Saturday, November 22, 2014

Sleep Service

My nickname is "Brooklyn King"
because I enjoy crowding your
century with oud and indigo.
A defuser and then fluffed them
in the hair. I scented the sheets
with smoky and intense. When guests
came over I had them walk through
the scent while moving my arms
in front of them. We all went out
with that smell on us. I am not
kidding at all about any of this.
Red Snapper stuffed with pistachios
or the word "Sunshine" written
on the front of a sweatshirt.
So, just take Queens bound G
to Metropolitan Avenue. It's a short
walk even if you have a shitload
of stuff in your bangs.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Return

Monday, November 17, 2014

Hello

I wasn't going to tell you this,
but my machine erases things.
The old wet flavor is a hotbed of tension.
I can smell fish in here, Dorothy.
There is a swimming pool and a burnt
car here. Burnt rose bushes and the shell
of a house. Actually, living to drink water.
A sailor could be seen that way. Donating
my Sundays to Mondays. Something gazing
at me. We like our people to do
all kinds of things with their free time.
The wreck of pain in persimmon ankle boots.
A leaf falls from a tree at 63mph.
The status of the probe that landed
on the powdery surface of the comet.
Peggy Lee singing "Fever."

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Red Mudders

In Friona, Texas, there’s an iridescent red mud pit that was discovered in 1921 by a group of children playing amid the desert shrubs, in the central panhandle valley near the border of New Mexico. The pit itself is almost 3 acres in diameter with dozens of ruby red tributaries about one foot wide spreading out from the pit like a spider’s legs for a good quarter mile in all directions. The red mud runs in each one of these veins. Over the years, residents have come to refer to it simply as, “The Mud.” The mud is formed through periodic shifting of tectonic plates that overheat the earth’s central crust. This intense friction creates a heat three miles below the surface of the earth, near the magma, beneath which the tectonic plates shift. The heat caused by the shifting is enough to turn the hard oil shale into a liquid which seeps upward to cooler temperatures near the surface of the earth. What comes out of the pit is a bright red, viscous, and sweet smelling oily substance.

Friona has been nicknamed “Sweet Town” because of the smell of the red mud. The scent is very similar to the smell of brown sugar simmering in a pan. This smell is caused by the abundant mineral deposits melding with the stag magma, the same resinous amber clay that is used as a stabilizer in chewing gum. The bright red color of the mud is the result of the cool, dark, iron-rich soil coming into contact with warm oil, which heightens the acid balance at the exit point, making the soil hyper-enriched with iron, hence, its vivid red color. Though the immediate area of the pit is off limits to current residents, many of them have bright red veins of mud running across their property.

Over the years, various attempts to contain the red mud have been futile. In 1948, The Army Corps of Engineers tried covering the pit with 4-metric tons of lime, but the lime coagulated from the warmth of the mud and formed a solid white disc about the size of a kiddie pool in the center of the pit that rests there to this day. In 1932 a geophysicist named Frederick Thomas from the University of Texas in Austin, Texas was put in charge of trying to contain the spread of the mud. He surmised that he could float the oil from the earth through ammonia infusion. Engineers inserted 12 high capacity fire hoses in a circle and inserted them through pipes pounded in by pile drivers 60 feet deep around the pit. Thomas then propelled 500 gallons of raw ammonia through hoses into the pit base. Unfortunately, this operation had dire consequences: 5 men were killed from the ammonia cloud that formed near the pit and all 224 residents of the southern forest of Friona had to be evacuated for a year while the ammonia dissipated. Subsequent years have seen property values plummet, as homeowners struggle to pay taxes on property they can’t even sell. Since the local economic downturn of 1990’s, people in the area looking for a little extra cash dig up buckets of the mud from their own backyards and put cups of it in large baggies. They sell the mud for 50-cents a bag next to local gas stations and convenience stores. They discovered that the mud could be used as a flame accelerant when mixed with charcoal briquettes, making it far cheaper than lighter fluid. During the summer months, when many families are barbecuing, people buy the mud in such abundance that some sellers can make a hundred dollars in a few hours.

The sad part of this geologic oddity is that some local Texans have taken to huffing concentrated forms of the mud. In order to huff the mud, the users mix it with peppermint oil to open their lungs so the petrol can constrict the blood vessels of the brain quicker; delivering a rush that the mud users crave. The first step of the process involves rolling the mint-infused mud into a tight red ball between the thumb and forefingers, forming a plug. Next, a hole is poked with a fountain pen into a white air filter mask that goes over the nose and mouth. They used the same kind of masks construction workers use as dust filters. The user then presses the plug of red mud into the hole in the front of the punctured mask. Once the mask is secured on the user’s face with a rubber band stapled to each side of the mask, the high is delivered within the sealed cavity between nose, mouth, and mask.

There’s a group of 10 Friona area men who call themselves “Red Mudders.” They meet the first Saturday of every month in the back of a dilapidated bar called The Wildcat Lounge on I-60. At both the mud nights I attended, the Red Mudders mingled in the back room around a pool table with their mud plug masks on. It seemed like any other gathering in a bar except for the masks, which looked like they’ve been rubbed with red lipstick where the plugs were inserted. All of the men had red fingers from rolling the mud into plugs. There was a lot of laughter and the usual euphoric, tipsy behavior when they first put their masks on. Several of the men there were known for speaking in tongues while high on the mud. They called these men the “Speakers.” They circled the pool table with their masks on, mumbling and chanting in rhythmic patterns of speech, somewhat like an auctioneer or preacher, pointing at one another, their shouts muffled by their masks. Under the influence of the mud, the Speakers violently thrust their hips forward with a dance-like rhythmic motion that was threatening and seductive.

Both times I attended the mud nights I witnessed one of the men break down and cry like a child; his body heaving while he sobbed into his mask. The other men imitated his sobbing sounds, wailing and chanting through their masks. This idea of mimicry and laughter was a theme I observed at both gatherings. The men switched back and forth between mock-crying, and twerk-like movements. The final part of their ritual cycle involved a unified chant when they all asked, “What do you seek?” over and over again while they pointed at one another and thrust their hips forward. While this did seem intimidating to watch as an outsider, it was always tempered with a palatable sense of compassion. It was clear the men all knew that this was a ritual that would go no further than the room.

A pivotal moment of both nights was when one of the men was picked to stand on the pool table in the center of the room while the other men walked in a circle mumbling toward the man standing on the table. After my first night watching the mud party, one of the men told me that this part of the ritual was known as “the loosening.” The men let out a quick succession of rhythmic whoops, which felt to me like a falling away from words. As one man described it, “When we’re under the influence of the mud it’s like words are just a lot of garbage. We don’t need any fancy talk. We can just be raw and fucking real.” From my own perspective, it appeared that the men were regressing during the “loosening.” One could imagine the same scene in a kindergarten classroom that a teacher had left unattended. Twenty minutes or so after this animated ritualistic period, the men became lethargic almost on cue. Then, everyone collapsed on the floor, in booths, or on chairs with their heads resting on the pool table. The petrol in the mud plugs essentially evaporated (or “flamed out” as they called it) into their lungs and the plugs shrank, hardened and fell out of their masks, allowing the Red Mudders to revive themselves once a few minutes of fresh air had been flushed through the hole in their masks. The whole process began again; the cycle continuing until dawn.

During both of my visits to The Wildcat Lounge, I never witnessed any violence, but I did feel a sense that something beautiful, and absurd might bloom from this circle of men high on mud.

“Red Mudders,” they’re called. God help us.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Do Not Open This Window

Empty flat bed trucks
cause quite a racket on the BQE.
On the delta, the airport goes
all retail. My mistake was bringing
fun into things. I do not want to
meet military dogs and their
wartime handlers. The air is really
sweet to breathe in, but not always.
If someone admits to having anguish
permit them to thrash about. It is
blank o'clock. Bring me amber from
France. Take me out to look at
the lights of Manhattan. Glow to seem
inevitable, all of it, the beginning,
the middle and the end.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Nine Tuesday Essentials

1. Your mode of production, reconciliation and compensation is based on a long outmoded form.

2. The weight of your body is purposefully kept just above the threshold of being liftable by one person.

3. From the vantage point of the roof it is easy to embrace the illusion of understanding what you see.

4. Perspective isn't everything, it is a distraction most of all.

5. See how long you can avoid what needs to be done with the many distractions at your disposal.

6. There won't be any time for the serious stuff once you measure from here to the end of your life.

7. The devices we use to see each other are a bit glitchy and unkempt.

8. Remember "playing store?" They were preparing you even then for the inevitable.

9. No one can help you understand what needs to be done from here on out.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Monday Poem

What appears to me now
appears to be gone. It is old NY
under my arms. A closely watched
aroma of meat is thrilling on the grill.
The angry falcon is in the van
with our hero. Where there used to be
woods there is now only a map of those
woods. I ate her pudding. I had one idea
today. Typical audience members
at the advanced style screening
appear to be throwing their hats at
the door before they come in.

Friday, November 07, 2014

Goof Off

I would like to extract from you something
both bewitching and beguiling. By way of a reductive
pose, I would like to enable you to squirm
a bit when I enter the room with my bangs
and cordage. Perhaps if I placate your desire for
an instant, you'll be as bold as the machines
revving up in the dark. I'll bring you fruit
sprayed with lime juice and perhaps then
you'll see a way out of your synapses snapping
at each other like wild dogs. Let me help
you make a connection in the disco with a shovel
and a bucket of something creamy. I'm legally
purposeful in most instances, let alone during
these unstable weather days when the bloat
from salt takes away your vascularity. Hum
a melody to me as I do things for you.

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

I'll put a jewel in your name

The Space Above the Ceiling

I just got here so
I don't know anything.
Sun splendor at dawn
is one thing, I'll start
with that. Oh, and electric bacteria
in outer space, that's another thing.
Out in the open, the dear world
vibrates on a broad bandwidth. 20 uses
of water include: bathing, cooking,
and transportation, so there's that.
Nothing was really happening
except "do not open this window."
Last, but not least: people with
good memories are scary to me.
I'm going to vote now.

Saturday, November 01, 2014

Community Bookstore reading (10.28.14.)


Photo by Alex Edwards