Monday, December 31, 2012

Letter

Gimlet eyes soothes monster with
feather mechanism. Spreads butter on
collarbone to achieve desired sheen.
Old trick: foster flex and thrum.
All the animals are damp in this basement.
Pony smell where there is no pony.
Authentic letters in a bundle wrapped
with an old leather strap. Yellowed
paper between lips to orchestrate
a mailing motion. Minty envelope glue
from before the internet. Deposit through
rusted metal slot, like if there were water
the rust would turn blood red. Anyway,
a mobility issue, a stark contrast
to the surroundings, a hairless cat,
something else. So the letter never gets
sent but someone caves in and reads it.
Seriously befuddled entrance with fork
and knife kit for hikers. The method of year
endings mostly from estrangement and moss.
The vehicle of intent drives around waiting.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Three Photos Containing Paranormal Events




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 soothing.
On earth you can travel through time
back and forth late in 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 the 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 details
of your own 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 we go.

Friday, December 28, 2012

11:13 AM

I built a small boat out of tongue depressors
and let it lose in the bathtub while I watched
it just sit there in the water, tilted to one side.
So there's that.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Thursday Top 10

1) The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit

2) Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesare

3) Bach, Bach, & Bach

4) Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Lara Bar by Delicious Breakfast

5) Happy Birthday, Charles Olson

6) Nasty Cashier at Met Foods on Henry Street, #1!

7) Standard Key of Jubilation: D Major

8) New Year's Day at The Poetry Project

9) My body can't ignore the beat

10) Mellow Bliss

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Rose, 2012


Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Efficient Holiday Travel

Efficient holiday travel is what I'm all about.
Make sure to stay hydrated and wear earphones
that leak sound during the Led Zeppelin section.
If the seat in front of you is too close
simply press your knees into it, like you
are in your own video with Led Zeppelin.
Then what you should do is open your supply bag
and get nail polish remover and use that
on your fingernails and maybe you have some
blood on your purse, it will remove that too
with a cotton ball and some rubbing. Then nail
polish, brushing from the base of nails to the tips.
Clean under the nails with a provided dinner knife
or tooth of a fork, yeah, that will work too.
Red looks good on your fingernails. I really
like it on you. Then if you take off your shoes
make sure to remove your socks and hang them
over the armrest. Do you have cell coverage?
Now is the time to use up those extra minutes as the month
draws to a close, speedily. Last thing: Onions
should be eaten like an apple if possible.
Napkins? Nasal spray? Personal lubricant?
Now might be a good time to pretend something horrible
has happened somewhere in the vehicle of transportation.
Get them to believe you, be convincing, not obnoxious
or too adamant about what you've just witnessed.
Allow the people around you to react in their own
way to the information you've just shared.
Make it believable! Have a safe trip.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Monday Top 10

1) A bag of clementines.

2) BACH on WKCR.ORG until New Year's Day.

3) Why Love Hurts by Eva Illouz

4) "Manhattan" by Cat Power

5) Tossing it from the balcony and watching it drift down to the street

6) Joanne Leah found her wallet!

7) Silence by John Cage

8) Captain Beefheart

9) Calm heart

10) Christmas Eve

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Portrait by Joanne Leah

Click on photo to enlarge.

Sunday Morning with Charles Olson

"I have had to learn the simplest
things last. Which made for difficulties."

-C. Olson, from "Maximus, To Himself"


Saturday, December 22, 2012

We Are Loyal Versions of Ourselves & Fun 4 All



Friday, December 21, 2012

10 Signs That I Am Full of Hope this Holiday Season

1) I bought 10 bananas that are only slightly green.

2) I bought a large bottle of face wash.

3) I bought 3 bars of soap.

4) I have enough cereal to last me at least a week and a half.

5) I have a half gallon of milk.

6) I have a full bottle of shampoo.

7) I bought a new stick of deodorant.

8) I just did my laundry.

9) I paid some bills this morning.

10) I have a brand new candle (Feu de Bois).

Paradis (Porte)


Thursday, December 20, 2012

Portrait by Erin Albrecht


Captain Beefheart - When Big Joan Sets Up (1971)

Thursday Top 10

1) Amour a film by Michael Haneke at Film Forum, now.

2) Inner Experience by George Bataille

3) Dumb by Nirvana

4) Maximus Poems by Charles Olson

5) Daily Pictures of Paris by Mary Margaret Rinebold

6) Clean Apartment by Todd Colby

7) Lacan and Postfeminism by Elizabeth Wright

8) Columbus, Mississippi Blues by Bukka White

9) 3 days off

10) Hollow Log by Beck

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

View Out the Window

There's some rain that might
be mistaken for oil, the way it
looks over the street, a shiny
black coat. Then the cars
and how each one represents a human
going someplace other than here.
People walking. I see a woman
in bright yellow rain boots
up to her knees. A man with a red
scarf, probably wet, no umbrella.
The whoosh and thrust of a breathing
city. When I get out of town
and look at it from afar and think
here I am in all that. Well.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Monday Top 2


Let us not into compulsion

because
all the sublime metaphors
have been taken
the kernel
the thing itself
shall suffice
assaults days
with mad whacking
that membrane
going to rip it
into halting years.

Atone This Galaxy


Friday, December 14, 2012

Autobiography

1) Right on Schedule things got inchoate and shaky
2) In the birth room the air had to be stirred or it would Coagulate
3) and Disturb the gentle tubing of my heart
4) I was a Diligent boy, prone to fits of wildness well into manhood
5) savoring the delicate Parsnips and tossing one, as though a football.
6) My Dumpling is medicinal, and all that I stand for
7) far from Standard, these panting vats, syrups of confusion
8) I will stir anon and blister one Afoot as flooded with these breaths.

Thomas Bernhard

"In winter I think spring will be my salvation, and in summer I think autumn, and in autumn winter, it is always the same, I hope from one season to the next." -Thomas Bernhard, from: Old Masters: A Comedy, p.135

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Wednesday Top 2




Really Great

I want a watch that can keep track
of my space. Bust walls so I don't have
to look through the puzzle. Meaning: If
I want to run, how far in front am I of that
goal? To think of desire as a root cause
cylinder comes to the exclusive notion
of brightly lit rooms all, like a map
before you went. Really great.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Tuesday Morning with Josephine Foster

Monday, December 10, 2012

Monday Top 10

1) Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems and Prose

2) Ted Berrigan The Sonnets

3) W.G. Sebald The Rings of Saturn

4) Esopus 18 (thanks, C-Pop)

5) False Translations

6) Opera on WKCR.ORG

7) Gray Monday

8) Louis Begley The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head, Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay

9) My body can't ignore the beat

10) Flushing Meadows

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Did You Like the Day You Just Lived Through?

Let's focus on something more casual and steady, like a day just to receive. To wear slacks and feel flexible and free to do what I want. You know that steady progress on Enchanted, basic food chain of miracles! Praise Avenue Oh, oh powder blue shudders landscape. If the time attack police only mediators pushed oil and spinach. Camphor burned aluminum foil in the candlelight dinner in height. Let's get it going and it is a constant thing, these people live far people push. No peeling, no diving, no smoke, no spitting. I'll be here until then.

Friday, December 07, 2012

I love you so much


Thursday, December 06, 2012

United & 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.

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Flushing Meadows!

You can order my new book here.
Scary Topiary Press is located in MacArthur Park,
the Champs-Élysées of Los Angeles.




The Clothing of My Death

I'm not sure if the clothing I'll die in has been manufactured yet. Perhaps a bolt of cloth lies somewhere in some warehouse in New Jersey that will be the cloth of my clothing when I die. Or perhaps none of the cloth exists yet. Perhaps I'll get a shudder that will serve as a warning of some sort on the day the clothing I'll die in is being harvested or chemically mixed to create synthetic cloth. It could be years from the time of manufacturing of the clothing until the day I buy it. How many years would I do mundane things in the clothing of my death? Doing city stuff, like walking to the subway, sitting on a bench, eating in countless restaurants, riding in taxis, shopping in grocery stores, and strolling in parks. Perhaps the clothing I'll die in has already been purchased, perhaps a favorite shirt of mine will be on my body when I am taken to a morgue, the shirt will be half cut away, or there will be no signs of anything harmful to the shirt done at all, but I will be too oddly pale to be napping, too blue around the lips and eyes to suddenly wake up and say: "This is not the clothing of my death."

Friday, November 30, 2012

Marianne Vitale & Me Last Night at the Performa Gala





Milk the Tack

There's so much to think about
you could start thinking and not
get it done even by tomorrow.
And then there is the matter of food
and how you'll have enough food to
last you all week or even into
the holiday season if you were
barricaded indoors. Think of the soft syllables
of lost summers, whispers on a beach
under bright sunlight making the sand
in the distance all wavy and gradient.
What you can do is a matter of myth,
what gets done is called real.
All day long the scent of the ocean
which is not more than a mile from here
and then there is the matter of hours
and how each passing one is distant
from the other, could be that, constantly.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Francis Picabia


"Painting, Music, Literature: these three magic words can still remain alive for those who forget their role as painter, musician, or man of letters, and see in these means of self-expression only the joy of being alive!"

Francis Picabia, from "Slack Days" in I am a Beautiful Monster

See you tonight: here.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

We Lump Days

I was thinking maybe an ice cube
would help relieve the muscle enough
to sooth the twitch of these pesky ethics.
I've been there, been there. So we
led folks to within pelvic distance
in order to show books and fevered conversations
accompanied by acrobats and space hooks.
We were all about elevation and gain.
We maxed out as privilege slumped
over the group. We sprayed out the slits
so they could became carbonate. They fizzled
and popped. Soggy smoke sat heavy on the summer
air, fucked. A tent full of supplies, mostly
a Corvair forum or a Thunderbird forum.
We were all about sternums and throats.
Audibly frank. Politely mutating.
Saline, volition, lobbed. A newly-spangled
voice on the sinister pop horizon.
Less chemicals, more gel of the stars,
more purple mountains, and majesty, and all that.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Morning

Sweet wood smell
on morning sheets
rain water splats
against the window
the smell of toast
coffee something else
eggs? Radio humming
classical muted and far
the swish of traffic
in the dim city
dishes need to be done
bed needs to be made
getting buckled in
for the day.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Performa Gala

Bukka White - Jelly Roll Blues

Hello

Please start focusing on giving me a feeling of flying without expensive gear or a spacecraft. Just concentrate on the part about making me fly or giving me the sensation of flying. I hope there's some assurance you can deliver that would confirm for me that my flying has presidence over anything that is near you. Thanks.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Scott Walker!

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Blank



Friday, November 23, 2012

Atlantic Avenue Windows




Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving from The Borderline

Xo

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

From a Room

You can scramble across
the bed, back arched in solitary oblivion
where a hand once went flat along your spine
tilting up at the cheeks and right
into the air in a room without words.
These marvelous late nights with
nothing so much as the empty trucks
banging away and the ruthless flow
of blood in the artillery of my mind.
A cavity in my skull with some electricity
and a brain and some sugar making
it all just so ridiculous when you
think of it this way. So much for intimacy.
In the bath of your tired light I wither,
or wander, or something that sounds like wind when
the word hisses from your mouth. Flicking my tongue
at the prison of my teeth or while
washing your face you think of the ocean.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Hey

The flint switch won't work
because feathers have melted into
the crevices of the hammer platform,
rendering the piston too moist to fire radiance.
I'll have to buff the slats and strip
the platform in a citrus solvent when
I get back to camp. Sorry to digress. Anyway, I'm
steady out in this blue field we read about
in the guide book. They were right: There
are plenty of glorious dawns and all
that, but it doesn't make up for the sound
of human voices chanting things they need
or want. Nor are the songs of the village
resonating in my chest like they used to.
The other day two small rocks that fit neatly
in the palm of my hands became the click beat
for one of my delightfully corrugated songs
about my situation. I've been feeling purposefully
obscure and throaty in this place. Someday I hope
we can shuffle into the field on some distant
bold bonnet night and flick vegetable paint
on the dirt in bright crisscross patterns
like we used to. I bet you'd like that.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Scram

Do you remember when people used to say they
could not feel their arms? Do you remember when all this
city air was ventilated with balsam fronds and the cold
rush of peppermint gas was brought in through
a pink tube in the ceiling hung with zip ties and foil?
Do you remember when the crowds
would disperse along the river and wander
into the hills split by the muted
nobility of earnestness and palimpsests?
Do you remember when the dirge of the day
sounded regal and pointed, not harsh and blotted?
Do you remember when the lucrative jangle
was mostly for rented spaces and wet-throated
desire was for the warm, honey-lobbed spank of Mulberry?
Do you remember when the pastries were coarse
and inedible, powdered not with sugar but
the richest cream of tartar? Do you remember when
the moist towelettes would stack neatly in the vestibule
halting not just the flow of blood but also of all thought
and intent? Do you remember when the soft breezes
of March carried birds that would fly in soft circles
signifying something new and slightly scary?
Well, I ‘d like to have a word with you.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Colby * Compton * Coultas * Knox * Simonds

A magical night awaits us all...





















Poster by Shanna Compton
For more info, bios, directions, etc: click here.

Ground Control


Monday, November 12, 2012

Tilted

You can stay in place
and let the specter of hyper-filling
free dialogue bubble hold the mouse over your head.
They have something to say. I urge all
to give you a feeling of flying
without a special feature suit or spacecraft, making
high connotations useless. Let managers
on the second screen of equal cruelty
and to provide the illusion of movement.
They will drag you well and with respect.
Let this be enough to convince you,
slightly lean rotation is done in the cloud
or mountain escape. Your
prevailing wind and sovereignty
almost all of which may be
referring to shares. They have priority over
almost anything that can be nearby. Presentation trials
if the leaves quiver there. When you try to print
a tree, so that the leaves are shaking, see.

Affectionate Poem

I think Italy has a moon in June, right?
So, how big is my heart with all those non-lovely
stars above your head? Super-beautiful
creamy stars you can smell. You are so rich
and complicated with cone roses
and the red and other woman things
so. You are the best and only
person to me, because you have
the right ghost.

My Method

You can always sit still
with a hyper-ghost, mustering
all you can preserve in time.
You can wait for something incredible
to smash the vacant dialogue bubble
floating above your head. You can.
I would consider letting someone animate
you to get the sensation of flight
without having to wear a special
suit or get in a vehicle that allows
for lofty connotations. Let the frames
per second be abundant so as to allow
the illusion of movement to be convincing
enough that you lean a bit when a rotation
is taken up in a cloud or a mountain is avoided.
You prevail over almost anything that can be
drawn closer to you or brought into your area.
Try shoving a tree so the leaves quiver. See,
you are getting the hang of my method.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Saturday Stillness


Friday, November 09, 2012

Do a Good Job

Do what you can
for the people
the city really is
something else
to see
things fall apart
to be worried
about everything
but what worry does
to a body in the city
to lick your minty
sneeze from the sky
to help a sister out
the city is on maximum
the city is slippery
the city is clubbing my head
making me feel like a dumb-ass
run around the city
do a good job in the city
city sparkle
city sleepwalk
city celebrate
the end of everything

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Now This

Into the haywire
bright snow on traffic
flashes forward
wants to go home
where my body
slower more deliberate
some sort of cold ache
in a minute
and recedes
branches hanging low
slush packed under feet
all the color

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Vote

Please remember to vote today.
Love,
Todd

Monday, November 05, 2012

Reportage

Outside my door there are things on the news. Neighbors
stagger on their walks home. A pajama-clad boy
in rain boots leaps onto a filthy tire and bounces there.
Makes you wonder. Makes you thick with grief for all
we stand to lose, stand up. Slow mucky
is the motion of sludge in a living room
buckets of sand removed in time for the wallop
of another mess, the weather. All that I could
remember, is not. I could show you me mocking the wind
arms stretched wide in the hazy damp breeze,
the salt from the ocean in the river swirling
behind me as the storm gathered.
Light agitation of the heart muscle
pumping blood with that same water in it. All
the mists, croaked in relief, storm water
come creeping into us, in our places we call
home, twisted. We, and I do mean us, this
pall comes into focus, a headache of light
when the light reveals the spanking of the day
with little to show but these dwellings:
hoses extending out from cellars burping
black water into the street, family photos
on the porch, curled and drying, artifacts
strewn on the cracked sidewalk, a damp bloated
dresser, moldy blue jeans, a pile of yellow
books fluttering in the wind as each page dries.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

On the Beach, Me


Thursday, November 01, 2012

Caution

In the event of an aftermath,
bathe in the blue light for the duration
of the silent phase. The weather will help you along.
Simple gestures to the neighbors, please.
Nothing elaborate or indecent, but perhaps
sanitary and soothing by way of your hand
moving across the air in front of your face
signifying grace or empathy. Then, when you
feel secure on the floor, drop to your
knees and spray sleep into the cracks. This
moment is important not to ask what sleep
spray is. The answer will come to you
with a red sound, like a bell that has a color
that you can taste. Yes, that sort of thing.
Nuzzle with the body in the blanket next
to yours even if there is no body.
The air will feel cold on your nose
and the sirens will seem a bit too close
for comfort all morning. Don't worry, someday
they will come for you, but not today.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Wednesday Top 10

1) Red Hook.

2) Lower Manhattan.

3) The East Coast.

4) Marwencol.

5) Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell.

"Is a man sensing his oncoming death more likely to rid himself of his worldly possessions or cling to them?"

6) The Writings of Erik Satie, translated by Nigel Wilkins.

"Progress has always seen its way barred by violent opponents who, it can be seen, do not necessarily have an exceptional nose for things of value, or even ordinary common sense. Yes." From "Propositions Proposed About Igor Stranvinsky"

7) Pass the Mic: Beastie Boys 1991-1996, by Ari Marcopoulis.

8) Black Mirror by Roger Gilbert-Lecomte (translated by David Rattray.

"The trick is to get out of your own dead body
in one piece. One quick hard twist and you're out." From "Cartesian Diver"

9) Benjamin's Arcades: An Unguided Tour (Love).

10) Enough Said: Poems 1974-1979 by Philip Whalen

"You do what you do
Fucky-ducky." From "Cynical Song"

Tuna Colby


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Metallic Sleep

Lithe and papery, I grow pasty and wan
in the dim light of storm season. The gray pillow
is dappled with uterine dots. Small as a towel
that is a blanket, thrusting my pelvis
with enough force to make wind, that is, yes, that.
When I stop to think about all the years in these
swaying rooms, I feel the trucks bump the floor
and make the bookshelves creak with the weight
of all that stuff. Positioned so as to defeat
decay with an elixir of pompous systems, I will
walk right into the night repeating myself
to myself, sure of nothing but my own hands
steering this vehicle into the purple ribbon
of sea and light, smack dab into a bland sad kitchen
with a view of the highway. Oh, how I long
for your vast metallic sleep.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Barging Into Brooklyn


Friday, October 26, 2012

Friday Top 10

1) This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

2) "Ho Renomo" a song by Cluster & Eno

3) Building Stories by Chris Ware

4) Printed Matter Bookstore

5) Francis Picabia late at night

6) "Freight Train" a song by Elizabeth Cotten

7) Chocolate Blend Granola (by Baked) with Vanilla Brown Cow Yogurt

8) Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa

9) The Picabia/Nietzsche Connection.

Jon Glaser, Brilliance

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Soothing Poem

A soothing moment like in a garden
if a garden is soothing to you then
that. Yes. That a garden with hyacinths,
or, oh, what's a fragrant flower? I never
learned the names of flowers, I learned
their beauty and what they represent
to me, that a garden equals relaxation
in most people's minds. So that: a day
in the sunlight in a garden with some
flowers I can't name. I hope you understand
what I'm getting at here is to soothe you
into thinking you are okay and that
the air in the garden is the same temperature
as your skin, so you feel comfortable
in your skin just hanging out with the flowers
I can't name for you like some people can
because they had parents who gardened,
who took them out among the flowers
and said "now this is named that and that
is named this" and so on, until it all
sank in and you could know what someone
meant when they referred to a particular
flower or asked you to go pick a flower with a name
in a bountiful garden. You'd know what to look for,
you wouldn't just stand there going "uh."
You'd know the look of it, the texture of it,
the name of it, and quite possibly even
the latin name for it, which is really
just a way of showing off. Anyway, I hope
you are relaxed by this poem, it's been
a real mind fuck of a day. You deserve this
moment with my poem in the garden of your mind.

Jouissance


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Screening

I was hoping there would be a graph
or chart, you know, some way to quantify
everything in time. That a projection booth
of some sort would be in the back of the room
showing things I'd forgotten with a graph off
to the side showing their relative importance
in my life. Perhaps the quantification could help
signify the moments I needed to pay a little more
attention to and the ones I needed to forget.
I was really hoping someone would bring me some
popcorn or something while I watched and anyway
I needed to ask who had filmed all this stuff
like me in bed thinking I was alone scratching
my head in the dark with just the light of the
courtyard beam through the shades striped across
my face, I mean really, who filmed that?

Monday, October 22, 2012

Cluster & Eno - Ho Renomo

Dreaming of Paris


Saturday, October 20, 2012

People of the Future

What is satisfying is that there is a sun at all.
So mysterious and loaded with light. Nothing is
brighter than the sun, perhaps ever, and especially
right now. That I lived in an apartment building,
have been scolded by the downstairs neighbor for
making noise that was ridiculous, I was incredulous.
I can hear the Brooklyn Queens Expressway from my
office window, it sounds like the ocean. Sometimes
I get a lonesome feeling when I see a pigeon flitting
around on the roof across the courtyard, or when I see
another person in a window across the way sitting
and doing something. What am I thinking of? The smell
of autumn, the breakfast I never had, coffee in my
stomach, the gnawing feeling of wanting to do something
or make a big change but not knowing what that is.
The sky looks perfectly adorable. This room is quiet
and cool. There are books all over my desk and several
pens, a legal pad, an old journal: "11.9.99-1.20.00"
is written with silver ink on the black spine, I date
all my journals this way, it makes it easier to look
for dates I did things when I'm in the future. I'm writing
this for someone in the future. Is it you?

Friday, October 19, 2012

Friday Top 10

1) We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, a Very Oral History by Yael Kohen.

2) New York City Players Presents: Richard Maxwell: Neutral Hero at The Kitchen, tonight! (the kitchen.org).

3) My Saturday Poetry Workshop at the Poetry Project.

4) Jack Spicer.

5) Alfred North Whitehead.

6) Sarah Silverman.

7) The Diary of James Schuyler, edited by Nathan Kernan.

8) The Good Fork, Red Hook Brooklyn.

9) WKCR.ORG.

10) Wondering on a rainy day.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Drunken Boat




There's a bunch more songs on the youtube page. Thanks for posting these, Mike Phillips.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A Plausible Miracle

Let's sandwich this muck
of Tuesday, so bland and blue,
between our shoulders tied with
a gleeful strand of crimson thread.
Our bodies can only hold so much
sound and stay in synch with the cacophony
of signals, like vortex mathematics:
all rounded, doubled, and inscrutable.
I'll make a batch of language to
soothe your tired scapulas, which
are so amazing when I dip my
thumbs into them they flutter,
those wings, and we both pop
into the air like fleshy birds
in a movie about people who
do things like fly over the city
when no one is looking, our chemtrails
blabbing messages in crisscross
patterns, quilting the sky with puffy slashes
that signify nothing but our joy
in simply being here.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Picture This

A serious blue bolt from the sky
when I open the door the hue of light
indicating a possible aneurism
turns to me, comes head on into my blouse
and gropes me as I try to walk nonchalantly.
On Henry Street the sidewalk is covered
in a layer of Tempur-Pedic foam
making it feel good to walk around in my body.
Kids throw beach balls at people like me.
People were more serious about television in 1999.
Then something clicked, and oh, a decade or more goes by,
still no television show, just some old
caramels I forgot about next to the soup,
and a silver vegetable steamer
thing I bought in Worchester, MA (still in the box)
the day after Thanksgiving 2009.
It's all coming together like two trucks
playing chicken on the B.Q.E.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Four







Gone Friends

Clutch at stars while falling
through air then you should soothe
the chandelier during one of my handshakes
head a few feet from the bottom
down with a crisp lunge into oblivion
all the falls calm these alerts
at the speed of light things get easy
I'm pleased to meet the small of your back
with whiskey tan mobility from a branch
of colonial frumps reenacting all we
did for years so we can watch it
again and splurge on memory
if your spoon comes plump
it should be curled around my body
people are playing us in the reenactments
what you can't have you call back
desire is masked as contemplation
the city below is just too much
to handle the grip worn from
grabbing people alert me
that time is ordinary freedom
is pertinent to the echoes I'll be watching
fantastic leaps forever gone friends.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Saturday Top 10 Books

1) Pataphysics: A Useless Guide by Andrew Hugill

2) Talking Poetics from Naropa Institute: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics edited by Anne Waldman & Marilyn Webb

3) Some Instructions by Stanley Crawford

4) The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C.T. Onions

5) I'll Be Seeing You: Poems 1962-1976 by Larry Fagin

6) The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

7) The Selected Works of Alfred Jarry edited by Richard Shattuck & Simon Watson Taylor

8) Treatise on Style by Louis Aragon

9) Last Nights of Paris by Phillippe Soupault

10) The Fast by Hannah Weiner

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - 2 Kindsa Love (Recovery)

Friday, October 12, 2012

Untitled

Friday

Opportunities abound, perhaps one is simply
sitting here while morning light thumps
down in the courtyard, making the trees
quiver just a bit, or is that a passing truck?
Brooklyn is dipping into autumn, sandwiched
between the heat and stench of summer
and the mystery of a dusty sweatshirt
I haven't worn since last March. I think
about all the stuff I need to do
and then I think I'll never get anything done.
Today I'll sit and gaze at workers
constructing scaffolding on the front
of the building across the street,
and later, I'll listen to the high whine
of a leaf blower scattering dead leaves
across the courtyard. That's enough for one day.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Erik Satie/René Clair: Entr'Acte (1924)

In One Year and Out the Other

I look for clues,
wear scotch tape pajamas
in a limousine all the way
to the couch. I feel solid.
I mean, when I whack my hand
against the desk, I feel solid,
have a body, do ache. It's nice
to know that someone I'll never
know will tell you when I'm bleeding.
I can't breathe with your hand
over my mouth, I say.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Walt Whitman: Damn, He Knew How to Dress, Among Other Things






How to Cut a Lemon in Half

You put a cutting board down on the kitchen counter
and then you put that yellow sucker smack dab
in the middle of it. Get a big honker knife
and hold that bright yellow sour thing between your thumb
and forefinger. Cut that thing in half! Yeah!
Smell that stuff? That is the smell of a freshly
cut lemon, dude. Look at the seeds and pulp and flesh
on the cutting board. Think about it, is there anything
more wonderful in the world than a freshly cut lemon?
I'm so glad I told you how to do it.

Tomorrow: How to Cut an Apple in Half.

Monday, October 08, 2012

Mathematics

Your body is leaking math:
that's not abstraction, that's fact.
Add it up. You are a puddle of mercury
splattered against the fantastic people
who love your great songs.
I would ripple with enthusiasm
like an astronaut's face during takeoff
if you had the science to make that happen.
Tip a cup of oil on your lap to make things
run smoother. I want the miracle of breathing
to envelop the cavity of your purple
lungs. I want a real stainless steel
seat to support your ass
as you speak through a megaphone
to the people who done gone,
won't answer back.

It's going to be okay for awhile and then it won't. Simple as that.


Saturday, October 06, 2012

Incident Reports

9:16 AM
Man and woman talking in the courtyard. The occasional sound of sustained laughter. From her more than him.

9:18 AM
The words: "worried about it" spoken by the man in the courtyard.

10:07 AM
Workers hammering in a vacant apartment on the 2nd floor.

10:23 AM
In an effort to get a glimpse of the people talking in the courtyard, I bump my head on the window frame.

10:35 AM
Wispy, high clouds coming in from the south over Brooklyn.

10:43 AM
A real and consistent itching sensation on my left outer thigh. I reach inside my pants while standing up after failing to satisfy the itch over my pants.

10:44 AM
I suddenly realize there is a man in the adjacent building looking across the courtyard at me from his window as I itch my leg with my hand down my pants. Worry for a moment about what he might think I'm doing. I lose interest in this line of thought as soon as he disappears from the window.

11:02 PM
The sound of a staple gun that echoes through the courtyard.

11:20 PM
Text from Tara who asks how I'm doing.

11:21 PM
I text back that I'm doing fine, just writing.

Friday, October 05, 2012

Friday Top 10

1) Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Brilliant film. Thanks, Jason.

2) The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1975-2005. Thanks for reminding me, Isabel.

3) Francis Ponge: The Sun Placed in the Abyss.Thanks for giving me this book years ago, Peter Philbrook.

4) Francis Ponge: The Power of Language.

5) My workshop starts tomorrow.

6) The Master, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson.

7) Photo by Joanne Leah.



8) Lunch.

9) Performing at the Performa Gala in November. Thanks, Marianne.

10) The Clean. Thanks, Jon.







Thursday, October 04, 2012

Paul Auster on Writing, Film & Brooklyn

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Wednesday Morning with Francis Ponge

"The root of what dazzles us is in our hearts."

from "The Sun a Fastigiated Flower"

*

"One should be able to give all poems
the title: Reasons for Living Happily."

from "The Power of Language"

*

"The nuptial habits of dogs are really something!"

from "The Nuptial Habits of Dogs"

*

"Man is just a heavy ship, a heavy bird,
on the edge of an abyss. We feel it."

from "The Object is Poetics"

*

"Miracle! O new image of Myself: how beautiful!"

from "Metatechnical Fragments"

*

"Let us beat with a single heart the colors of the sun!"

from "Reading the Sun on the Radio"

Tender Merry

1) When she pulled out the Tupperware
container as large as a snare drum
full of tuna pasta
I knew she meant business.

2) The way she covered her head
with a napkin because she didn't
want "God" to see her eating
the tiny bird.

3) The way she danced
when she put on her tin foil
crown.

4) The way she said:
"Good!" "Get golly!"
"Let's go!" "Why not!"
"Hoorah!" and "Smile!"

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Photo of me by Joanne Leah


Can We Go Inside Now?

Mink oil moisturizer
on crushed velvet tent.
Why would you do that, ever?
Purple mountains majorly.
Then a disc of subtle hued pink.
Slip into player and groove.
Gurgle mint and lime juice,
spit into wooden cup.
Deer hair in mouth. Two realizations:
Deer go to icky places. When was
I near a deer enough to get hair
in my mouth? Then a dawning
of some really sweet thought.

Monday, October 01, 2012

City Walk

Every person in New York City has a name
and they tingle in cool weather outfits
ready to get it on in autumn. Some people
are creating film scores to go along
with their walk through October. They wear
headphones in their own video about doing that thing.
Strolling around in a park next to the water
with a busy background and then waving
to the sky to create the impression
that a person is up there in the sky
waving back. Or walking down the street
and waving to a house to give the impression
to the other passersby that someone is
in the house waving back. There, among the
marvelous flow of orange and black streamers
festooned around a VW, someone has written
the word "DUDE" in white marker on the windshield.
There are signs of life all over the place.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Brain Ferry Portraits of Me

Photographer Brian Ferry took these excellent portraits of me last week in my apartment. He's so talented. It was a lot of fun and an honor to sit for him.

Click here.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Friday Top 10

1) Gerard Manley Hopkins.

2) Mina Loy.

3) Hart Crane.

4) H.D.

5) 1970's Nigerian Pop Music.

6) Philip Whalen.

7) Leslie Scalapino.

8) Giacomo Leopardi.

9) Blind Willie Reynolds.

10 Any thick, dense, poetic music that makes NYC tolerable.

XO
TC

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Thanks!

What I mean is: you are wearing only
a t-shirt on Smith and Bergen Streets
and it is freaking me out. I'm not at all
inclined to intervene or to even ask
an individual for her credentials, but
basking in the traffic while all around
you a shale-like substance is forming
on your skin is just not safe.
More precisely: a toxic, flaky mimosa
is driving you bananas.
What you need to do is scrub the affected area
with a dish sponge dipped in a solution
of lemon and peppermint oils.
Use a circular motion to inhibit
regrowth and bifurcation. I'd also like
to hear back from you in about a dollar
if you can hack the not-wellness with
the pure supplications of past desire.
I'll be around. You'll find me.
That's just the way it is.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

How to Wake Up

Morning is for rubbing the sleep
off your body. Surface texture should
be crystalline and calibrated for urgency
but in a manner that does not alarm or provoke
aggression in the downstairs neighbors.
For safe traveling out to the edge of living room,
bring some fruit roll ups, just in case
you get stuck in the wind and can't
get back until nightfall. Bring also:
glass beads for meditation and some
ochre tinted shawls for warmth
and camouflage. Turn ringer on phone
to "blast" mode. Bring water syrup
and steel mud cleats for her. Take field
notes with golf pencil. Record the transition
from sleeping to awake and the various
realizations as the work vehicle approaches.
Feel the rumbling under your feet
until the day fits around you properly.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Top Ten Facts

Fact: Lou Reed invented the modern dial tone in 1966 for Bell Laboratories.

Fact: Keith Moon had all of his suits handmade by the same Parisian tailor as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

Fact: David Bowie owns a building in Los Angeles that contains three rental units and one commercial space on the ground floor.

Fact: Steven Tyler has run 7 marathons. His best finishing time is 2:56, making him one of the fastest marathoners in his age group.

Fact: Hall & Oates wrote 'Sara Smile" as a result of meeting the legendary poet (and fan of the duo) Allen Ginsberg after one of their gigs.

Fact: In 1949, Aretha Franklin won a tristate area dart championship. She is the youngest champion (7-years old) to this day.

Fact: In 1979 Robert Plant inherited 76% controlling interest in the Bayer Aspirin Company from his grandfather, Franklin Plant.

Fact: Bob Dylan proposed to his first wife Sarah in a Sears & Roebuck store in East Lansing, Michigan as they shopped for refrigerator.

Fact: John Lennon had such a severe shell fish allergy that he could not even be in the same room as a lobster.

Fact: Donny Osmond has a collection of over 5000 old TV Guides in his basement in Salt Lake City.

Fact: Alice Cooper lives in Utica, New York, on a drydocked houseboat.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Goat Skin Pantsuit

Don't be stupid,
everyone knows a pantsuit
is sexy, sir, but not if you
wear the rose powder
and hump stars, blue satan.
You can dip your finger
into the black milk, humming
to the tone of global spunk,
while dip shits in Corvettes
whistle the melody of body
parts. Codified by the psychedelic
funk of Moogs, you're all pepper sprayed
with reason and contempt. Don't forget
there's a slow boat
waiting for your pink berries.
You'll loaf on the dock
until you shrivel from neglect.
One day you'll get a letter
and that letter will say a lot
if you could only read it
imagine how successful you'd be.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Brooklyn Bridge on Atlantic Avenue


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Soothing Poem (Redux)

I would like to settle the score
by brushing your hair until you go
into a trance from being soothed
by the gentle stroking of the brush
in my hand that provides that relaxing
sensation you so adore and crave.
Then I would like to make you
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You are exhausted, you tell me you
are exhausted so you should sleep
and not worry that I'll write on
your face with a felt tipped pen
or devise some trick that will
piss you off or startle you.
I'm beyond that sort of stuff
now that you are here with
me letting me brush your hair.
I'll never be bad again, I swear.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Tuesday

What Tuesday does is twist
around my legs making it
difficult to dance around much.
But I digress. The people
downstairs are cooking something
yummy, onions? Partial only
to the coffee in this blue cup,
standing up finally on the chair
only to be closer to the sky
in this room above even the bookshelves.
This room, how many things it has
observed. If it were able to repeat
a tape back of every second would
I watch it? Would I sit and watch?
Well, I kind of do, but that's another poem.
Meanwhile, life goes on all
around me; a decade skitters away
like a brown water bug carrying
all my belongings on its
crusty back. People have to learn
the hard way. It's time to dance.

Happy Birthday, William Carlos Williams

Allen Ginsberg reads from WCW's "Spring and All."

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Sunday Poem

Sleep in the slow motion position
so the sparks of these kinked
days slow into a low glow.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Andy Kaufman - Cannonball

This story seriously changed my life.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Thursday Reportage

This morning I carried my groceries past
Bob's house on Kane Street on my way home.
A few years ago there was an article
in the paper about Bob's house
being haunted by a crying baby which was
more annoying than scary to Bob. Near Degraw Street,
there was a kitten in a box being carried
to a waiting car by an elderly man. I spotted
what appeared to be powdered detergent
sprinkled on the sidewalk on the southwest
corner of Baltic and Henry Streets.
A man with a groovy baseball cap
that said "DOGS BARK FUNK" across the front
was walking down Hicks Street with an odd smile.
Oh yeah, the sun was shining in that slanted way
it does during late summer.
Thanks,
Todd

Thursday Morning with Cat Power



Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Wednesday Top 1

1) Tweeting @ToddColbyPoet

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

What Goes Missing

You must think in terms
of loss to connect the dots
to any living thing. To the spaces
they were, their moving through
something, a faded bloom. If you calculate time
you must allow for parts to be sheered off
in the debacle of days. Careening
into the slow slop of morning in your underwear.
Indentations from sheets on your soft skin.
There's a membrane around you that's made to last
until something ruinous comes along or something hidden
in the flesh springs forth. The universe
is just too abstract, the mere volume of it
is too enormous to collapse with us in it, right?
I hope so. I guess I'll just look at this:
a minute passing and a catalogue of a room
observed in the quiet of now.

Bonnie Prince Billy - Time To Be Clear

Monday, September 10, 2012

Monday Top 10

1) Expectation of transcendence, delusion.

2) Forest of metal objects, recycled.

3) Memories of summer, bland.

4) Flow of time, dying.

5) Heel pain, permanent.

6) Coffee saturation, hollow.

7) City waking, cacophony.

8) Unread books, many.

9) Blank screen, fuck.

10) Get up, walk around, sit down.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Swans - No Words No Thoughts

Friday, September 07, 2012

The First Sentence of My Novel

He was sweet, but he was really sweet after he got hit by a truck.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Continue Reading

What concerns me - continue reading -
is the spectacle of humans on the A train
platform - continue reading - if the music moves you
stand still with me and focus on what you can't
do to it - continue reading - there will be moments
like this when the very air stalls, some would call
it a drop in barometric pressure, some simply caving
into desire with grace - continue reading -
I love the canopy of sun that seems to have
ripped through the older darker sky, if only
for a moment before the showers come again -
continue reading - there will be days when the
very fabric of your life seems alien and absurd,
flanked by all sorts of people you don't understand
anymore - continue reading - the idea, no, the fantasy
of friends or family sticking around long enough to see
change or change coming without loss is simply
absurd - continue reading - it will be good to come
to a resting place long enough to call it eternity,
you'll see - continue reading - everybody clap.

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Poetry Lab: What Can a Poem Be?

Here's the lowdown on a series of workshops I'll be teaching at the Poetry Project starting Saturday, October 6th.

You can register by clicking here.

Saturday, October 6, 2012
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Saturdays 2-4PM: 10 sessions begin October 6th

What can a poem be? We’ll attempt to answer this question while creating new modes and forms of poetry just outside the dominant culture. In this class we’ll create a safe place to take chances, to openly speculate and participate in the ongoing dialogue that ensues. There will be weekly experiments and assignments and a lot of in-class writing. We’ll tumble together through collaborations and mutual innovations. We’ll explore poetry through play, joy, openness, immediacy, profound ideologies, music, and art. We’ll take risks that allow us to reinvent ourselves as poets every time we sit down to write. We’ll create poems that don’t resemble or sound like poems; all the while being totally committed to the idea of broadening the borders of the possibilities of poetry. We’ll leap off a platform constructed by Henri Michaux, Reggie Watts, Djuna Barnes, Bill Knott, Fernando Pessoa, Hannah Weiner, E.M. Cioran, Ben Marcus, Gertrude Stein, Andy Kaufman, Sei Shonagon, Joe Brainard, Walter Benjamin, Diane Williams, and more. Todd Colby is the author of four books of poetry published by Soft Skull Press. He keeps a blog at gleefarm.blogspot.com.

Monday, September 03, 2012

Official Communication

I might have to get dressed today
and go outside. Thank you for waddling
through the streets harboring
a secret hunch that the photographers gathered
outside your apartment are there for you,
not your pride. Meanwhile, I have a landscape
and some other things that need
to be scrubbed. Look at that city out there
all gray and shaky in the humid
haze. Can you imagine what working
people out there are thinking
as they walk to real jobs?
Well, you're about to find out.

Street Scenes

On Kane Street a guy was jabbering into a phone
about so-and-so and this-and-that.

On Degraw Street a woman with a huge shock of gray hair
was pushing a cart with precisely two long loaves of bread
and a bundle of sunflowers inside.

On Warren Street a little kid was just standing alone at the top
of a stoop in front of a brownstone crying his lungs out.

On Pacific Street three little girls all stood with sticks in their hands
poking at a puddle as their mothers stood nearby talking animatedly.

On Clinton Street a big fence blocked the road at Kane Street
where a church steeple had collapsed on a man and killed
him earlier this summer.

On Court Street two men in bright lycra on bicycles rode down the middle
of the street. I heard one of the men say the words "Roxy Music" very loudly .

On Baltic Street I tried to smile at a man carrying grocery bags
in both hands but he averted his glance rather than smiling back.

On Amity Street there were a group of hospital workers in scrubs
with laminated identification placards pinned to their chests
all standing around smoking and chatting in a very serious manner.

On Bergen Street I saw a woman on a bicycle that was about three
sizes too small for her. I thought maybe she had borrowed a child's
bike in order to get somewhere fast.

On Henry Street I saw a man with a "Smith & Butler" t-shirt on. I'd seen
him just a few days before with the same shirt on walking down 7th Avenue.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Safety Takes No Holidays

Strawberry and rhubarb
jam can go bad
in a matter of hours
in the back of a hot car
in deepest summer.
Rub that crap on your toast
after a day at the beach
and you'll be wishing
you never landed on earth
the date of your birth
etched into your
bowels as you cringe
into oblivion.

Ombre - featuring Helado Negro and Julianna Barwick

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Thursday Top 10

1) Lester Young and Charlie Parker Birthday Broadcasts on WKCR.ORG.

2) Dinner with Heidi at Vinegar Hill House.

3) Strolling around DUMBO in general.

4) Perfume Gun by Frederic Malle

5) Lease renewal.

6) Remove Your Hat & Other Works by Benjamin Peret.

7) The Strassburg Sock.

8) The Howard Fenster piece Jordy Trachtenberg gave me.

9) Diaries: 1899-1942 by Robert Musil.

10) Getting more vivid.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Word

I'd like to have a word with you.
Like how all of New York
is making my brain feel
like it's covered in cheese cloth.
A temptation to move beyond
the confines of the blue edge,
which is really only a blanket
of light over the city.
I'll stumble into something
apparent as grunge or the tilted look
of someone with a real appetite for life,
you know, like conviction.
Anyway, I'll be sitting here
confining myself to a few choices
as a deadline looms. It's all about limitations,
confinement, and the pearls of light
as they drip through the blinds.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Sleep

It's sleep we'll miss
while dying,
so the dying say.

Tuesday Top 10

1) I'll be teaching a series of poetry workshops at The Poetry Project for 10 weeks starting Saturday, October 6th from 2pm-4pm. You can read a description of my workshop and register here.

2) "Believe You Me" by Ombre (with vocals by Julianna Barwick). Brilliant semi-ambient clouds of bliss and wonder.

3) A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Best scene of guy meeting girlfriend's parents ever.

4) John Godfrey. One of my all time favorite poets. I'll be introducing him before his reading at The Poetry Project on Wednesday, October 17th at 8pm.

5) Lake swimming at Deb and Max's place with Tara in Massachusetts. Bliss.

6) Taza Mexican Chocolate. Help me stop.

7) Dinner with Justin Theroux.

8) Death to the Pigs & Other Writings by Benjamin Peret. Punk surrealism since 1899.

9) Counter Culture: Mocha Java.

10) Einstein on the Beach...September 15! (Thanks, Tara).

XO

Monday, August 27, 2012

Telefunken

I was at a party yesterday,
I don't think you were there.
People were swooning
over one guest's cobalt blue cape
worn with neon orange leggings.
In one corner there was an old
folding card table with snacks
placed on kitschy glass serving trays.
One oblong pink plate contained
asparagus spears encircled with shredded
beets. The kitchen floor was scuffed
and smelly. I found a dead roach
on a box of coffee filters in the cabinet
while looking for the salt.
When I picked up the carcass with
a dry paper towel, it crackled
like a potato chip.
Come to think of it, if you had entered
the room, I'm fairly certain
I would've remembered you were there.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Morning Loop

I must acknowledge this pond.
The light on the water
is so creamy it looks silky.
No wind, some ratchety cricket sounds,
a group of low warbling toads, and the sudden hiss
of rubber on a rough country road
from a car in the distance.
And then this: what do I call this?
Just an emptying of the agitation of the city,
the movement of things around me coming
to a stop long enough to position
myself in front of some water on a canvas
camping chair, low to the wooden floor
of this screened in porch.
My bare toes rub on the tiny gaps
between the dry, matte-gray planks.
The sound of children's voices from another house
through the woods as they wake up
to look at the same view as me. Perhaps their shrieks
are simple exultations from seeing the endless
possibilities of a summer day.
It could be said that I have not more than
twenty years to live if I hold to the averages
of a man's life in this country,
as calculated by actuarial scientists who
get paid enormous sums to determine such things
for insurance companies who turn their conjectures
into cash money. I should remember that,
and these days, layered one on top of another
until there's nothing but a mound of bland years,
not so tall, not so profound, just a lump of time
amid many other lumps of time. We're all screwed, but so what?
Time is all we really have, any of us, or so they say.
But really, I must mention this calm pond,
these enormous pines and the sound of some birds
waking up near me. All the rhythms evolving,
weaving in and out of the flow of this day,
so simple, so calm, so fleeting.

Vacation



Wednesday, August 22, 2012

August, Robust

Nothing is as dank as sunflowers
lilting outside the deli wrapped
in August heat, mustard yellow
petals dipping to the rancid sidewalk.
There's the smell of something
spilled from a restaurant garbage bag:
could it be blue gravy? Yes,
it's blue gravy. Small animals scurry about
when I enter the room of the street
escaping with the details of a larger
picture. Are you reading this
in a cool room with a fan circulating
the air above you? Is someone
rubbing your shoulders as you
hum and think of Amy Adams in a yellow kimono
on the beach, giggling at your antics?
I didn't think so. Go back to work.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Age of Frost

This is the first day of 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.

Dumbo Cruising