Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Good Boys Parts 1-4

"The Good Boys" is a video project that the artist David Lantow & I did for a collaborative art show back in 1996 (we've done about 300 drawings and several books together over the years). Steve Gross, the guitarist for Drunken Boat, videotaped & edited the project -- and played the guitar. David Lantow stars as "The Clown." I play myself, more or less. All four parts are now up on youtube.com -- but they're all posted here for your convenience:

Part 1 (5:47)


Part 2 (4:57)


Part 3 (3:01)


Part 4 (2:22)

Friday, September 28, 2007

Drunken Boat -- CBGB's -- NYC, 1991 (Flatland/Encore)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

More Drunken Boat @ CBGB's -- NYC, 1991



Drunken Boat -- CBGB's -- NYC, 1991

Okay here we are, finally on youtube. Thanks Peter & Alex! That's me singing by the way:



Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A Tasteful Approach

My situation called for a tasteful approach
when his aggressive thrusting nearly
broke the table with all his weight on it.

I measured my responses, I thought,
with a history of the details of the table
and the decor, to provide a context
for the approach of his aggression
which was humiliating and did nothing
to illuminate the example of the taste
I exhibited with the decor I'd personally chosen.

I could sense in him a certain
longing for forgiveness so I saddled my opinions
with his longings in mind, using terms and
making associations that only he would make.
For instance: I made sure to use the phrase "scraping
the soft pallet with a tiny butter knife" which triggered
a shudder and blush around his neck without any
apparent removal of the soothing subtext
of the color pallet of the room.

So great was my resolve to show him
the restraint of my good taste that I seized
on the opportunity to wave
to the crowd below while making sure my
wristwatch sizzled in the light and the
the dispatch of sheen from my suit
made the subjects swoon for an instant.

It was pleasing to witness the spectacle
as it was witnessed by him. I would like to serve
as that medium to all in the realm of aggression.
I've spotted many who thrust or flare
and my approach was no less lean or severe than
the ones before. I'll note here: his thrusting halted
and the mechanism of restraint, once triggered
by my example, was heeded from that day forward.

Pink Tension

Monday, September 24, 2007

Hart Crane
















"You cannot heed the negative--, so might go on
to understand doom...must therefore loose yourself
within pattern's mastery that you can conceive, that
you can yield to--by which also you
win and gain that mastery and happiness which
is your own from birth."

--Hart Crane, from "Havana Rose"

Saturday, September 22, 2007

From Alex's Windows in Lower Manhattan



Thursday, September 20, 2007

Diane Williams


"Now my father is better than my hat is. My hat is better than my mother's shoes, yet her shoes are better than these socks. My hands are better than her wristwatch. My nose is better than her hair. My teeth are a far cry."

--Diane Williams from the story "It Is Impossible to Imagine a More Perfect Thing" in Romancer Erector: Novella and Stories

PS Her new book of stories: It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories, was just published.

Thomas Bernhard (click here)


"One still likes some old philosophers, some aphorisms. It's almost like fleeing into music. For hours you enter into a wonderful mood. I still have plans. I once had four or five, now I have two or three. But it's not necessary. I don't need it and the world doesn't need it either. When I feel like writing I write, when I don't feel like it I don't. Whatever you write it's always a catastrophe. That's the depressing thing about the fate of a writer. One can never put on paper what one thought of or imagined. That gets lost when it is put onto paper. All you deliver is a bad, ridiculous copy of what you had imagined. Basically, one cannot communicate all that. No one ever managed to do so." --Thomas Bernhard from an interview with Asta Scheib, 1986

Fun Stuff from Clunkytown (click here)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Mommy from Clunkytown (click here)

Skin Ring Tone

I get a feeling the phone rings under my skin
when people say that people don't interest them
I think HOW while the ringing comes in loud & clear
in my body two layers of plastic inside scrape
against my heart I have to explain this
to someone in Hong Kong making sunglasses
that will later be sold in Target as POLARIZED
but let's get back to my skin ring tone:
the electricity is amazing when I hear the bells of your not
wanting the least thing to do with people
all around you I pick up the phone
if I wanted to give you my heart
literally pull it from my chest
and cook it in a hot pan I couldn't
because that's just some
fucked up shit
now go back to your life.

Wednesday Top 5

1) The Marvelous Bones of Time: Brenda Coultas
2) Trees Outside the Academy: Thurston Moore
3) The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: Ackerly & Gontarski
4) How to be Perfect: Ron Padgett
4) "There is no need to strive for anything in the world, because you get pushed towards it in any case. Striving has always been nonsense. The German word "Streber" (striver – meaning swot or brown-noser) means something awful. And striving is just as awful. The world has a pull that drags you whether you like it or not, there's no need to strive. When you strive, you become a "Streber". You know what that means. It's hard to translate into another region." --Thomas Bernhard from an interview, 1986

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Terrestrial Labs

Some birds are depressed over your Abe Lincoln odor,
a revelation based on your annihilation.
Toxic polymers illustrated your cool and calm
but they've been replaced with stinging waters.
You arrived on the chilled peak,
nudged the styrene aside
and saturated the bean counters
with your brutal objectivity.
Now you measure the books by weight alone
straight through the All-Pro game.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Top 5 Friday & Saturday Photos





Monkey Boys

Sticky Pony Money

Pretend your lightning bolt
is lemon candy cane thump off
the car (his body) pink and brown
vetiver on the small of his back
bright black cash money will make
the city love you, hug you, scope
you out, wash your mouth out
with soap & water
& make a pledge of allegiance
to your sticky pony money.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Kiss Boys from Clunky Town (click here)

So I'll stay that, I swear

I wanted to tell you this before my mind stopped working. Before the job, becoming the job, or not becoming sad but becoming the making of a living--that institution of change is becoming a burden. I could see into the future--swallow--this hollow barn with bling in it. Muffled howls and so on. The change imminent and total. A seizure and not a radical departure, just some webbing, to make the night not repeat the job of the day pleading for location please, a rest stop. A light shift (it's dark now) I will not become the job in a place like that, I'm sorry I became that--I'm not that, I'm this other--so I'll stay that, I swear.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Here's a Thought

Everyone you know
except for me
has been replaced
by a duplicate.

Root as Mood

Root as mood so a root vegetable
is a collarbone on a fabulous pal.
The vegetable bone matter is perfect
for building a small ocean vessel
(we suggest you use the collarbone as a hull).
Get next to the body under the neck.

Thus, if you find yourself inclined,
try swimming next to the beach
where the words take shape,
that is, if you are on a bright beach
the mutation of the collarbone
should take place on the big guy.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

BATTLE HILL POETRY FESTIVAL

BATTLE HILL POETRY FESTIVAL AT THE GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY
SATURDAY OCTOBER 13, 2007 7PM

A literary event for the living amongst the dead, the Battle Hill
Poetry Festival will be a tremendous gala poetry marathon, the most
elaborate we have ever developed and a lively extension of the spirit
of the Battle Hill Reading Series. Step into the historic Green-Wood
Chapel on a Saturday night in the country’s most beautiful cemetery,
478 acres of woodland right in the middle of New York City, and honor
our poet ancestors -- both permanent residents of Green-Wood, and our
still very-much-alive forbearers. We invite you to join us for Battle
Hill’s Dia de la Muerte.

BATTLE HILL POETRY FESTIVAL AT THE GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY
SATURDAY OCTOBER 13, 2007 7PM
Green-Wood Chapel
25th street Entrance of Green-Wood Cemetery (25th street/5th avenue in
South Slope-Green Wood Hts)
R train to 25th Street, walk up the hill one block from subway
ADMISSISON: $5-10 SLIDING SCALE
RSVP at battlehillfestival@gmail.com

Over 20 poets will read & local blues musician Bennett Harris will play
during the refreshment breaks.

bernadette mayer
brenda coultas
jennifer coleman
jim behrle
megan burns
jessica fiorini
julie reid
philip good
dave brinks
brett evans
karen weiser
ce putnam
lauren claire ireland
anna moschovakis
shafer hall
macgregor card
genya turovskaya
anselm berrigan
joe elliot
gina myers
brendan lorber
allison cobb
todd colby
edmund berrigan
and others!

The Battle Hill Reading Series is hosted by Brooklyn-born Tracey
McTague, Lungfull! Magazine editor, and living resident of Brooklyn’s
geographic apex, Battle Hill, across from the cemetery.

The Battle Hill Reading Series is funded in part by Poets & Writer’s,
Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a
state agency, and the Green-Wood Historic Fund.

Proceeds will go to benefit the The Green-Wood Historic Fund.

Additional information at www.lungfull.org/battlehill

Dennis Cooper on Thurston Moore (click here)

Lots of great stuff over there. Enjoy.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Let's Go to Clunky Town! (click here)

The incredible artist Elizabeth Zechel has a blog!

Check out some of her drawings and stuff over at Clunky Town:

clunkytown.blogspot.com

I love Elizabeth Zechel & you will too.

Friday Top 8

1) Shaky Hands "Why & How Come" & "We Will Rise" (i-tunes).
2) 6 years later, 200 pieces of mail a day still arrive at the post office addressed to zip code 10048.
3) "Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain." -Sophocles
4) Lydia Davis has a new book of stories.
5) Ron Padgett has a new book of poems.
6) I just ordered both books.
7) Fridays are my Saturdays.
8) I'm going out to ride my bike in Prospect Park right now.

William Forsythe

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Re: The Maxiumus Poems

"the diadem of the Dog
which is morning
rattles again"

-Charles Olson

The enormity of The Maximus Poems used to make me anxious as I sat with it on my lap with other books and guides strewn about to help me decipher it. Now I find it comforting to thumb through it--diving in randomly & finding old notes I'd made, scraps of paper marking pages from an Iowa City newspaper, from an old magazine, a faded green piece of paper with a caterpillar printed on it--every mark is a reminder of the places the book and I have been; the various pieces of tape holding the cover together, the crispy brown & brittle corner of the cover where I left it too close to a desk lamp on 6th Street during the summer of '87, the water damage on the spine from the Monitor Street fire in '03 (I cried when I found the book again amid the rubble), the rips & rubbings, & the stains from careless cups of coffee and bottles of beer. To think of all the places I've read from it--if only the spine had eyes facing out in all the rooms I've lived in with this great book--if only there were a camera facing out on Dubuque Street, 1st Avenue, Grove Street, 6th Street, 83rd Street, Union Street, St. Mark's Place, 3rd Street, Monitor Street, Baltic Street...

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Scenes from Julien Donkey Boy







Cat Tyc

My friend Cat Tyc co-directed this lovely & haunting video for a song by the band A Weather. Cat used to work over at Soft Skull Press in the late 90's when the editorial offices were in the basement of an old tenement building that Sander Hicks lived and worked in on the Lower East Side. Those were the days of delivering poetry manuscripts through rusty storm doors and late night spirited discussions to the soundtrack of Fugazi. To quote The Young Marble Giants: "Think of salad days: they were good, they were young."

Way to go Cat!

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Pink Bunny by Elizabeth & Todd

Everything is Down to Earth

My tangerine
has dice dots on it
that's my backache promising
the jolt of nerves
opening a hole
to put all the ceramic
pieces of my spine
into the wind
powdered cords
lips with ignition
fluid all around
the puffy glass
kissing open windows
the air there is pink
and hollow write
checks to dead guys
on my block
eat blueberry jelly
straight from the jar
before kissing you
down to earth

Monday, September 03, 2007

Percy Bysshe Shelley






















"The curse of this life is that whatever is once known can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot which before you inhabit it is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon the earth, & when ... you think to leave it, you leave it not, -- it clings to you ..."

-Percy Bysshe Shelley in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 1816 from Ann Wroe's new biography "Being Shelley" Note: the ellipsises and punctuation are Shelley's.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

From Todd Haynes' new Bob Dylan Bio Pic "I'm Not There"



thanks to pogoprincess.blogspot.com for the clip.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

In a Stern Way

Maroon crust ripped from my lips
a dime of butter dipped in battery juice
a plate of olives drizzled with antifreeze
an old hand nailed to a goat
thin strips of knife paste on toast
guns drawn on tracing paper
a silver crayon enthusiastically.