Friday, September 30, 2011

Super Future

There was a time
when people sang
the best is yet to come
now I'm not so sure
lifting my hands in the air
in order to simulate
rising above something
the BQE blooms
a layer of grime
on my Plato
blue veins visible
under papery skin
open my face with wind
scrape the meat inside
make my skull bone super clean
electric flight
leading me on
all in good time.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Pleasant Places

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Rest Your Face

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Tuesday Top 10

1) Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (thanks Peter Philbrook).

2) The Letters of Samuel Beckett: 1941-1956 edited by George Craig.

3) Promises, Promises by Adam Phillips.

4) The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (thanks again, Peter P).

5) When I Am Playing With My Cat How Do I Know That She is Not Playing With Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch With Life by Saul Frampton.

6) A Kindle full of Shakespeare by Amazon (thanks, Tara).

7) Patchouli Candle by Diptyque (thanks Aedes de Venustas).

8) Jane's divine Edits on Marianne's new film.

9) The possibility of actual crisp fall weather.

10) The calm, mocha brown walls of my bedroom.

Monday, September 26, 2011

My Methods

My methods are sound,
I write them down on grim slices of tissue paper.
I'm all about communication
and abbreviation. I want a simple method to make
language bump against something so I'll
cut letters from wood and toss them
at people, otherwise, just breath and paper.
See, whatever is said is done.

I know where to run along the river.
You make perfect sense to me because
you are me now and then. No one gets
tortured on my team. I win. Fuck.
As the weather shakes the sky
open a feeling of blacking out. Trusting
or wanting what smells good. That can
bring about change: the scent of a frenzy.

I load fruit leather into my mouth in mournful bites.
My paper bones fold over as grief becomes panic becomes
friends eating roast beef from each other's
mouths, literally. Like it matters what you think
at dinner, at all. You lift a cup, you tip
a cup, you grow old and whither. Watch what
you say. I mean it: watch your mouth move
in the mirror when you say what you say.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

A Week of Things





Morning Air

I love this place
what it does
I can walk down the street
without my skin stinging.
Blue under the cuticles
from oxygen deprivation
a soda bottle corked
with air inside I walk with
enough air in there
to get me to Red Hook.
Tape my wrists and ankles
shuffle to the river
I've got all day
to tie up lose ends
things are marvelous
in the morning.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Architecture

All people have to do
is be charming to ghosts.
If you believe in ghosts at all
then you need to start charming them
because that is what the people
who believe in ghosts do: they map a space
with their tongue behind their teeth
and say "a ghost is planted here
and comes in here to do things."
Why can't ghosts reside in a person's mouth?
If not there, then where? The tongue moves
and swirls around the words
you speak but cannot see so who is to say
the ghosts do not reside there
in the mouth? Who?

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Marianne Vitale: New Sculptures at IBID Projects Gallery, London



Thursday, September 15, 2011

Star Skin

We're all moving towards something:
Scaling the halls of medicine,
humming through gales as oceans
swell above crest points, making
the descendants delirious with caution.
I have stumbled over these streets
and mapped out what I thought
would lead to some brambles
and a patch of good luck. Instead,
I got thick syrups and lousy grub
while I panted over bare feet, thousands of them,
sure of nothing but my own losses. My inconsiderate
ways made me friend to some, the very few
who knew me and the fevers of my youth all strewn
about the Lower East Side. As though
location matters at all when that puff ball
of science clears it all away. I have
moments now and again, real moments
when the shoppers stop and jaws drop
to some lightning quick delicacy
made of yarn and meat. Living and breathing,
you could call it that.
I'd like nothing more than to see you through me
while we share a streak of goodness.
Mumble to me, star skin-
It'll be over sooner than you think,
or so they say, oh say can you see?

I want a party like this

With muscle shoals
the strawberry pudding
makes my mouth sore.
I will step up those sugar stairs
and grab onto some shreds of paper
streamers, they are called in the N.E.
Growing into my clothes
so the days pass like ancient things.
I would like incredible words
to come loose in my mouth
and rattle there before a little
dialogue bubble makes the people
panic. The word help on a life
preserver. Bright orange and skyward.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Three



Sunday, September 11, 2011

W.G. Sebald

"It seems to me sometimes that we never got used to being on this earth and life is just one great, ongoing, incomprehensible blunder."

W.G. Sebald, from Rings of Saturn, p. 220

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Wednesday Top 10

1) "With the sad sweetness rising in me like nausea, like the beginning of wanting to vomit, but spiritually." -Fernando Pessoa, "Maritime Ode"

2) "It is human to search, from lure to lure, for a life that is at last autonomous and authentic." -George Bataille, from The Accursed Share

3) "Hence writing is a self-disturbed activity: it knows itself to be, at once, trivial and apocalyptic, vain yet of the greatest consciousness-altering potential." -Maurice Blanchot

4) "I've often thought that the best way of life for me would be to have writing materials and a lamp in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar." -Franz Kafka, in a letter to Felice.

5) "What is marvelous is that each day brings us a new reason to disappear." -E.M. Cioran, from Anathemas and Admirations

6) "I wait impatiently for involuntary thoughts-those are the only ones that count." -Peter Handke, from Weight of the World

7) "The reader likes you to tell her/him what she/he already knows in familiar form whether in mainstreamese or avant-gardese, but then there is the individual reader who is often not like that at all, who prefers poems to be talking about them and has strange individual experiences with them. That's a very scary idea." -Alice Notley

8) "For me it's a lot about possession: the world is missing these things that I want to own, so I have to make them." -Donald Baecheler in Lacanian Ink #2

9) "I am in my mother's room." -Samuel Beckett, first sentence of Molloy

10) "We see that the now is just this: to be no more just when it is." Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

Monday, September 05, 2011

September

September in a silent city.
Late summer washes over the banks
of Baltic Street while limp leaves fade
from green to milky brown.
In the creases, death. Empty schools,
spaces where cars had been, blinding white lines
on uneven pavement. I walk with
a bag full of apples and coffee.
Maybe if I strut confidently those
people on the stoop will think I'm on my way
to something spectacular and successful.
Maybe I'll blend into Court Street,
dabble in crafts, become resplendent,
eat fancy cheeses and jog
next to the Gowanus Canal.
Maybe what I really need to do
is lighten the fuck up about a lot of shit.

Saturday, September 03, 2011

Saturday Night with Alice Notley

"I can't seem to get down into the caves and the lovely pleasures of the pursuit of soul by will. What will happen, will I ever find me in such a way that I'll change, off the page?"

Alice Notley, from "Just Under Skin of Left Leg" in Disobedience.

Adore

Cartoon angels, with masking tape lungs,
the ports of your plugs are all crackling.
We greet people with spearmint wind
and deliver smooth monologues
as we gingerly slope to the dirt.
Walking along the High Line
with fake mustaches and wigs
we are totally unrecognizable.
Under the milk moon
we balance what dazzles us
on silver trays like medicated servants.
In our pockets is a blank divinity.
I want you to stop feeling like there
is a camera on you all the time.
This self awareness thing can be
paralyzing. You might have
approximately five more times
in your life when you feel totally secure
so plant yourself before a panorama
and scratch your head awake
to the creamy tone of a tenor saxophone.


Friday, September 02, 2011

Masky Show

This minky hip thrust
just flunked at gravity.
Cherry Slurpee into: POW.
Lick dank flowers
in between commercials.
Crush lemons
over pink sugar.
Melt thick tusks
into resin paste.
Gush honey
& other sticky goop.
I figure I'll be in your album
of dust carnivals & gorgeous slop.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Moon Duo - Mazes