The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973

Thanks to tinyluckygenius I bought The Spirit of the Beehive on DVD at amazon.com. It's a masterpiece. Here's a sample:

There is work to do

Everything is starting to rot -- it has always been a little rotten -- the piano is out of tune and the player is nodding his head deep in the sound -- the overtones are drastic -- the militia mount the stairs into the bathroom where the shirts with words on them are being washed -- the blood is being removed -- there are people -- they are lazy or they seem tired -- I must work -- there is work to do.

This is bent

It's not all wrong -- it was designed that way and put back together wrong -- the floor is sloped and there are people screaming in the house -- I feel uneasy walking across the yard while they are screaming in the house -- the house is bent.

I'm glad you're here

You must think of things often
or you'll forget them
so you have to make a list in your head
and think of the things on the list
throughout the day
which precludes the experience
of the details of the moment you're in
which is all the more reason
to feel nostalgic
for what's just happened
all over again.

Balloons at Clinton & Kane Streets

Friday @ Alexland Studios

Sonic Youth, 1983

A little something from Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing (Click Here)

He used a sample of my infamous poem "Cake" in this danceable mix. You can hear my voice about a minute or so into the mix. Sweet. I like Mike!

Strut and Thump

You grab silver boots
like a little baby with that
babysitter face poking a cigarette
into the magnolia cupcake frosting
I walk you to the park and the music
you play sounds like it should be
blaring from a frat house
your glum trudging strut and thump
is a sleepy medicine from a pharmacy
I know all about your habits
you keep a list written in a notebook
of gums you fear trident peppermint doublemint
it all starts to look like an act
a reason to think you might be putting
me on your jacket a patch you had made
of my smiling face on your shoulder
that freaked me out when you came in
the room like that saying look at this
and all you get is a delicate fever
from sugary fuel that makes me
feel icky and useless.

Ezra Pound in a Letter to Louis Zukofsky, Jan. 8, 1933:

"Dear Z/
There are some things a writer like E.P. ought NOT to be bothered about."

Louis Zukofsky

"His legs blue, tendons bleeding." -Louis Zukofsky from "A"

Shivkumar Sharma

Neu: Hero live 1974

The Kills: U R A Fever

Here's something really great (click here)

Elizabeth (Zechel) did the covers (front and back) for the new edition (Winter '08) of "Forklift, Ohio" edited by Mr. Matthew Hart out in Cincy. The back cover drawing is called "Happy Birthday Aneurysm" and the front cover is called "Watermelon Man." I have a poem in it too. Yay.

Here's something really great (click here)

#2 from "Overnight Generation"

They say the fever springs delicate
pitch of noxema hydrox and fancy pelts
the black ribbon of gusts or in
the milk goes the chlorine pepper
I'll always get a lot out

Alliance of cakes no fair air pocks
and sugar the parental
picks the glare farm alight
and alone thin glimpse ships
soothe with their fairness

A list of gums to the clear
sky a rocket boosts sun structure
via glint and thunder or was that
highway and car a half block
of rubber and straw from her

#6 from "Overnight Generation"

A brittle celeb stone milk blossom
in bright yellow chalk must even
be powdered sugar host and gift
of hint buttery clump salt skin
breakfast of spit onion and silk

Grainy meat robe the mama grit
stool medallion or floor pump
grease on hemp flower ginger
tongue depressor fix mud gear
mud room mud coffee mud zoom

Beaver nicotine lip stack
snack of muscadine and meyer
lemon tweezer cake rustic crust
thin hops triggered binge of
saline and brine margins locked

From: The Mellow Letters

Dear Mellow Ones:

Your tumblers are full of ammonia, wine gum, and raisins.
People! Step into the light where paper money
is something we draw on and coins are skipped
over a lake, a crystal pagan lake.

Lovely,
The Knob

Talk About the Blues

Foucault and Chomsky

Alice Notley

"The middle classes don't believe in fate;
the middle classes believe in objects bought.
They can't tell a story without an
appliance or a fabric."

-Alice Notley from "Conspiracy" in her latest book of poems "In the Pines"

Top Three for Thursday

1) Spangled Surf

2) Muted Exterior

3) Burnt Umber

Here's the Rub

Trees don't look heavy
but they are heavy
and here's the rub:
you have to cut them down
in order to weigh them
I envision you interpreting
this as a call to arms
the axe is ready
it is very shiny and there
is special grip stuff on the handle
a chain saw is full of fuel
and the souped-up
scale is ready too.
What's remarkable is
is my head
which is just aching to be shaved
down the hall is a woman --
a little crazy but inspired --
go to her
she has a rubber stamp
alphabet set and she leaves
notes on the trees in the park
with their approximate weight
and degree of their ability
to have poems written about them
(for example: "THIS TREE WEIGHS
APPROXIMATELY 10,000 LBS
ACCORDING TO MY CALCULATIONS
WHICH I CAN EXPLAIN LATER. DEGREE
OF THIS TREE'S ABLITY TO HAVE A POEM
WRITTEN ABOUT IT: 32 %).
She shaved my head
while I was in bed.

Happy New Year!

"As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a "writer". You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life."

Michel Foucault. 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 106. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).