Fragment

A cure for the day comes in half tons
so we only half get the heavy stuff.
We buff Monday with a shot of spinal
funk and entertaining fuck stumbles.
We require a good soak in nerve endings
extracted from weary nows. A cure
based on spastic grin shine is implausible
but worth trying when things get really bad. And then
we are getting a letter. The news: better.

Saturday Top 10

1) I love your salve!

2) Bending coffee into a cone.

3) See you on the other side all week long.

4) Get on the phone to Mistake World.

5) The real time mechanism of a lost day.

6) The bold vibrant line of the Uni-ball 207 Impact Pen.

7) "People pay to see others believe in themselves." Kim Gordon (Happy Birthday).

8) BLK DNM.

9) What I could think about if I was thinking about you: your spirit wing-ding.

10) Misreading a misreading.

I Promise

I promise not to pile the pillows
under the covers on the bed in such a way
that they resemble a human body,
my human body. I promise not to
do that and then crouch down next
to the bed where you can't see me
while I wait for you to come back
to bed after you go to the bathroom
in the middle of the night.
I promise not to wait until you come back
and feel around the bed, placing your
hand on one of the pillows that is
supposed to be me and then realize
it's not me. I promise not to
wait a few seconds after you realize
the pile of pillows are not me while
I hide next to the bed in the darkened
room waiting to leap up and shout "here I am!"
I promise this will never happen
and I also promise that you can relax
if you ever come back into the room
when it's dark and I'm waiting in there
for you. I promise.

Figural News

I've felt very off
this continent
since 1992.

Eileen Myles on Being a Poet

"I think we take the hit for language in any era. To decide to do “this” as a living is to invite barbs that generally pile up around gender and power. The poet is a fag, the poet is a drag, the poet is righteous. But really I think people resent our freedom. Our choice to keep doing something they may have done badly when they were younger and were full of feeling and to keep doing something that supposedly anyone can do – making something out of something as practical and mundane as language is to brand oneself as a lifelong fool rather than merely a fool in her youth. People feel sad about what they disavowed to become who they are now. Poets are human of course and have disavowed plenty, but to stand behind this nonetheless significant or foolish act – it’s a kind of self identifying, self categorizing act (like language itself) that enrages people exactly in the place where they’ve made choices and need to assume you haven’t. This – to be a poet – was the biggest choice in my life, and I suffer fools gladly and have a great life. Look at this. I just wrote a book called snowflake, for god’s sake." -Eileen Myles, via Hairpin & Robert Dewhurst

Right on, Eileen.

John Zorn & Thurston Moore at The Poetry Project

See you there!

My Friend Wallis - Knowing

My Friend Wallis - Sunspots

Crystal Dorval - Who Are You

White Poppy

Thanks, Valerie

Monday Top 10

1) I'm going to be interviewed for WFMU's Seven Second Delay at The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater on May 2nd. Let me know if you want to go. More info here: Seven Second Delay.

2) I have a new poem up HERE. Thanks Thomas Devaney!

3) Jules and Jim by Francois Truffaut -- handheld cameras and crazy youth. Catherine, played by Jeanne Moreau, as a borderline personality making life difficult for everyone. Sigh.

4) Joe Brainard. Always. Everyday. Have you had your Joe Brainard today?

5)A Time for Everything by Karl O. Knausgaard -- a compelling novel about the history of angels told in a way that almost has a narcotic-like effect.

6) Sweet Heart Sweet Light by Spiritualized. Brilliant, quirky, heartfelt, divine.

7) Paris, France. Going in June.

8) Me Reading for the release of the NEW edition of Sensitive Skin Magazine on Sunday, April 29th at 8PM at The Bowery Poetry Club.

9) I Had a Dream by White Poppy -- extremely smudged pop, like one of Gerhard Richter's squeegee paintings, but with music. Did I mention it's also seriously heartbreaking & gorgeous? Well it is.

10) Anything with coffee in it, on it, or around it.

Flushing Meadows

If you were to sleep in a sleeping bag
on the surface of the moon, so the theory
goes, then you'd be hovering just above the dust
and rocks, in fact, you'd be as comfortable on the moon
as you'd be in my room spooning against my biker thighs.
In a pinch, I could concoct a new mechanism
that would grind you into believing
everything is ecstatic and demented.
Just when you think it's not, I arrive.
Whenever you leave the room I never forget
who you are. When you come back
I'm all like, "hey!" There are people
out there in Flushing Meadows whose
singular pleasure is seeing us spin
into oblivion the same way a tiger
turns into butter when it runs around
a tree too fast. I believe in you the same
way I believe my hands can form enough turbulence
to lift me above the crooked city when I need
to get out of bounds. That's just the beginning
of what I need to tell you about what goes
on around here late at night when you're not.
Soon you'll see what I mean by ecstasy
when I unbutton my shirt and a flood
of birds are released all over America.

My Orchid

Wednesday Top 10

1) Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle.

2) Stephen Mitchelmore's review of My Struggle: here.

3) Kat Edmonson's song "Lucky" off her lovely new album "Way Down Low."

4) Cat Marnell, why?

5) Joe Brainard night tonight at The Poetry Project. Info: here.

6) New Balance 890 v2. Great running shoes.

7) DUMBO-near the Navy Yard, my favorite place to run in NYC.

8) Paris. Going in June for the first time! Will you help me get a reading there?

9) "Legends of Benin" An amazing collection of ass shaking songs on iTunes.

10) Sprummer.

Memorial Postcard

Though no fault of our own,
we let our grave doubts make us specular and drastic.
We strapped the cone speech mechanism
to our faces in order to magnify our howls
as we roamed the streets in search of friends.
The way flowers grew on the bark of trees
like a pink fungus, or the way the bus driver's tatooed,
meaty hand slapped the windshield, shattering it.
All we needed was a week away from the tilted landscape
of the jaundiced ritzy city. On the edges
of town, the tumult of despair grew into a sickening
dose of gunk and frappe. We donned foil suits,
and hard plastic hats, yet the rays of the
putrid sun still penetrated our protective layers,
and delivered a hard citrus punch that knocked
our breath away. We staggered into the train
station where the oily mist couldn't envelop us
in the tunnel, which was sterile. There, we found
a television mounted high up on the wall in one
of the darkened, cavernous, subterranean rooms.
The broadcast was full of smudged, staticky
images of fires in a deep, wooded area with
flashes of soot-stained deer and skeletal trees.
We'll be okay, we just miss you, a lot.

Sunday Top 10

1) Julianna Barwick at The Guggenheim Museum.

2) Mysterious Love Machines.

3) Chambray.

4) Chocolate Granola by Baked.

5) Symmetry.

6) Whatever I feel like doing when I feel like doing it.

7) Summer feelings.

8) Constructive Impulses.

9) "Hot Tears" by The Immortals.

10) Dream of the Red Bird.

Love,
Todd

You Know What I'm Saying

A bright day is good for the heart,
it adds clarity to thought, if you're so inclined.
You know what I'm saying? The way the day
blows some radiant debris over the corner of my eye,
like an angel. Wait, it's not a vision,
it's concrete dust from those guys
jackhammering the sidewalk
on the corner of Baltic and Henry.
Keep it real. You know what I'm saying?
I think of you in the most feeble
way, where I almost feel guilty about
the way I'm doing it, which is not much
at all, because this poem is about me. So
I begin to walk, and as I walk, I see things
that are very interesting; it's why I live in the city,
you know what I'm saying? There are so many
adorable things to see that my brain is bulging
at the seams like a fat thigh in tight jeans.
The city sparkles caffeinated silver so
I caterwaul with a face full of sun for kicks
and bloom into something radiant and sharp.
You know what I'm saying?

Me singing Kraftwerk's "Metrolpolis" at Littelfield, 4.10.11.

Thanks for the photo, Tara!

Light Supper

I will always have this sense
That leaving the house is easy
When it's my load slowly burning
No licking between legs no effort
Carefully over the load.
Draw a key on a pad of paper
Carry the bureau drawer
Flanked by well-meaning people
In such a manner that
A jaw bone under a tense muscle
resembles a briefcase.
I watched this operation:
Removing an organ from a slack body
In the spanking new limousine.
Yawning, there is plenty of space for sports.
In the harbor with bleached whale bones
Bumping the prow of the boat.
It was the longest day;
My mint green scarf was shredded
By ocean wind. Steady as she goes.
The air was heavy like heavy computers
Slow to establish a roundness of face
Air. Everyone liked the silvery
Paper lips of the make out stranger.
Reluctantly behind treetops
I felt the monster calm of night
gingerly stepping around the smooth
Silver room. When it was time
When it was merely light
For supper.

Sweet Wood

We are thrilled with the response
so far and happy to bring you
the pants of your dreams, sweet wood.
The sure foot of your friction
is rubbing the floor dry.
Oh! How you open the sky enough
to let the moon drip pink
into the ocean froth. Darn that dream
where I get haunted by the gift
of the fabulous you. A suitcase in your
plow and matchstick in your pants.
I will always and only
and so I assume you will too.

Kraftwerk Covered

I'll be part of a fantastic night of incredible musicians doing Kraftwerk covers this Tuesday. It should be a marvelous night!

Tuesday night, April 10, 8-11 PM
Littlefield 622 Degraw St, Brooklyn, NY 11217

Featuring:

Free Kitten(esque) with Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), and Pete Nolan (Magick Markers)
Dan Friel (Parts & Labor)
Publicist (Sebastian Thomson of Trans Am))
Matt Marlin (Pterodactyl)
Danny Tamberelli (Jounce)
Todd Colby (Drunken Boat)
Brittain Ashford (Prairie Empire)
Jesse Reiner (Jonas Reinhart)
Shonali Bhowmik (UltraBabyFat, Tigers and Monkeys)
Vaz (Paul Erickson, Tyler Nolan, Jeff Moodrian Jr.)
Corn Mo (.357 Lover)
Kurt Braunohler (Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen, IFC’s BUNK)
Dave Hill (Valley Lodge, Children of the Unicorn)
Carla Rhodes (The Continuing Story of Carla Rhodes)
Xaddax (Nick Sakes of Dazzling Killmen, Colossamite & Chrissy Rossettie of My Name Is Rar-Rar, The Hex)
and more!

Tickets are $12.50 in advance, $15 Day of
http://www.littlefieldnyc.com/event/103639/

Krautwerk is curated by Joe Garden (Features Editor at The Onion)
Poster by Rick Martin (http://rickmartindesign.com/)

More Coffee Than I Need

Link arms with bright blue angels
shredded by skylight. Hippie image. Pitch soap squares
across the river at all the medicated tumblers.
Put some sex on the madly luxurious masses.
Feet and guts are a little slippery when bent over
silk bows in a shoe box. Get it right!
A day is the size of all mistakes
someone could make in a year. Add them up
on an Excel spreadsheet. Maybe a tub of glum
will spill into the creepy sink. Maybe.
Let the rotund sludge make the new math glitter.
Just imagine what it means to be anything.

Bill Callahan

Sensitive Skin Magazine

I have a bunch of poems in this issue! That's my name printed on the shoulder of William S. Burroughs. From the editors: "New issue launching April 29: featuring a rare interview of Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg, with previously-unpublished photographs of Burroughs by Ruby Ray, as well as portfolio of some of Ruby's amazing punk shots. Not to mention lots of other great writing, poetry, art and music, in a full-color 8.5 x 11 print format for sale via Amazon and selected bookstores - and of course available for free on the web!"

Days and Nights

The old yellow lights
go spotty and make us edgy--
we don't want to sit in the dark.
We break the morning bread into parts
and wrap them in newspaper and serve them from
the roof of our car next to the highway, gloomily.
By night, we are stumbling
into the pudding field--that's
what we called it. Shoes dipped
in sludge, there is some distinct notion
of the whirling of days, and other
abutments which cause delays.
My modes are lush and pelvic
but not at all what you'd see
in a movie or on the street.
The morning flickers, perhaps
the filament is a disaster waiting
to shape our reading. I'm not sure,
but we are soaking in it, approximately
all day, flickering or not.

10 Things

1) The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard.

2) Forklift, Ohio, Bin #24, Winter 2012.

3) Psychological Anthropology.

4) Emergen-C (Tangerine, New Improved Flavor).

5) Classic Fusion Skeleton King Gold. WTF.

6) Gingerly swabbing with great mechanical effort.

7) i.e. Purple Middle Toe.

8) Tickets to see Julianna Barwick & Grouper at The Guggenheim Museum (Friday, April 13th).

9) Me reading at Pete's Candy Store with Leigh Stein (Friday, April 20th).

10) Alora Ambience Defuser. Caldo.

Sunburn

I was forced to leave my house
for the influx of experience. It was
a turn of events making the eyeliner
smear on the cover of the celebrity magazine.
In one domestic locale, a neighbor
plucks his eyebrows in sunlight
coming through his window. Oh my,
a helicopter sprays blue grease
at the cars below. I'm not at all
hemmed in by my desire or my refined flaws; I
advertise good living like a cop.
Just look at the gorgeous birds on my tour
of the mangrove swamp.
If I stand perfectly still, the highway
sounds like a metal ocean. Surfers
bounce off roofs and these brilliant
blue fish get stuck in the headlights.
By the way, do you know the
small part of my back? I'd like you
to itch the sunburn back there.