Sunday Top Five

1) As You Like It at BAM. Thank you, Jane.
2) Making Bo and Theo breakfast. Meow.
3) Wind rattling the cloth blinds.
4) Bright blue sky and brown crisscross branches from bed.
5) Sweatpants and desert boots = Hot.

Ted Berrigan Reading "Red Shift"

One of my favorite poems ever. Turn it up & click here.

Top Five Friday Photographs

Here and There

15th Street Poem

My butter is jelly imagine
a gentle bliss lingering all morning
it could be the espresso on 15th Street
making my hands sweat I'm not really meat
I'm spirit and sweets and spastic dancing
I loom not-so-mysteriously
I'm patient and inspired
my body is shaking in the warmth
under the sun I am lemon zest
lips contoured around what you mean
when you say better, which I am
you see I'm all rubbery and firm
moist where it counts to be among
the living lapping milk from the palm of my hand
making the math of morning easy
to figure out where things are again.

Holderlin

"And when the trial
has passed through the knees
one may perceive the cries in the wood."

Holderlin, from "The Ister"

My Name is Mud

New writing and word art by me

Here.

Wednesday Top 10

1) Red Wing.
2) Thomas Tallis.
3) Pema Chodron.
4) Sprawled on the brown rug.
5) The good people.
6) Aedes.
7) Kissing memories.
8) Purple Mountain's Majesty.
9) The xx.
10) The F train.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Brevity of Sleep

Sleep's horizontal kiss
is so fleeting and insincere.

From the Weekend

Poem

You just go out there
and you move one foot in front
of the other and then this brand spanking
new feeling comes over you as you cross
the Gowanus Canal. Something about the green
water and the metallic taste when you breathe
there are real organisms inside of you
that want to devour what you bring
to them. Your lips have kissed
faces all over Brooklyn
and you are no better for knowing this
is a day like any other day
some of you is missing
what you can't get back
but that's okay
there will be plenty of others
to miss down the road. Christ, there
are people you don't even know yet
that you'll miss in the future.
It's all just so fucked
that you have to smile.

Friday Top Two

No Age - Losing Feeling

Here's Your Poem Right Here

Radiohead - Bodysnatchers

Agency of Kisses

Really all a body is for is jumping up and down in
front of relatives when they come over. You can do that
in front of them because they sort of have to be there
and put up with you, and watch what you do for them the best,
which is jump up and down like a fucking weirdo.
You can make a claim for clarity and box the neighbors,
but one of them will train way more than you and bust
you up real good. I mean, I'd be pulling for you
no matter what cape you wore, or how you entered
the room all agape and wanton. I listed my qualities
on paper and then I posted the list and people seemed impressed.
I'm all over the place like a moth on a stick of peppermint.
Listen to me, I'm not so sure how long I can keep this up.
Come to me now so I can see you in the light-
there, you can rest assured.

The xx- Basic Space

The xx - Crystalised

Captured

Let the air capture what it can from you
it will hold you there pretty tightly
until you fall and then it's really up to you
to reach out from time to time and feel
the air moving through your fingers
as though you were in the back seat
of a car with your arm stuck out the window
your mother screaming you could lose
your arm that way it was on the news.
I'm so glad I met you so I could tell you this.

Better Still Born

Finn - Electrify

Let It Go

Take a Break

I am on my best behavior when I am
moving through the night. In my heart
is a hand so you should find this news soothing.
On earth you can travel through time
back and forth late into the night.
I'll hold you while you breathe in my room
where you are never here more than now.
You can lift your voice in song
in C in unison with traffic and the people
that call and whisper things, that tone. With each
word another follows until you have a sentence
and that sentence tells you to do something
like kiss or eat or reveal strange new animals
of your own invention of solitude. It's fun
and demanding. In the night there are words
you never use in the light of day.
The curve of each vowel like a body you
can't remember how it feels to be curled up
against your own fear of heights. Your love of love
or your desire for desire which is asthmatic and wheezing all
the time now. You can join the circle
and celebrate your breath, now you are breathing.
Good luck to you, and away I go.

Sunday Morning With Spinoza

"Wherefore he strives before all things to conceive things as they really are, and to remove the hindrances to true knowledge, such as are hatred, anger, envy, derision, pride and similar emotions. This he endeavors, as we said before, as far as in him lies, to do good, and to go on his way rejoicing."

Baruch Spinoza, from The Ethics

Radiohead - Pyramid Song

At the Little Women show on Friday night at Death by Audio in Williamsburg with Jane & her broken Jean-Michel Cazabat shoe & my new Redwing Boots

Jim Carroll Memorial Reading

February 10, 2010
8:00 pm
Wednesday
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church (10th St. & 2nd Ave, Manhattan)

Poet, autobiographer and musician Jim Carroll (1949-2009) was a consistent and brilliant presence around the Poetry Project since he first read here in 1968. We will never forget his kindness, his generosity or his humor. Please join us as some of his closest friends pay tribute to him. With Bill Berkson, Todd Colby, Anselm Berrigan, Richard Hell, Lenny Kaye, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Patti Smith, and Anne Waldman. FREE

More info: click here.

Skin Tight Morning

In my room there is no panic hour
because the weather fits around me perfectly
my limbs are rich and lacquery
I comb wet stuff into my fur
I am human on paper
I uncover the lens and there
is someone all green and heroic
standing there
with baby blue trim
that look in your eyes
is a poem.

Purposeful Belonging (9.14.04.)

A human breeze would be if everyone was
blowing on me I'd be okay with that.
Like lunch with a face-on-face in the mall
so the star fruit, a punch like teal but
the battery is punk, lest the grains surface.
As neighbors approach you go all ballistic
with uneasy references to guilt and disintegration. This
is a lot like the soap I used a mysterious abatement
of sharp feelings on my skin, real lacerations
during the delicate turning
or returning and just getting fucked.
It's okay to shut down the area
is filled with air. You are a receptacle for air.
You have hands and I can see what's
going on when you use them. I say hello or smooth
out the gums with shapes of my teeth worn away
like telephones or people in my life.
The keeper of these signs is more bitter than you.
My situation is the message that says it's
all clear. The pure gestures of animals me batty.

The Avett Brothers - For Today

Thanks Kimberly and Joanna.

Deer 13

First Poem

Earth seems
to have regained
a certain regal luster.
The void is now prohibited
by law. All the shine
is, in fact, desire, or dawn.
Contentment is sort of real,
in a vague sense. Still,
stillness and the breath
that stays that way.

Top Ten Tuesday

1) Washing my face with cold water.
2) Heartbreak is such a waste of time.
3) Totally getting it on.
4) St. Vincent, January 29th?
5) Learning to blink at regular intervals.
6) Sweet email from Kimberly.
7) Lee Ranaldo's Random Collection of Cells at The Hogar Collection.
8) Richard Maxwell's Ads, at PS 122 January 8, 2010.
9) As You Like It, at BAM on January 30, 2010.
10) Bob Dylan's Stuck Inside of Memphis with the Mobile Blues Again.

Beautiful Taste

There's a beautiful taste in my mouth
based on laughter.

The Green Wall

"Nothing matters but the quality
of the affection
in the end
that has carved the trace
in the mind."

Ezra Pound, from Canto LXXVI

Drugstore Cotton

Flipping my lid over how delicate
cold weather can make my forehead
feel weightless when my body follows you.
I never showed you my winter wardrobe.
I look good in a coat or sweater.
In the Complete Reality School
no one drones on and on about distance, silence,
or desire. We scoot along the bruised path
to a zone of exquisite remorse. Like
this constant stream of thoughts
they will capture you and eat you
and make the mistakes you never made
in an effort to show you what if.
You are so tangled in it
we have to pull you out by the clavicles
because it's the only place that doesn't slip
when we put the silk around you.

From The Roof at 119 W. 25th Street

Lilting

Lean into me so I can look into you.
The so-called sweep up is all dark and curled.
I visit lamps just to get some light relief.
Love is hard to come by so I walk slowly, hum,
and do whatever I can to marvel at what's been
looming. Time is going by as I write this
you read it, more time. I'll practice walking on the edge
and then it will just be over, done with.
Soon, I'll be dreaming in a new language while
staining my pillow with sweat.
I'm on to you.

Thom Yorke - Black Swan

Make Haste Slowly

What I'm going to do is get better at things than you,
like spelling. I'll learn to do that better, and then
I'll learn to use words in a way that will make me feel
secure with what I tell you not to do. There
will be a moment when you'll ask me for something
and you won't understand my answer because I'll have moved
into a certain range of language that is inaccessible
to people like you, so you'll just have to guess what I mean
and get anxious, sorry. I won't help you because
I'll be swathed in the goodness of my own heart juices
which will give me a sense of purpose without being
arrogant or coy. I'll start dancing all the time in real time,
without a single thought about the old days.
I'll just be doing real things, like writing this
without thinking of you in the least.
See you soon!

I Am Always by Joanna Penn Cooper & Todd Colby

I love how all your friends are shy. You befriend them in order
to put them at ease, make them nervous, and put them
at ease again. I'll light a candle and think of a place I've been
to with you. And then I'll stop because the wind will be howling
and the cold snap will be unbearable, mostly, without you.
Like this red down coat my mother had in the '70s.
It made her look like the Michelin Man, even with her
long hair and bird bones, and I ripped the pocket
grabbing onto her in parking lots, waist high
and desperate. That coat is gone. I drew a skull and crossbones
across the back of it with a giant Sharpie and hung it above the garage,
and then it just blew away the very first day it was up there.
The view from here is Christmas lights and gravel, and maybe
a whiff of cinnamon and cigarettes. I don't want to go home.

Jane Says

"I support you feeling shitty."

Yes!

How Odysseus Escaped The Cyclops

The Happiest Todd on the Block

click on photo to enlarge.

See You Tonight

I'm giving a reading at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church tonight (10th St. & 2nd Ave, Manhattan). 8PM More info: Click Here

My Thoughts on Bears

When bears are depicted as playing poker or smoking cigars, it contributes to people feeling like they could be friends with bears, or that hanging out with a bear in nature might be a funny or entertaining way to pass the time and make a new friend. Most the bears I know are stupid and selfish and yet bears are rarely held accountable for their actions simply because they’re bears. That’s bullshit.

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 bears, and play sports with bears, and g-chat with bears, and other 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.

Monday Poem

Monday, you come all delicious and poised
and full of promise; making up for missed connections
with bold announcements and golden lamp light
pouring over my books. I am all lit and anxious
making the moves that move me to you
and your super supreme tone. Monday, I'm on
to you and your green light moving closer to me,
making all this winter weather a bit brighter
and lighter; at least I know where you are.

Practice Relentless Positivity

And then take a nap.

I know now: best be free

Oh

The Soundtrack in My Head

Everybody Now

Everybody leaves
if they get the chance
to reach into their chest
past the breast bone
to actually massage the heart
to work the kinks out
a cramped chamber clutching
blood until it's chunky and clogged
work that out now
bring your best self
you function better without clots
like the animals you read about
a new number of days
signifying something that makes
the old list shit
step lightly
dance daily
get your love on.