Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tuesday Poem

I kind of like the idea of being okay
with people doing jubilant things in my apartment
like scaring the crap out of me
when I come home from work
or dancing in the sweet swirl of now
leaving notes for me in my shoes
on plates and under my pillow
that's a sweet spot I'll savor
deep in the heart of me is my heart
and something is pinned to it
I'm full of coffee and love
the sun has made me giddy
at the punk promise of this day
I'll settle in the fields
of Prospect Park all drowsy
and comforted by the memory of you.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Thao Nguyen - Bag of Hammers

Two Weekend Photos


Saturday, June 27, 2009

Gemini

To dance with this new pink form
in a slippery city while roaming the blue yonder
leap through an urban garden make the vast
exchange of what came before
or just after
not now
that's too much
to say trust is vivid or comforting is right
it's a chance we take
to say the last time I felt secure
was never and you too and mean that
where does that leave us
but to make something better & brighter
clean up the dark with a light bright
and muscle our way into a new way of thinking
oh there will be darkness still and the moments
of eating our own lips in the middle of the night
but there will be someone there with you
catching the sad sparks that you cast off
clearing the floor of bitter doubts
lifting the roof so there can be more air
when you breathe your belly moves under my head
I'd like to stay here so I can see what happens next.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Brooklyn was Bathed in Pink Light Tonight

Big Plans

When I find the meaning
of feeling fabulous I'll let you
know in a letter that I'll never send
keep you guessing as to my whereabouts
leave messages in other voices
send packages from foreign places
the sidewalk will get cluttered
with chalk writings describing your days
I will do something with a fork that
will allow you to breathe easier
when I leave a room or enter a room
that you are also in
I will work on an idea tonight
I will not get overcome by the quaint obstacles
of time and space and shit like that
I will develop a certain method of grinding or hopping
so that the bed will move from the wall
the floor will be slick with silicone
I will rub a word into your back
and you will feel it pleasantly lodged between
your shoulder blades whenever you need me.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Cat Power - Remember Me

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Larry Eigner

"After trying my animal noise
I break out with a man's cry."

Larry Eigner
"I Have Felt It"

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

My Thoughts on Bears

When bears are depicted as playing cards or smoking cigars, ie 'boxing' it may contribute to people feeling like they are friends with bears or that hanging out with a bear in nature might be a funny or entertaining way to make a new friend. These bears are stupid and selfish and are responsible for their own actions, but still...they are rarely held accountable for their actions...when stupid and selfish bears slap people on the back and surprise them with outward signs of affection, people often get the wrong idea and get too friendly with bears and like want to hang out with a bear and play sports and chat and stuff like that. That's not fair to all the people that need real friends. I like pictures of bears better where the bears are doing things that they would normally do in the wild.

What are your thoughts?

Butterscotch

I combed the singed fields
for the dank tang of still water
teeth bared hissing air a warm knife
lowered into butterscotch pudding
there is a thin line between glory
and humiliation there's something
I can do with a book
so I can breathe better
or work on other ideas
the smell of honeysuckle and diesel
for instance is one way
to make a living by napping
or picking up on the vibes
or rays of people and explaining
that to the people on the subway
like what it means to be dreaming of that
hoping my jacket doesn't blow away
with everything drooping from the humidity
the air has turned to jelly
and I am spreading it between us
in an effort to bond with you enthusiastically.

Gramercy Park


Fuck your private park jive.

Monday, June 22, 2009

A Little Monday Poem

By lifting your heart into my mouth
I can see a green spanking new way
to live a life in some fabulous harmony
when all is lush there are lists
of things to do I'll do them with you
carefully and with consideration
one by one by one
the air is so moist you can sit on it
so sing a new song to me
or dance quietly while I plump
up the pillow sweet morning
alone or not at all just alive
and spinning on air constructed
of breath and belly and bed.

Friday, June 19, 2009

What it was like to live now

What it was like to live now:
appliances snap in the electric kitchen
a paper plate loaded with emeralds
damp wires emit words
LCD membranes a chalk block
tagging walls with various exotic fevers
an orange kitten springs to attention
bells ring in a forest of metal objects
a hand lit by the moon curls
around your own idea of patience
is changing daily it starts to rain
as someone kisses every inch
of your body and you are transformed
clothes mean nothing hours mean less
at the river's edge
mud squishes between your toes
and you get calmly lit from within.
You just got got.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Broken Social Scene - Almost Crimes

Collaboration!

Joanna Penn Cooper posted a lovely collaborative poem titled "The Age of Wonders" that we wrote together a few weeks ago. It's posted HERE.

I quite like it. Enjoy!

Dancing and so on

If there is something rather than nothing
then sound can move through it -
a day for instance, if it has objects in it,
can emit sound. If the light
is coming in correctly through the blinds because no one
has messed with the angle of the building, then
it's going to be fine, for real. There may not be a hand
you can hold or a back you can tickle in the dark, but that's okay
because that's just the way things are. When you
say "you're not alone" and the other person defiantly says
"yes I am" well, there's nothing you can do about that shit
and anyway, that person is right and you've
just got to start dancing because that sort of talk
will make you feel like you're on the moon
exhausting yourself into relaxing with such topics.
Your thoughts have a thinker
would you like to meet her?

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Julianna Barwick

I saw Julianna Barwick tonight at Pianos. Every time I've seen her I've gone into a sweet little trance that lingers gently around the edges of my brain hours later. Thanks Julianna!

The Slow Now

When what is needed is a four leaf clover
not the admission of missing. Or some resolute
charm in a box marked intense. It takes
discipline for you to get off at that stop.
We need honey to come in and come.
We need that kissing mechanism to work
so when someone is hollering you don't think of me
or you don't miss me you get up and go
get on another train. And then you found me
with my rhythms that are boss.
Shivering when I write the mechanical realism
of the slow now. Dawn is for remembering
as in the night people love me for my energy
and leave for that too. So there. Cheers!

Help Me

If you see my robot please tell him
come home to me the meal
was divine. The turnips were brazed
to perfection and the tuna had not one
dot of mercury. When you see my robot
tell him that I really liked what he
talked about (lonesome hearts) and what he whispered
to me when the going got tough (fuck shit up).

Thank You

Monday, June 15, 2009

Feu de Bois

If I could smell a day it would be Saturday
because I'm not awake yet I get a feeling that
what time does is memorialize what I love most
everything is radiant and new
with smooth skin and tight pants
no more melting or careening into traffic
having physical contact with ideas
about work or social systems and designs
an architecture that people can move through together
at home with friends eager to make stuff
for your apartment to help you break free of the past
the modulations of my moods are symbolic of nothing
so I'm building something really awesome with my hands
while I listen to you on the phone
I'm getting the flutters and shakes I want to bring
your attention to this one fact: I shouldn't be up
but I am words are so funny in the face of this
all things are spinning in a gentle cycle of now
reaching for someone and finding someone there.

Elivis Costello - Pump it Up

Sunday, June 14, 2009

My Birthday in Photographs




Friday, June 12, 2009

Poem for Fridays

I want to press you against the F
train pour raw honey into your locket
lick the whites of your miles
dance in the space between your flowers
tune into your troubles like a titanium radio
bubbling splinters entering sleepers
under thick summer thunder showers
I want to text you late and early
bring you flags and charms
turn up the volume and dance
with a certain amusing if not erotic glee
I want to bring you to the Brooklyn Bridge
so we can laugh at the violet city down below
speaking with tongues twisted
into new sprains run miles
swim smiles relax into the blue dream of bicycles
and books while getting an education
in eastern and western classics
dopamine ink in the reservoir tip
spangled moods of skipping
down the cobble hill life I love you
all is moody and glistening
while ginger snaps to attention
in your arms.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Sonic Youth : 100%

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Sonic Youth : The Eternal

Sonic Youth's new album "The Eternal" is absolutely brilliant. I've been listening to it all morning and the whole thing makes perfect sense to my brain by way of my heart. Thank you.

Connect Four

Monday, June 08, 2009

Monday, Monday


Hi.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Walt Whitman

Whenever I run down to Dumbo under The Brooklyn Bridge, I always make a point of stopping at the landing and reading this passage from Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Call me sentimental, but no matter how many times I stand there on those wooden planks reading this, I cry a bit, with joy and connectedness. Enjoy. Happy Sunday.

"Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me;
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!—stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!"

Top Ten Sunday

1) New bedspread and sheets.
2) Going for a run.
3) Coffee.
4) Birthdays coming soon.
5) Rag & Bone.
6) LCD Soundsystem
7) Sleeplessness is overrated.
8) A perfectly ripened banana.
9) Tao Te Ching.
10) This expansive feeling.

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

It's All Good, Right?

It's just the night trying to get comfortable
with pacing in a line you're up so why not
put down the book and glide around
the room like an anxious skater in socks on wood-
Lou Reed can help you with that stuff.
It doesn't matter what you do or say
as long as the books get rearranged or the dishes
get done under a cascade of tasks, nightly. And I mean
there is a doubt in my head but not the one
you're thinking of a place and then going there
like Paris from a window only better. Sleep is something
that stirs us into committing to the math problem-
a door opens, a spark, some fire, and then rest.
Consistency trumps intensity which
might help you unwind like those people
on t.v. making medicine for political causes.
I'll be here you can call anytime the people
say but what they really mean is their machines:
you can talk to their machines late into the night.
Give me the machine that's a clown I like clowns.
I don't want to go over the side of this vessel
I simply want to enjoy Brooklyn's lovely weather
and anyway stunt people get paid large sums to do that stuff
and I wouldn't want to take that away from them.

Saturday, June 06, 2009

From Cobble Hill, Paris This Evening




Saturday Poem

I'm glad there is air
and light and your hand
reaching out to mine.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Fernando Pessoa

What I want, with every particle of my soul, is for the sluggish clouds that fill the sky with grubby lather to be gone; I want to see the blue beginning to show between them, a bright clear truth, because it is nothing and wants nothing. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Walk Away

I want to be significant refreshing and informative
as a soft drink spilled over the New York Times
there's nothing left of me but you
or so you'd like to think after the excitement
there is disappointment just as there are
people who dread going into buildings
because they remember where they came from
and the hurt they will not rise above now that
they're all decorated in zeros the walls shiver
I can breathe on you when your pelvic bone
presses against my thigh bone alert to need
nothing can prepare you for the war in your own fur
like mass appeal and prestige could help you forget major
mistakes alone in a room forgetting nothing but dismay
the evening is so dumb so crowded with memory
so awake at the table so fucking around
until dawn when I can make changes.

John Cage

Something has to be done to get us free of our memories and choices. -John Cage (interview)

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Two


Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit

Afternoon Poem

I built a fort of blue ribbons
so you could enjoy it, live in it,
and feel like you came in first place
even when you didn't show up
or have a hand in my
anxiety which is growing dimmer
as the light changes we speed off.
It's raining in Brooklyn so the roses
look droopy from the ledge
where the pigeons are making
those sounds that wake us up.
I don't ache so much as I've started
to shuffle in and out of the kitchen
throat in my hands slipping into
something delicate and whispery
most of the night. That's what I like
even as day changes to night.
I measure my desire in the lists
I keep of things I do when you're not here.
It's so simple and pure being a New Yorker
but not so clear as the day began.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

I've Got Your Back

I want to have some of what you need me for
linking arms a chain of flesh in the distance
I won't make mistakes and I'll behave.
I want the wedge itself to dissolve between us
lifting and pulling turning one into the other.
There is only so long you can spoon
a 120 LBS bag of cotton. Eating one blackberry
at a time until my fingers are stained
as I thumb through pictures of you.
Smudged faces, glass on the floor, a water bug
skitters between us and we scream because
those things are just plain scary. Surprises
are scary too but not when they are cupped
in your hands a little chocolate granola
sneaky things repeated a toothbrush in the bathroom
signifies nothing so much as clean teeth and fresh breath.
There are wars raging people are pissed-off everywhere
some of the children have started bonfires
made of dead roses and cherry blossoms.
Pink smoke fills the air. A circus of skin and sparks
beyond the headlines the details are building
while the possibility of two people simply sitting
in a room together not at war is a miracle. Now
think of that when they scream in your face
walk into the river and don't look back
or wave even-I'll be right behind you.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Sunny Monday

Sun sparks off my bike
as I ride away from you
into the forest of Brooklyn
trucks and blooms
and fat guys with cigars
shout eagerly at my speed
glistening under the shield
of my surrender still shivering
under the strength of our light
speaking into my hands
as though in prayer
but only lapsing into daydreams
long enough to recognize the absence of fear.

Let's rock!
Yay Monday.