Sixth Finch (click here)

It's up! Works by Todd Colby, Christopher DeWeese, Erica Miriam Fabri, David Lehman, Mark Leidner, Jay Baron Nicorvo, Daniel Pinkerton, Ted Powers, Emily Toder, Morgan Blair, Caleb Charland, Robert C. Jackson, Michael Mararian, Greg Miller, Erik Otto, Philip Toledano, Chris Trueman and Michael Harlan Turkell. Go here.

Happy New Year.

Stephane Mallarme

"Late in coming, it seems to me, is the true condition or the possibility not just of expressing oneself but of modulating oneself as one chooses." -Mallarme-from "Crisis in Poetry" from Selected Poetry and Prose

Easy Street

A slow chunk of steel
falling from a building-
but we went on with it-
were able to dodge it-
it was falling so slowly.

Gert Hofmann

"The gist of the whole thing is to make endurable, with a modicum of art, a way downward, at the end of which stands, with no art at all, death." -Gert Hofmann- from "Casanova and the Extra" in Balzac's Horse

Sic Alps!

It Ether

It ether gas rainbow
slit magnet into rusty mint
and gangrene glow. A couch
and some cookies. Listen to
the can opener on the F-Train.
That guy is pouring milk
on the floor. Chainlink spit.
Another coughdrop a service call
the router is blinking red.
Meditate before the end stops
cold in the heart. A moment of bliss
maybe a cough cough cough. Alarm.
Cough. Ride bike to work. Fog.

Ida Maria--Oh My God

Allen Ginsberg

"That a new kind of man has come to his bliss
to end the cold war he has borne
against his own kind flesh
since the days of the snake."
-Allen Ginsberg, from "Who Be Kind To"


Merry Christmas.

George Bataille

"...it is easy to observe that the overwhelmed individual throws back his head while frenetically stretching his neck in such a way that the mouth becomes, as much as possible, an extension of the spinal column, in other words, in the position it normally occupies in the constitution of animals." -George Bataille from the essay 'Mouth" in Visions of Excess Selected Writings, 1927-1939

My Room in Paris

Coax the Swan Out

There were some people in the room trying to help me last night
but when I turned on the light
they were just pants hanging over a chair.
I bought a swan for the bedroom; it's neck is beautiful
and it's feathers look high gloss white against the matte brown wall-
it's like having a t.v. in the room
but there are only paintings books a chair
and an aluminum table that wobbles a bit
when I sit down to write furiously or not at all. To tenderly hold
my head in my chapped hands and sigh coaxes the swan out.
Sadness makes the swan affectionate and sturdy
or just some guy's pants hanging over a chair.

Please Be Careful

In Rome

In Rome not a disaster
found deer ticks in the cabbage
dreamt I urinated in Keat's deathbed
sniffed ether in a slum
with an Italian poet
walking back to the hotel
I felt hollow-headed spider webs
soft mysterious gift bag
full of vitamins and drugs
a loft with beautiful people
playing guitars and drinking heavily
from a spigot inserted in a cask of wine
ate mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat
dressed up in a tight purple crushed
velvet suit read poems in Italian
to a crowd of artists who gave
me food an olive oil massage
a deep blue fork
with a laminated pope pious
walked to a monument
and wept on the airplane out: wept
again Rome was hazy but comfortable.

Sic Alps--"Semi-Streets"

While I was in Paris

While I was in Paris
a dog. Then a bagette and
some plum preserves. It was sunny
and there were people chatting
by a beautiful building.
They knew me. I was strolling
along a street and then I went
inside a cafe and chatted in French
for a good hour. The best hour of my life
was that hour. Then another dog
and someone mentioned the stars
and the clarity of light. It was
such a nice feeling that I
and then another dog interupted
Parisian dogs and I didn't feel
sad in Paris I felt alright
like things were going to be okay.

Dig It

I ate the Cleveland Sandwich
it is raining all the time
in the butter hut near Watanga
my elbows are bleeding from
leaning on my side and reading
the chalk manuals. Tell me you
love me in braille quickly before
I go off my rocker. I've stopped rocking
now that the boat has docked
and the nuns are shouting to the
shitty kids to come in off
the money. I'm off the money
I want to have a look around a little
bit and then I'm going to read
up on loneliness and the clowns
who proclaim the medicine is
making life better late at night
what bullshit lies, what mocha
brown can do for a room: dig it!
I'll be in the office.

The Agility of Birds

To have been in the circumstance of seeing
a bird break on the sidewalk and the father of the bird
weeping losing total control and mastery over
other beings willing himself away from certain subjects
trying to remain calm although the broken bird
was gliding through time without any notion
of a goal. The false notion of the agility of birds
in keeping with a search for the absolute while
only finding things, fixed things in the form of the world.
You could say something to the broken bird that the
world of the happy is different than the way the "m"
sound inhabits the body from deep within.
It is rude to confront someone with their stupidity.
One can simply think of the bone itself while
looking at a painting of a broken bird. The wings on her
back are white bones. A face without muscles.
To maintain a certain physical hygiene while
standing at the heights of despair. By nightfall the broken bird
will be dark as mahogany while people walk
around it on the way home. Safety
takes no holidays. Thanks heaps, birds.

Virgil

“Perhaps some day it will be a joy to remember even this.”

Spiritualized

Cher & Troll

Look Around You: Music 2000

22 Misters

Mister Silver, Mister Potato, Mister Yucca, Mister Papaya, Mister Pineapple, Mister Purification, Mister Mango, Mister Candies, Mister Clay, Mister Coco, Mister Cacao, Mister Crocodile, Mister Sun, Mister Sea, Mister International Flowers, Mister Cattle Ranching, Mister Pretty Legs, Mister Grape, Mister Wine, Mister Swimming Pool, Mister Lemon Cookie, Mister Oil.

Lucky Dragons!

LUCKY DRAGONS "Live at Farmlab" (dublab VisionVersion) from dublab on Vimeo.

NO

The Name of This Band is Mocha Bedroom With Ghost Spots

Mash the Gas (Tonight's Program)

In my program tonight
I'll be dancing to the music
of real sad shit my hands will be wrapped
in cheesecloth and sea salt
to signify mourning
you will be asked to taste them
do lot leave your brain in the truck
heavy metal kids will talk trash
the room will smell like burning rubber
then sandalwood then sex
I'll take a moment to think
of your backyard and your garage
then I'll extract fur from the stairs
high winds will blow fragile gold
down Baltic Street
the holy grounds will merge
with the petals in tonight's
program the point is not happiness
but persistence you will get old
you will fall apart but you will look good
in the turbulent way that venom is chaotic in the heart
at the end of the program you will forgive
yourself for the indiscretions of your youth
you will be asked to applaud mildly
your body will spend Christmas with someone.

Allen Ginsberg

"Well, while I'm here I'll
do the work-
And what's the work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow."

-Allen Ginsberg, from "Memory Gardens"

Writers' Rooms

Writers' Rooms

Thanks to Stephen Mitchelmore for the link

Brooklyn at Night

There might be the exceptional possibility
that something could go wrong with panic
that I was a thick pelted animal of some sort
the skin around my eyes was peeling
so the other animals ran from the room.
Now it's like living with a sad silent ghost
some of them jiggled with the standard pink share
I thought the floor was sagging from the weight of my books
of their mossy genitals and the fog around them
the swirl of traffic pushing the night around like a bully
from the smokehouse. They would eat themselves alive
there are things I'll never know until I do them
if they were afraid enough of what I could do.

"M'amour, m'amour
what do I love
and where are you?

That I lost my center
fighting the world.

The dreams clash
and are shattered--

and that I tried to make a paradiso
terrestre."

-Ezra Pound, Notes for Canto CXVII

This was in my head all day--the imagery and the song

Two for Thursday (Bataille, the green wall, and me)

Two (with green in them) for Wednesday

Tuesday Morning with George Bataille

"For a period of several days, life enters empty dark. A wonderful feeling of relaxation is the result, and unlimited power is disclosed to the mind. The world is at your feet and you can do what you want. Only problems soon develop."
-George Bataille from Guilty, p.37

"Each Type of conquest is, no doubt, the deed of a man fleeing a threat." -George Bataille from Inner Experience, p. 43

"It's as if there's a crab in my head. A crab, a toad, some horror I have to puke up, no matter what." -George Bataille from Guilty, p. 15

Office Wall