Monday, December 31, 2007

ifn the weather isn't the best--happy new year

Aside from the hooting fellow and the bits of feedback off his voice, the sound here is good and man this is a pretty song. I'm going to celebrate what will hopefully be the start of a better year. Hope you (all 4 of you) are brought closer to where you need to be in the obstacle course of '08

Sunday, December 30, 2007

in the spate

and knocking. one eye (aye!) twitches on its edge and continual. this because
clause is not set off with a comma. this twitch has its own concerns, not my vision or distort, distory.
as the hours are smitten with turn
incomplete second. talk about forded swing. like the people list of names just tied. very close to pretty good-may be cross-listed with women
whose hands are washing off bacteria. with unconscious precision they make water noiseless, and make wet the basin.
A news program man said that there are more great fires now and no one mentions war without thinking of a man in an office or walking out of a locker room or in a shiny uniform. it's not as important
to consider what missing limbs or dysplasia contorts the shift-addled mind.
the men and women who come back from the places the television
tells us might be getting better.
Just the new year's fuzz covered cap--the bullets still know where they're going
and babies still get new teeth and keep being born
because life is full of promises and this clause has no need to be set off
as dependant or promoted by advertising

Sunday, December 9, 2007

conti: combustible on the inside

it's really you?
yes, it's really me. really.

So the time has come where I can say I'm almost about to be able to think again, freely. There are a handful of weeks where this luxury is afforded me and what usually happens is

What are you blanketing about, or blanking? why can it be that the coffee stains and the upholsterer are not ever in the same room together. Its outcoming like a weathervane. It's an outcome to be considerate about, and something to hold your tongue for in public.

Once while sitting with 3 other people at a restaraunt I forgot how to talk and then afterwards how to eat. My food arrived and I smiled at it, figeting. A napkin on my lap, the glass of water very friendly and at a comfortable distance. There was noise coming from the mouths of my companions. It was very dark outside. A wonder any of our senses worked at all.

The cost of Christmas trees: $125 on Broadway above the hundreds. The cost of Christmas trees: a large steak knife and determination in penn's woods.

What means of this, discrepancy?
Oh, so really, you'd like a conversation? Noblesse Oblige.

Tomorrow is the last of my paperswimming. I will order a hat full of beer and still have to pay for it. Seriously though, I'm going to be able to carry on a conversation without telling people that "I have to ____." My most common response regarding social and political engagement. This and next week, with handfuls of serious contempt I will wander among the madly shopping throngs and attempt to make wise gift choices for the coming exchange. I really wished I knew what people wanted, or what would make them feel like I knew something about them that most people don't. Though maybe that's just the Ebay commercials that have been on all day seeping into the old noggin. They say it's the thought that counts, but what if you think wrongly about someone, as I'm often prone to doing? It may not be drastically wrong, but wrong enough. Say you have a friend who has allergies to a certain type of animal. You might give that person a picture of the allergy-animal in hopes that their comfort with it in picture form may lead to an eventual change in body chemistry so that they become magically unallergic over time due to their sustained proximity to the picture. A picture to be placed by their bedside, say. And when it's received, none of this information passes between gift giver, and gift receiver so there's a serious mistrust of judgement regarding any further interaction these two people might have. Well, maybe not that drastic. But what about giving a blender to someone who only eats baked goods that are handed to them over a countertop. And what about receiving gifts, like clothing? What do these things say to us about what people think we are? You have to love those notorious aunt hand me down sweaters. What we can become in others eyes, only their cranked up head engines can know. Oh the weather outside is perfect for that hand stitched reindeer antler hat I got for you last year, yeah the one with all of the fiberoptic lights.

And what in hell do you buy for your parents, especially when you actually like them? Someone needs to come up with a giftcard you can use anywhere. Oh, wait that's money. Who really likes getting money over a well thought out gift?

A question to you, then. What is the best gift you've received from someone else? You can do a ranking of sorts if you'd like. I've put away my distrust of numbers for the time being.

Monday, November 26, 2007

in the space of won: fading star: light: a color change

supposedly when the tonnage of hydrogen, or some other gashat that is light and combusted by the machine that is the sun, runs down - there will be an expansion. not like something in baseball or football where a city gains revenue and disinterest, but something grand and luminous and colorful that will engulf this planet and then over millions of years, recede. what was once our small source of pride and pull grows giant and glowing like a bulbous ember and then returns into the echo and fade of itself: a small pale knob slid down the motherboard almost to the off position.

some days are rained out. like this. we wash better when there's reason for it, or because the water's warmer. i have a hard time figuring.

the figures are simple, but difficult because. it will require sound and the wires to accompany. some news. a bit of older. the mirror full of different faces and light. the sky full of things like this.

send word when.
send all the words.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

pre-turkeying a true event: what's been done to prepare you to be thankful?

ready to be large mammal this later week.

I will wear pants that stretch. I will drink lots of water. I will swear the sleeping that happens is necessary and deserved.

Pretty soon this blog will contain a list of things that I want to get recorded.

1. the post-wedding chaos of this past weekend composed with sketches and arrows and a brief synopsis outlining the course of events.
2. composite of the emotional response caused by listening to Jim James sing "goin' to alcapulco" while a dead girl in a coffin gets displayed in front of the town of Riddle, Missouri--her throat cut by her own hand.
3. a manner of dividing time in a fruitful manner--to best utilize it and not feel sluggish and disoriented.
4. the sound of one person waking in the morning and looking at another person who is still next to the original waking person and asleep.

There are many people that I'm lucky to know. Seriously. Thanking them. If you're one, thank you.

Monday, November 12, 2007

learning the music

Like, anybody who plays the piano would thrill at seeing and hearing one thrown off a 12-story building, watching it hit the sidewalk and being there to hear that thump. It's like school. You want to watch it burn.--Tom Waits

I'm not there, he said
his hands thin and fidgety
the treeline quivered.

intended to rain and the sum of another season. here's where it gets:

A cold front meets a warm front on the Atlantic seaboard. There are diagrams, too, to go with it. Watch your televisions. I intended to write some kind of response to a movie I'd seen over the weekend, but sleep is better.

Friday, November 2, 2007

This Friday contains

Traintrip, winehangover, MaddogsnEnglishmen, waterinajug, correlationplugging paperweight, missinreadings, carmovement, planthunger, bagoclothing, coffeecomedown, and thisman'sstare:

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Bear or other? The wilds of Western PA

Which if you have ever seen Deerhunter, look nothing like that movie.





And here's a baby bear:




And here's something else:




Take your pick...Sasquatch or bear or Olson twin?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thrush culled, not the whisper of

You have gone on
again into Casa Video
in your pajamas

& forgotten the name
for whatever cassette tape
could have been brought

home. A handful
of popcorn in your teeth
& the desert

screaming its summer
through the streets, lined
white with orange

blossoms. Your
hesitant steps. A hand
full of popcorn

in the breeze & good
titles for what happens
when we all go off

into the sepia-toned
mountains. Our notion
of silence & what

sayings belong to
the self. A lone wire
hanger in a closet

holding a pair of pants
that can't be thrown out
or given away or worn

again. What can you
say to that door hiding it?
Or what can you quit

saying--pass through
me, too? The moon hung
in the day looks just

out of place, high
& blank in the sky. You know
nothing could suffice.

r.i.p. JA

Monday, October 15, 2007

autumning

When bells have stilled
and the dead tongues of stone
sit named and etched with dates:
an apple gets cored by ants.

When the sun dances
on old headstones, a noose
unravels: disarmed - the rope
comes free from its branch.

Our national time passes slow.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

translated a running stream and repetition of red

Son, I wake up and I’m a fly in the shower, above the water with so much thin and brave diamonds swearing their apology. Stoplight in the relative—his humid mouth and red. The relative red color and the angles of soundless sleep. The alone control, son. Wire, I awake to flight in the downpour—to leave—to go the lines. Plants of consolidation and the jesters of a shoe. O it will be supposed that you remember who, good of timber, it was absent from the hearth. It is a locked month of payments—bathed mouth and the relative red color—the calculation and the platform barriers it. The single direction, wire, from one state to another, developed of individual where we are all levitating in our feet. What it has colored the gas-carried aircraft to go. In the corners sleep one inter-country that is built by one single house. Singed the exits sleep whole numbered and hold onto the hinges. This part is always wide and hot, but none can climb under the reticular mesh, the night—can climb in bottom the grid at night, threads wake I the flight. A piece of clothing that it peels behind. The relative red color I center. Thus red of the stoplight in the relative one—keeping better in the articulations and the important persons. Down it I drip off? Peels that he says it and is transmitted to the sky with small brass band, with small sheet metal music. Put together with beautiful precision.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

It's tired for a sunday nite

or I am.

The spare language we use or save. Here's a description of every thought we've ever had together: blank blank blank.

Diced and snake-eyed. I forget who I'm talking about, ok?

I pay my loans in installments. I wash my dishes with a rough sided sponge. I wish my friends were a constellation I could crawl up next to.

My body was four-sided once and you rolled up to it with your limp and heather. You knocked my ribs around looking for a way in, looking for answers.

Wait, the phone's ringing. Wait, the tapwater's dusty. Wait, there's a stranger handling the door.

My sign is a cramp-handed ego. You're laughing like the grapes have gone drunk. We'll sit in the rain wet shadows with our mouths shut, peeling away the tart skin from the fruits we stole.

Some garden, this. Wait, what are those starbursts on your chest...

Sunday, September 9, 2007

football: damn the eagles' eyes

or maybe not. maybe damn the eagles' special teams players eyes but this does not bode well for the oncoming season. to lose to Green Bay on opening day...oof! it may well be a string of sad sundays. if anyone was wondering, yes, i'm a birds fan, even in this age of player ownership and fantasy decentralization. (and the notoriously injury-prone d. mcnabb is my fantasy qb in two separate leagues--keep that knee safe!) it made me feel good to hear marshall faulk pick the eagles to go to the superbowl this year. it's pretty much a wash for any nfc team, considering the strength of the teams all across the afc, but i'd still love to see the iggles make their way to a loss at the end of the end of the season. who knows? indy and new england could play each other and decimate each other's health and well being leaving only a surprisingly strong looking pittsburgh team, a san diego team which may well have the most individual talent in the nfl and a cincinatti team, anyway, you get my point...the lovely and unproven nfc east will be a battleground--an ugly and low scoring battleground. or it won't be and dallas will have a stellar year and i'll have to get into a fight with dino about this some weekend over an egg, cheese, and ham sandwich and some coffee while my dad tries to figure out who it is that's come over to us and chatted him up for 10 minutes.

when i was just starting my teen years, i used to get dressed in eagles gear from head to toe and as the team floundered, inevitably, i would grow angry. serious angry. stomping and shouting and throwing of things and kidcursing, leading eventually to a change of clothing and a change of channel to the afc coverage while my father hung clothes out to dry (even into the late autumn when the socks and undershirts would take a few minutes of being indoors to lose their hanging shape) and made some kind of meal which we'd house together in between games. usually a pound of pasta that would disappear magically as the day grew dark and houselights came up. most sundays involved a late afternoon nap, sometimes all the way through the second half of the late game. immobile sundays.

and yes, i realize there is no consistency to anything that happens in/on this space. maybe that's too bad, but i like things that shouldn't readily be seen together (like chats about football and a renamed map of the heart) and i like how life produces a vast difference in people's interests.

maybe next will be a list of things that i think other people should like with a comparison to things i like. but who in hell cares about any of that? aside from every magazine that ranks anything according to people's preferences?

i am not a magazine. i like you all, whoever you are. thanks for being here and bored enough to read this. Go birds!

Friday, August 31, 2007

On hearsay and dog fighting or: vick and the dogs and the dogs and vick.


someone said the man should be put in the pit.
someone said the man should not serve a jail sentence but be forced into a public relations frenzy and go to talk to school children.
someone said something must have happened to him as a child
someone said his brother makes him look like a saint
someone said he'll never play in the nfl again
someone said he'll be back next year and he'll have a lot of time to think about it
someone said he apologized and he said he had to grow up
someone said animal rights is a relatively new idea
someone said there are too many people on the face of this planet
someone said its bad to care more for animals than for people
someone said people like him should be tortured

someone said that men in the nfl use their bodies like weapons
someone said there are enough people on the face of the planet being tortured already
someone said if you feel like you're being abused there's nothing stopping you from becoming an abuser

someone said animals don't have souls
someone said who electrocutes dogs
someone said the price of his card has gone through the roof
someone said they're sending his jerseys to clean out kennels
someone said all dogs go to heaven
someone said we need to think hard about what to do about this

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The stagger in heat and misplaced aggression of wind

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

Today is a puddle, muy grande, my face. Say you like it like this and the slapping will commence. I've been living for the summer with no fans and no conditioned air in my home. You may call that obscene, but the occupation of sweating is a good one.

There seems to be a cycle of talk about sustainability among people I know and respect. I can address some things but fail at many...the global economy is cloaked in oil--this affects the cost of production of just about any consumer good--as almost all things need to be transported and produced. The relation of the cost of transport to the cost at the shop may not be one that's always figured in, but it's there and it alters the price of the goods we buy--from food to flat screen tv's. And what's most important to the issue of sustainability, straight away, (and convincing people that convenience isn't always the best option) is cost. The benefits of altering our means of production and consumption may not seem readily accessible to most folk. Hell, it's more money. Look Ma, my pockets are thin. It's less choice. Where'd that mango come from anyway? We'd have to change a bunch of shit in order to make it happen. You mean I can't grab some hormone-injected, cornfed chickin anymore? Nobody likes change. Especially if it means that people will be less reliant on the larger distributors of goods and services, since this will undercut company-wide earnings and throw a wrench straight at the market's ballooning numbers. Oh and where's my retirement going to come from then? And there's really no good way to switch up our energy sources (or our farming methods and means of obtaining food) if the right people aren't concerned with doing this because it's way more fun to swim in money and burn it afterwards.

I know there's a lot of legislation leaning toward greener energy but I know very little about that legislation. I do know that if we continue to rely on non-renewable resources, eventually they run out. That's their story and they're sticking to it. Ah, but it's not close to happening, right? Even though it may not be in our particular lifetime (though it may well be)--this collective stick-to-it-iveness and shrug of non-concern will widen the gap in the distribution of wealth, and quite possibly lead to an utter economic collapse. (Secretly, sometimes I hope for this but don't really know what in hell I'd do if it happened--I can't make fire with my hands and eventually all the lighters would run out...) Why do people keep waiting? Good ol' TJ with the help of a few friends came up with this: "all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." And suffer we have and will continue to: complacency, pharmaceuticals (those fricking confusing Cialis commercials--what do 2 people do in separate tubs outside with no plumbing?), convenience, disgust, war, iniquity...

It's like there's a building burning above us--or better yet, like the whole damn sky's on fire and we're all walking around saying, "Will you look at that, huh?" Oh, chickin little, I'm not generally an alarmist and I'm lazy as the day is hot and long (especially this one), but something's got to give here and I don't want it to be the future. Our future. The future of the neighbor kids and possibly your own. I know that there's no more or less matter on this planet than when it was first globbed together and when we're all fouled up and gone it's still going to be spinning until it explodes but I've got a mind that lets me know it's alright to be alive most days and don't want the people from the future to look back and hate what they have because of us. I mean didn't you all see Terminator? Gawd!

And my prattling has gotten nowhere. Time to go wash my clothes in the river.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could sustain the ideals we carry instead of tarnishing them with counterproductive actions? O, Laundromat, sing me a clean song. One that means OK is better than OK.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Selectively insistent neighbors

Goodnight droopy floorboard and the drag of chests
across you. Hear the train mark its stop from half a block
away and this is a beginner's window--to shop the street
and shout from--"lick me like you like it," or
for the last time "you'll cook this chicken and sing!"

They're rebuilding their doors and plumbing
a flight up. They're rebuking our rights to punch
pigeons that ring out through the walls
and plaster. The pigeons are never grateful.

Another man is bathing in his aches while he
waits for a woman to enter the building.
With all of us here, it's personal. Even
the conversation from the trashbin
and the cars asleep on their curbs.

One woman a block from here likes her feet
tickled. She walks with her hands
upturned and her children are learning
to crawl and curse in unison.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

what does the fool with wings say when he's called a man?

Sat in the back for most of the show. Some guy kept coughing behind me. It sounded like his eyes were trying to make their way out of his body via some cavernous route through his lungs. And then there was all the tapping. I don't know about you, but some thing are almost enough to draw me into a cola fueled frenzy and incessant tapping is one of them. I'll double fist two litre bottles of cola until I'm ballooned up with enough gas and piss that it all comes out at once. Be wary. Don't sit anywhere near me. (overheard on the walk from 83rd to 7th ave)

It was a Tuesday. The sun had just risen over the city's slow buildings. Nobody was minding anyone else's business. Trains were running on schedule and a man with a cane stepped out into the street. There was nothing special about the cane or the light or the man. He'd made this step every morning. He could remember doing it in varying forms. Occasionally he'd pirouette just to see if anyone would notice. There was hardly anyone else out at that hour, but once he'd made a young girl smile and once a gruff young man almost bowled him over and called him foul names.


Your address changes only.
Your address and your demeanor are the only things to change.
Your address and the way you sleep at night and your bones and facial structure.
Your address and the name you're given and the name you take and all of the friends you'll ever have, but you'll never leave them.
Your address and the walk to the bathroom and the walk back to bed and who's there when you get up, but you will never. You will never change.
(overheard on a commercial for skin cream and throat losenges).

Monday, July 16, 2007

Jarmusch in Black and White

[Blake finds a revolver underneath Thel's pillow]
Blake:
"Why do you have this?"
Thel:
"Because this is America!"

Sunday, July 15, 2007

If you listen enough to your tv you may hear a line like this:

ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex



forward thinking requires that there be a behind somewhere. now to think
engines are only pieces of metal and tubing.
when everyone is looking at her, you'll be looking like you're scared.
you also run the risk of very informal organ failure
before using boiled water. more juicy in the atmosphere
they're saying currently on the news.



since i can't put pictures of sex on the screen, and there's enough of it available on screens everywhere:



Friday, July 13, 2007

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Happy Birthday, America!





Many Americans were once familiar with this famous image of George Washington’s tearful farewell to his officers in New York’s Fraunces Tavern in December of 1783. Few, however, were aware that this tavern was owned by Dominican-born Samuel Fraunces (1722-1795), a free black, restaurant owner, and chef, of French and African descent. When the U.S. Capital moved from New York to Philadelphia in 1790, Fraunces accepted Washington’s invitation to be chief steward of the President’s house. There, Fraunces also found time to open a new restaurant on nearby Second Street.











Tuesday, July 3, 2007

In Response: Is Riddle, Is Not Riddle--the day before freedom day

Q: Regarding terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, you said something to the effect that the real situation is worse than the facts show. I wonder if you could tell us what is worse than is generally understood.


Rumsfeld: Sure. All of us in this business read intelligence information. And we read it daily and we think about it and it becomes, in our minds, essentially what exists. And that's wrong. It is not what exists.


I say that because I have had experiences where I have gone back and done a great deal of work and analysis on intelligence information and looked at important countries, target countries, looked at important subject matters with respect to those target countries and asked, probed deeper and deeper and kept probing until I found out what it is we knew, and when we learned it, and when it actually had existed. And I found that, not to my surprise, but I think anytime you look at it that way what you find is that there are very important pieces of intelligence information that countries, that spend a lot of money, and a lot of time with a lot of wonderful people trying to learn more about what's going in the world, did not know some significant event for two years after it happened, for four years after it happened, for six years after it happened, in some cases 11 and 12 and 13 years after it happened.


Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.


It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.



There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.


Yes, sir.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

From Toast to Freedom, Things that might be owed to the french

This post stems out of a conversation I had a few weeks back about a distaste (somewhat joking) for things and people French. Or at least slightly. Once, some years back, and in a drunken fit of homesickness, I left a party and was overtaken in the street by a band of French rogues who threw me to the ground and repeatedly raked my face across the concrete. This was in Pittsburgh, mind you. That being the truth as I told it.

The "truth" aside, I like french toast on occasion and enjoy a plate of french fries accompanied by the loveliest of American cuisine, the cheeseburger. Mmm, get all dribbly just thinking about it. And today I spent a portion of the day wandering around the city of New York with a friend who I've known since those days in Pittsburgh and a friend of hers who had just arrived back in the states from a 6 year stint in Russia (Volgograd and Moscow) teaching English. He is originally from Canada. So being that we were with a tourist, we were viewing things that tourists view (which if you've spent time living in new york, you don't view unless people come to visit from elsewhere--something about self-involvement and mythology could fit here but I'm tired).

Walking across the Brooklyn bridge, we caught a few glimpses of the statue of liberty. Stopped to take pictures of the architecture and the crushing of Miss. Freedom between two Canadian fingers. There was a fender bender on the bridge and everyone walking gawked for a minute. Drivers were cursing and flailing and beeping. The man whose car was hit almost had his driver side door ripped off by opening it into oncoming traffic. The weather was beautiful. High reaching cumulus and just enough sun. Being the front of July, it was unseasonably mild.

The statue of liberty, however iconic and possibly overblown, still maintains a resonance that very few national symbols can hold a flame to. Yes, I know the turn of phrase is cliche and too cute, but there's something to it. The statue is not commemorating our dead founders, it is not a testament to any religion, it is not simply a feat of architectural ingenuity, or a large timepiece--it embodies an idea that, however hollow and not entirely withheld throughout our nation's short years, people can truly aspire to. And the french might hold to this ideal better than we do, but the statue they gave us is not their nation's welcoming mat.

While I was traveling from what is possibly the most powerful part of this city (this city that is known around the world from representations on screens that make it seem almost as large as it is) across dirty water to another part of the city that receives enough waste to build acreage out of that same dirty water, there she was. The green lady with her skirt and her tablet and torch set against a backdrop of white pillows on a pale blue bed of sky. The lady whose name has been whored out on the tongues of many politicians, whose image and meaning supposedly make foreigners hate the people who populate our nation. And she is beautiful. But it's not her fault. It's the fault of the French. With their damn ideals and grace. This is the truth.

And I will not proselytize about my politics, as they're shifty to begin with. I just know that this nation can be better than it is, and this has always been the case. But I would not want to be anywhere else for too long. At least for now.

Happy Canada Day.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Friday, June 29, 2007

not instant crumble

i been spit and slather
i bend, you know
backwards the haven'ts have gatherd
there's noteworthy building
there's conform and formity
i bend, you know
aftwards the gathers haven't happend
lick like the sky is chicken
airplane can be anywhere skyfallen
licked like gorgeous building forward
playback pay, i bend
spit the slather you know
chickens gather just like the haven'ts
have not slipt into blather
noteworthy building there
skyward's the matter
airplane like chicken can be
anywhere falling rather
full of comfort
onto runwayplatter slathered
with land i bend

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

under revision (standard) drab and fickle




In the desperate years & the lean
you can say that you knew me. When
I set up the saggy trampoline, the one
we tried to climb the clouds from.


Sunday, June 10, 2007

Letters to the indifferent interior

My dear B--,

My opinions are many and varied, but the better of them get my pains going. I can hold onto one thing for only so long--say a lighter or the end of a butterknife and then once it's reached the temperature of my hand, once it's come to almost swear itself to my worn skin...something else grabs hold of me. To hang up the coats, or other things unnecessary. I can't say you've been any less distant than the things that line my arms now. There's the small bear made of wood. A halved orange like the moon. The ashen scraps of a picture that used to hold in its frame a visage I thought would never turn those bubbly and distorted colors even if all the fires I contain could wrap their tongues round it.

Summer has made its way into the interstates here--wildflowers and dead animals drape the sides of the roads. I've never been too fond of the heat and they only let the damned fans here spin at an rpm that wouldn't be enough to frighten someone with a quick arm or settle the need of one with the inkling to separate themselves from a limb or smaller extremity.

Balance is the key, or the chief has fed me enough language to believe this day. Enough hot and cold, enough sun and shadow, enough corridor, enough ambling, enough crosses and selling, enough states to capsize the conscious. They're not to switch the meds for another two cycles, so if things seem oddly consistent from my end please don't hesitate to make a mark of it in your calendar and see if you know any better route I can take if they allow for me to take a short excursion. You know my favorite time of year is just around the barking corner. The storms travel swiftly and open spaces that exist between us get filled with light.

Be kind and well,
H--

Monday, June 4, 2007

this man is a fan of burgers

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
long as I got my plastic Jesus,
sittin' on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant,
glows in the dark cause it's irridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna,
dressed in rhinestones sittin' on a
pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I ain't wary,
'cause I've got the Virgin Mary,
assurin' me that I won't go to Hell.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna,
dressed in rhinestones sittin' on a
pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I ain't wary,
'cause I've got the Virgin Mary,
assurin' me that I won't go to Hell.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ending of a month

there be bears about. there be hares and the shouts of little children who spring forth through the woods. i've swallowed pouting. i've clamped my mouth so it hangs down but only so.
you cannot know how hard it is to see the sun go out.

there be wolves here. there be old men in costumes. there be bald and furious women. there be incurable soreness. there be the settling of dusts and aphids. i've hung my rafters high. i've gutted the chapel for its shiny objects. its glass that colors the light. you cannot know how easy it is to let the wind go on blowing.

there be needles dangling. there be fast and doglike panting. there be the catch to breath--a latch to knock back,
all the friends who've never settled their debts.

and we come by the way that we stumble.
and the afternoon is long and slow, it hangs its coat on the roadsigns.

you are no horse to be known that way. i am the atmosphere of delaying. i'll post the bear that i saw in the woods while i walked. i'll not cut back the skin there.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Crow I stole

The caught crow is a dead crow. But it is not in the nature of crows to hide or cower—it is in their nature to gather and to screech and to gamble, in the very tree where death stares at them with molten eyes. M. Oliver

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A prophet's aggregate

The carnival’s set up in the middle of town, or at the mall dependant on what you decide is more central. And the carnies make wishes come true. One boy with an airgun cut a hole the shape of the blessed virgin mother of god out of paper. The pellets he used were handed round church the next Sunday; they fetched a good penny. That boy was a dreamer though, his cardboard hat gave him away. And the gun was only his hand, held up like a weapon. People milled about him anyway asking for favors. All he could do was try to oblige. He half-tipped his hat, fingers light on the brim.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Sandshark I stole

A harmless creature, really. Look at that face. Look at that face. Look at that
The sandshark feeds on the sailor bold Till his throbbing heart grows poor and old Or swallows him down while he's tender and young And laps his blood with a greedy tongue Not where the upland fountains play Not where the timid minnows stay But close by the surf of the mighty deep In the gulf of hell does the sandshark sweep By the devil's reef at noon and night In the alley dark and the bar room bright Quick as the victim comes to the lair He is clutched by the gory monster there What cares he for the sailor's cries For the father's groans or the mother's sighs He has sought that sailor from pole to pole And the sandshark eats him body and soul In the sandshark's haunts there is music heard And the sparkling waves of the bowl are stirred And the siren's lust and the gambler's spell Are thick by the sandshark's road to hell And seldom shall ever the victim pass From the harlot's grip and the demon glass For at home and abroad through every flood The sandshark waits for the sailor's blood

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Singing to the counter


What the voice does when it leaves. What to take from the counter and after signing a sheet to be sure that you will not be adding to the middle of the nation's meth problem. One ID card traded with a handful of electronic money for a small box of little red pills and three packages of film. For when the light does what it likes to around 4 in the afternoon. For the linings of the head that swell and secrete a colorful and viscous fluid. I've swallowed broken plates before. The etching and the metal and now to sing. Now to crack in places natural and understated.

letters to the indifferent interior

Dearest H--,

In light of perfection, everything seems to be less and less full. But that is only an idea at best. And once approached, all of the things that combine to allow for one person to set to rest 27 consecutive batters become distorted--a smearing of imperfections. Nervousness must be kept to a minimum. As must most emotion and excessive outbreaks of light and weather, or peoples voices from the distant backdrop. Maybe it's the fact that a series of imperfect events could lead to something that people would admire. It's a sort of art, a sort of deception.

I hear you have been shouldering a large satchel of complaints. I do not mean to make our former company years any less glistening. Oh what the stretch and yawn of time does to mark things with different light, depending upon one's demeanor. I will not keep instructions in the cupboard anymore. I will not think about the heart as a corridor or what years have stripped the walls of my memory. You are a serious deviant with your speech of the cheif. I can't rightly say what to make of this finding of his, but you had better make your bed consistently and try your sharpest clothes on in front of the mirror to see how slouched you've grown. If you have. I only speak of this from experience.

I am growing poorer by the day. This in a very literal sense and in relation to people. Please disregard any offensive words or actions I may have spoke or enacted in your presence or without it. I cannot stand to lose.

Always yours,
B--

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Temptationation©

Just thought that one up the other time. There was something on the tv. It looked like it tasted like it looked. People spent hours to get it that way and were paid more than other people make in their whole lives to trick us, who are lazy and watching the thing that looks like it tastes like it looks on the tv. People make in their whole lives sometimes nothing of much substance, and others who make less money than those who try to trick us by making things look one way or another sometimes make very substantial things, but neither parts of this statement are mutually exclusive.

Take the copyright © Take the cola © Take the handlebar moustache and Lenny Dykstra's ability to spit © Take alt 0169 and press it close

If someone were to say to you, I'll give you this bloody nose for free or you could bargain for a hand cheeze grater that doesn't work at all.

If someone who makes something substantial decided to quit doing whatever it was they were doing to make the substantial thing a part of our mutually exclusive existence, the copyright could be a great tool.

otherwise, out of the great blue hallucinogenic yonder we would have to smell the things that looked like the tv and make do with eating things that were less than tasteful.

and if someone said 'I'm not so sure of anything anymore,' fumbling like with keys but with their very words ©

Monday, April 23, 2007

Really, Ray Manzarek?


We stuck our heads into the blue canopy beyond. And a lot came from ingesting certain hallucinogenic substances.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

brillo scratch/a special date

later and later and no instant win
the animals licking their places and salt
a baby in the river
a baby under the cover of water

get back, there without
goldenrod, without a fold of wheat
or coffeepot. the picture
says 'because you are one
of our best'

a baby on the television
stroking his gunservice...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Drunken stalkers of the world, your future looks promising!

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man has met and married a 22-year-old woman after, by his own account, dreaming of her phone number and then sending her a text message.

David Brown, 24, says he woke up one morning after a night out with friends with a telephone number constantly running through his head. He decided to contact it, sending a message saying "Did I meet you last night?."

Random recipient Michelle Kitson was confused and wary at first but decided to reply and the two began exchanging messages. Eventually they met and fell in love.

"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson told the Daily Mail newspaper. "My mum and dad kept saying 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it."

Monday, April 9, 2007

post the day, risen inrelatively good spirits, considering things like what this wrestler would wear

best boasts or lauding for professional wrestling:

the hotter than a hammer

struck diamond

better than butter

horny as a bugle

bee’s knees (whatever’s so wonderful)

with interminable quickness

ass-whoop canister-holder of the big noodle

man of many hats full

of colored plumage


(obviously a hat full of feathers, but any costume suggestions?)

Thursday, April 5, 2007

and on April 5 in history


if'n the internet's any kind of resource: welcome down from the water noah's arc and happy birthday thomas hobbes, what would we do without you both? would the water be safe? would the contract be waterproof?


Monday, April 2, 2007

Letters to the indifferent interior

My Dear B--,

The cheif has called and his calling means something. I don't know quite where the lines stop and the noises start but somewhere within my hollow body there happens to be a tick of sorts. A tick and a rattle and the chief suddenly noticed all of my less formidable restraints--the saran wrap stuck to the walls in the kitchen, the lint from my pockets growing into collector sized blue-grey balls. My linings are full of fluff. Even the best parts are stuffed. Oh, but you speak so harshly with your pen. You settle debts with your openings like they're for rent and I've seen worse things happen to people in the street who act in such a disinterested manner.

You shouldn't command so. I'm beginning to question our correspondence almost wholly. But I know you've known the way. I should go better than I most often do. Yet I trust that you will remain a capable guidance in my life--sometimes it may draw a strained voice from me, but know that I know that you know what to know and sometimes I don't and for me that's settling. To know what's known and what's not.

I remember with a fond mind your former life. I remember like it's living still and when we were made entirely harmonious. But the wings of things--insect and pigeon especially--and the clutter we created, it is truly a wonder they ever let us on board to begin with. I'll never sink your shadow. Or rather, the shadow you cast can never get enough of itself over me, even from the distance we keep.

On another note, I've given the phone up entirely. And I've taken to eating. It's almost as if I never knew how before. There is no trouble this time. I wait to hear how and if you are as well.

Yours,
H--

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Grade Change

If you were instructed to do this: to place a letter on how well you take change into your hands and hair and eyes. How would it form and what assessment would you wind up giving your extremities and your poor poor clothing, your one box room, your slow wintering? Oh there I go projecting. The light from the lamp is not set to throw shadows on the wall, to make pictures move. The lamp is set in the corner for doing naughty lamp things.

I found a broken mirror on the sidewalk. This is good I think, but maybe bad luck to take home and place on a desk say or into my mouth. On my hand the reflection of some letters that were written there days before. No cuts. The fake-like fingers bending and pressed together. The skin all one piece except where it opens.

historically things that enter into phases are not.
lists get undone by lines through them.
the letters in my hand are not meant to be shipped.
there's a sad song on the radio and the dashed hopes in bed.
a starling does not stand a chance against the better handled gun.
the nickel is a weapon, too in its witness.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Odd bedfellows I stole (with an observer)



eventually the tiger will grow tired of being kind and playful and the orangutan will grow a beard and my own beard will wander off into the streets to be with the others. hands will shake and grasp. but now, now is the swaying hour of friendship. look longingly after each other.

for in time: water grows still. for in time: eternity knits its brow. for in time: the tigers of wrath come wise and the horses cross and the owl blind but to the heads of things it kills. and below the trees, stray bodies gather

Saturday, March 17, 2007

committed too/tolerence for violence

happy drunken irish day! and in the past the snakes were ridden from a small island and out further from the hipsacks of druids. but several other things had happened.



country shed like a shirt. take my hand
signs and the cold that comes. take my

miles from this year and transfer, there
is no lasting converse/people with their

quiet bodies scrapped, especially at the
workplace. if you intend to lay

claim to thoughts you better
possess another head entirely

formed of instructions for what
to do with them stray and

unkind things--a shaft
of light superimposed

on the window, a whole sky
made of glass and waiting

in accidental lines below. my back
is made of brick and mortar, my

my my my my my my my my
glitch in the recorder. your getting

your used to.
hands in pockets

and kids at war
with the carpet.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Not Good For Transportation

the bus ticket receipt says in big bold letters on its face. the face of the bus says something in a different manner in equally bold letters. the brakes are fire headed things that scream. the windows allow only a little light in. the wheels are relatively round. the music is of people sleeping, their dreams obscene and hovering about their heads. a lay trouble doll gone from one state's smoke filled station to another. in the night and in the day it's a different world and a receipt can not get you anywhere.



insert picture of busses sleeping and people gathered with their angry things outside:






into their faces they're walking already away. go more, says greyhound. and a dog is stuck on its metal outside unable to move and elusive on the highway's shoulder.



you might as well get up. on your way.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Noted, duly.

Directions for Care:

pipes not burst
multi-purpose solution
scores are low
remove deposits
littler up from ground
here is your free
to pay by
may explode or leak
do not carry loose in your pocket
press it here
critics say it must
wolf to keep warm
please submit the name
you're making sick
one intimate portrait
committed to like struggle
obtain your correct address
bustle upsidedown
guaranteed against defects
remove when not in use
a wonderful sense of pace
please read this careful
new way to experience your world

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Say goodbye to Madam Joy

is Van Morrison the third level removed from what killing means?

Offer to
squash lemons by the sung throttle. Goddamn I'm glad I grew
outta that. All night station heaven. On the paper a bundle of words
line up:
clog
clutter
collision
colossal
coma
open their hearts and here
this guy was easy to imagine, but some humans
are given more details. They screw you when you're sleeping.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

reality is the standard or in the immortal words

i meant to make you comfort. i meant
to make you last. --m. koosman

Hopping along the trash-lined street with a moving van idle in the middle of the road, the man with dog-yellow eyes switches voices from the high pitched plead for (drug/change/assistance) to the baritone, post-question, response of, "yeah, ok, ok, i'm doing ok today." He blows his nose in his hand and turns his head toward the ground.

The pigeons dress up for the sky and each other. Lately a lot of irridescent plumage and display of girth by seemingly desperate males toward highly uninterested females which leads to erratic flight patterns. The sky suddenly empty of wings and a line of birds on the cornice, jockeying. And for this, people hate them.

As for me, I continue to toss and turn, sleepless, waiting for daybreak. And this month, the Department of Agricultyre would like to pay you not to grow potatoes, darling (emphasis misplaced on you and not not). Time configured like a wheel, the city roaring its own disappearance. Within this, another turning.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Platypus I Stole


If you live long enough, everything happens--P. Levine
sonorous is a good word

what we do each day

give up & turn for home

a handful of change

lacking thought

a train or other set of wheels

speaking like to the public

we expect to find

a stray and quiet voice

a completely invented life

horsecock and mattress stuffing

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Something I didn't know

Names similar to Tony:
Anthony
Antoinette
Clifton
Sheldon

The first two, yes, I get it. The last 2 names, though, is it because there's a 'ton' in Clifton and an 'on' in Sheldon? If someone called me Sheldon or Clifton in the street, I'd probably want to punch them or throw ice in their shirts.

Letters to the indifferent interior

Dearest H--,

I am unencumbered by happenstance. The scabs on my arms are starting to itch. The skin has faded there, at least the color has died down and I know the scar tissue will begin to rise. It's hard to not peel back in places and see the body doing its mending. I'm looked at with pity here and I hate the eyes of people.

Your last letter had an air of desperation to it. I can count the numberless ticks that crowd my roomate and part of this relates to your telephone experience--the people in the center of this country are desperate for entertainment. I don't care if I sound like a general sweeper. This is something that you should not be concerned with. Wash your windows, keep your books, dance with someone if the mood strikes you. At any cost, however, do not rely on the kindness of any disembodied head to draw you closer to understanding the human nature of noise. And keep your mouth shut for the sake of the good lord Jesus or you run the risk of having your mouth misused.

I am always thinking about the countryside, even when I'm in it--especially then. I hope your days move and you move within them.

Faithfully,
B--

Thursday, February 22, 2007

One Reason Why People Don't Like Pigeons


If your face was a doorway and all of the world could enter and exit through it, would the bird know it didn't matter so much what its waste was? For instance, this child is at such an angle in relation to the ground, it's unlikely remaining upright's an option.

They aim. One picture proves it--like the face on Mars.

What we don't see is the child sprawled out after another step and a half.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Found on a Piece of Paper in my Hand

Things Bad For Business:

-mutations
-toe stepping
-worms
-bullets
-juking & misdirection
-unseemly back hair
-head trauma (while helmets are also a faux pas)

The 12 step program to help recognize the shortcomings of your soul: for those of us lacking something in that special place...

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Continued Weirdness

The train that takes me home is not working on the weekends until March. So I had to take the N to a shuttle bus and back to Sunnyside but while waiting at Union Square there was a man shouting about god (not entirely odd) and his grandmother carrying a gun to church and problems with the deacons and the preacher and guns and the blessings we have just being alive--it made me think of Son House:

Yes, I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church.
Yes, I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church.
You know I wanna be a Baptist preacher, just so I won't have to work.

One deacon jumped up, and he began to grin.
One deacon jumped up, and he began to grin.
You know he said, "One thing, elder. I believe I'll go back to barrelhousin again."

One sister jumped up, and she began to shout.
One sister jumped up, and she began to shout.
"You know I'm glad this corn liquor's goin out."

But I was drunk so there was no singing on my part. While he was shouting, there was another fellow making birdcalls by the payphone. Someone further down the platform was responding to the calls. I had no idea what in hell was going on. So I wound up on the train car with the God shouter--he had a tall can of Magnum and his right eye was dead and set well below his left. He continually gestured with his gun hand and praised loosely our lives. The gun-toting-grandma-church-going-chatter ceased two stops later when he got off the train but further down the car was a man dressed in a Spiderman suit. He must have been a street magician because he did a few little disappearing kercheif tricks and then proceeded to rifle through a rather large suitcase, pulling out balloons and honking horns and flopping a rubber chicken around. He almost missed his stop looking for whatever it was he couldn't find in his trick case. He stepped off the train with a pink star balloon on the end of a stick that popped as soon as he got out the door.

These things happen all of the time, right?

Friday, February 16, 2007

new band name involving animals

there's really only one that counts: anaconda death grip
an acoustic "ballads only" band with metal sensibility

heart heart pigeon is a close contender for the new band name title.
horsewind fury, not as much.
3 tigers is killing.
winter of the stork
llama propulsion
platypus
orphan dog park
jamming the dolphin
armadillo breastplate
breakfast with donkeys