For The People

Happy New Year

Click on photos to enlarge.

United and Raw

Needing or wanting something like an action figure
to wile away the hours with or to simply slide
on a ribbon of glass all the way into a vat
of warm wax. I want only simple things that don't pose
engineering problems or require long explanations
or psychoanalysis. I am dampening the sounds
in my head with a fluffy towel and coffee.
I still hear frantic harpsichords and loud neighbors
banging shit around like they were in their own video
about loud neighbors banging shit around. I stumble down
the stairs into the cold. My hands are chapped, they look
papery and flaked. On the street people look past me
into the eyes of their appropriate partners. Hi!
The damage has been contained by multitudes. All the private parts
are raw to the touch. Granules of salt infuriate
some of the people all of the time. As the year ends
we're all united and raw. Won't you tiptoe into oblivion with me?
And then I start getting this feeling of expectation.

Toile de Jouy, Enjoy!

Oh, You (for you)

Oh, you shine a light on me that's as tender as a boiled egg.
The whites of my eyes are dilated.
All the buildings have my name on them.
I'm working so hard on your freedom.
I'm glad there is rhythm and sound, it really populates my days.
Grief is only temporary and rarely ever fatal.
Think of a place and then go there.
You'll get a real handle on what to expect when you expect it.
I appreciate them.
My days are full of expectations.

I'll be giving a reading on Wednesday, January 6th!

I'll be giving a reading on Wednesday, January 6th at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church (10th St & 2nd Ave, Manhattan). It starts at 8PM. I'll be reading lots of new and old work. It would be great to see you there. Really.

For more information click here.

Love,
Todd!

Tentatively Sparkling

Like a swan covered in glitter
I waddle into the open field
untethered by mercy, lacking
only lack, I am all high end
audio and ruthless detachment.
Try and find what part of me is missing.
Reward: all night long.

36th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit Reading

January 1, 2010
2:00 pm
Friday
The Poetry Project
St. Mark's Church
10th St. and 2nd Ave
Manhattan

Poets and performers this year include Ammiel Alcalay, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, Penny Arcade, Arthur’s Landing, Ari Banias, Jim Behrle, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Ana Bozicevic, Donna Brook, Michael Brownstein, Franklin Bruno, Tyler Burba, Peter Bushyeager, Reuben Butchart, Callers, Steve Cannon, Yoshiko Chuma, Church Of Betty, Michael Cirelli, Todd Colby, John Coletti, CAConrad, Cori Copp, Brenda Coultas, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Mónica de la Torre, Mina Pam Dick, Steve Dalachinsky, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Maggie Dubris, Douglas Dunn, Marcella Durand, Steve Earle, Will Edmiston, Joe Elliot, Christine Elmo, Laura Elrick, Maggie Estep, Avram Fefer, Jess Fiorini, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Foamola, David Freeman, Ed Friedman, Greg Fuchs, Joanna Fuhrman, Cliff Fyman, Kelly Ginger, Pepi Ginsberg, John Giorno, Philip Glass, John Godfrey, Toby Goodshank, Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan, Stephanie Gray, Tim Griffin, Miguel Gutierrez, John S. Hall, Diana Hamilton, Janet Hamill, Robert Hershon, Tony Hoffman, Eddie Hopely, Lisa Jarnot, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Adeena Karasick, Erica Kaufman, Lenny Kaye, John Kelly, Aaron Kiely, David Kirschenbaum, Bill Kushner & Merle Lister, Susan Landers, Joan Larkin, Dorothea Lasky, Denizé Lauture, Joel Lewis, Brendan Lorber, Michael Lydon, Kim Lyons, Dan Machlin & Serena Jost, Filip Marinovich, Chris Martin, Gillian McCain, Legs McNeil, Tracey McTague, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Sharon Mesmer, David Mills, Rebecca Moore, Tracie Morris, Will Morris, Eileen Myles, Jess Mynes, Elinor Nauen, Murat Nemat-Nejat, Jim Neu, Geoffrey Olsen, Dael Orlandersmith, Richard O’Russa, Yuko Otomo, Gary Parrish, Simon Pettet, Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Kristin Prevallet, Brett Price, Arlo Quint, Elizabeth Reddin, Evelyn Reilly, Citizen Reno, Renato Rosaldo, Bob Rosenthal, Douglas Rothschild, Tom Savage, Michael Scharf, David Shapiro, Frank Sherlock, Elliott Sharp, Nathaniel Siegel, Christopher Stackhouse, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Tardos, Susie Timmons, Edwin Torres, Rodrigo Toscano, Tony Towle, David Vogen, Nicole Wallace, Lewis Warsh, Phyllis Wat, Karen Weiser, Simone White, Emily XYZ, Don Yorty, Rachel Zolf, Magdalena Zurawski & more t.b.a.

This event will be held in the Sanctuary. General admission $18, Students & Seniors $15, Members $10.

Sunday Poem

Heaven might just be in a
cup of coffee and a piece of toast.
Were there only buttons to push
on a tree to be lifted into the sky
like a big fat adult baby. That would be fun.
All that miserable cold rain has come to a stop,
now it is calm and clear. Some Bach
is playing on the radio in the other room.
One cannot possibly think of making
love while listening to Bach.
I am all about thinking the things
I think and letting them go. Let
those sick little monkeys go!
Raise your voice in ecstatic song
like a total jackass that upsets
the neighbors with early songs.
You can apologize later.

Celebrate

This sweet part of the morning
is red, my word for blue. It's great
to be up and alive and chomping.
To delineate without restraint.
I want some pony to bring joy and not feel silly about it.
Breathe and think of those words
as breath. It seems that by now
I'm almost amazed that I could totally
kiss a body and provide pleasure.
To think that in real time, not a loop.
To think it through one last time
so the results are not so distorted by youth.
I wonder what would happen if everyone
came to their senses? I've got a really good
feeling and I don't want to spoil it.
Machines fly above my building. The people onboard
are swollen with grief. I tell them
to celebrate the end of everything
and do a good job at it.

Vic Chesnutt, Rest in Peace

Top Ten Thursday

1) Lightening the fuck up about a lot of shit.

2) Bach on WKCR.ORG 24/7. Save me.

3) Blinking into the void.

4) Wondering what 2010 will be like.

5) Getting to know someone all over again.

6) What a good massage can do: change my point of view.

7) "The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact." Maurice Blanchot, Writing of the Disaster

8) The crystal clear sky this morning.

9) The silence right now in this room.

10) Getting ready to have been born.

Odysseus Speaks

"I will tell you all of this, down to the last detail.
If you and I could have only have food and sweet wine
for the duration, feasting on and on quietly
here in your hut, leaving the work to others--
It would easily take me a full year, and even then
I would not finish my heart's tale of sorrows,
all that I have endured by the will of the gods."

The Odyssey, Book 14. Translated by Stanley Lombardo

Goodnight

Love

Poem (for Marianne Vitale)

Such lovely you-
news too
and joy
in you & in me
in it deep
so run deep
go far
let a muscle glide
you into the pleasure
dome of ink
and spiders and
muffs and stuff.
You just make life
better with you in it.

Thanks

It may have come to this
but you should keep doing it
even if parts of you start falling off
like a finger or two or hairs from
your arms start to blow around you
in the wind. It's exciting
to be alive in this century,
even if you do get pounded now and then;
it's part of the ride. And anyway,
there is always someone on the internet
to tell you when you've gone off course.
Fuck them! Deliver the goods!
Those bells you hear
are there to wake you up.
When you can't fall asleep
you get up and put your pants on.
Get your love on!

Hidden. G Train Platform. Metropolitan Ave.

Julianna Barwick at Cameo Gallery

Listen to This

If you could have some more of what it took you'd be all bent up too.
Not like you were a pretzel but a car that rolled, like that.
There are people just standing around, waiting, pulsing
like they were ready for it, and it was all happening for the first time.
But it was the last time and we were the first ones to get to know you.
Just as better, just as it can, just as now. Just get up and dance.

Dushore, PA

The Last Rose of Winter

Sunday Top Three

1) Snow.

2) Coffee.

3) My Parka.

Look at That

Look at that
morning light
it is vegetable matter
spooning the air
warm on the back
slippery smiles pressed
against my neck
holding me upright
under a torrent
of clasps and buttons.

Cat Power - Crying, Waiting, Hoping

Wings

If wings hadn't been introduced
to shoulder blades then no one
would be flying around looking all ecstatic
and befuddled while catching cold air.
There'd only be tiny ponies chewing oats
from ratty buckets outside right now.
There are mornings and then there are
golden glimpses of something totally
amazing like awe or coffee. In this instance
I would like to simply point out to you The New York
Times in a blue bag with my name on it.
Kisses could be delayed by days or even months.
The paper says you have independent modes
of transportation so I'll meet you half-way
there with my jittery self.
Morning will never be called off
due to budgetary constraints or even heartbreak.
By afternoon there will be plush green pillows
strewn on the lawn waiting for my body.
I can hardly wait.

Time Out

Lifting my arms in the air so as to indicate
I'm here on the floor so you can come and lift me up
if you have the time. Air stings when it's this cold
things freeze right where they are. I mean totally.

Friday Morning Top 10

1) Julianna Barwick at Oasis Gallery. The sound was amazing and the songs transported me to the appropriate place. More later (and photos).

2) The Tanners by Robert Walser -- I purchased it tonight at Spoonbill and Sugartown on good old Bedford Ave, which is looking very nostalgic.

3) Laura looking very tailored and elegant playing the tailored and elegant woman of a certain age. Comfortably spiffy.

4) At the Metropolitan Ave. G stop: Red lipstick on a bright yellow phone. For real.

5) Sushi in Williamsburg on N. 6th Street. I had my last dinner with Henry Flesh there during the Spring of 2003?

6) How talented and genuinely sweet Julianna Barwick is.

7) All I know is that it hurts more than all the commercials about pain that have ever been made.

8) You want to mythologize it, make a story of it, but you just can't.

9) The cold became a demon tonight and shaved my legs with an icy scalpel.

10) My hands are so dry that it feels like a natural oil has been drawn from them and now I'm all ash and flakes from typing this. I clap my hands and people cough.

Henri Michaux

However weighed down, washed-up,
or bullied you may be, ask yourself regularly--
and irregularly--"What can I risk again today?"

H.M. from Tent Posts p85

Oh! Mirror Lake!

I long for you today.

Beautiful Soil

I am filling the space
you left behind with a few things
that I forgot about while you were here.
My bed is made of old hair and books.
I put on my flip-flops and this
little sprint of light from under the door
flickers loosely around my thighs;
it provides enough light to make a sandwich by.
Bread again. A vacation would be pleasant,
perhaps somewhere with pencils
and paper. Thin ducts of water
streaming from a legendary dish.
Waste time considering the mortality rates of cute things
versus that of rough hewn things. Underestimate the value
of past hugs. Consider stopping that stuff now.
I will focus on the incessant pang of the new now.
I will stop making the animal sounds and
raise my voice in song instead. A crystal clear vision
of the present shivers down my spine.
How long until I'm on beautiful soil?

Robert Frank's Rolling Stones Video

Smoke - Curtains

From The Dhammapada

"Let him live in love. Let his work be well done. Then in a fulness of joy he will see the end of sorrow."

One of my favorite passages from The Odyssey (two translations)

Oh Brave Odysseus!






















"Endure my heart, you endured worse than this
on that day when the invincible Cyclops
ate our comrades. You bore it until your cunning
got you out of the cave where you thought you would die."

from book 20, Translated by Stanley Lombardo

"Bear up, old heart! You've borne worse, far worse,
that day when Cyclops, man mountain, bolted
your hardy comrades down. But you held fast--
Nobody but your cunning pulled you through
the monster's cave you thought would be your death."

from book 20, Translated by Robert Fagles

John Coltrane Quartet - Live 1965 - Vigil

Damn.

Morning Poem #252

Lifting my head,
breathing from my belly, eating a bit,
drinking coffee, reading the paper,
dozing almost, going for a run,
breathing more, saying hello to three
people in the park, in the dark!
Now home again with
a certain tinkle of the piano
somewhere not far way.
OK, here we go into Monday.
Good luck everyone.

The cover of my new chapbook: Prism Frame

More on Prism Frame later.

Sunday Top 11

1) Brooklyn, early morning Sunday. My favorite.

2) Talking with Greg Hamilton last night and witnessing his courage while battling cancer. I honor him here.

3) All this Christmas stuff is kind of bumming me out.

4) The sound of a seagull outside my window right now.

5) Frank O'Hara: "I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."

6) The view of the city on 56th Street from the 43rd floor last night: Sparkle City.

7) Walking home from the train and having a momentary feeling of peace and calm on Baltic Street, but it didn't last long.

8) My bed, now festooned with books.

9) There is something about the silence of this room that I find adorable.

10) I'm okay. I just miss someone, a lot. Bear with me.

11) So, a bear walks into a bar, see?

Julianna Barwick

Julianna will be perfroming at The Cameo Gallery on Thursday, December 17th. If you've never seen her, you should. I'll be there!

Saturday Top 10

1) Cold outside, warm in here.

2) A clementine and a banana.

3) Hum and whoosh of traffic: it sounds like the ocean from my bed.

4) How tender Brooklyn feels this morning.

5) This new skin I have is very supple.

6) Whenever I feel like dancing, I dance.

7) What would you do if I sang out of tune? Wait, don't tell me.

8) The scallops, the beets, the squash, the home, the company. Thank you J.K.

9) Lifting my hands above my head and clapping them.

10) Thelonius Monk.

Friday Top 5

1) Running in the wind and cold is just not fun, not even with a really good soundtrack. But Prospect Park looks gorgeous and barren, so there was something to smile about. There's your poem right there.

2) "Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don't then everything is over with here, once and for all." Franz Kafka, July 21, 1913 from Diaries

3) Reading, writing, and taking naps on Fridays is what it's all about for me.

4) The smell of the Christmas trees on the corner of Kane and Clinton made me cry today. I'm such a dork.

5) So many friends sending texts and emails. Hey friends: I love you all.

Allen Ginsberg's Advice (again)

"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."

Morning Poem

Whatever else could be said is done.
It's so cold outside that some birds have come
into my room to sleep. They flutter and coo
in the warmth and doze on my t-shirts.
I am naming them later today and feeding
them walnuts that were left behind.
All night I dreamt of brave Odysseus
and his disguise at the banquet making
them think he was a tramp a lesser man
some big trick but he got it right in the end
and shot the arrow through the axe heads.
When it's like this I am all that I can take
watching steam curl from rooftops
golden light in windows as people
prepare for ordinary days.
I remember ordinary days: getting ready to do
something and doing it without this strange new
heavy coat I have to wear around now. I bump into things
I drop dishes I limp around like I've
been kicked in the heart.
Hello birds, flutter above me as I rise
I will not abandon you.

3

1) "I can't wish anything or I will die of it." Alice Notley, "March 25th" from At Night the States

2) "And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation." John Ashbery, "A Blessing in Disguise" from Rivers and Mountains

3) "I'm infused with the day I'm out in it." John Wieners, "A Poem for Early Risers" from The Hotel Wentley Poems

Good Night Poem

I hope the bedroom makes me sleepy tonight
and not a frayed electric wire popping sparks off the bed.

Cold Weather Top 3

1) Jazz!
2) Smartwool Socks!
3) Green Tea (2 bags).

Thanks for stopping by.

Shifting

Let the sky hold you upright
like a crisp blue crutch. Long light
over Brooklyn in winter.
Let the memory of all that
lull itself to sleep so you can
be awake. Why just look
at all the things waiting
for you to embrace them.

Thursday Top 8

1) "We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it." Blaise Pascal, Pensees, #166

2) "This is the first schooling in spirituality: not to react immediately to a stimulus but to get a hold on those instincts that stall and inhibit." Robert Musil, Diaries 1899-1942

3) "Marius' earhole smells." Martial, The Epigrams

4) "If you can't find anyone who can stand you, you can't find anyone who believes you've got anything they want." Adam Phillips, Equals

5) "Don't hand yourself over like a wrapped package. Laugh while you howl. Howl with laughter." Henri Michaux, Tent Posts

6) "Their catalogues of loss are also records of survival." Adam Phillips, Darwin's Worms

7) "Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its wounds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bounds, and its very self." Franz Kafka, "The Great Wall of China"

8) "One has carefully scented a robe and then forgotten about it for several days. When finally one comes to wear it, the aroma is even more delicious than on freshly scented clothes." Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

!

To Everyone

A relaxing night
full of fabulous stuff.

Top 12 Wednesday

1) Listening to the cold rain while reading under a down blanket.

2) Just feeling total love for Joe Brainard and how much he's made me smile over the years whenever I've been sad.

3) Remembering how much I bring to the table of love.

4) Sweet Jane.

5) A warm shower can change your point of view.

6) Patti Smith and Alice Notley. How strong and creative they've both been in the face of enormous grief. They are my heroes and I salute them.

7) Realizing how much I don't need.

8) Peanut butter and jelly on toasted Ezekiel Bread washed down with ice cold milk while reading the NY Times (breakfast and dinner).

9) The simple basic stuff like being kind to myself and others everyday.

10) Bob Dylan, you've been there every single time my heart has been broken. Thanks Bob!

11) Riding my bike home at night. Thank you for setting me free, bike!

12) Dancing, even when it hurts to breathe.

Fulton & St. Felix

The punch line is delivered
with impeccable tragic timing
but the roar of traffic along Atlantic Avenue drowns
out the sad bits enough that you project
a neutral look to assure the speaker that
whatever was said is throbbing in your chest now
whatever words do when summing up
a past well there is an agenda
everyone wants protection
so their words can't be trusted
even my own words tell little
they must be discarded listen
this much is true: it's the gestures that speak
some hand reaching for your own
the delicate steps together say a kiss so soft
or embrace when the world disappears
there is something noble something regal
about love that descriptions and post-descriptions
and critiques can't touch the reality
of simply caressing someone's cheek
using a finger to wipe a tear away
and then sticking that finger in your own mouth
in order to taste the salt of that person
there is no code here no hidden meaning
there's something here that you can't sum up
because tenderness says so much
no matter how hard you try
to define it with words.

Alice Notley

"Grief isn't empty it's black and material I've seen it
It's a force, independent, and eats you while you're sleeping."

"The universe is ruled by love and countervalent sorrow
Grief's not a social invention
Grief is visible, substantial, I've literally seen it."

"Grief is opportunistic and uncontrollable
it doesn't exactly come
from you, you allow it in
It's godlike
as in possession."

"One is magically struck down at certain
moments, can't move, can't arise,
and inside is poison: grief gets caught
in intensifying pockets which when opened
cause sensations of illness. On Christmas morning
I can't stand up."

"If you immerse your feet in icy water
you forget grief for a moment. I did this once, my
brother-in-law made us cross a cold stream barefoot,
that winter, walking in the woods--I was emptied, then elated,
blissful; but didn't try it again. Grief
returns vengeful after you've repulsed it."

Alice Notley, excerpts from the poem "I--Towards a Definition" in her book Mysteries of Small Houses

Joanna Penn Cooper Interviewed Me

You can read the interview here.

Enjoy!

Top 11 Monday

1) "Too much definition leaves too much out." Adam Phillips, Terrors and Experts (such a good book, I keep returning to it again and again).

2) Seeing my life through the eyes of those who love me, a singular pleasure I occasionally grant myself.

3) Reading over my journals from 2.21.09 to now. Lots and lots of details I'd forgotten. I was really talking to my current self a lot. I love that I took so much care to document everything. Hey, I'm a writer, that's what I do.

4) Sweet morning of calm delight in solitude.

5) The coffee is good, like a warm hand lifting my heart.

6) Garbage guys: why are you so loud?

7) Running is wonderful: the breath, the rhythm, the joy of movement, being totally present--all good. Hey, I'm an Ironman, that's what I do.

8) So many texts and emails and comments from friends, I want to save them all.

9) Hibino Sushi with Drew last night.

10) A good feeling: A totally cleaned, dusted and scrubbed apartment.

11) A fresh, full bottle of Feu de Bois parfume d'interieur by Diptyque.

Sunday Morning Meditations

"Remind yourself that it is not the future or past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less, if only you isolate it and reprove your understanding, if that is not strong enough to hold against it, thus taken by itself." -Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

"The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that makes the problem disappear." -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

"Mourning is immensely reassuring because it convinces us of something we might otherwise easily doubt: our attachement to others." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Pain makes us believe that other people have something we need." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Trying to cheer yourself up isn't easy, and sometimes it feels hypocritical, like going against the grain. But the reminder is that if you want to change your habitual stuckness, you're the only one who can do it." -Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness

"Sorrow, the cause of sorrow, the end of sorrow, and path of eight stages which leads to the end of sorrow." -The Dhammapada

"If I'm as normal as I think I am, then we're all a bunch of weirdos." -Joe Brainard 29 Mini-Essays

"People of the world: relax." -Joe Brainard, Selected Poems

"But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secrets in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow, whose very appearance cheers you up." -Seneca, Dialogues and Letters

"I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities, in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

"One lovely day in spring: you get up and wash, you shave, you brush your clothes off. Each morning there you are, a new man, scrubbed clean, shaven, clothes brushed." George Bataille, Guilty

Saturday With Henry David Thoreau

"What sort of space is that which seperates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to?"

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Top Ten Saturday (So Far)

1) Getting my hair cut at FSC-Barber (my usual place) on Horatio Street in the West Village and having my barber council me on break-ups and grief and what to do tonight. "Go out to a club!" He suggested enthusiastically. Um, no.

2) Rain in Manhattan is just dirtier and sadder than rain in Brooklyn. Go out there and see for yourself.

3) Retail therapy is kind of silly when rent is due, but it was fun looking around in Barney's Co-Op and Rogan.

4) The letters of Seneca are moderately soothing to read on the 2nd Avenue F train platform.

5) When a wave of griefy-panic hits you, just give in to it like a wave hit you and let the bottom of the ocean scrape your body.

6) Elizabeth's text.

7) Isa's text.

8) When your phone vibrates no amount of wishing will make the name you really want to appear on caller i.d. actually be there. Things just don't work that way--most of the time. But go ahead and do it again anyway because you're psychic and you have special psychic powers that can make things like that happen, you'll see.

9) Bob Dylan's "If You See Her Say Hello." Best love song, ever. Listen.

10) Looking forward to seeing Bad Lieutenant with a friend.

Talking (A True Story)

He said he could talk with dead people on the phone
and there was no explanation. The dead people on the other end
were heard explaining things to him about
what it felt like to talk on the telephone when they are dead
and what sort of food they ate and TV shows they watched
and what they did in their free time (bathed repeatedly)
and that sort of stuff. They brought in sound technicians with
their mobile labs in big trucks and found that the voices on the phone
were easily matchable with tapes of the dead people talking.
Everyone got totally freaked out by that. Whenever they saw
him on the phone they hoped he was not calling them
or that he would say "hey I'm talking to you on the phone."
It created a hostile environment in the neighborhood
with people all edgy and anticipating some horrifying
revelation that they were just walking around, though dead.
Everyone was also a little worried about what they might
reveal to someone on the telephone if they were dead.
He got a radio show out of the deal and people listened
in record numbers in 2009. He currently lives alone
in Cobble Hill Brooklyn. You can see him with his cell phone
walking down Warren Street talking in a loud theatrical voice,
which is the way he said the dead like to be addressed:
loud and theatrically.

Friday Night With James Schuyler

"Past is past, and if one
remembers what one meant
to do and never did, is
not to have thought to do
enough?"

from "Salute" by James Schuyler

Thanks Jeni

Thanks Laura

Friday 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."

from Guilty, p. 37


"Great and terrible events are difficult to deal with. But it's also true I woudn't have wanted to live without them, even if what they brought me minute by minute was worse."

from Guilty, p. 52

Thursday Night Brooklyn Walk

Brooklyn, won't you please be my friend tonight?

I did it

Trader Joe's is not a place to be sad
so I had to move quickly from point to point
with a red basket in my hand
kefir bananas coffee milk
things I need to survive and then
I got the fuck out of there fast.

Watch What You Remember

Watch what you remember: me dancing,
I did that, and sang too for you on the 6th floor.
If no one is there to see me land gracefully on the rug
on one foot does that mean it didn't happen?
Night is funny when I look at it from
the roof it looks all luminous and jewel-like.
It is one advantage of living in the city.
Memory is so dull, imprecise, and repetitive, and anyway,
they're all reruns and I've seen them dozens of times.
I have this thing, what is it called?
Oh, yeah, it's me and I miss you. Hi.

I can't stop watching this, again

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

Classy Morning

What morning does is trick you
into thinking someone's just left
the bed to go to the bathroom or is drinking
tea at the big table. Morning makes
you think you can solve problems,
do math, send thoughts and change
minds. Morning is light and heavy
as any instrument of war. But still,
when I run through the last traces
of night, blue fingers of dawn lift
the sky and my heart into now.
This is all I have, so I'll do with it
what I must by being here
and moving through it in a classy way.

Top Fourteen Thursday

1) Dad.
2) Drew.
3) Justin.
4) Jeni.
5) Elizabeth.
6) Laura.
7) Joanna.
8) Isa.
9) Shaun.
10) Eva.
11) Jordy.
12) Charles.
13) Jane.
14) Everyone at work.

Top Four Thursday Photographs

Poem by Joe Brainard

POEM

Sometimes

everything

seems

so

oh, I don't know.

End a Kind Thought

I'm safe now after nighttime misty Brooklyn bike ride home.
I discovered a new way to be depleted today.
I could only learn from my fatigue and watch it from afar
like my face reflected in the subway window, I was alarmed.
Now I'm an upright shipwreck face down, humming.
It's gorgeous in here! I have plants!
It's so alive in here! So much life in here!
With this big ass stomach pang I don't know whether to fly or freeze.
I give thanks for this getting to know what I need to know.
All the same, send a kind thought, a meditative trick - love doesn't
just go away, it learns and gets better -
send something, anything, if you have it.

It Was All Wrong?

155

In an effort to free ourselves from the effects of
some paralyzing potion we'd swallowed,
we made small talk with the people around
us. We wired money, we paid our bills,
that sort of thing. We're so glad it worked out for
the good people. We were there, we saw it,
we were one of them. It was my age
that did me in but I'm so much closer
than you'll ever know.

Waving

What you hold dear is not gone or fading
or never there to begin with the day is
like that unfolding a shirt say and spending
a full minute reading the logo
letters mean nothing so pretend the shirt
says winner and you are winning at this
by staying steady in your smooth life
like by willing it you could climb a mountain
without oxygen or descend deeper than
those weird fish in the dark you are somebody
to me and you are trying to do this thing now.
I love you more than all the wind on my
skin as your cab pulls away. I love you like
that and so that's what I choose please
be good with it in the rain
and keep waving me to you.