Air

Why does my heart swell from ear to ear? Could you
involve me in that sort of mission?
The air above us is corrosive, it also appears to be blue.
Some might even say that the air around us
is taking up space. We can see the air
when we're properly equipped. You could tell
me what I see or breathe. That, as you know, is air.
Remember when the people clapped their hands in the air
when you fell onto a dusty couch on drugs? Do you?
Well, you could sell the dust, the applauses,
laughter and the noise of those people.
I'm leaning on a balcony above a lake
doing dorky things with light waves
through the trees. You can see summer
is for sale. You can. Some people can afford
to get out and do things in the world.
Isn't that nice?

Belt Parkway

More than all the sunlight
on my head, more than a field
of greens, butter on toast, more
than all the music on my macbook,
more than the smoothie with coconut water, more
than the lady bugs in a jar in the refrigerator,
more than my flower collages, more than the faces
I see at night in the dark, more than the place I kiss
on your neck right below your ear,
more than light itself, and laughter, more than
the words I write on your back with my fingers
before the day ends, more than
riding my silver bike home at midnight
through the vast metallic prairie of Brooklyn,
more than dissolving on a Saturday,
more than your arms, the chlorinated pool,
the children laughing under a sprinkler
next to the East River, more than the smell
of sandalwood or amber or you, more than
the layers of my history I can't lift away,
more than anything, more than me, more
than the smiles on the faces of the ones I love most.

Sleep

When it comes to sleep or the contemplation of sleep
it is better to sleep than to read or theorize about sleep.

WNYC/Soundcheck/Rimbaud/Me

In case you missed it...
click here.

XO

The Free First Annual New York Poetry Festival (NYPF) on Governors Island

July 30 & 31 on Governors Island
Noon to 5:00pm, Saturday & Sunday
With Readings from 100+ Poets

I'll be reading with fellow Board Members
from Poetry Project: Edwin Torres, Kim Lyons,
Stacy Szymaszek, Evelyn Reilly, John S. Hall,
Todd Colby, Elinor Nauen and Christopher Stackhouse
from 2-3PM on Sunday, July 31.

For more info: click here

Free!

Extra Special Day

If worry and doubt were dressed in a costume
I guarantee they'd be dressed as a cowboy and a gorilla.
Fact: Hot sun on pancake make-up
makes that lady's face on 7th Avenue look melty.
I can see into the future with a spatula and a trouble hook.
People drink coffee with little effort. Some people
are very interesting and do interesting things
all summer like go to the Vineyard and ride
in the back of a car with their hand out the
window thinking "this is an airplane, my hand."
I'm more realistic than that and fluid.
My arms are tan and salty. I mean, I'm ready
to walk around Brooklyn with sunscreen and a broad-brimmed
hat. I'm not going to get hurt by anyone. I'm just this
human guy with the keys to my apartment
and some really good writing pens.
PS those white dots are swans.
I hope you have an extra special day.

Planet Earth

People are really upsetting
with all the things they do in their
free time. We could be so marvelous and
freaky, our private worlds all swirly
and real. But still, when we get up we see
things moving around outside
and we are part of that.
Walk down the street and see how sweet we are.
We won't be here for the after party
because we're here right now.
I'm just saying I feel okay watching
people do just about anything that's
not upsetting. Things are so strange right now
in the world (like that will ever change)
but if you look hard enough, I mean
if you really just look,
there is so much beauty it's almost
liberating. You can handle it,
you are from planet Earth.

Remembering

Summer

Morning pummels my body
with its ridiculous heat.
Six floors up is closer to the sun
which is why the back of my chair is damp.
My skin mocks the organs underneath
while outside engines rev up the heat
with internal combustion. You could
cook an egg on any surface in this
room. A pile of socks in the oven.
The rubber on my shoes is soft
and pliant like a lover's hand.
Let the day blast out its broad
furnace light. Oh, may the fluids
we exude find their way to the ocean
where I'll be waiting for you.

Top Ten Books of July 2011

1) Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux

2) 1979-1980 by Rene Ricard

3) The Man of Jasmine & Other Texts by Unica Zurn

4) Cousin Corinne's Reminder: Issue Number Three

5) Soap by Francis Ponge

6) The Assistant by Robert Walser

7) Feast by Tomaz Salamun

8) Miserable Miracle by Henri Michaux

9) 365 Days Project by Jonas Mekas

10) Notes from Irrelevance by Anselm Berrigan

Beverly WIlson on Passive Aggression

BEVERLY WILSON on PASSIVE AGGRESSION

Listen.
I am her.

XO

Queen of Summer

My methods are at your disposal.
In fact, the implication of this statement
is one of crowning, as in royalty
not as a birthing term. She was crowning
in the cab in Chicago. That would
just wig everyone out if I meant that.
No, I mean: here, I have a crown for you
that I made of paper and foil and glued-on
beads from that bead place on Smith Street.
I crown you the Queen of Summer
which entitles you to beam in my presence,
to actually wallop the daylights
out of the dark and just boogie in Brooklyn
all summer long.

Pina - Trailer

Extravagant Morning Poem

Oh morning,
you have no one
in the water watching
the sun make extravagant
orange rings on the ripples.
The pine needles
under your dew
in a man made forest
are more artificial than a
pine scent in a cab.
I will lift your repetition
into oblivion, taste the maximal
deep end with a cone under
each foot and laugh while
I make your original fizz
elegant again and cosmopolitan.

Joseph Beuys' Fedora at Dia Beacon

In Front of Imi Knoebler Paintings at Dia Beacon

Sky Over Brooklyn

Sunday

And so I
mope down
Smith Street
under bright light.
People in casual slacks
head to the beach.
One guy is smoking a pipe
like he's a professor
in a movie about academics
living in Brooklyn.
And there is some dude
writing the word "coffee" in chalk
on a board out in front
of a coffee shop.
In an effort to seem more original
and complex I work on Sundays
which makes me angelic
and precise.

Jim Carroll Talks about Frank O'Hara

Holiday

Let me crash into your life
like an electric van covered in
cherry chocolate red velvet. I'll do the chores
in the yard and you'll watch me lift
tools that make me look shiny and new.
There will be a festival of light
when I wash my hair under your garden hose.
There, near the sparks of your becoming,
you'll put it all together and feel the groove
of summer moving through your hips.
You'll become more holy and less distracted
by the propaganda of love and its improbable agendas.
There will be days that you'll dream of these days.

COUSIN CORINNE'S REMINDER - ISSUE #3 PARTY

COUSIN CORINNE'S REMINDER - ISSUE #3 PARTY

THURSDAY, JULY 14TH - 7PM SHARP
AT BOOKCOURT, 163 COURT STREET

BROOKLYN!

REFRESHMENTS SERVED FREE ALL NIGHT!

COME EARLY AND ENTER TO WIN A $500 BOOKCOURT GIFT CERTIFICATE

MINI-READINGS BY:
BEN GANTCHER, TODD COLBY, LILIAN HEEHS,
MICHAEL SIGNORELLI, and JAMES GUIDA

A SHORT PRESENTATION BY:
SIMON DINNERSTEIN

LIVE COMIX PRESENTATION, Moderated by JEFF NEWELT, FEATURING:
NICK BERTOZZI, JEN FERGUSON, JOSH NEUFELD, AND DEAN HASPIEL

A MUSICAL SET BY:
DREAM JOB

Alligators!

You might have forgotten something
like it is good that things roll on the floor.
The day is round and dark, it has no edges.
All pretty fucked up things.
You can not have this kind of thing, you will see stuff
and go back again when they see you here alone.
Juice on the tables, you juice blue birds.
Employees fall into your hands.
You stare at the sun and the dark
and swear by it now. There are no rules
you won't follow. No one will follow,
but things are so fucked now, it does not matter
what you do. I can see through you and that's all it is now.
Soak the dried skin on my finger in the light.
Let the low hum of another room get full of you.
If you could just get it you would run with it for a touchdown.
What I have to add to my style is your day.
As I write, the flowers wither on targets. Vast weather
is not difficult. You can feel close to someone's life,
such as pillows are soft, but you can get something. Sun.

Father Rad

Deliciously Fresh

You can drive all the way to
Miami in your Sunday best. You
can blow a kiss to the fancy people
in your garden with its broken
pool and deflated tube. I'll take care of you
when everything collapses around you.
I'll cheer you up with Tic Tacs,
dark chocolate and a few odd
new green snacks that they sell at Trader Joe's.
You will be able to read the letters
I send to you on this night.
This is what I'll do for you
when I really want to send you things.
Soon, the night will generate a bonanza
in a very realistic way that will dissolve tension.
When I get to you, you will know me better
than the people who talk about me.
We will party on a fabulous beach
with all these deliously fresh people
whose cool names we'll never know.

Thursday Top 10

1) Dream of riding in a truck driven by William Burroughs. He was steering us through the glitz without bothering to look at the road. I was cool with that, in the dream. After all, it was William Burroughs.

2) Sleep as a form of dissolving.

3) Fashioning something you can throw that also lights up.

4) The vibrant particulars.

5) Photos from Fire Island.

6) Empty red bowl.

7) Reading glasses from MASS MoCA.

8) Plexiglass umbrella money-making idea.

9) Sweet pelvic mop.

10) The blackboards of Joseph Beuys.

Sonic Youth - Skip Tracer (Live)

Cy Twombly, 1928-2011

Proteus, 1984

I am Beverly Wilson

You can listen to me as Beverly Wilson by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Aster Aweke

Five

Happy Birthday Poem (For Tara)

There are bright bells I'll ring for your birthday.
A silver clapper will send a loud gong
into the valley of Brooklyn
with its bicycles and sidewalk chalk outlines
of soft hopscotch bodies. Did you know
there are birds out there whose only job is to sing
in that enchanting bird-like way once a year
on your birthday? Well, it's true. You are a lucky lady.
I'd like to have a job that involves celebrating your birthday
on the 4th of July from an airplane with a banner
streaming off the back that simply says "Joy."
That would really be amazing, wouldn't it?
When you stand with your back to the city
it's easy to imagine that the fireworks bursting in the air
above the East River are actually festoons of light
fastened to your hair. Oh, may the children always smile
when you enter a room. May the friends who adore you
surround you with affection.
May the low sky permit you to caress it
with your fingers like a humid kitten.
Oh Tara, I'm glad you got born today.
Happy Birthday!

Satellite

You can broadcast your sparkle
into a tin radio with an old toaster cord
and that new electric red syrup in The Times.
When you stop to take off your pants
the words will keep things moving through this century.
I'll wait for you and find the right words
to describe what I see when I see it. I promise.
The moon is just so much
debris in the sky, and anyway, I'm lifting
a new form of myself out of bed
and dipping my face into the marvelous city.
Elegance has a price, like around
a hundred bucks for a shirt, that
should do it. Then you can sit with
the moody kids and mood out
while looking good.
Check this out: a satellite is picking
up every movement I make. Would
you like to come over and be tracked
by my own personal satellite?

Raw Denim

You can ride a silver bike
all over this nation
with panniers packed with water balloons.
A landscape of pine and eucalyptus trees
will mark your way, you'll see.
The incidents you create along the way
will make you a good dude
if you let that lemony thing inside
the markers. A little bloom of radical
pizazz will envelop your platitudes
and you'll see how well you get things done
in a manner both becoming and enchanting.
Good luck, champ!

Friday Top 10

1) Friday on Fabulous Saltaire, Fire Island.

2) Fact: Massachusetts means "red sky" in Algonquin. They named it that for all the cardinals that once resided there.

3) "Combustivism" - an essay I wrote for Marianne Vitale's upcoming show in London.

4) Union Market Coffee, Cobble Hill Blend.

5) Summer, for real.

6) Adidas Sequence. Best running shoe in ages.

7) Anything with watermelon.

8) Brooklyn Bridge Park.

9) Michel Foucault.

10) The serenity of right now.