Friday, March 30, 2007

Friday Top 5 and Art Show

1) The Clash: Sandinista!
2) My Guru Crono in Prospect Park: 100 Miles.
3) Fizik Bar Tape.
4) Assos Chamois Cream.
5) Oatmeal with peanut butter.


Thursday, March 29, 2007

This poem is exactly what you need to get better

You might have confused me with someone
who has a negative message for the people.
You might have pronounced my name in an unflattering manner.
You might have spoken about me with friends or relatives or coworkers
in such a manner that I would find your actions self-defeating.
In spite of your nagging, I will not prevent myself from inventing
a great machine that makes things easier for all animals.
I will not prevent myself from doing things in front of people
who pay me to do things for them no matter
how embarrassing it is to my immediate family or me.
I have simply tried to inform you that everything
is a little too marvelous in your world
so I’ll try to explain more to you about my views in the future.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

This poem is for in case it all starts to mean more than we can make it mean

It’s going to be okay.
From here on out it’s all going to be fresh and green.
It’s going to be open air and vast spaces.
There will be no more dirty things.
There will be no more garbage.
There’s only going to be you
And your immediate family
Creating a little bit of garbage
But a whole lot of medicinal bread.
And you’ll be able to sustain
Yourself in the woods on the bread.
You and your family
Will sustain yourselves
In the woods
Like pioneers
chowing down on medicinal bread
and you’ll feel good about it.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Click Here!

I have some new poems (both in print and mp3 versions of me reading them) and a short interview up on MiPoesias.com

Check it out.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Orange Felt Dress

Since everybody gets tired they can wave at cars.

Wave as cars go by, not even the spray of jelly.

Butter is moving into jelly on Atlantic.

The carpet is a galaxy, next door: a guitar ass.

Still, she fiddles in the studio. Draws a shark, uses strong grammar, bites down hard when it is time to concentrate.

Panting like a tiger, glowing in parts, a light.

Turning into butter.

Lights long or lives long or is long.

Leaves me cold, leaves me cold, leaves me cold.

Maybe all the danger and conflict has made me more present, delivered me in a sound like a large gray wool sock on a boy’s tiny hand.

You can’t imagine how fast friends drift apart until they come together again over some tragedy. Scream in the street.

The slow blue heart.

The slashed museum.

The slice a day.

You can count on me, you can count real low while humming.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…

No no no, count the money, the drugs, count the fumes.

You can pursue an exploration of your enjoyment, you can sing into rags to dampen the sound.

You can achieve a new purpose, a new feeling of togetherness with yourself.

You can have a steady knowledge of the bang, the bolt of thunder, the burning roof, the rags in your mouth, the stew for bigger fish to fry.

I might scab up before help comes.
Do you need help I didn’t know you needed help.

It just came and ate up my skin.

So may I soothe you with medicines, with ointments, with stories?

Let me tell you a story: a story of rubbings.

Are you all you aimed for relief?

I’ll tell you a story if you skip the sensuous massage, if you rub the stillness from machines, if you grow a steady parade of babies.

If the best people have babies, if a home is schooled, if a horse is dead in a barn with a gunshot to the head.

I just want my babies, a wind from my mouth.

This area of my face remembers the babies (points to cheek)

An endless blemish, there is fragility in that slope of laughter.

A place for you -- a soft place for you.

Tweed and silk?

And the softest orange felt dress.

And the stores with so many things that you can enjoy.

The people have worked so hard to make things that you can enjoy.

A little better love than this love, a light still, really, now you are reaching into me.

Is baby going to cry until its curtains? Is baby reading into things because of the purple medicine? Is baby reading for the stabbing pains in the religious scene?

Still, whatever else I’ve done I’ve drowned. Please remember to drive into the water of unknown depth without the orange felt dress.

The dog’s upper lip kept curling in his sleep as I watched it sleeping next to you.

My bent frame is alive.

Decay is a salutation, I welcome it to my face.

An expert dives into the warm oil. Amber oil.

I reduced my contact with others to a minimum. I have to comb the knucklehead from my hair and get on the bus to you.

Yes, yes you do have to do that.

Yes, and I have to pursue this wedge between us, and make that rumble because a child is getting very wet and cold somewhere.

A child needs a total makeover, a lot.

Fox vanilla float air shock.

I’ll have you or I’ll bite you.

I’ll have you.

Rainy, cool, people come and go.

A mutual sunshine event of scalloped deals.
This time I’m asking politely if you do it, if you’ll rub the hate out of me.

He splashed acid on his heart.

When a clock runs 87 hours you feel alone.

In my arms: an earthling. There’s a stillness in the house and a flutter in my chest. Men laugh for what is here or less than what it takes to rub themselves out.

Self-destruct sunshine.

This time I’m asking politely if you’ll take me away from myself.

Sing into your father’s putter like a rock star.

But America was self-destruct sunshine.

Your lips may taste like amber but I am not going to take off my top for your business associates.

Nothing will prepare him for the war in his own fur.

Nothing to spoil my mouth or the cave I spent shelling.

I just want to buy things. I just want to look at all the stuff. I just want to share these ideas with you. I just don’t know why they hate us. You are scoffing at us. You love me.

You love me you know it is written in the smoke above the house on fire.

It always seems like I’m headed somewhere when I’m not.

What I serve, what I fear, what I dream is this: who is calling me in to serve?

Well you do waddle and you do.

If something really did happen, if lives were lost, if there were carnage and the attendant aftermath. What would shopping cure?

Go to this blue station in the loam, proceed, the cash, oceanic: use this address, earth to zoo, my magic is the clownish bracket.

Do you mean what purpose does it serve?

Help me remove myself from myself.

Words into words.

A whirl?

A delicate spasm on your neck where I kissed it.

Are you all you aimed for relief?

If you’re not here when I get back I certainly hope so.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Poem for Toasters

Sweet garden toast, red dot flash--red-hot memory. Red mist. The painting of grease. The grease pants. Sticks of calm turbulence, constant rain companion. New faces are breaking. Feeling grateful but tired for the earthy sweet earthy sweet. What rain does a lot of: fall.

Parable: the eagle mistakes itself for a plateau of ginger and feathers so an appalling sense of satisfaction is enveloped by anxiety. Whistle while I float on my back. Are you for licking, you? Lint on the shades, sad now for the time I can't get back. What suffering? You’re soaking in it.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Maria Bamford

Just watch, she's absolutely brilliant.

Old Snow

Old snow glistens
next to the drastic van
that rumbles on the sow's
elbow -- silver medicine
is rolling
the sky is leaking
milky sunshine
good and glad
the days
they are fast
and here and on
and on.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Gayle F. Wald just published a new biography of Sister Rosetta Tharpe entitled "Shout, Sister, Shout!" Here are some damn fine clips. Enjoy!



Friday, March 16, 2007

Friday Top 5

1) The Ice Crystal Sidewalks of Brooklyn, New York.
2) The fat guy in the Speedo blowing his nose in the pool
at the Dodge YMCA.
3) The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Volume VII.
4) Lorine Niedecker body check.
5) Toast with raspberry jam and orange slices on the side.

Friday Comic Day (click image to enlarge)

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Two New Things

* 90 lb. bright orange pressure suit.
* The main force you feel is the one kicking you in the back seat.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Closed Captions

1) Here's my mouth (puts it about here).

2) Here's what I've done with my life.

3) Now you can call me and we might grow fists about it.

4) It's been a few days since you were my friend.

5) Someone might be selling lamb sandwiches.

6) It was blue in the dream and there were sharks and the futility of existence was apparent.

7) Imagination and knowing when to stop.

Fact: On March 11, 2001 Jen Robinson bought a Rapidograph pen for $20.00 at Pearl Paint on Canal Street.

Chicken,Tiger, Snake, and Chain

Monday, March 12, 2007

A Memory Trick

Pen facing up
held in hands
ink side up
point in front, up --
face into it
mashing
darkly and forever

Whoosh whoosh.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Saturday Top 7

1) Lavender Diamond "You Broke My Heart."
2) Mike Doughty "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well."
3) Sean Hayes "All Things"
4) Califone "Our Kitten Sees Ghosts."
5) Ben Marcus "Notable American Women."
6) Prospect Park "50-miles on a Bike."
7) Elizabeth Zechel "Blueberry Muffins."

Friday, March 09, 2007

We Had a Great Night

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Welcome Home Incident

1) You could almost call it "self dissolving."
In particular: a need for attention.

2) Who amuses you most? Flustered by the weather.

3) What color do you emit most when you are thinking in color frequencies? Oh, that's fur.

4) I know what you're thinking -- I have expressive hands.

*********************************

Pick One:

A) I hear horses but I see scissors.
B) Grab something chunky from the cupboard.
C) He had to have known -- even as he was running the pattern -- that he'd made a mistake.

*********************************

D) Rude as a peach tossed from a train.

*********************************

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Poem

I understood until you explained it.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Brendan Lorber with the art I made for him

Here are some photos that Brendan Lorber sent me of the "FSU" art that I made for him for his birthday. He hung it above his desk. Nice.



Monday Night Top 6

1) The branch that almost hit me while I rode my bike home from work in the howling wind.
2) Dried cranberries on flax seed and oat cereal.
3) The Jesse Sykes song: "Station Grey,"
the most heartbreaking melody ever.
4) Sandra Simonds: "I've got my dibs on this oblong morsel of Rome."
5) The huge bruise with a raspberry-hamburger center that is now on my left hip. A result of being kissed violently by the Brooklyn Bridge when a tourist's leather jacket got caught in my handlebars on the way home from a 70 mile ride (on Saturday).
6) The left side of my body has been punished enough.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Two New Ones by Elizabeth Zechel & Todd Colby

Kiss My Dad (Pencil and Vinyl on Paper, 9" x 11")


I Love Hair (Pencil and Vinyl on Paper, 9" x 11")

Friday Top 9

1) Elizabeth Zechel's new bee and wasp drawings
that she's asked me to add words to. Soon to be posted here.
2) The new Jesse Sykes CD:
"Like Love Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul." Brilliant.
3) William Forsythe's "Three Atmospheric Studies" at BAM.
4) Amber scented lotion from Kiehl's on Elizabeth Zechel.
5) Clear & Blustery vs. Preserve & Protect
6) Successful attempts at telepathy.
7) Afternoon Values vs. Seasonal Values.
8) My baby blue coffee mug.
9) Uni-ball Vision Pens.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Love Todd -- Standing on the World -- Click to listen

Here's a lovely song that I sang on recently and Alex politely mixed.
That's Glenn Petry (Drunken Boat bassist) on bass.

"You'll need every breath that you can get
when the mess drops from the sky."

Emily Haines -- Expecting to Fly

Evening

I'm just having, oh, what you might call a nice evening.
Toe still aching but the cats have been nice, in particular Lewis
who let out a meow cry in an honest and moving rendition
of "Cat Demanding Milk in as Pleasant a Tone as Possible
Given the Situation Which is Not at all Rosy." So I caved-in
and delivered the milk in a saucer on the floor
and everything was peachy again -- that's just one example
of my illustrious life. It's like there's a soundtrack with a snazzy
jazz flute and a high shot coverage from a roof so you see
me in the frame: small, graceful and forever yours.