Reggie Watts!

Vic Chesnutt

Friday Top 10

1) NYC Marathon packet pick-up.
2) All morning with Gorilla coffee and Anne Carson.
3) The Finer Things Club (Laura Minor, President).
4) I understand you.
5) Sleeping like a rock.
6) Vic Chesnutt.
7) Rogan still makes me feel good.
8) Honey Crisp Apples.
9) Jacques Lacan, I love you.
10) Me reading at the Poetry Project, Wednesday, January 6th, 2010.

Thursday Poem

If you were living like a human say
or taking the steps to live like one
tying your shoes with your own hands
or divvying up the proceeds into an
old jar of mayonnaise, I'd still love you
in something scalloped or banal
as butter in icing or an omelet.
I am winning so much lately
that it hurts my arms. I get the drift
and stumble down the 6 flights of stairs
to a new way of looking at Baltic Street.
There are men walking dogs
in the dark and people frothing
at the loud mouths with nothing
to say but saying it anyway and that's just great.
So human as to seem tasteless, gabbing
into my palm like I'm praying into a phone.
So high up in the trees, this memory
of grass and something else up there.
A hand reaching for yours isn't all that
so I'll use this wooden spoon and think of you.
So what will you use to think of me?

Spot of Bother

Just taking some time
to really get down with the vibe
and get it on in the rain.
Or some breakfast maybe
with a certain layer
of mystery eating it
to one side of the table
just to see how mysterious
it is over there.
Waking up on a bed
and feeling all I can do this
and then really only
chugging coffee and making
that feeling last like for a minute
of bliss and then bother.

May 15, 2009

In Our Time

There were machines that made communicating earlier
easier by way of electronics and airwaves.
It was blustery so we set up a blockade
and sat on the protected side of that
discussing things that matter. Then we
were just happy to be clowning around
because we had the company and the leisure
time to do that. A photo album sat on the table
and it had photos inside of the good old days.
But things were not so much easier back then
we had this metallic tang that erupted
at odd moments. There were ballplayers
and televisions. You could buy tickets to things
and be assured that something would happen
when you asked for something to happen.

Philip Whalen by way of Wood's Lot

The real tension, I think, is between official poetry, the kind that we're taught in school and is kept in libraries, and the kind we really believe in - what we are writing and what our friends write. The same thing holds for meditation: what we discover for ourselves and learn. At some point you can forget it and go off and make a pot of spaghetti. We used to do go down to Muir Beach years ago to gather mussels off the rocks. We'd build a bonfire, put seaweed on the fire to steam the mussels. We'd eat them, then jump up and down in the waves and have fun. That was enough. Probably enough. Or too much. Oh, I guess Blake said it, "Enough, or too much." That's all.
- Philip Whalen, About Writing and Meditation

Top Ten Friday Afternoon

1) Meat from the back of a cobra.

2) Covering the blowhole with my mouth in order to save the whale pup.

3) Lists like: "Whitman, Koch, gassy."

4) Sorry we're close.

5) The little bits of morning that I cannot dodge.

6) When someone says: "look, this is how it is."

7) Blue flames.

8) Before, during, after.

9) Glucosamine Sulfate with MSM.

10) Title for my new book of poems: Looky.

11) Thousands of pounds of flaw.

12) Gray and brown.

13) Pancakes House.

Up and Out I Go

Those sad mouths are of like tin
gray meat and dice in a glass of soda
has narcolepsy but is even-handed.
If all the earth's inhabitants
blinked at the very same time there would
be a moment that you could do whatever
you wanted. And you would do it. I know you would
because you love doing it. And you
would not make me like you less and less.
In the shitty toss of mood and memory
what is the method of original method?
I'm salvaging my mysterious ideas with these salad days.
There is a medicine in the radio and I took it.
So, sat still--so, up and out I go.

Everything You Want

If you got everything you wanted
you could just sit around all day
making puppy airplanes and launching
doves from wrist rockets as the sun
went down over your padded estate.
People would bring you all kinds of stuff
and call you "dude" and value your opinion
based on the vivid charm inherent in sitting around all day
inventing things to do with your friends. Good luck
with that. I'm off.

Skin Tight Morning

Skin tight morning
the air all rich
and lacquered
in the sink is a light
so many colored papers
comb wet stuff from my hair
the planet tastes
like combusted chicken
I ride my bike to work
and the weather snaps
I feel okay for a man in Brooklyn
someone left a cookie
out on the ledge last night
Keats died in Rome
when my hands move
I am a dancer
calm down until the wind
suggests an escape route
through the field
seeing the Proust all sagged
with water I froze with that
years ago I need to forget
more than I know
from now on.

Nancy Spero, Rest in Peace

Obit here.

Ranier Maria Rilke

"Since close to death one doesn't see death any more,
just stares ahead, perhaps with big animal gaze.
Lovers, if the other weren't there to
block the view, lovers are near it and wonder...
As if by oversight it's disclosed to them
behind the other...But beyond that
no one gets any further, and the world happens to him again."

Ranier Maria Rilke "The Eighth Duino Elegy" translation from German by Robert kelly

Nightmare

I'll love anyway and not witness the loss
any more than it takes to love again.
And again, if necessary.

Things I Would Do To Help You

If you were never coming home again
I would hire someone to help find you
a sweet song form to sing while you
were out there not coming home again.
I would look for clues in the trees
watch how their branches moved
and examine the animals climbing up
or down the tree for signs of despair.
I would soothe the uninvited guests
walking in the courtyard with stories
of my adventures in Paris and stuff like that.
I would send you an email outlining my new
positive approach to life which involves
coffee and photos of puppies and jelly.
I would tell you to stay away from Ikea
if you're feeling the least bit shaky
about your own reality. But mostly
I would help you with the idea of
simply being lazy and letting it all hang out
for a few hours every day that you're here
with me facing the music. Good luck!
I'll be thinking of you.

Saturday Top 4

I am the walrus

Take My Advice, I am in Repose

Take my advice, I am in repose,
I most definitely could take action
a long shower springing to attention.
Then a silver plate, but big, like a table.
We would never eat on that.
When you walk away it is okay
to look back at me and let me catch you
doing that I'll have the camera ready
and I'll post it. Help me
coordinate the air so that it is
no different from the temperature
of my skin. This piercing tingle feels too early
for winter. I'm about ready to get down
with my friend. Amber is the smell of sadness.
Looped, defiant, and husky-hearted,
let me have a sip of your light more vital
than vitamins and coffee, fuller of protein
than water. There is no fantastic grief in rain.
It's okay to look down on someone's ideas about jeans.
Don't you have any specific questions for me?

Love It!

I will let them stew over their mistakes,
come clean into the room and then exit, joyfully.
I will be sure of the presence of something generated
from the the leave taking, the pelvis, the ginger.
I am always assuming you are meaning something
when your list goes on and on.
My tablet is full. There will be a gentle storm,
and Vespas, then and there.
I will pick up the pieces of the shit I break.
And then glue and tape, and a full repair day.
But it goes on way longer than that.
It makes us curse and pull muscles
and sleep a sleep so thick and creamy
that it is totally fucked up.

Glenn Gould

This Dance

What morning does is considerable
given the lack of light silence seems
not silent but humming into my room
curling around my head like a cotton snake.
I'm all for love though love makes
for stuff I can't predict where I'll be
holding hands with racking sobs
lifting the palms up as though one
could lift the sky that way, just a bit.
If I could hide out with you I would
bring mint gum, tissues, a jar of lingonberry jam,
and my book of Danish phrases.
People are late all the time. I will be discrete
and courteous, I will slip into the subway
with clippers and a rake. There will
be a day that we will dream of furnishing
a space in the city that is currently occupied
by other people. I'll help you find me
there in the garden, under a tree.
Hello.

Breathing Time

There will always be someone
to tell you that cupcake frosting tastes dreamy
when eaten from a cup outside the 72nd Street subway station.
I am reeling in the day by way of night, making leaps
where the ground once looked frozen
and harsh. A starling will eat carrion
while its blue black feathers dazzle
the living in the woods. If I roll
amber on my wrist you will smell
it on the subway when you sit next
to me and ask me to draw the dress
you wore to the prom. I am breathing
all the time now, in fact, I don't even
think of breathing anymore, it just happens,
even while I'm sleeping you dream of dancing
while I'm not there. Cool to crisp to brisk,
all the people look brilliant in their
fall apparel. I'm still waiting for you to knit
my blue and brown hat. Did I mention
the periwinkle vest in Central Park? I did.
When you laugh I feel better. The sky is a constant reminder
that time is rushing by - and I'm part of it - because
when I stand my head scrapes the wind.

Storm King

Television!

Drunken Boat!

Tune-Yards

A Poem About Vaporization

The focus is revolutionary
when not focused on the storm -
or this glitzy plaza - but an actual place
full of details that seem certain
or almost clear, certain though, of a storm.
I'm up to us in parts, so this day is
good to you in a new way or you'll assume I'm bringing
you good news for once. I'll just be singing and dancing
with the most spectacular news ever.
I am reaching into the future of this day.
If I were vaporized you could breathe me in
and then that would not be so great for me.
So I'll just keep getting my skin on your hand.
The efficiency is important to notice. I cannot decline you.

Top Ten Tuesday

1) That subtle rushed feeling.
2) Working on spaces in poems.
3) Naked Lunch at 50 at The Poetry Project Wednesday October 7 8PM
4) Running out of bounds.
5) Just standing there thinking.
6) The walk down 3rd St. to Staples.
7) I still sort of believe that there are things I can buy at Staples that will help make me a better writer.
8) A certain pen makes a big difference.
9) Sardines and goat cheese on arugula.
10) Honey, mustard and olive oil.

My Panther Down

You should always know your times.
Your good times roll over what little remains:
a sliver of lemon on the chalkboard,
a pomegranate seed on a white sheet,
the ice blue sky full of silver planes.
My friend goes someplace warm
and meaningful. Outside, a sparky little day
is beginning -- the meaning of which hurts
my blue forehead. What makes the weather pop?
Why does granite taste like lime ice or oily water?
Don't eat the monuments, they are for the people.
The salt, a gush, Sainty and her effing moon talk.
We are laughing because that is the best thing to do
together when your arm stops hurting from the zombie flu shot
you'll see me pointing stuff out that makes you smile.

Top Three Saturday

To Myself

I will have this all to myself:
a brook slapped with sable
no mourning rod, the gills
of dead fish stuffed with lemon wedges.
Walk on leaves marked
by the scent of musk and offal
while the shouts deeper in the woods
ping from tree to skull-
a blood curdling scream-
a woman with a paper towel
over her hand stained red with dots.
This clavicle blooms suddenly
smelling the last rose of summer
while stammering linked to air
where arms were once scented with amber.
I'm walking into the cool water
without hesitation without remorse
a scant shell cleaned of words
gripping the silt with the curl of my
toes edging closer yet closer still.

Drunken Boat