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

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.

Hurricane Sandy Barging Into Brooklyn

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

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

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?

Cluster & Eno - Ho Renomo

Dreaming of Paris

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 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.

Drunken Boat

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

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.

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.

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 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)

Untitled

Untitled from Reggie Watts on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Paul Auster on Writing, Film & Brooklyn

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!"

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.

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.