Todd Anguish/Click Here

My Dice Paper

It's a well-known fact in the medical community that you can't put meat back on a squirrel once it's cooked and seasoned. It is difficult to see when the light bulbs are greased with animal fat any more than you can see what's behind you when you've stuffed it with walnuts. Forgive my honestly in the these ribald times but the animal was placed in an old household refrigerator with Dice (1940). We found them together in the same habitats, but discovered no evidence of conjugal bliss, in fact the blood scrapings were evidence enough of a rarer form of pre-Colombian horseplay and dispersal alarm. It was condoned so we applied the principle of packing more meat on the seasoned squirrel; the most dice-footed of the animals known for their tree climbing, hearty taste and ability to play high up above the city dwellers.

It is time. And in the time that remains we'll unfold not out of time but in time. The importance of split-second timing, coordination, and quick reflex actions in the running of activitywheels is indicated by the fact that experienced dice-footed cancers prefer running in animals that run on square "wheels" and wheels with hurdles to running in plain or round wheels. That is the fuck of the grist for your mill and you should not fuck with it until the study makes your body ache with fucks and jabbing. Let the rumors begin. All hail the American night with swabs of cotton and witch hazel intended to tenderize and season. Packed into the animal are the best and most vaporous of canals and waterways. Mint oil rivers, camphor avenues, musk crotches and milky kisses greet the dice-footed and reveal the way in, and out.

Dice-footed mice readily master complex bloodthirsty regimes in which several different levers and shutters must be pressed or rotated in certain sequences within seconds for different rewards or the hazard of punishment which is the motivator for all locked in this world. It's like that y'all. And in the beginning a small area shall be cleared of brush and spent. Accordingly, studies of deprived domestic dice-footed animals in simple mazes may have but limited significance for understanding the behavior of wild and relatively uncomfortable animals. A comfortable animal will be confined for the taste it gives is succulent and imaginable.

When allowed to control the intensity of illumination by operating a series of switches, dice-footed mice establish a roughly 24-hour regime of sleeplessness and anger consistent with that experienced in the day-to-day work world, namely dim light during periods of activity and very dim light during periods of inactivity. Consistent with this finding, when exposed to a dim-dark light cycle, the dice-footed are active during the dim phase, not in darkness. They should harden the fuck up and work in the dark because it makes them taste better. Artificial twilight transitions of both constant and varying color temperature like the pissy yellow and shit green have several marked effects upon the activity of dice-footed "extreme animals." The existence of a strong orienting influence of dim light on the direction of wheel-running suggests that dice may be the acrylic manufacturing plant in a jungle that makes "just dice" with cheap labor and toxic conditions. Did you think dice or animals just appear without the aid of workers bringing them into the dim light? The use of huffing turpentine from an old rag will look quaint with it's radical buzz, but the awareness it raises in the workers of celestial light sources can be used as navigational references. That's the dice. So treat it well, and it will last you for years to come.

I am watching this

John Cale -- The Thoughtless Kind

At The Poetry Project/5.19.08.

I introduced the poet Will Morris. Here we are together after his marvelous reading:

The crowd after my introduction as Will makes his way to the podium:

Walking to the F train on 2nd Avenue:

Still walking on 2nd Avenue:

It is this

It is this nagging feeling
where something might be starving
but it's blown into submission
startled by headless torsos
half-submerged in tangerine
water. It's always something
making the pits drip tar
a length of rope for instance
is tied to an oar
that's really artistic but
the function of aluminum boats
is to instill the capital
within a framework of labor
getting us from here to there
adhering only to the sullen
achievers stumbling on their
way to work--bones into dust
for what? The lemon on a stick
from the budget of a frog
to the tune of now you owe us?
That's not what we signed up
for in the heat of the milk
the forest was surely greener
than the representation
promised a card with a safety
patch and merit was rewarded
with a shivering whisper
lonesome for nothing
but lonesome before
that silly word left a hole
where you were.

My Day Too

Watching

Ted Berrigan reads "Things to Do in New York City" (click here)

"make friends forever and go away." -TB

Edwin Denby reads "Elegy - The Streets" (click here)

Sit back and listen.

tracks from THE WORLD RECORD (click here)

Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project 1969-1980
The World Record (volumes 1 & 2, 1981) was produced from the tape archive of live performances of poets and writers at the Poetry Project.

Enjoy!

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

Coming soon (this is going to be great):

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
Silent Art Auction Fundraiser (& Book Sale)
Saturday, May 24, 2-7pm - $15
(performances, wine and snacks included in admission)
10th St. and 2nd Avenue, Manhattan

Please join us for our 3rd biennial Silent Art Auction Fundraiser! View work from established and emerging visual artists. Enjoy live performances and readings at the top of each hour (3, 4, 5, & 6 pm) on the Sanctuary stage. Shop for rare and signed books and printed matter. Purvey the activity from the (free) wine bar on the balcony, then outbid your friends and fellow enthusiasts on your favorite works of art.

Performances by Richard Hell; Jeni Olin; Bruce Andrews and Sally Silvers; Franklin Bruno; and Legends (Elizabeth Reddin, Raquel Vogl and James Loman).

Participating artists and writers include: Yvonne Jacquette, Suzan Frecon, Pamela Lawton, Emilie Clark, Etel Adnan, Susan Bee, Star Black, Rackstraw Downes, Simone Fattal, Vincent Katz, Vivien Bittencourt, Beka Goedde, Brenda Iijima, George Schneeman, Anne Waldman, Erica Svec, Christopher Warrington, Zach Wollard, Bill Berkson, Andrei Codrescu, Maureen Owen, Michael Friedman, Yuko Otomo, Steve Dalachinsky, Stephen Rosenthal, Reg E. Gaines, Robert Creeley, James Franklin, Richard Hell, Emily XYZ, Ted Greenwald, Hal Saulson, Mimi Gross, Legs McNeil, Jennifer Osborne, Ken Mikolowski, Ron Padgett, Ed Ruscha, Will Yackulic, Jim Dine, Fielding Dawson, Donna Brook, Simon Pettet, Steve Carey, May Pang, Henry Edwards, Terry Southern, Michael Cooper, Mick Rock, Baron Wolman, Lee Friedlander, Eve Babitz, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Clark Coolidge, Alice Notley, Lewis Warsh, Bernadette Mayer, Peter Schjeldahl, Richard O'Russa, David Abel, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Greg Fuchs, Alison Collins, Nate Ethier, Anne Tardos, KB Jones, Andrew Mister, Elizabeth Zechel, Patricia Spears Jones, Hannah Weiner, Ted Berrigan & Fairfield Porter, Alfred Leslie, Justin Theroux, Marc Andre Robinson, Veselovsky Pitts, Geoffrey Hendricks, Elizabeth Robinson & Fran Herndon, Karl Klingbiel, Oren Slor, Nick Piombino, Jack Collom, Erica Wessmann, Danny Fields, Kate Simon, Yoko Ono, Kiki Smith, Phong Bui, Basil King, Elizabeth Castagna & Edwin Torres, Debra Jenks, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Felver, Tony Fitzpatrick, Hank O'Neal, and more t.b.a. PLUS: bid on a tarot reading with CAConrad, bid to compose a collaborative poem with Ted Greenwald, bid on a hypnosis session with Maggie Dubris, and more otherworldly experiences!

Visit our online auction database. We are adding items everyday!
http://www.poetryproject.com/auction2008.php

If you can’t make the party, please contact us at 212-674-0910 or info@poetryproject.com for information on proxy bidding. Every dollar earned will benefit the continuance of the Poetry Project!

Lightning Bolt

Trumans Water

Hello this is Daddy Panic:
Poem is attached.
Life is not broken.
I live a quiet life
I'm not trying to get
into high drama.
My words are in your brain.
Padding is optional.
Lick the spoon and free the mind.
Rock with TRUMANS WATER.
I'm all like this is ROCK
and Rock is > Not Rock.
So Rock & LOVE,

Todd

endings

where is that part where I leapt onto the horse and the horse turned into a moth and I crushed the moth because of my weight? where is that part where I walked into a room and the floorboards snapped and I fell to the floor beneath me? where is that part where I opened my mouth so wide that giant manufacturers rushed into the house in order to ask if I was leasing space there? where is that part where some gasoline was poured into a glass and these little bugs all skimmed along the surface while I flicked matches at them? where is that part about air and breath and night and the wet days leading into these? oh where is the part where I run into the ocean forgetful of everything but the solemn charge of endings?

3 X 10 Bird

1) "I could stir you into the mix with a well-chosen word or two--a super slush."

2) "It is difficult to travel on a road with jelly gas splashing all around you."

3) "The silver jacket was really great with the gold boots-we loved the look!"

Reggie Watts (thank you Daniel Nester)

It Gets Better from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.

Reggie Watts (thank you Daniel Nester)

Play it LOUD

It Gets Better from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.

Saturday Poem (Hotel in my Forehead)

There is a hotel in my forehead

I blame the hotel for the silent brown desk

The concierge brings the medicine to my room

The white soap dish by the tub is full of faint blue hair

Daisies are polite flowers

The guy looking for "Ritchie" on the roof across the street

The damage a poet starting a men's magazine could do

You can speak to me without devices

Provoking animals with political buttons

Strange things happen to people the entire time that they're alive

What it did to you was unspeakable

A mad horse, a light flash

More of us have to die until all of us are dead

Why don't you read one of your little poems to the Frank Gehry people

The earth is a great animal guilty of movement

You can speak to me through me--you can speak to me

*****

Three from Friday

Friday Top 3

1) Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely. Brilliant.
2) The current production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Turturro is a treasure.
3) The Eleven-Headed Princess by Elizabeth Zechel at The St. Ann's School. Elizabeth's writing, costume design and direction are perfect. I love her so.

Home in my mouth

I would like that spinning while reading or that
spot along the way that precedes the exercise
of spinning while on the way to the ecstasy of reading.
It's only later that I pick up the pieces
that lead back to the desk or the job or whatever.
What utensils are available to blur the incidents
enough that total hours are transformed?
Or what smudge is thorough enough
to get the head bent in the ripe position?
I will perform the exercise--the soothing
nature of humming--the words--the way my
tongue forms words out of breath and the breath
makes itself a home in my mouth.
That is enough--it will do for now.