Poem

Highway highway
how I long
for your fast
and metallic sleep.

Dream Walk

The 34th Annual New Year's Day Marathon Reading!

January 1, 2008, 2:00 pm
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church
(10th Street & 2nd Avenue, Manhattan)

Ring in the new year with: Philip Glass, Eric Bogosian, Ernie Brooks, Tony Towle, Open Music Ensemble, Brenda Coultas, John Godfrey, Patti Smith, Jordan Davis, David Henderson, Frank Sherlock, Rich O'Russa, David Mills, Jenny Smith,John Coletti, Johanna Fuhrman, Erica Doyle, Dan Machlin, Cat Tyc, Jessica Rogers, Renato Rosaldo, Stefania Iryne Marthakis, Rodrigo Toscano, Yoshiko Chuma, Elinor Nauen, Frances Richard, Phyllis Wat, Ed Friedman, Christina Strong, Stephanie Gray, Evan Kennedy, Lydia Cortes, Kim Rosenfield, Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, Shanxing Wang, Lauren Russell, Marcella Durand, Marc Nasdor, Brendan Lorber, Alan Davies, Stephen Motika, Bob Rosenthal, Susie Timmons, Eliot Katz, Maggie Dubris, Peter Lucas Erixon, Eve Packer, Chris Stackhouse, David Kirschenbaum, Bill Kushner, Tom Savage, Rob Fitterman, Cliff Fyman, Tara Betts, Jennifer Coleman, Allison Cobb, Jill Magi, Gillian McCain, Emily XYZ, Todd Colby, Elliott Sharp, Paolo Javier, Eileen Myles, John Giorno, Steve Earle, Donna Brook, Bob Hershon, Jen Benka, Carol Mirakove, I Feel Tractor, Lenny Kaye, Anne Tardos, Sharon Mesmer, Greg Fuchs, Douglas Dunn, Wayne Koestenbaum, Renato Gomez, Rebecca Moore, Michael Cirelli, Joe Eliot, Tracey McTague, Jess Fiorini, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Vincent Katz, Merry Fortune, David Vogen, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Jackie Sheeler, Penny Arcade, Michael Lydon, Filip Marinovic, Yuko Otomo, Steve Dalachinsky, Adeena Karasick, Barbara Henning, Tisa Bryant, Bruce Andrews, Sally Silvers, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek, C.A. Conrad, Keith Roach, Daniel Higgs, John S. Hall, Maggie Estep, Michael Scharf, Wanda Phipps, Leonard Schwartz, Miles Champion, Citizen Reno, Jaime Manrique, Dael Orlandersmith, Uche Nduka, Laura Jaramillo, Nathaniel Siegel, Jim Behrle, Anselm Berrigan, Dustin Williamson, Macgregor Card, John Coletti, Amelia Jackie, Simone White, Hal Sirowitz, Peter Bushyeager, Guillermo Castro, Simon Pettet, Max Winter, Tonya Foster, Judith Malina, Hanon Reznikov, Ted Greenwald, Patricia Spears Jones, Avram Fefer, Taylor Mead, Lee Ann Brown, Denizé Lauture, Thom Donovan, Franklin Bruno, Drew Gardner, Kyle Schlesinger, Don Yorty, Kimberly Lyons, Katie Degentesh, Tracie Morris, Val Jeanty, Chris Rael, Daniel Higgs, Sparrow/Foamola, Ben Malkin, Erika Recordon, Mónica de la Torre, Emil Bognar-Nasdor, Bob Holman, Janet Hamill, E. Tracy Grinnell, Nada Gordan, John S. Hall and Harris Schiff. General Admission $16 / Students & Seniors $12 / Members $10

Robert Creeley reading "Place to Be" (Click Here)

I miss him.

Magik Markers

Gently Read

"This book has been gently read, if at all."

The Tower of Mother Jewels

The important thing is to begin with white ink
make a splay fan of paper by folding it
put on mysterious bulgarian voices
your face reflected in the silver c.d.
So write the words make the appropriate
stain because that's what you're doing
you're staining the page with the white ink
then get your throat to make a wet
throaty cry and you can just sit like that
making that sound for an hour
or so and then just flip through people
magazine with scissors making a collage
from stuff you see there you'll throw
it away a day or two later anyway
so go back to making the wet throat cry
see ya!

Top 5 Books of December 20th @ 2:37 am

1) The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen

"I went to your house after you were dead
Nothing left except your pet white goat
grazing in the green meadow."
--from "Dying Again" p. 377

2) The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

"One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near."
--from "The Man on the Dump" p. 202


3) Hello From the American Desert by Lee Ranaldo

"how not to get played on the radio
how to keep a good thing quiet
how to roll with the punches and
keep on keeping on
further up the road."
--from "Our Music" page 16 & 17

4) Gargantua and Pantagruel By Francis Rabelais (Burton Raffel translation)

"He went to see the jugglers and the clowns, the magicians and those who peddled wonderful, half-magical remedies, and contemplated their games and tricks, their somersaults and smooth patter, especially those famous montebanks from Chauny, in Picardy--born with silver tongue, every one of them, able to sell water to people people swimming in a lake or firewood to those inside a volcano."
--page 63

5) Fatstick Magazine Edited by James Wilk in 1998

"Learn to voice your direct love for men and women
Take every challenge no matter how mammoth the scale
Work through the night."
--Cliff Fyman from "What to Learn from Beowolf"

Dear Todd

Fire me from a cannon
into the form of a new form.

"Swan Choker" by Elizabeth Zechel

If Small Questions

Though unstable
a sheen of tin
from the bark
of a metal tree
(streetlight, lollipop?)
slit from the
gift down to
the ice pack
(panic attack?)
venison with lead
pellets circumscribe
the meadow
with guilty stilts
(see far?)
and fringe juice
(alternative culture?)
a pebble
some grief
you ass.

Activity Magazine

I'm acting with the help of
an activity magazine
it helps me with activities
with a brain the size of an almond
or a fig-tipped pen getting mushy
the best poets of the american east
hammer on the plastic and get wicked
with memory when memory goes
to work they act like children with
real ideas about daycare and sleepy
they always sleepy and teenage acting
so you should shove them
tell them to settle the fuck down
with bread or sugar fruits
make them cookie this
or sweet fudge that
zip them into peppermint lacquer
until they act better
with glamorous machines
and hypoglycemic raw honey candies
dialed into beets in lime juice
until sleep until sweet sacred
illusive sleep.

Saturday Top 5

1) Today I Wrote Nothing by Danil Kharms
2) Huge Coffee
3) Aleve
4) Oatmeal
5) Sunlight

Poem

You might think a dog
with a huge swollen tick
on it's floppy ear is a costume
a disguise of some sort when in fact
it is just the opposite where the opposite
holds true: the costume is the
parasite so the dog is host to the transformer
you run into the house now
and get a bic lighter
tweezers
and a hot fork
and you go to work on the tick
until the tip of the fork becomes bright
with heat and then with blood and then
the disguise is a sort of mess that you
flick into the grass under the sprinkler
where the kids play.

Mika Miko

This cereal smells like skunk...my milk tastes like sunblock...

Part Chimp

Fucked Up (in NYC)

From "Extinction" by Thomas Bernhard

"We search everywhere for our childhood, I thought, and find only a gaping void. We go into a house where as children we spent such happy hours, such happy days, and we believe we're revisiting our childhood, but all we find is a gaping void." p. 301

"However lovable a person is, we only have to consider him for a time--if only in our mind, in which case he can be as far away as we like--and little by little he is transformed from a good person into a bad person." p. 300

We spend a lifetime trying to understand ourselves and don't succeed, so how can we pretend to understand something that isn't ourselves?" p. 81

"However intense my reflections, I won't be able to shorten the night." p. 296

"The tragedy of the would-be writer is that he resorts to anything that keeps him from writing." p. 100

From the 1996 film "Lost Book Found" by Jem Cohen (I did the voiceover)

Thomas Bernhard

"We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them."
(From "Hotel Waldhaus" in Thomas Bernhard's "The Voice Imitator")

Good Night All.

Sunday Top 2

Re: Your Pony

Even if your pony was made of candy & felt
I still wouldn't want to bust it up.
FYI: The same holds true if your pony
was made of hand cream.
In conclusion: you can trust me with your pony
I'll treat it really well.

Young Marble Giants -- Credit in the Straight World

Hello From The American Desert by Lee Ranaldo (Click Here)

Click photo to enlarge:

From the publisher:

"This beautiful little chapbook features about 40 pages of poetry written between 2004-2007.

The cover art and illustrations are from Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets and there is an introduction written by Todd Colby.

These are limited to an edition of 1000. There is also a lettered edition (a-z) of 26 copies signed by both Lee & Curt that will soon be available.

They are available now for purchase online at:

www.silver-wonder.com"

Unrest "So So Sick"

My Artist in Montana

In the carnival scene
there is a pink light
pointed at the dancer
and he is enraged
about the brown air
from the BQE
lingering around the baby.
In the car Mom is trying
to smoke a wintergreen
lifesaver--the white edges
are charred between her lips.
In the job there
are a lot of people
with small pox and misty
eyes because the movie
was so good--the movie
about a male prostitute
named "TIGER" who
befriends an elderly
woman who later drowns
in a pool of vanilla, amber
and patchouly.
In the store there is
a mellow vibe brought
on by Hadyn, but later
Lightning Bolt comes
on the i-pod and
everyone starts dancing
and stabbing stuff.
In the medicine cabinet
is a face cream that
makes skin transparent
so you can see if
your cheekbones
have cancer or filth
on them. The cream
comes with a scrapping
tool, fine sandpaper
and Woolite.
I have a job to do
so long.

Heaven

Elation

I can't get you into care
without hitching your face
and tugging at your overlord.
Your reaction time
is measured by my hand
rolling off the table.
You can't have what's
never been made--you simply
get to a point in your life
where you don't tell people
a thing or two, you simply walk
away--knowing that time
moves too fast to fuck it
up with a scene which
only adds more heartache
to the progression of the
feeling of elation.

Three for Sunday