the title and I went about like this for the full year. Starting today this blog will host the results.

Let me know how it went.

Beldam (9.25)

How many breasts have come
into full rotted
been taken away on some metal
table the mammaries of my mothers
slug-like bleeding
a kombucha mushroom rubber and melting
if each had two at the start how many are left

The spaces between cells turns clear then black then light

How far back are we dying - here is a necklace of women
the thread a bread crumb for the cancers

Each amazonian breast
placed in a vat of honey
soaks until golden
is spooned like cow tongues
onto a waiting child's mouth

We are dying because we are passing everything - we empty
into each other

Is it a sort of root
the nipple a tuber like a switch
the tubes push dust in my family
mothers don't feed so much as spread
everything spread a
war of gourd a hollowing
from the center of the universe
out

Naples is the New Pizza

My roommate has started getting New York Magazine randomly. We assume it's free as he didn't purchase a subscription. A few years ago I had a similar situation with Genre. After 2 years of getting it every month it suddenly vanished from my mailbox, leaving me without its vapid pretend GQness.

So I read through the latest issue. There was an article rating the Top 20 trendy pizza places in NYC. The number 3 spot on the list is held by Franny's. This restaurant is right near where I work and yet I hadn't gone. So my roommates and I ventured forth last night.

I remembered why I hadn't tried it within 5 minutes.

The wait.

The place is packed. Noisy. Sauna-esque and poorly run by the waitstaff. The hostess seemed to have no idea how to run her wait list. She walked the full length of the restaurant every time someone new came in. It was sad. We waited about 30 minutes, not terrible and I would do it again in a heartbeat (more on that later).

The waitstaff was lovely. They are nice people and were quick. We got our food in about 10 minutes. Maybe faster. The problem was the staff's knowledge of their wine list...which is extensive but mainly based around a few brands. I asked for a light, dry red to go with our meals. The waitress seemed unable to help me select something. I finally pointed randomly at the $30 wines. This cast a bit of a pall on my mood. I don't like not knowing my wine and I like it less when the suggestion is poorly thought out.

The pizza was amazing though. I got the basic mozz, basil, tomato sauce combo. The crust was a little charcoaled in spots but perfectly doughy. The sauce was sweet and not acidic, the mozz was fresh and stringy. Beautiful.

For dessert I had a dark chocolate gelatto that was probably the best thing I've ever had in my whole life.

The place is reasonable for what you are getting. With three pizzas, a bottle of wine and a dessert we spent $100. I will go back, but earlier in the evening and definitely when I have time to spend waiting for a seat.

KNOW YOUR WINES!

Franny's
295 Flatbush Ave.
718-230-0221

Every Day Every Moment

There is an amazing new internets project over HERE that a Mr. Crispin Best has begun.
He is presenting a story/poem for every year from 1400-present.

I helped out with 1497 - the bonfire of the vanities!

Drop on by and have a looksee.

Paper

The Brooklyn Museum is a wonderfully hidden treasure in New York.

Kinda like the Tea Lounge's super amazing happy hour. (full disclosure: I work at TL but $4 wine and $2.50 pints are hard to argue with)

Every time I go to the Bk Museum I wonder why it is so empty. I wander the empty halls looking at the amazing permanent collection and think about how packed the Met is. There are recreated rooms. In full designed details. Simply beautiful. They even have a full house that was torn down and put back up inside the museum for you to walk inside and peruse.

They have a great collection of design work. An Egyptian wing. The exhibits are always beautifully curated and incredibly laid out. Add in the fact that the museum also has some of the best art shows in NY and you have a perfect day in store for you. Where else could you go to see Murakami or Gilbert + George on such a large scale this year?

They also have the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art which houses Judy Chicago's Dinner Party installation and always has an interesting show going on.

I bring this up because while walking around the museum a few weeks ago I spent a good long time examining a part of the place I usually just walk through. The rooms designed to look period appropriate. They are lavish and slavish attentions to detail. I love them.

When I got home I was filled with ideas to make my apartment more lavish. The wall coverings from the past were stunning. The furniture! I didn't know I was such a covetous man, but seriously...I want. I started looking for wallpaper that filled my sudden need for luxe.

I found Signature Prints. They only print wallpaper and fabrics based on designs by Florence Broadhurst, who was a fantastic crazy lady. The company is based in Australia and is way too expensive for me, but the designs...amazing. They remind me of the wallpaper in my Grandmother's house. The website also sells pillows and throws in the designs. If you can afford it, I say go there and do it.

The trip to Signature brought me to the wonderful Emma Hack. Who takes the designs of Broadhurst and paints models to match. She then photographs them in front of the wallpaper. The results are beautiful.