Stabbed

From Paris

I am writing this in Paris
on a pontoon in a bark hut from
the top of a building. Some confetti in my hair
makes me feel celebratory and stable.
It is raining in the valley, there are children
squealing with sarcastic joy and a woman
with blond curls rigorously agitating
a blue rug. There is a man with sandals
on but his feet are bleeding. An avocado
on some stale bread on the veranda.
Some sailors, a book of poems by Rimbaud,
and some cute little packet of Euros.
Violence to my face mask and lamb coat.
I'm trying to get to the metro in time
for my recital. My poems mean nothing
to the people in charge of transit and commerce.
I'm stumbling all the time but I'm gaining
insight into the way my body works
without my mind guiding it.

Happy 80th Birthday Kenward Elmslie!

Allen Ginsberg's Advice

"My advice to you is as follows:
one, learn meditation practice;
two, empower yourself with your own emotions -
don’t be afraid of grief, or heartthrob;
three, be willing to expose yourself and be a fool,
to not be intimidated in the presence of presidents
and rock stars, but come on as a gentle, living
flesh and blood human being.

Don’t treat people as icons.

If what you are doing is considered by all your friends
as too far out, think thrice -
so you don’t go outside the bounds of sanity -
check it out.

Get a good education in reading the Eastern and Western classics.
Avoid animal fat.
Be a slave to love.
Wear your heart on your sleeve.
Twenty rejections in a row are wiped out by one acceptance."

Taking Care of Things

In terms of laughing or dancing
she was a pro with the light coming
through the circles under my eyes
the public observes everything
but most things happen in a way
that is easy to say no one did it.

New pages are being written upon
all over town I see them distant or near
what is known as publicness. To what
you might imagine I'd add to that process
having made a decision to sign the papers
in delicate script making it no longer

Impossible to breathe into a towel
held over my face in the dark of the room
so I step over into a more wakeful glimpse
a place of blurring and blending no hard
edges to this smoothness so rubbing against
rather than bumping into so good luck with that.

I hope you never get tired of me

Two Poems by Jeni "Truck Darling" Olin & Todd Colby (in the current Lungfull!)

I Like Your Modern Outlook


There are certain things better left unsaid
Like, You are about as nurturing as a desert
& have the ordinary heart of Helen Keller
amidst summery thickets of noise See you Thursday.
A baby makes hay pinches muscle on neck. Never speak
into a microphone without knowing
who is on the other end or where that microphone
has been as, fear of contamination fondles us to fruition, rocks us.
Back & forth. Forever. But my pulse
is a beetle in my vein scurrying from
limb to limb under your thumb
which sucks (as only your thumb can)
causing the insect of my desire
to scramble eternally in a bonsai tree
(as only a hot little animal can)
when subjected, sans sunblock,
to your effervescent touch.
Let me pour a scotch for those who can't
eat--a little ray of tinfoil light reminding us
that the heaviest head is the envy
of the crowd gathered outside right now
waiting for me to walk to work.



Right Now


There might be something in your hair that
you should have a look at
your reflection in a handgun is a terrible
excuse for shacking up with a college girl
while you await retirement. Every line means
something vulnerable and stressed out so why
are the winter birds dripping blood on my plush new suit?
Me, I touch nothing but the thread of things
I hold the heart--it's tough, simple, and contaminated--
it keeps me foggy and illuminated in the most flattering light
the kind that a bloody man whose pain goes far
from bird to bird would feel as he gazed at you
and continuously weaved in & out among a 100 birds of snow.
Where then is it okay--like a broken arm is okay
or a razor slitting your thigh in a fit of ecstasy is okay.
My lover appreciates her nickname (Sugartits)
Our friends are at ease We get on gorgeously but
The birds will be worried
If I've forgotten something there's always
something in the way of being American
like pyramids and music and rhyme.

More

So the air is clear so I can't shake this swine
a smallness to features, featuring, amid others,
a dainty explanation. Think about delicate ribs
moving slowly like a smudged rocket on VHS tape
blinking or a plan to succeed in a friendly game.
People are choking on each other everywhere.

I love your game: its fabulous prices, the dark wax
on the end of the tip, the dazzling smell of watches,
the banging of cans against the sidewalk, and those pearly
episodes where a hand can reach in and quell the stampede.
We live in NYC, we throb lightly, we eat standing up.
There is provocation in simply riding a bike.

The animals, they know when to walk on leashes,
or use a rope on a chimney to hold up some
battered silver scaffolding. Another table for books.
Shaving legs and belly with ironing wand
and ice cream - you would like that sort
of ice cream now that it is warm weather time.

He sleeps, which means the medicine has
taken affect. Think about your spastic genesis,
think of print magazines, the lowdown, like a spirited
camper with white fluff and epilepsy. These people
seem to know medicine or know neighbors
on the medicine or on the bed. Cops at the door.

I brush my back, she knocks a calendar,
shows specific dates, animals run in tight circles,
lime green, some other people with ideas all
their own. Oh how do you do it poetic type
seeking the stairs or going down them, the meaning
again where the small parts are hidden, so makes a house.

Finally after everything, we've earned it: our special
day I'm right where you are ruthlessly clawing my way
through nothing so much as a smooth transition
exit wounds abounding a miracle I flutter on
this flush brown rug and still I live in the city.
I'm huge, I'm demanding, I make proclamations.

The Anarcticans

Jesi the Elder

Monday Poem

Vast and radiant as a lip gone rosy
from kissing too vigorously charmed I'm certain
by the pile of yesterday's newspapers the multiple
scents on the steel table vibrating
with that sick aspic jiggle a little too gamy
the tint of today's sky doesn't match my boots
my chin and hair and blouse what is still
is the summer thickness a flank of mocking
bitter like one of my moods
distant as distance itself explaining myself
to a wall but that wall is so gorgeous I have
to climb over it with a chisel and cleats.

Top 10 Saturday

1) Fiorentini & Baker Boots.
2) 80 degrees.
3) Perfect avocado.
4) Being kind to others everyday.
5) Walking around Manhattan listening (5 times) to "Wishing Well" by Terrance Trent D'arby and then switching over to The Talking Heads masterpiece of an album: "More Songs About Buildings and Food."
6) Four people were really nice to me today.
7) Riding bicycles with perfect companions up to Nyack & back.
8) Just spending the evening alone.
9) Greeting pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge in fake Italian.
10) Happy I'm not a total shithead.

Talking Heads - Take Me to the River - May 10th 1978

Metric - Expecting to Fly (Neil Young Cover)

I Make My Holiday After You

I can't stand something that size chubbing
fruit bloated by the ferocity of the blaze
(enough said)
clear caches
clear adulthood
cold car
a piece of a nightmare
blue denim hiss on the grill
kicking my sky out
motioning for me to come inside the house
hosts with motives are complex
a message that simply doesn't happen to play
after everything is represented there are some leftovers
the whole thing
the landmark
the exposure locked in garlands
claustrophobic meat down
dry socket
sometimes you might want to try again
go ahead and try again
I dare you.

The Duke Spirit - The Step and the Walk

Telepathe - I Can't Stand It

Joanna Penn Cooper has a blog!

Here.

Thursday Top 10

1) Mobile phones are taxing.
2) The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
3) Took the day off to...
4) Ride my bike with Mike Pulli all day upstate.
5) The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
6) Red Assos vest.
7) White Cervelo R3.
8) Reading journal from 12.17.01-12.1.02.
9) A perfectly ripened banana.
10) Listening to Snowblink.

Enjoy Yourself!

If someone can't stand you because they need
you to do something to make them like you
then you need to get on a bus and find a new town
if you can't stand someone who needs you
perhaps you need to stand on someone
who is walking away from the image of you
or the needs expressed deliver a cool coating
of mint someone who stands you means they
found something they need from you
instead of a rug or a chair something
like groceries something inside instead
if someone wants something from you
then it's likely they need you or like you
if they don't they are probably too tired
to walk up the six-flights of stairs and knock
or barge in then if someone wants something
from you they probably need you and you
might develop a need for them too
which is fraught with its own batch of dangers
but totally natural so you should roll with it
and just understand any system of needs is
going to be complicated and just a bit fucked up.

Orchid Enthusiast

They was inside saving me from impatience.
They was all loser you can't write a grocery list
in the third person. If you join the club you get a prize.
The money is shit so you just have to wing it from bed up
to bed down with a superb greasy motion. Like a dolphin
swimming in olive oil or people listen to me: it can't last.
Breathtaking syrups enhance life.
You can fill a face with silver paint
and splash it on a blue car. I'm fainting
all the time now. A frothing orchid enthusiast in the park
like there's going to be a time in my life
when you feel comfortable with me walking around-
like that would ever happen. Oh the things
that come out of your mouth keep me awake at night.
Get up and subtly take off your clothes
like you're taking out the trash but you're naked
like they was all good morning we didn't notice
you were so naked on Baltic Street at all.
To no longer think of something because one has
a perfect understanding of something.
The wind is made visible by flowers. I'll listen for
your name as it is spoken by the people
on this island.

Tuesday Top 10

1) The Letters of Lorine Niedecker to Louis Zukofsky.
2) St. Vincent’s new album "Actor."
3) Glass moving without help across the table.
4) Extra Virgin Coconut Oil and raw honey on Ezekiel Bread.
5) Stars of the Lid.
6) Memory of Monday thunder.
7) Vinyl stick-on letters with glitter in them.
8) Error readings on my tailbone.
9) Vast and fertile sheets.
10) Kicker Conspiracy.

George Schneeman's "Facing the Music"

At The Lungfull Magazine Reading Last Night

Three Pieces of My Own Art That I'll Be Auctioning Tonight at The Lungfull Party/Reading/Benefit

If you'd like to buy one, just email me.

LUNGFULL! MAGAZINE RELEASE PARTY & READING

This Saturday April 18 at 6:45 PM

Poetry • Music • Raucous Auction

Many of the following contributors will be there, singing or reading a poem or two.

New writing from: Matt Hart, Jessea Perry, Sam Magavern, Nathan Hoks, Nick Antosca, David Berrigan, Bradford Gray Telford, Sean Kilpatrick, Stephanie Cleveland, Rebecca Loudon, Anthony Farrington, Elizabeth Hughey, Craig Cotter, Duane Vorhees, Todd Colby, Jeni Olin, Chris Martin, Scott Abels, Eugene Ostashevsky, Fred Schmalz, Lee Ranaldo, Noelle Kocot, Will Morris, Marianne Vitale, Mike Topp, Clnt Frakes, Kevin McWha Steele, Suejin Suh

World News Reports From: Sawako Nakayasu in Japan • Dmitry Golynko in Russia • Eugene Ostashevsky in Florence, Italy • Bernadette Mayer & Phil Good in Upstate New York • Sparrow on Long Island, NY • Edmund Berrigan in Brooklyn, NY • Thomas Devaney in Philadelphia, PA • Michael Kelleher in Buffalo, NY • John Most in Virginia • Chuck Stebelton in Milwaukee, WI • Eric Lorberer in Minneapolis, MN • J.S. Makkos in New Orleans, LA • Shafer Hall in Austin, TX • Julie Reid in Petaluma, CA • C.E. Putnam in Seattle, WA

Bring a little extra scratch for the auction barked by Todd Colby.

This issue is 200 pages of poems, fiction, rough drafts, art, world news reports, irate letters to the editor.

Zinc Bar
82 West 3rd Street NYC
Between Sullivan and Thompson

Subway ACEBDQF to West 4th RW to 8th or Prince

Visual Art from: Jeff Benjamin, Tracey McTague, Deth P. Sun, Marci Washington

LUNGFULL.ORG

I sleepy ride 4:16 AM (for jpc)

I sleepy ride bike
in coffee dark brooklyn
woods and the bikes
my friends are getting ready
too air clean words
like these words: go
and more coffee
and hi.

Monster!

monster

The Fall

Poem

I have always wanted to appear in a poem. Will you write it for me?

Listen to some mighty fine poetry (click here)

Peter Davis
Todd Colby
Maureen Thorson
Reb Livingston
Michael Schiavo
Shanna Compton
Josh Keiter
Micah Towery
Ginger Baker
Charlotte Seley
Jeffery Paggi
Lindsay Daigle
Jan Becker
Michael Meyerhofer
Thom Yorke
Peter Davis
Chuck Stebelton
Nate Logan
Adam Deutsch
Harmony Korine
Katie Steinrecher
Susan Firer
Robert J. Baumann
Anne Boyer

Yes!

Tuesday with Balthus

Connie Converse

Breathing in the Brilliant

I can't talk about anything
without everything happening that I talk about.
In the perfectly refined music of my home
no-no business is yours while I occupy myself
studying in the cold, or the train
or the street. Someone might be selling
lamb sandwiches or wearing a lamb coat
or watching a movie with a lamb in it
as a central figure the lighting sucks.
Why just this morning I rubbed your nose
in my hair, or the memory of your nose
where it is a burden to remember
it could have been my thumb bent
just so. What is my leg? Huge dream,
muscles cover your ears - when you
pick up the phone I'm watching you.
The succession of days - the humiliations:
come on now let's calm down now
the tradition of the epic
is all about visiting an underworld
for some information or magic device.
I can't imagine seeing you
watch me dissolve before your eyes
well you better start getting away
from the city you should be at your best
with some products on the market.
And whatever other monster ails you,
a nap, the cool wind, my eyes are closed
during landing. A list of past loves in a notebook.

Patti Smith

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD TOLD THROUGH INFOGRAPHICS

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Springtime

There are some days when
oh what is that word?
when the travel is by candlelight
in broad daylight when
lotions containing amber
and sandalwood envelop us
in the memory pit.
In the morning I think of gardens and the things
buried there. Such and such a riddle
a note in a mason jar: help me I'm not free
yet of what pains me now when you find
this I will be studying rivers in Alaska
or hanging in a work shed all the dollars
are signs all the days pass and they are dirty
to me. But still blueberries and toast with
coconut oil spread on top, raw honey I swear
things are alive in this apartment other
than the mail I get for the guy who died here
who loved here before me I walk the same
route from the bedroom to the bathroom
and sit on the same toilet
and stare into the same mirror when I shave
it's like that and nothing else it just is
so back to morning: so much to say
the way light plays on blooms, the way
the radio sounds in the next room,
the way I'm just glad to be awake
in the springtime of my decline.

Terry Riley - In C

Trancing out to this as I write tonight. Thought I'd share.

The Wooster Group Performs "La Didone" at St. Ann's Warehouse

See it.

Brooklyn Bridge 4.10.09. (11:17 PM-after seeing "La Didone" with JPC)

Bob Dylan - I'll Keep It With Mine, Etc.

Chewing on the Fleshy Part of a Partner's Elbow

That is, rubbing her palms together over
a pair of pants in order to warm the air
into a squall. Then a dance
because dancing & going away
are said to work like narcotics work.
Back then - or she said it worked back then - so
there were sparkles in the air
when she pulled the cotton from her mouth
it wasn't raining it was great
and painful, right people? Yes,
it was the reminder in the anatomy book
that we all have a skull attached to our spine
so walking around with that knowledge
was a goddamn vivid reminder of the bulbous fear
of losing control of one's body and of that body
leaping from a building or trudging up the stairs
bumping into others to feel close there
are so many things a body will do to feel
close - that spine is a column
and information is traveling up and down it.
I just don't know what the fuck to do
with all of this information so
I'm chewing on the fleshy part
a partner's elbow, you know,
that sort of thing.

LUNGFULL! MAGAZINE RELEASE GALA AND PARTY Saturday 4/18

On Saturday April 18 at 6:45 PM

LUNGFULL! MAGAZINE RELEASE GALA AND PARTY

Join us as we usher in the latest issue!

Editor Brendan Lorber hosts a night of poems, music
and a raucous auction barked by your Todd Colby.

Many of the following contributors will be there, singing or reading a poem or two.

New writing from:
Matt Hart, Jessea Perry, Sam Magavern, Nathan Hoks, Nick Antosca, David Berrigan, Bradford Gray Telford, Sean Kilpatrick, Stephanie Cleveland, Rebecca Loudon, Anthony Farrington, Elizabeth Hughey, Craig Cotter, Duane Vorhees, Todd Colby, Jeni Olin, Chris Martin, Scott Abels, Eugene Ostashevsky, Fred Schmalz, Lee Ranaldo, Noelle Kocot, Will Morris, Marianne Vitale, Mike Topp, Clnt Frakes, Kevin McWha Steele, Suejin Suh

Saturday 4/18 at 6:45pm

Zinc Bar
82 West 3rd Street NYC
Between Sullivan and Thompson

Subway ACEBDQF to West 4th RW to 8th or Prince

$5-15 sliding scale fundraiser. $20 gets you in plus a copy of the magazine.

lungfull.com

Click Here for Something Nice

Thanks Shanna Compton for making it happen.

The Heat Transfer Years

Warm tastes sweet
and sometimes bitter;
cold can seem salty
or sour. There are people
trying to sketch the wind
talking like their mouths are
full of bread. The modern kids seem
vexed while they work on seizures
of sunlight. Everyone breaks
my face and I get hurt
by light blue. You can put the concave
part of a cool spoon against your lips
and practice kissing someone you miss
before eating your cereal. I come
to you in peace with the smell
of factory on my arms. To meld
with the world as only a martini
could once make you meld. Red and raised.
Aspirin tablets on brown dirt. To make
our hope real is to destroy it with red
and orange being warning colors.

Elliott Smith - 13

Thanks Jeni Olin.

Summer of 2000

Thanks Don Goede.

Kathryn Regina

This is really beautiful.

I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

Comme de Garcons

1) I'm so tender and Ester is so arrogant.

2) The meat and potatoes kind of ensemble
with lung butter and radical astonishment.

3) What shape is the imagined body during difficult days?

4) The earthy texture of a cat's tongue on my hand.

5) Publicness obscures everything, then claims that what
has been covered over is what is familiar and accessable to everybody. -Heidegger B & T p 119, Stambaugh trans.

Sunday Top 10

1) Gomorrah, see it. It's a masterful and tragic film.
2) Beckett's Letters Vol. 1.
3) New drinking glasses from Fish's Eddy.
4) Telepathe: Dance Mother (brilliant).
5) Hanging out with JPC two nights in a row.
6) Talking with Dad on the phone yesterday.
7) Giselle at Barney's Co-op in Chelsea.
8) Knowing I'm loved.
9) Running into E on Court Street.
10) My Sunday flower from JS.

Gomorrah

I'm seeing this tonight. I'll let you know. Listening right now to the new Telepathe album "Dance Mother" which is mighty fine.

Who?

What Does Morning Bring?

Morning brings this posh wind
and overcast guy. Morning brings
the rich asphalt of bland hopelessness,
it brings our calm realm, our fear of nothing
but the extreme paucity of error-
dazzling and fatigued. It also
brings the distinct feeling of doom,
the oceanic feeling of oneness
and perhaps a real delight in the minutia
that entangles us when we lean down
to pick up the paper a bell chimes
and all is forgotten or forgiven,
timidity no longer angers us,
sunlight shines in the same way
torment bubbles into the delight of now.
All radiant and new like lambskin
on a baby - double soft without
the certainty of it all burning away
or careening into the traffic I love most.

Thao

Gangrenously Floral

It could be a rose but your badge
is a human heart fun stuff kiddo
that stick is from a thigh
made of bone with some muscle on it still
jacking up the print with a potato
skull pattern on the upper wall
human mud and the brainy gift
of silver and good spending on the
purple medicine and the ink
which gets all rank when the pale
yellow plate arrives it all means
so much man and stinky or not
and past or not it's all thundering
it's all magically mistaken for real
when what is not gets caught
between your teeth so you're forced
to floss it out with a credit card.

You Can Make a Difference ($225.00)

Badlands

My favorite film, ever.

15 Things from Berlin

1) Last meal in NYC: Spinach, avocado, salmon, Annie's goddess dressing, I'm thinking baby carrots too and an apple and blackberries and red hot blues and water.

2) To appreciate each other's style in the back country.

3) A videotape of people standing around confused as water came in the room slow and crawling like a snake.

4) Days moving by so fast I don't know dates anymore.

5) I would like to take this place out to take my wound is a naked American the same sort of savage blame so could be getting better with love which is not corny so be kind.

6) Wonderful thinking apparatus: The man they call Cheetah is bloated with toast.

7) Every day that goes by means I'm a little further away like a boat at sea away from the shore the bed a raft floating out - away away - away. Eventually land will become an afterthought. Then there will be land and I will say goodbye to this bed.

8) Valet by Windy and Carl, half-asleep all the way through each song.

9) Here is April already. I woke up this morning in Berlin. They invited me here so I will read my poems to the people here.

10) No more k-holes.

11) Bells by Vetiver.

12) White Eames chair.

13) A picture of a flower sent in an email.

14) "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." -Spinoza, Ethics, v.42

15) The Book of Clouds: For a year I collected images of clouds that I'd scotch tape into a sketchbook.