Marianne Vitale's Ship

Chest of Drawers

If each day were a unit say
something that could be lifted
tossed or embraced
come see my dresser
come visit this room
all my things are folded
and squared-away
which means nothing
and feel the pressure
from modern literature
to anyone but me
make friends and fade away
or have a conversation
with someone you didn't
even know a year ago
here's a feeling now
you might have
dreamed them up
here's a feeling now
in an effort to free the things
you did leading up to this
those things are coming back in waves
to kiss the orange
and feel the pressure
from modern literature
to simply walk the walk
to pick up the phone
tossed or embraced
to put it back down
here's a feeling now
post it

Morning

Morning barges through my window
with shark-like precision
so all I'm doing
is thinking about that
achy blue sky
with it's skin twitch zeal
the sun is a real finger
pressed into my throat
a silver dollar lodged
there until I remember
I have to go to work too
and get something done
that I care so little about.

The Age of Frost

This is the first day in the age of frost
when people's movements are coordinated
and not batty and extreme or motivated
by the desire to eat or consume.
All around the city people are intent
on calibrating their mood swings with the desire
to behave with tender gestures like cave animals
coming into the daylight with a curious cock to the head.
People move into the flattering light
and get better at being robust and unkinked by doubt.
They have all the things they need
to arrange their days in dark blue shirts, raw denim,
unrinsed day packs, and the like. They use laces
on their shoes that signify a certain dynamic
way of navigating their way through this most
mysterious age of frost. These days
have come upon us with a real force. Soon the people
will cast spells, dig deep, and sleep with people
next to them on thin woven sheets. You can expect
me on that day with a valid word for your list
here, in this age of frost.

My Campaign

This is the most delicious I've ever been
writing you a poem in crayon that you can't
read because the tip has been broken off.
My knuckles, or what has become of them
a machete or something glassy like your eyes
light and new. From the blackboard a ruffian
shapes letters in my blood making a loopy
scrawl like some French bedspread in Versailles.
Maybe when I'm older there will be a better
looking sky to look at than the one I'm looking
at now which is all stained with Monday
and making my heart ache in that dopey
way a heart can ache on a Monday. Still, what
fabulous things are in store for us like trains
and the complicated math of daily separation
why would you give me money now when
my campaign is over or should have been
long ago when I was so much bolder then.

Talk Normal -In a Strange Land

On My Boat

A word with you
on my boat while soft waves
lap not-so-mysteriously at your feet
we're in a French movie
about intercourse and theory
blue ribbons on the red crest
of a damp sail
a whole bunch of change
I'm going through you
copper turns green in salt water
keep your chin up
don't slip on the gorgeous
medicine into oblivion
with your chalk museum your
fainting spells and your backward glances
I'm all desirous of you
on the back streets of Brooklyn
my moods are confusing
even to me I grab the sky with pliers
to get back what I left behind.

Verse

We make letters for each other called goddamn I miss you.
It’s a piece of paper with holes in it.
You send it to your friend, and she will try to guess who you are.
You write your name like this: ……….
If your friend guesses who you are you owe her an egg.
But if your friend can’t guess who you are your friend owes you an egg.
There are verses and flowers called snowdrops.
A verse:

(English):

My name stand with spots

Be care it doesn’t stings.

Rest in Peace, Alex Chilton

Elliott Smith - Say Yes

Three for Tuesday

My Cart

Do you know what she might like
to celebrate her Todd? Bold. She might
take that red cart to the beach to multiply
her desire for Todd. She is all rhythm and rice.
Can there be something about a pail?
Yes, there can be a pail and it will have milk in it
for the shark. I like to build castles from the shells
of my vivid panic. You are confused by this. That's okay.
There are many of us here who feel that
Todd is barking up the wrong. Maybe, maybe not.
For your ideas I bring these pests that make my
nights hard and seemingly gravity free. I can't
see what you say. Please keep all inquiries
to yourself, okay? I mean really, when you think
of me, are you thinking of someone else
named Todd? I couldn't care less. I am in this
making my way home too.

Top Friday Photo!

Friday is Your Friday

Reminders of you are everywhere
I lick the foam from the top of a coffee cup
you're there I think I lift your leg a bit
so I can see the glitter within
this gray day spaz attack snuck up
on me so we walk all over Manhattan like we're
dreamy invaders slipping on manhole covers
we start to enact passions I want you all
warm and wet and devastating
while pieces of rain shower and sparkle
my voice is changing with Spring
all the curls are loopy and ginger
is the taste and vanilla and chocolate
and so: Friday is your Friday lips touch
I could just burst open but I'll meet
you somewhere golden and untroubled
by the past if you want I will.

Thanks, Jake

I still love this:

Spring?

For Good

I prefer that you not drag me
through your skanky allegories
of canker storms
a shiv in your bread basket
all lonesome and pitiful
oh sick little fungal heart
pulsing on the desert floor
oh the bullshit under your nails
turns the blisters on my body
into knobs on the radio
I won't tune you into this town
all glistening red and expectant
a moth tastes sweet on your lips:
the powdered syllables
make for luscious convulsions
I can feel you leaving
through my mouth.

Top Ten Wednesday Musical Pleasures

1) Karen Dalton: Something on Your Mind
2) Julianna Barwick: Anjos
3) Junior Kimbrough: Meet Me in the City
4) John Fahey: Fare Forward Voyagers
5) The White Stripes: Do
6) Arthur Russell: Janine
7) Lungfish: Fearfully and Wonderfully
8) Mississippi John Hurt: Coffee Blues
9) Ornette Coleman: Rejoicing
10) The Germs: Manimal

Poem for Early Risers

My chunky block feet
are stained a warm pecan hue
I am in the big blue now
lifted from dust
sweet amber turns
on low-emission breath
my heart is a fist
unfolding in the light
of your soft glee
turbulence is a memory
I can do without you
but I'd rather not
walk on glass
or hot coals to prove
anything but I'm here
awake with this
small token of my
appreciation of this
day from me to you.

A Good Night

Cousin Corinne's Reminder

Writing- Charles Bock, Todd Colby, James Frey, Ben Lasman, Donald Moss, Shira Nayman, Alice Notley, John Burnham Schwartz, Emma Straub, Anne Waldman, John Wray, and Hannah Zeavin.

Comix- Mike Cavallaro, Jen Ferguson, Jonathan Lethem & Dean Haspiel, Tim Hall & Jennifer Hayden, Michel Fiffe, and Kat Roberts.

Photography- Mark Borthwick, Mona Kuhn, Noah McLaurine, and Kimiko Yoshida.

More information: here.

Things

I've liked certain things so much that I wanted to devour them. Isn't that what got me in trouble?

Repost written by me right here on the Gleefarm from September 2006. Thanks, Joanna Penn Cooper, for pointing this out.

Some things never change.
Sigh.

And while I'm at it, one more:

"The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling."

-W.G. Sebald from Vertigo p 212

Sweet Jane

Rest in Peace, Mark Linkous

NY Times Obituary.

Electric Pony Light

This is what I look like when you're not looking
at me I feel feverish my eyes are bigger in your
electric pony light. There will never be more of me
than you can handle ever, I swear. Leave the heavy lifting
to my sturdy legs. Parts of me are strewn on the floor,
I can pick them up later. Leather wristband, cold cream,
and my lost in space feeling marking what remains of the morning:
you and your helium will. It's curtains for the
sheepish and sullen. They can suck it. What I'm trying
to say is: morning with you is a luxury in the puzzle
of my day. Give me the soft solace of your arms.
All amber-scented and clear-headed,
you move through me like a bright tiger
jolts the green with her stripes in the woods.
You might be more awake than even I could imagine
but the way coffee tastes in your mouth
when I lean in makes my spine buzz with jazz.
When you're not looking I'm right here.

Top Four Friday Photographs

Pema Chodron

"We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart." -Pema Chodron

Gabriel Josipovici

"Simply giving voice, I would suggest, finding words for your anguish, is what in the first instance, makes it possible to overcome that anguish." -Gabriel Josipovici from Singing a New Song

By way of Stephen Mitchelmore

Thanks Stephen, as always.

Elliott Smith - Lucky Three (a film by Jem Cohen)

Turn off the lights, turn it up, and enjoy the heartbreak.

Julianna Barwick

Name the Days

It must be mesmerizing to be you because you told me
you could be fascinating and unreasonable and
intriguing in rope espadrilles with flat tote silk
charmeuse bleeding floral print dress multi-straps
on your head functioning on a higher plane
than the rest of us being fascinating is hard work
in tokyo paris or new york I thumb dial
your message haunts me still all day you are just
so fucking gone picky people love the way
the air catches under a bird's wings
and all the boats in the bay bob like yellow
gold plumage on a vat of black oil
you must make the sharks swoon for your meat
just a nibble of your finger in skinny pants
you were fucking me the competent shopper
leather fisherman's sandals with ruffles not so nice
you'll never read this wednesdays are my thursdays
just go just name the days and go.

Marianne Vitale in the Whitney Biennial

Mind

You are always on my mind
even when you're not adhesive
you release thoughts into the atmosphere
a catalogue of moans and hypnotic tones
trailing me around this pulverized town
only a few more hours before I slip
under your narcotic haze
squeezing the night into the day
I come to you
all elegantly ruffled and eagerly doused
with the pang of good intentions
if you're not here when I get back
I certainly hope so.

Life and how to live it

Guess What I Did?

I was really thinking of doing something
pleasant like writing your name in the snow
with my foot in giant letters. There
were lights on in apartments, all
warm and yellow and inviting. I ran
past the corner we kissed because
that corner might have bits of us
pressed into the sidewalk, so much
as a hair fell and is still there from one
of us, so I kept thinking of that. All my parts
are intact. Stooping to say hello to a
little buddy all clownish and bracketed
by affection. A street can mean so much
more when we give it meaning we dilly
dally for days until the seasons change
and what was once cold and unforgiving
is now sticky and solid. My word, what
I said was I just so adore you and that's
good you know that big time. It's all falling
into place with your help me lift you up too.

Prospect Exit

Ache

Lift your sheet of blue light,
split your lips into arms
and wave to me. Wave like you
were all about waving goodbye,
like you were committed to it
and then you were saying it
and so: waving.
Lick the edge of the room where
the sun makes a bright spoon
curl through you, your organs
like a donor's half-eaten angel.
I'm just trying to get through the day
and into the night. I'm just saying
you're so good at it, you can do it too.