Minnesotan Ice

Eyes Closed (Invisible Poem)

2011-10-22T23:55:00.002-05:00

Writing with eyes closed again again, always our eyes are closed, and we admit it, unlike those people who say "my eyes are open" as if to indicate experience, wisdom, an awakening. When we are born our eyes are closed, like puppies and kittens, and our metaphoric eyes remain closed to certain things in the world. Who can stay fully awake every minute to every beauty, every injustice in the wor(l)d? Who can possibly see everything with out flinching and learn to tell the tale and life and still stay true to oneself, to one's humanity? We must keep our eyes closed sometimes: to pray, to sleep, to contemplate, so why not to write our dreams and prayers and hopes and not to worry if anyone can read them?

Blank (An invisible poem)

2011-10-22T23:54:00.002-05:00

My mind is blank, is a blank
is a blankety-blank, a blanket,
wet, a blank page, an expletive blanking
out on itself. Blank you. Thank you.
Spank you. Flank you. I digress.
All of life is a digression, at least the
interesting parts are. I digress, I profress, I
am less a success than a mess, espec-
ially writing this messy invisible poem where
my words step all over one another like a
bad dancer's toes or a dancer's bad toes,
running out of space as I run out of words
and out of paper.

Clouds (An Invisible Poem)

2011-10-22T23:52:00.003-05:00

Grey clouds in the blue sky, last thing before I close my eyes, Think think about the metaphor, about what is not clichéd about how to express twilight and how to talk about clouds. Judy Collins said I really don’t know clouds at all and I think of that I say that every time I’m on an airplane. It sounds kind of silly to say that. What’s too stupid to be spoken is sung, said Voltaire but why is it so stupid so say you don’t know or don’t understand clouds, really understand them, not just meteorologically. I don’t understand as a poet, how to talk about them, how to be new with clouds. I am not stupid, just a poet who is struck by grey clouds in a dark blue sky at purple twilight.

--Written with my eyes closed, September 23rd

Authenticity, Bah!

2011-10-22T23:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, so this is why I don't get very many books read, especially when I am trying to do research. I read 3 or 4 pages and then I have to stop and write 3 or 4 pages of commentary that turns into a blog. This time, it is about the return, always the return, to that infernal word:

Authenticity.

I can't tell you how many times I have read about poetry slam and the authenticity of the author/poet's voice and how the strength of poetry slam is from that authenticity.

Humbug.

I thought that we had long ago abandoned the modernist notion of an authentic self, a holistic sense of identify that you could point to and say "this is me." I thought that long ago, for example, black feminists had said I'm black and I'm a woman and I come from a certain socioeconomic class and I have an urban or a rural and a northern or southern upbringing and all of these things go into making me the multifaceted person that I am and sometimes several of these things come into conflict so I sometimes have divided loyalties and so I don't really have a stable subject position from which I can speak. Then again, about 150 years ago, Walt Whitman wrote Do I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself. For I am large and contain multitudes.

This was my problem with poetry slam 15 years ago, when I dabbled in it. I saw this functioning as well. People pimping out their identities as a woman, as an angry (or depressed - take your pick) college student, as a gay man, as a grandma, as a Latino, etc. etc., giving the audience what they want to hear, spewing out cliches in the process. When I did my bitch feminist poems I placed. I took home money. When I did poems that were not only more complex, filled with more original images, were metaphorical and lyrical and also were performed every bit as well, I got lukewarm scores. (Not responses however. The responses I got after the slam was over, were generally very positive, dare I say, fantastic.)

Besides which, it's a poetry slam. Poetry. Poetry is about imagination and images and language. What you write about is not as important as the way you write about it. You can go ahead and write identity work, write political work, write about -- heaven help us -- flowers. I love to quote Bryon Gysin. Writing is 50 years behind painting. As long as we insist on some kind of authenticity of the writer's voice and experience instead of on the actual work, daring to do abstraction perhaps, or at least mess with the conventions as visual artists have done, we will continue to be 50 years behind painting.

I did a project a few years ago on the Iranian-American artist/photographer/filmmaker Shirin Neshat. I read a quote from a Turkish artists who said that the non-western artist, the "other", is always playing catch-up. It is assumed that they will always be one step behind. When artists in the west had already moved on to abstract work in painting, they were at the same time praising middle eastern artists for painting nudes. This is the assumption that there is a natural evolution to art and culture, so nonwestern artists must paint nudes, their culture must be advanced enough that they can paint nudes, before they can do abstraction.

This would seem to be the case with poetry slam. Many in academia praise poetry slam for getting young people to care about poetry, praising it for giving a voice to "marginalized groups." Fine. Good. But I think the problem with getting young people to care about poetry has been the presence of poetry teachers who were somewhat lacking. Who looked at poetry as a higher art and too good for the common person. You were supposed to read poetry for the same reason you were supposed to eat broccoli. You could have been doing ass-kicking poetry readings for years and it would have encouraged students to read poetry.

But we are perpetuating and praising poets for doing what post-modernism (and in some cases, it's parallel movement post-colonialism) have said is not possible. If there is always a doubled consciousness in post-colonialism, what self is the most authentic? And ultimately, does it really matter? The exploration of the fractured, doubled, shattered self, in fractured, doubled language, in imagery, is so much more interesting than trying to create and perform an "authentic self" for the masses. And how condescending to the audiences of poetry slam to assume that creating a populist poetry means that we have to give people what we think they want from us, to assume that we have to "dumb down" our poetry for them and save our good, "literary" poetry for editors of literary magazines, for people who can appreciate them. I have seen more than one poet who has good, difficult, beautiful poetry refuse to read those poems before a slam audience, choosing instead to do easily digested work that they know will go over well.

My critique is not of the poets themselves (at least not entirely), but of the people who perpetuate that system -- the academic, the promoters of authenticity in the form of slams, Def Poetry Jam, those who perpetuate a worn out system of reference that condescends to audience and poet alike, that continues to keep them at arm's length, always one step behind the "innovators," rather than encouraging poets to do what poets ought to do best: to create new and fresh images for our time, using our references, rather than cliches of what they see on television of what they think the audience expects them to be, which is someone else's version of authenticity anyway. Poets should be experimenting with language, taking us to new levels of seeing and understanding, rather than to perpetuate the old, the given, that which we have already been living with.

Assonance/Aliteration Poem

2011-10-22T23:48:00.002-05:00

This was a poem inspired by Charles Bernstein and Bernadette Mayer's Experiments List. The name was inspired by a typo.

Aliterature

Any angels ask about Anna?
She said several sang sonnets
to the trembling, tumultuous tides to
sooth some semblance, some serenity
to them. Trying to talk
without words was wearying. When we
danced, did dainty
pirouettes, people probably panicked.
Were we worried? Weirdly,
no. Nothing noticeable, nothing nullifying
happened here. Happiness heralded hope,
I instantly insisted. If I instigated
more meanderings, moving mountains
by burrowing, borrowing (Burroughing) black boulders,
then time tilts toward
forever, flying fancifully
alongside an angel.

WWW

2011-10-22T23:46:00.003-05:00

When we were writing, we went where we wouldn't
wither. Wildly wanting words, we waited
while wandering. Wolves with weird women
waded, weighted, waited. Weavers wove while
wrenches wracked, wrens warbled. Whole world
working without, while whistling whispers.

This poem is based on an internet acronym. This time I chose www. Previously I did a poem called OMG. Maybe I'll do a whole book of internet acronym poems. Whaddaythink?

Excuse Poem

2011-10-22T23:46:00.000-05:00

I forgot where I parked my car.
The police came and towed it
away. I lost my keys.
I lost my license. I
forgot your address.
And phone number.
I got lost on the way there.
I ran out of gas. I
couldn't see in the dark
because my headlights
were broken. I turned
around and went home.

I will call you when I get there.

Poetry After Auschwitz

2011-09-17T15:38:00.000-05:00

Poetry After ~~Auschwitz~~ 9/11

I.

Theodor Adorno after the atrocities of World War II were made know to the world, said “"To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric." Many scholars and artists have taken up this idea and rephrased it as a question, or a collection of questions. What is the responsibility of poets in light of such barbarity?

Certainly poets were writing poems at the time. It is what poets do and if you are a writer, for many writers, it’s all they can do in the face of horror. There were all kinds of poems and paintings recovered from people who died in the concentration camps. Many of the images were horrifying, but the artists who painted and poets who wrote could not cease to tell us what they saw. They must leave something behind.

For the survivors, certainly, poetry provides a kind of succor for the soul when we find ourselves among such uncivilized cruelty. Perhaps it shouldn’t. Maybe that’s what Adorno meant. Maybe we have to right to give ourselves comfort at a time like that. Perhaps we have to just face the facts, as horrible as they are, with no window dressing, no images – horrible or beautiful – to ease the blow. All we deserve is journalism: a straightforward telling of the facts.

In fact, there are usually any number of heartfelt but terrible, sentimental, moralizing poems and stories written after a horrible event. We are too grief struck to be able to process it all. Our emotions come out too easily. And while people associate poetry and art with emotion, it is not true that we can write poetry and do it well when our hearts are on our sleeves. Poets, like everyone else, often need just a little distance to make sense of what they have just lived through. All they can really do is to record images of what they have seen, a kind of poetic journalism. Not a straightforward telling of the facts, but a mishmash of those images, all churned up and mixed up, ready to be sorted out by critics and academics down the line.

II.

I would not even begin to compare the events of 9/11 with Auschwitz, although the aftermath of 9/11 may very well be comparable. But to compare the deaths of 3,000 people in one day with the systematic extermination of millions over a period of 10 years is an absurd proposition. But there is no doubt that it was a tragic day that still lingers for many.

I started out writing this not because I want to write about 9/11. I’m actually tired of writing about 9/11. It has permeated my very consciousness and it seems that I am unable to write about anything else, overtly or inadvertently. Many of my theatrical concerns, including the inevitability of death, which I dealt with in Antigone, and the horrors of confinement and uncertainty, which I dealt with in my Guantanamo demonstration, have come directly from thinking about 9/11. Recently, when I tried to write a manifesto about myself as an unruly being, it turned into a meditation on 9/11.
And in fact, I had already written about September 11th years before it ever happened. In my poem, The City, written in 1998, I believe, I had written:

Window frames
hang heavy like fenders bent beneath truck
tires, sidewalk shattered. I could be
anywhere. Belfast.
Oklahoma. Beirut.

It didn’t take, for me, a whole lot of imagination to make the link between the abandoned American city and the images that I saw on the news. It didn’t take a huge stretch to imagine that our cities could one day be like other war-torn areas. My inclusion of Oklahoma City was one way to make that connection.

I wrote as much as I could for five days. I wrote again, six months or nine months later or something like that, when I noticed a guy in my neighborhood and developed a fascination with him. I did not write in the interim. And I did not write poetry for some time after – maybe a year, maybe 2 or 3. I don’t know if I didn’t write, or if I just didn’t write anything that I considered good. Maybe I never really stopped writing. But I perceived that I had stopped.

Years later, when confronted with Adorno’s edict in graduate school, “to write poetry after Auschwitz in barbaric,” even though I had rejected the notion, that was exactly what I had done. Faced with horrors that my emotions that the core of my being could not and might never process adequately, I had stopped writing poetry.

III.

One of the standards of poetry is that you write in images. In metaphors and similes. This is like that thing over there. But there was no point to writing in metaphor. The entire experience was real and metaphoric at the same time. It was a strange otherworld. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t. I would wake up several mornings over the next six months in a panic, thinking I had just woken from a dream, that none of it was real, that I had made it all up.

For myself, without even being aware of it, without saying it consciously, it felt like at once it was such an overwhelming experience while at the same time, these were images that were all too familiar. They had become stock photographs. The broadcasters on the radio in New York that day kept saying this is like a movie, this is like a movie. And I thought, and said out loud to no one, no this is like television, this is like the news. This is like what happens every day in the rest of the world.

And it was true. We had already seen those images in our own country and around the world: the fireman carrying the dead baby from the child care center, the bomb in Beirut that was so strong it burned the patterns of the sheets onto the bodies of sleeping marines.

What use is there for metaphor when those images are so powerful on their own? Does poetry serve any purpose that journalism doesn’t in such a case? Does it help us to understand it any better to say this thing is like that thing? Or is it still incomprehensible, not to our conscious, rational, intelligent minds, but somewhere deeper, in that place where poetry touches us, where it works on our irrational, non-rational, subconscious mind?

IV.

I’m teaching poetry and in the process, I am slowly starting to write poetry again. I am revisiting my old poems which I haven’t really pulled out and looked at seriously in 7 or 8 years. Every once in a while I pull one out to submit somewhere to get published. But to seriously look at the poems, to even perform them in public, hasn’t really happened in a long time. I found myself, on this, the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, despite all of my attempts to ignore that day, thinking about the legacy it had had on me, as a writer and as a person. I wanted to revisit Adorno, to see I could make any sense out of my experience through that quote. I wanted to think about how a poet comes back from terror to poetry.

Manifesto of a Modern Woman

2011-09-11T19:50:00.000-05:00

I did not set out to write about 9/11. In fact, I have been studiously avoiding it and all references. But still it comes out, even when trying to write about something else! So here are my thoughts, as usual, interspersed with other things, on the 10th anniversary.

I have been experimenting with using strikethoughs to show choices that I have made in the text, so I am using that technique publicly for the first time.

I am made up feelings, not memories. I do not live in the
past if pressed
I can summon(s)
the memories, ~~remember~~ the moment the men
in suits covered in soot slow as statues in hardening cement
walked up the streets the
disappearance of a building the
long lines to use the anachronistic pay phone in the park
sees and says strung together like tin cans
across ~~states~~ a continent but I ~~prefer to~~ let memories
fade in favor of feelings the tears that come forcefully on hearing
siren after siren after siren song the sun shining in my eyes
the darkness in my lungs the feeling of not taking abreath after breath.

~~I am made up of feelings that don't face of love anger courage.~~

I am a woman who is made of feelings once attached to memories that must fade, shed like an extra skin, an old layer, no so much to make me new, but a skin shed, no longer needed, so that I can ~~live~~breathe.

Experimental Poetry Class in Minneapolis

2011-09-04T03:46:00.000-05:00

Always wanted to be a poet, but can't quite set the words to paper? Write that Great American Novel? Are you an experienced writer who just wants some new ideas?

In this class, we'll use some unique techniques and prompts to generate material and get you writing - whether you think you can or not. You will leave with two to three new pieces of writing each week and a wealth of ideas for even more!

Wednesday, September 28 - October 26 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Cost: $95 for 5 weeks

Minneapolis Community and Technical College
1501 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Follow this link to register or vist Minneapolis.edu and click on Continuing Education to get started.

http://mctc.augusoft.net/index.cfm?method=ClassInfo.ClassInformation&int_class_id=2527&int_category_id=1&int_sub_category_id=4&int_catalog_id=0

2011-06-06T11:01:00.000-05:00

That with gentlest time you know

I too, I too, came from the desert

Into the light of this imperium.

Why settle for steak when Amaretto will do?

2011-04-05T15:11:00.003-05:00

Synonyms shaped by counting backwards from one hundred.
Girls out of school laughing at traffic.
Lung flume on a cigarette plume.
I could cover this up but it would still look like hair.
And some muscles flex only when the subject is recumbent.

2011-04-04T11:52:00.002-05:00

spectroscopic vortex. eyes on america. the unknown woman.

having an unpleasant talk with you this evening. the moon sinks.

statements on a theme of poverty and responsibility.

natreous participation. that was an infernal Fury shifting in her sleep.

fighting other countries for fun and profit. that seated queen.

seeking love in the springtime. three dancers with the guts to try.

american traitor. household word for destiny. the house of thieves.

battlements, someone up there waving a flag with the color of good news.

one cut and the enemy falls. nine more blows, and the empire falls.

someone cropping up with the plague and banished into the forest.

we are in our cups, indigent and sinking fast. everyone’s here at the party.

margrave, his mouth filled with glitter words. pontiff jumping off next.

sell me your deserving calumnies, I have the gold. a kiss of good fun.

she was all gray but the moon rose. he was in flowers but misfortune.

the house collapsed. playing a bad hand across the table.

where was the recluse monk when we were looking for him.

no time for a visit. get on your horse before the worse weather comes.

everyone sees. we don’t have daylight to guide us. specious fears.

I have what you’re looking for. bearing in mind that you wake up more now.

mashiach comes but once a year. he carries the eternal Om on his brow.

marked with the sign of unexpected windfall. her Amazonian beauty.

abbreviated

2011-04-01T23:44:00.001-05:00

into the
swampy swampy
change in temp
collated

there we made
promises
there were
projections

into the
sifted sands
a periscope
held in place

so that clay
came
assurance for
why it didn't last

substance insubriated
phrases left
when others
washed away

Accipe, quod cupis e me intelligere, qui sint regis et Gallorum mores, et quare primates et populi Insubriae tam iniquo eos animo ferant.

Receive what you want to know from me, those royal matters of the Gauls and their character, and why the nobles and people of Insubria bear such injustice in their soul.

couplets to the blowing snow

2011-03-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

dress warmly
retrieve compensation

receive penitents graciously
amazed but for dispensation

statements founded in calumny
break the code with elation

makes me seem sort of scary
there’s no accounting for intention

makes you pee your pants with glee
sin is a matter of pronunciation

as seen by four poets

2011-02-27T23:59:00.003-06:00

Who washes slowly
Simplistically stump
Rounded a bird white
Flipping interest stiff.
Fix my humor -- in
Marzabotto I met a
Dead man singing
An alien language.
The bells of your
Mountain temple
Are ringing, again.

--

Who is who as washes slowly.
Who was as washes. Who knows, washes.
Stay round, who is bird. Waits as bird on stump.
If a bird, if only bird, if as a bird waits and round.
Do you know when animals speak.
Do you settle for the white birds when they speak.
Show me that the animals speak.
Show me when the birds speak.
Start with a round animal. Stay stiff together.
Not asking the right questions this time.
Who knows who knows when animals speak.
Who know when animals are speaking.
From here to the stump is a white bird.
There is no space for telling. For asking.
The right questions about a white bird.
Knowing settling. The bird of soul of speaking.

--

Any of the following sentences contributes to the sense
of the policeman called to the scene. Arranging for
the rounded bird to land on a broken plate with nothing
by a simple stump, this is enough to telegraph your answers
to you, from Tuscany, a fortune waiting for you
in terracotta. She was plodding up the hill behind me,
I said, "You and me we're not like birds, we're like animals
with sharp claws and fangs, but nobody stops trying
to understand our language." A periodic table of rips
and screams, hung up in a mildewy cave. And holding
a demon-figurine, but it whispered like a neighbor that
it was coming awake so just sit still. Bestirred empty
where the bird was flying. Nobody spoke his name.
Stooped in front of us and explained they broke his head off.
In Italy some of us heard a song coming to us from the hills --
when we asked a local wine merchant about the sound,
he had a funny answer. And, holding up the shunned piece,
everything she knew of liquefaction and solipsism suddenly
came out, and we were forced to leave the ruin just then.

--

staple action
a how with a sip
wing up
seriatim punk
languid
in the outer cusp
if a weightlessness
big on a wave

a slogan for Valley Forge

2011-02-18T09:53:00.000-06:00

this fellow's feet

2011-02-16T12:35:00.001-06:00

it is not essential

but

look it up in the cards

circling the issue

2011-01-28T16:02:00.000-06:00

A range of emotions,
informed by the usual
suspects:

...Nude Formalism...

...Diarrhea trapeze artists
( Don't Look Up )...

...Whaleskin daddies
subjugating the street
with a criss-cross patter
that brings the rubes
and truck drivers in
night after night...

All were waiting to ask
their questions,
but the guru was fading.

And in the end we were
holding a nightmare
in our hands, shape
of a collapsed balloon.

2011-01-21T16:47:00.001-06:00

Had based your words on imagery—
They slipped away and crusted to the street
Outside your window—haven’t you heard
That Shakespeare only wrote lines
When he could infuse them with philosophy?
And your images are creaking in the cold.

12/20/10

the donut store still disappoints

2011-01-19T17:08:00.000-06:00

the donut store still disappoints—
bears were seen in the woods nearby.
a chocolate cruller was my dear
her eyes so brown, but she would not stay.

hoofing it to the music of the spheres
at 10¢ a dance—where does the time go?
I wouldn't dream of coming in from the cold—
just give me one good reason why.

1/14/2011

2011-01-17T11:29:00.003-06:00

don’t like it only
because it now
has apostrophes—

the matches sound
like beats in a robot’s
chest cavity.

10/12/2010

She steps on air with her eyes

2010-10-29T00:55:00.000-05:00

It has structured eyes. A delay.
In time. With her eyes.
Out, where she in the widening air
brings down the structure.

But she knows that possibility
lacks in the light-dark time.
Darkening, the bell was made of time.
The sighs. Delayed.

The nuanced look
and her steps for the gone bell.
Her night looked to the architecture of passions.
The bell widening.

A footbridge for the wind
in this gone night.
Moving the crossed eyes of possibility to her?
Almost was wind. Moon. What is gone. Her shaking.

The night lacks by widening.
See her structured night.
Passions nuance for beautiful.
Almost whistled with her eyes closed.

SPARK 10 - Online Art Collaboration

2010-10-28T23:00:00.006-05:00

Open to writers, musicians, and visual artists of all kinds, SPARK is a participatory creativity event that takes place four times each year.

The project’s rules are simple: Writers send their partners a story or poem; artists send an image of their painting, photograph, or sculpture; and musicians and video artists send either a file or a link to their work on another website. Then, over the 10-day project period, each person uses their partner’s piece as a jumping off point for new work of their own.

Read more.

My contribution with BR Belletryst.

nothing wrong around here

2010-10-19T16:23:00.005-05:00

Nothing wrong with the old beet.
Hazard a guess or throw us out.

You have a noxious look on your face.
There, that’s done, we’re quit of the place.

coming out of general anæsthesia, 9/21

2010-10-14T16:03:00.002-05:00

Beep. Bands santos. Shape
Out of sound presenti
Ment. After capital post
Sensation. A beautiful day
Was in store. If only they
Had amputated sensations.
But doctors know the kind
Of strange stories to tell.
What narrative will get you
In the door, the right reaction.
Call it bedside manner,
But that comes with practice.
A breath. Beep. Your blood
Pressure could write this
For you. Observe the cuff
Anchor kind of fortune-
Telling. And you were
Thinking this would
Shadow a kind of hall
Ucination process?
No time for hypnagogia,
I’m afraid. And pompia
Comes broken, Mercury
Out of practice, we’ve
Automated most proce
Dures: he even has his
Caduceus lit up in neon
Outside the clinic.
Weather changed before
I could change. And look
At the condo’s exterior
Lighting. O my heart
Beat comes across
Like a laugh and they
Have me still linked up,
A dressing gown. I wish
I had more interesting
Thinks to report—only
Coming out of anæsthesia,
From a deep “faux sleep.”
Keep breathing. Beep beep.
But things seem posit
Ively sterile. Shoot my knee
Cap out. Again. That’s a
Sign that somebody doesn’t
Parallel the writeup.
Maybe marketing is the
Answer. But general
Anæsthesia is less a
High and more a
Process you need to
Wake up out of.
Latex polyrhythms.
We need more circum
Location. Should be
A blank slate, saw nothing
In “faux sleep.” Carrion
Words out of the temporal
Stance that surgery
Always induces. Who are
These people? --Lie low--
Don’t let dogs or other
Pets jump on the affected
Area. This isn’t a kind of
High I would recommend
For hypnagogic visions.
Crepitus. Focus. Sideline.
How does surgery make you
Think of all the ways
That summer helped us grow.
Oh but the cuff. Didn’t move.
No tension. 167/89. 78.
134/95. 69. Vitals. Not
Enough drugs to make
Any of this interesting . . .
Don’t be running
To your shop for a
Clandestine vicodin fix.
The typographic pipe
Is all that holds me apart
From the high blood pressure
Reading. Humorless meter.
What did  the Romantics
Have that the world needed,
Anyway?

HORTICULTURAL SUBJUNCTIVE (2)

2010-09-09T13:38:00.003-05:00

(What the prophet before them said:)

My Lord has eaten the apple,
Has breathed the breath of the rose,
Has withdrawn his guidance from the garden,
Has come before many without state or girdle.

Behold God, you little state! He beckons
Where you behold, he falls
Where they sin and ignore the words.
The state, the nations lie about.

Upon my prayer I commence my travel
On the threescore way.
I cast my leaves unto the earth
That remains. Gladly do I withdraw.

God’s lustre echoes with his great voice—
Not with the great roars of lies!
It is the leaf that single falls
And becomes language.

Those who smell the just,
See the rose as rose,
As when without Babylon
The superfluous rivers were sealed.

You roar, many-to-many! A single king
Holds ash for his hated brethren!
The flower which smells superfluous
And turns with trouble into newspaper.

The little ones, many, too many!
Yea, unto the rest I have devised an evil.
My Lord has eaten the apple,
Has breathed the breath of the rose.

Upon Babylon has the Lord ofttimes looked.
And He commenceth to rend the evil ones.
The palace’s chambers are black to behold,
Peopled with unregarding souls.

From their foreheads up to the loose stones above
I shall tie a girdle, and fence around their souls:
I open up this wisdom, but they are ignorant,
Though lustre is seen, the good language heard.

It is the leaf that single falls and becomes language.

See, two-by-two may we neither
Enter the ark, nor should this be
The way of man. Nor commencing
On the work that tries mens’ heads.

Devil: your seat of sin is yet upholstered with the language of God.

Your seal is the will of the Almighty—
Vomit it out! Will it! O servants!
You devised these sins yourselves.
This remains for your servants to perform!

O my sealed partakers!
They are loving—or are the inventors
Of their age. Open this which gives
The children their nations.

He saith “Let your reason be upon your foreheads.”
Alleluia! Your Lord measure these,
You are neither before or after
These short-sighted people.

Partakers sin, yea,
And still I shall abandon them.
Still your seat of sin
Is gilt with the language of God.

As with men, bile-for-bile.
Pray for the irreplaceable one
Concerning their allure, themselves.
Yea, of all this bad: scuffle.

Verily, now in one state, now in another,
I say many are the days that gladden
The followers, that my single single word
Was created for an admiration.

It is the leaf that single falls,
Gladly so, the rose and the ones who roar,
Who whisper, the biting ones, and those
Who praise these inventions, devised around Babylon.

(August 28, 2010; from a collaboration with Amy Souza)

2010-08-30T22:09:00.003-05:00

ITHYPHALLIC RONDO ALLA TURCA
With a tusk we make ready, for the push
that falls along the roadside, battle
precious trimmings fleeced by the merchants
lining the way. We have a different plan.
All it takes is a little shrewd observation.
Nothing more devious than that. And they’ll
never know what hit them. Staked out.

notes from the ashram

2010-08-30T20:31:00.004-05:00

sludgy tranquilizer troglodyte seeping spider washing away the yells
pacified with gelatinous bonds of tidal wrack and apprehensiveness
shave your sherpa strand your sheik observe the appliances of the gods
since the rage for atmosphere made our little commune in the clouds impossible

the disputations have become empty, the nihilists looking for new ways
to address the banality of existence, since it’s now de facto, legit
we have no room for enlightenment since the shops came here, the customers
are always in a state of monied nirvana, I would have given up before this season

but the layout’s too damn good, it stands to reason that an open mouth
will speak some wisdom eventually, and don’t get me started on the food here
it’s outrageous, the way the enlightened fathers treat us, the invisible saints
have gone clean over to capitalism, again with the bottom line, and tax

incentives, I can’t stand to say it again out loud, but then it’s your
dime, I’ve got mouths to feed, in this world and the next, my sister out there
shaking her prayer-beads for the German tourists, it’s phenomenal,
I hear them tell her, never seen something like this before, and now you ask me

if there’s another ashram that offers this kind of treatment, I’ll have to
tell you no, there’s nowhere else in the hills, especially not one with
a fleet of medivac helicopters and 24-hour on-call doctors for treating
altitude sickness and communicable diseases, for gods sake I almost feel

like I’m a native now, and my visa expires at the end of the year, so throw
euros or dollars, if you feel moved, in my begging cup, I’ll read your fortune,
you wont be disappointed, I’ve got this hernia from carrying logs up from
the valley below here, we all pitch in, I could have gone in with the Essenes,

would have been less work, so they say, but that’s karma for you, I don’t
cry about it much anymore, it’s part of pulling samsara, the mortal soul
evaporating out of my eternal essence, I have a line of incenses I think
you’ll really like, organic, they truck them in from Dushanbe, now that’s

a real cesspool, but they have enough dead brush to go around, aromatic,
I only wish they saw some of the profits for what they pick over there.

8/24

स्वप्न

2010-08-23T17:45:00.006-05:00

(svapna – sleep)

shim and a listening the letter S come from somewhere else
no spiders for tennish or elevenish shoes that wait around
it’s a funny symbol for typos and irrelevance mnemonics
not much it’s a callous word nobody wants creation anymore?
simpering widgets bearing the weight of the world in callous
digitation and percentages piled high over the covert rabbits’
hole somewhere in another country the letter S has never
been heard and is (am I guessing?) outlawed, correlative
scant precision this is as American as the fields of North
Dakota and just as colonized okay AND is another way
to treat the “other” to a hot meal expect something
more from Universals again again abstract hopscotch it’s all
in the words somewhere, everywhere syllables shrinking like
the rest of the cosmos is peeing on my hands or speeding away
from the center left alone gracelessly

2010-08-10T15:15:00.002-05:00

BOIL BOLL BOLE
HPER BOL

NOW IT’S TIME TO BOIL WATER
PARANOID COLOR T.V.

Stranger from Topomania

2010-08-10T14:33:00.005-05:00

Mastery of tone
shape possibilities
with winch with
soteriology.

“These kinds of books are called”
scriptures sutures sutras—
bindings of books
stitched with wings.

Impression takes shape.
Synæsthesia:
What does abstraction
taste like?

False stereo & friends.
Harry Partch was banging
on his entangled drum
in my dream.

Somewhere tied to
the new style,
“Why this song?”
Just make the changes.

Inaction in the continent
of Arabia. I used
to build strong positions,
but that’s through.

THE poem and verse TECHNICAL

2010-08-06T13:38:00.007-05:00

And verse makes scenes out of science.
And force makes sense out of silence.

Stories are brief forms.
Science includes the dramas of nonfiction.
This is the realistic adventure that we call historical, 
scientific, or a poem.
Stories form historical fiction, or narrative nonfiction, 
or verse forms, adventure and historical narrative.

Directions, directions.

The Technical forms a familiar narrative in the work 
of autobiographies, displayed in the brief silences.

And glossaries.
Choose ideas or degrees
with knowledge to literally clarify language.
Punctuation
lets you acquire synonyms
by choosing digital conventions —
including glossaries.

Recognize what’s suspected.

2010-08-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

“turn the go ons
and keep going”

Last of all is the house,
painted white to fade
in the American sunset.
Keep the go ons going.

Facts facts facts about Einstein.

2010-07-29T16:35:00.002-05:00

Facts facts are opinions
found in and formed of facts.
Facts facts opinions facts
found in biographies and opinions.

Facts include:
Albert did these and those things,
him/herself contain facts
and opinions about the Einstein.

His biographies include:
Maybe Einstein had the opinion.
Maybe he was found.
This is about about facts.

Albert's facts
and biographies' facts
are facts about Albert found
connected with opinion

Albert go opinion Einstein.
What to do with this violin?
What thought of Einstein’s
is opinion or personal opinion?

Albert responds to his violin.
What if his responses are smart.
Albert the person is possible,
the fact he discovered hair.

Include this:
Was it possible
that he thought
with his violin?

What was Albert about?
Albert, Albert, or his responses,
was it Einstein, Albert, did he remember
Einstein. Was it personal, or just about?

Albert thought smart.
He was crazy for his violin.
Einstein. Einstein. Einstein.
A what, or a person?

Go crazy.

2010-07-28T16:16:00.005-05:00

Letters’ placement on the page
Makes the architect a sage —
And even words with no beginning
Might bless us all with hidden meaning.

utilities

2010-07-28T16:13:00.001-05:00

numbers out of range.
someone makes me tilt.

there were wires, power cords,
strung on the wall

and disconnected.
but a stray sentence won’t

hamper an unsung legacy?
that is certainly not plugged

in anymore. the numbers
don’t count and we don’t

count for much, tripping
days of rest out, on the same

walls where they’ve cut
the power supply and

telephone cables. hear
them counting, to them

selves, the test pattern.

(7/18/2010)

there is a loose connection between the words

2010-07-23T17:30:00.002-05:00


definition, definition
passages of class give more


tell about the personal
experiences of a given text?


OT's on the way
a character's opinions


structures fabricated
by the author


definition is a guide
for the homeless classes


there is a loose
connection


between
the worlds

2010-07-21T13:06:00.001-05:00

unlit units
unites until
smaller sim
ilar liar all
decimeter
rods star
loads rate
measured
absurdity
tidy diet
tooty deity

2010-07-20T12:24:00.001-05:00

how big is
MY FOOT?

the arraignment
must be in the garage

refugees from the truth

2010-07-19T16:02:00.008-05:00

Holly wages war
on the indigent.                                       is
she thinks it's
more about                                       centered
their kind of
lifestyle than                                       along
what's going on
inside. she                                             a
wants to be
more sexy than                                   vertical
sardonic.
the truth is,                                         axis.
Holly is a refugee
from the Truth.

revelation upon the skulls of unknown animals

2010-07-15T15:43:00.002-05:00

Huckleberry Lord;
The unknown revelation
Calls the Lord to dinner.

Congruent days go by.
The uninspired don't let
Any words absorb.

After a passing cloud
My army of ants loses
Its way in the rain forest.

You won't hardly,
You can't hardly.
Parallelisms rob us

in our sleep.

semester

2010-07-07T16:27:00.002-05:00


Marcos with macros

from form it ranges

tusking the walrus

hasn’t broken yet

the ampersand exploded

same turmoil as ever

masking their distinctions

Marcos with mackerel

had left her soupçon

breakers or booms

bangs, impressions, terminations

adding a new detail

legend sketched in Masoretic

off topic is another subject

each section specifies

Marcos with jack-in-the-pulpit

yet stuffed adjectives beget

Lord Destroyer’s avatar

many contexts dissolve

Marcos with macaroon

he nice-nelly’d in front of them

some kind of albino hippie monster

you’ve saturated the market

four arenas of space-time

mediocrity, complicity

fewer of cowardice rebound!

if monarch betrays

consult a reliable

mangoes made of bongos

the actor and the chimpanzee

too much waiting for heart

escape from strong design

Yiddish fronting, and it all fell apart

consult a good

to do this and not go crazy

Marcos with a melon & a mallet

such was the outcome of the fast

she stubbed her toe on substantives

mouth-wateringly—term life insurance

I owe you this one

how to describe the pattern?

mottled & flecked

some Esther—that was some Esther

2010-07-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

knowledge of things
estimated pace for tripping
wheeze the road left

put me aside for pilgrimage
think good things
said Buddha, listlessly

great thoughts come slowly—
buy American. drift.

random encounters

2010-07-04T10:55:00.001-05:00

misplaced modifiers—the sons
of Light engaged the

sons of Mil. random
encounters are the only

encounters for me.
shift on—the wheezing

intensifies now it’s humid.

2010-06-30T15:36:00.000-05:00

this algorithm doesn’t import

o run the lightshow.
she was but his isn’t –
who is this
balm
mad
darkness?

grieve’s the forgotten shelf

isn’t – who is this balm
mad my apostrophe
blossom’s white

this algorithm doesn’t
impress

arrows out of a bag by

bald man

with all, it’s a break
with time

she broke my heart before the activation fee was paid.

2010-06-08T23:11:00.001-05:00

she broke my heart before the activation fee was paid.
time and ligatures stake their reputations the same way
we all do, with a hint of sulfur and a sweet kiss before bedtime.
placement makes me jumpy. her arms were a pitch
that didn’t have a punchline. nobody writes history the way
she wrote about anatomy. but I was still weak and she
was limp like a pancake. coming to town through a trap-door
in the slaughterhouse floor. when the birds distracted me
she swung onto the back of my trailer and hitched a ride
as far as Yellowstone. those geysers make your lips look wide
and full as the Earth Mother’s. staring at you gushing all over,
the natural park makes me wish I was lidless. but that’s
just a passing fancy. she never really treated me to natural beauty.
and it broke the spring sky every time she smiled. took down
the mountains when she growled insensate. now she drifts
untallied through the rain mist, calling my name with no vowels.
she captured my soul with a salvo from the kingdom of heaven.
reinstatement costs more than I can pay right now—call back later.

4/5/10

easter floods 2010

2010-06-08T13:59:00.001-05:00

The mean dumbo’d
when messy clarity
Kampuchea finessed
for my “Love Love Love!”

All the funky snakes
hate me, Kallotrope.
Me, or me strained,
deep perception, who

laving on them liquid
pearl drops but gritty teeth
wash on average tomb—
wait for Lazarus.

On an encounter
maneuver we haven’t
got time but a
heart moves mountains.

For the kin of numbers
all wasted, washed out.
Better a flood plain
for the main vein, stripped

for the season and
hung out on
the backyard line.
All birds come through here

some through the window
even with my screen on,
and birds that fly that
fly like elephants, falsify

their lamps of perception.
Weighed down in orchid
obsolete buried in aging
soul, skipping on mid-

snow in grotty boots
sinking ankle deep
and the shore and
the houses washed

away before the city
declared they’d
overtopped. And every
one agreed, “It is on.”

3/15/10

On non-sense poetry and spoken word (semi-sensical and rambling as always)

2010-06-07T20:56:00.000-05:00

Point of non-sense poetry:

To disorient, not to leave anything for you to hold onto.
Not sentiment.
Not intellectualism.
The two poles of poetic enterprise.

Non-sensical poetry (as opposed to non-sensory poetry) is designed to thwart these tendencies to hook onto something you know in favor of something not only that you do not know but that you cannot know, that it is nowhere in your experience to know or to even imagine that you know.

In spoken word poetry there is the extra sonic bit, the potential for the sound to transport you, like in a trance. It is no accident that Breton developed an affinity (a fetish, if you must) for Native American objects and rituals, shamanistic tools that predate surrealism like a fairy tale, that open up the mind like a séance, trance dances, Desnos in a faraway dreamscrape.

In spoken word poetry the performer is right in front of you and it’s easier to invoke sentiment, “relating to” the poet, but it’s also even easier to invoke other strange feelings, feelings that could be used to transport audience and performer to a different place, to transcend the person in front of you, to be lulled and pulled by the sound of the words on the language.

Jamieson accused the Surrealists of practicing schizophrenic speech. At the risk of romanticizing a traumatic condition, what is there about the speech of schizophrenics, or aphasics, of those who brains “don’t work right” in modern sterility of medical-industrial complexes that can teach us not only how the mind works, how language works, but alternative ways of seeing and experiencing the world, talking about, knowing the word. Pick a textbook on language and psychology and there are pages of potentially interesting surrealism, ways of rewriting the rules of language, experiments to undertake by subverting the rules and making people think different.

Gulf Requiem

2010-06-07T20:54:00.000-05:00

Brown color pelicans with wings heavy,
Rendering, these chickens won’t come home to roost.
Imagine the world remember the one we
Thought we would inhabit, technological wonders and cures
Instead of disasters and wars, drugs to calm our fears, sedate our troubles.
Sticky wings won’t fly
Home to a coast inhospitable.

Pangs felt intermittently
Entwined extracted electric flashes
To be subdued, extinguished. We believe in
Resurrection miracles it will all be
Ok ,
Left to someone faraway and faceless
Empty like a pledge a promise
Unfulfilled, now painted black,
Mocking tomorrow.

spring salvation

2010-05-20T01:10:00.000-05:00

A hundredweight of books. Give it up
for the stranger lying in the arms
of a spring thundercloud.

Seeds brought the freshness,
in this shade. Cut the ribbon.
And paradise upends the lossy
earwig-infested satellite dish.
So manic with opportunity,
so gap-toothed and unconcerned,
like a hill-billy Satan.

And I read it in her Marian palms,
torched in the false halo
of signifiers strung like martyrs
across the sky. She lived
for shivering. I read
the course of blood
in her uncontrollable gestures.

“That’s her heart,” I thought.
And slow into my own
shape-filled consciousness,
the ribbon, the rhythm pulsed
until she stopped all movement,
the windows as clear as her eyes.

2010-05-19T15:56:00.000-05:00

K I O N T O P E N T A
contiones in medias res

Tissaphernes on the Tigris
steeping tisanes with an irregular
pot. Grist for the hydroponic
houseplant. Derivation or
digestion. Makes somebody’s
compound learn to walk on feathers.

Wide seat a lisp, terrified by pterodactyls
and the place for centrality got lost
in the tailor’s hoop, in the praise for
Cornuto where he fell.
On the road to Massagetae.

And drinking is its own reward.
Terebinth down on the pavement,
and, you know,

“He was lying.”

Normative ache for a blank slate
gone full before its time on a house
boat crammed with Imageisms,
crows’ feet, harbingers, raps
daring the sound of menace drifting
through the sunken shoulders of dusk.

Slump forward, the cries of blotted groundlings:
pressed their noses to the windows, shot blanks like
circus clowns at the hour of their betrayal,
when stomp the bitter tread on poetic form.

Pro-fattwa, based on slow cooking
manuals in the hands of impossible
adjutants, all arguing with their wrists.

All this time is making me one of them.

«kitten in the mud»

2010-05-19T15:53:00.002-05:00

Jazz excrement
pass through
the hallowed
underchamber.

I licked the place,
I did lick the plate.
After the sump
curled up and slept.

That was the hour
I left the hullaballoo
in a mixed blessing
of infernalism
and apocalyptic lights.

Man’s cuts
enfeeble the
structures of
terrible built
surfaces.

Follow the line
to his local
sewage treat
ment plant.

Say hello to
the supervisor.
A pause for Tony,
after he gets off
his shift.

That’s better, that’s
better.

I licked the plate.

2010-04-19T20:10:00.001-05:00

can time be regulated?
are you afraid time could be regulated?
what does regulation mean?
what is time?

press mesmerism that updended

2010-04-14T16:27:00.000-05:00

Press mesmerism that upended, abandoned
reaches house hand grenade chanteuse paragon
certain of an access point where lies the common
getting shake it out to scatter snow poison brace
for encounter she shimmies breakwater dance
by the filtered light by the fading sounds hake out
of luck managing manifold outbreaths stump has
it been a brain dump my how the linking withholds
its fuse that hand enlarges meting out circuits
from Chosen to Chosen: approach additions carefully.

what you say to the weasel of despair

2010-03-06T15:33:00.001-06:00

I am plutonium

I am moon rock,
contagious goo

the naysayers predicted
something better

I am cut
to the bone of
extradition

when the tables

2010-03-01T16:21:00.005-06:00

when the tables
when the tables fight for
simplicity
a whole new perspective emerges
and the beams turn feather
and the eggs hold their form

inconsistency
a fast flyover with elephants

heaven saves her own footage
in extreme closeup

for this she waits
in the cold aftereffect
of atomic hankering

February 26, 2010

from Quatrains

2010-02-22T16:59:00.004-06:00

ah the clouds. this
goodness
gets in the way
of thinking

a clean shirt was all
he said he needed
after the war took
everything else away

no dogs but sacrifice
the source of my teaching

ah the clouds, the water

what beats the wind
or games, promulgated
by women, trawling
out the house by sections?

of the world but not
of the world—my god,
what drugs
do they have you on??

after a time
the referent slips away
and then these words
change their clothes

esoteric encounters begin

two studies in engagement

2010-01-13T23:38:00.000-06:00

Tracy said trade up
to the sempiternal
sexualized Islamic
itemized washboard
sound of carpet
catastrophe all red
with thunders on
the circuit of
freedom & totalitarianism.

.

Serena retreats
into her syntax.
And I step back
into the Promised
Land. A little
colder than usual.

The Demoniacal Project

2010-01-12T11:21:00.005-06:00

From a new collaboration with Not as Pretty:

Small child in the field,
Digging brown earth,
Pulls up a claw and spits
Blood over wheat stalks.

So we beat the grasses
To drive out all devas.
No help:
"You are possessed by demons."

The old men describe them as gods,
But they wail and devour flesh.
In their presence resides possession
By the undesirable hunger.

Spenseriana Caffeinata

2010-01-04T12:02:00.001-06:00


The deerfly terrorizes while the lime tick stains the tablecloth.
The Buddha of windowglass meets the blue-green angel.
Where the nameless Tao buys tobacco from gremlins,
and sexless Anchorites with frog-heels of tornado spiral
and wash out the tidal blow (paralyzed, at attention), there
the maintaining girdled virgins of the spare tire glade
stomp the optional howler, the stately monkey-king
and his consort—Regina Vulneorum—under leaves.
Buffed out like a grey palm, the kitten-purr form races
across the rasping windowshade. All speaking no English
for a year, all serving at the Temple of the Groves,
all mothy mouthed and sloth-brained, breezed by goddess
and gorged phantoms, shadowed like the mayfly, the night-bat,
the moon creatures coming to give libation and vomiting
out in stream and valence—
                          All wind, all wind, all nirvana.
Call the station of service before the woods cross the stake,
the gall bag of Jack-in-the-Green blooming, blowing waste
on the house-gods’ roof-shrines and acroteria. All parrots
and mittens sprung through air after seething pagan liturgy.
Houses are again crumbling the toast of domestic goblins, taken
with the sighs of dreamed spectres, all shaded, under moss,
with mushroom and gale. All the sailors come to shore
with nets rattling on the sides of their land-wagons: gaping,
gabbing, necks ajar and feet clenched, the doors dropping hinges
left here for threshhold encounters, with the songs of sprites
and shining albedoes, god with spikes that shimmer and condemn
form, every semblance of it, the breath of horse the hastening
of fast laps each counting spots and dapples, the source of
language, the counting of syllables, the sliding riverbanks
containing round stones and salmon like a fairyland
brain in millions of wet diamonds over the rocks, Mother
of Wounds or Mater Littorum—
                              Encounter, reckoning:
the air stills the scene shifts the light dims the fading comes
the space widens the lids shut tight and then the shades go to sleep.

2009-11-13T23:29:00.001-06:00

Take it with You Wherever you Go

Optional Publications

annual meeting

meeting minutes’

billion here, a billion there

Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st Century

Needed to implement this plan

Of

The Gap, The Gap

'trying to make sense of things--and that takes some adjusting'

2009-11-12T13:18:00.002-06:00

a long-form "ballad," from my 2007 vintage:

Get this widget

Track details

eSnips Social DNA

September miscellany

2009-10-26T15:17:00.003-05:00

morning rats

frozen venus

sensate goblin

.

must be

a religious

experience

.

I like my eggs

over ego

I like my eggs easy

over excess

.

Unwrap your preservatives!

Push me out the window!

Sugar coat your genius ideas!

Waste time! Mash!

Visual arts breed messy tornados!

(Where did you disappear to?)

.

Garbage pile Madonna

Sometimes nothing comes out

Search the airwaves

Pieces of overt recognition will fit

In a caper jar

.

I went to the rabbi in tatters

I went to the rabble with taters

.

test clock

2009-09-23T11:15:00.001-05:00

2009-09-09T23:22:00.000-05:00

'mazz production'

excerpt from 'Building Frames on Haunted Ground'

2009-09-09T08:27:00.005-05:00

                                                encounter with the voices—
this is a free country. Spicer’s dictation came from his bottle, 
but even lies recount fascination with the labeling of form. 
a tuxedo-patterned cat rustling in the rhubarb disturbs
twin rabbits and sends them into the neighbor’s yard. 
their eyes glint for the future, for the west, for western time
that always ceases along with the early frosts thickening
over poppies and killing the stems of late dandelions
in the grass. how much of a frame, they asked, do these
voices require? you couldn’t convince me that balance
was all it took. this was midnight when the words fell, 
and Houdini’s still dead. there were people here
who looked through the ground like it was a skin, pushed
back, and they walked a little more carefully, looking.

boat of heaven

2009-09-09T08:26:00.001-05:00

we line the backs of the Australopithecene
waterway where more come every day to sit

the shrine houses picked insect husks floated down
from the interior. it is quiet in this place,

the fears do not touch us.

compositions

2009-09-09T08:20:00.009-05:00

things       are       going      to       work       out
in        re       oi       o       ork       ut
fine       ire       soy       so       Bork       shut
fi       ir      so       s       bo       hu

is music a contriving exercise, or cowardice?

miscellany

2009-08-07T12:18:00.001-05:00

I went to the rabbi in tatters.

I went to the rabble with taters.

The toilet duck roars in its obstinacy.

My moose has run away—trust no one.

2009-08-07T11:55:00.001-05:00

standardized reach at same orchard.

put the orchid back in the case.

pathetic rules for ancient fools with flowers spitting.

changing plans with profane paces.

for me the chance at forsaking signatures.

emplacement on the South Carolina waterfront.

archives : November 2006–October 2010

2009-08-07T11:49:00.006-05:00

2006	November December

2007	January February March April May June July August September October November December

2008	January February March April May June July August September October November December

2009	January February March April May June July August September October November December

2010	January February March April May June July August September October

Impression

2009-08-07T11:23:00.008-05:00

The crouching fake cheeses contributed 
to revolutionary angst.

Here lies ERIS, that twists in the word, amidst woods tangent 
to small candles.

And I hang a crutch from my hand, a presentation 
of the Save the Trees movement.

Messaging always nearwards.

When cutting out for my hiding place, I will snatch significance 
from the arms of any size mountain.

Smiles twist the hairs that leave a bite impression.

Fake fake bite! Awake to the sound of a small word!

The smell of fake revolutionaries washes over 
with erythromycin reek before their snack.

2009-06-29T11:53:00.006-05:00

books are heavy, but they are my brothers.
books are heavy, but they are my brother's.
books aren't heavy (see #2).
books are ready for storage at my brother's.
books already take the place of missing relatives, 
                     like missing teeth.

                              too many books
                                  tomb any books
                             to man ebb ooks
                                  toe mane eve ox
to man ebb     many books
          ooks eve ox                    toe mane too   

tomb any books

books
                toe mane too   tomb any books to man ebb    
       many   ooks eve ox

many too    man ebb ox any books to    tomb 

         ooks eve books
 toe mane

the sky was orange above the river tonight

2009-06-28T01:41:00.004-05:00

flames of consciousness
flames of Steamboat Willy
as his burning rig sinks
in the Mississippi, burning
forever beneath the pull
and waves, rocks and branches,
come apart in cinders
of celluloid, vibration,
black mitts and white whistle
as down down it goes.

ideas for a film

2009-06-19T23:12:00.002-05:00

Old West Clown Wagon.
Clowns Ho! 
Wait for the outlaws to surface out of the wilderness.
Poetic Outlaws. 
Campfire oatmeal.
Writes of passage.
Recreants.
"Obviously, you're not looking for trouble." 
Buskers eat their own cheese on the street of broken arches.
Blast your same shadow and tell me what you are! 
Character, I mean.
Clowns! Madmen! 
Arch-fiends aching for the goal of apocalypse.
Chased by alien gunslingers.
The road to the Wild West is paved with narrative distractions.
Character lapse.
This smells like clean windows, this smells like love.
Action starts with an answer, ends with a proposition. 
Takes its hat off and slides down the riverbank into the mud of yesteryear.

UFO Geeks.
Ho ho! Slide winder.
Sun skater.
House cleaner.
Kitchen mom an answer.
Moonbeam.
Treasure mind a man, Mister.
Accidental erasure, long-form translated Enlightenment over the horny 
   around the cage we lope like animals.
Horned animals in cages loping terror to the night time 
   Aegean abduction.
A hostage crisis like a strained "Stand By Me" with angry Greys 
   and stoned Reds coming down an hour before Tequila Sunrise.
Return to stasis.
A barren planet, that knows.
And how do you love UFOs? I mean, why do you love them? 
Too many details make for a chunky soup, a soup fit for a hungry man 
   with big hands.
Claustrophobia in the wide open.
Close the circuit and then everyone's invited to lunch.
Think that the lightning only meets the ground when it's invited.
The ground conducts itself appropriately, without indulgence, to the clouds.
Something meets the sky.
Those crystals are asleep until the heavy weather comes.
Chaos ensues.
The vortex allows.
Principles' addition and possibility's trump.

Banjo mittens defeat vampire dogs.
Heave offering.
Chupacabra versus Manitou -- a Dybbuk serves as referee.
"Don't go where the V-dogs go, and don't you eat that red snow."
The snow's always red in Blue Lake, MN.
Fargo meets Cujo meets John Carpenter's The Thing.
Be true to your source material.
Drive me to the mission where that terrible tragedy happened.
Vampires are contagion.
UFOs are the uncontrollable unknown.
The mystery outside the ring of firelight.
We saw this story on the screen before.
"The pack is growing."
Gee whiz the spiders're biting something fierce tonight.
Play me the "Love Theme from Vampire Dogs."
Latch on to that vampire dog.
Someone maced the dispatcher, now the store's wide open.
The suicide who keeps getting other people killed.
The little girl at the spelling bee couldn't spell "exsanguinate." 
"The little dog laughed." 
Absent the mine that he already owned.
Absent the mind.
And what about the mountain man? 
This sure takes the fun out of breeding mongrels.
"It's like Alexander Nevsky, but with vampire dogs." 
Same flaw, different day.
Michael Crichton made me hate the vampire dogs.

wote rate

2009-06-07T14:54:00.002-05:00

you pay by the inch you pay
by the column the board
foot that washes that's washed
by sun from sense to senti
mental o you can't use

that paper! LAIR OF THE WHITE
WOMB TUSK SHOW TAKES
slower sound the elaborational
harp cluster house means the
bailed-out sensitivity this a

wash a done deal hat on the
race bakes for memory believes
the torn veil they kiss when
descending the rail is one of
my seeds for precision LAST

LOCKS HOUSE RENT NIGHT
WASHING NOW WE DESTINY
RIPE this camera ripped the
image out of my box cussed
them down the center OUIJA

on to wow and jealous Jains
sucking the bones of enlightened
identity ELLIE WANTS AN ICE
CREAM TOO seek me seek me
with wisdom in the cabaret

STRAIGHT QUOTES ARE NOT
CATHOLIC

no signs of force

2009-06-04T12:45:00.005-05:00

hand sign

space

topless

coffee bar

burns down

call for 

alliance

with atheists

the bus moves

but slowly 

day litany 

for all

the charismatics 

in a circle

paleozoic digestion

2009-05-23T09:35:00.002-05:00

dinosaurs
didn’t have a word
for dinner.

2009-05-22T13:19:00.001-05:00

FOOD
SILENCE
METHOD
COMMON GROUND
CIRCUITS
REPRESENTATION
PATHS
TIMING
SET TABLE

2009-05-21T16:21:00.001-05:00

let us be technical

let us first determine that the pattern is a pattern

let us affirm that the pattern is alive

a thing itself that calls itself a pattern

the talking gets us over the bridge, but only slowly

technique a leaving

that pop-up disables my browser's artificial intelligence

let us change the coordinates before we speak of this again

big size, big size → whooooaaaa!!

let us be
technical

2009-05-20T22:31:00.005-05:00

give me slain
give me
skin for the rant
the rate of
slavery
the cost of shiver
exacted like an old
son’s
inheritance,
from war.
add me to
pollination,
add the windows,
the past.
survival isn’t long,
you wage
and wage.
it’s only sound.

or deal

2009-05-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

an ordeal and or deal me twelve
hit make the Olympian Hotel a ghost
town with me you get an organization
an ordeal impossible to rhyme, impregnable to
scale the model the role there can be a 
simpler method of maintenance but we aren't
interested in your Ø down plans right now

(5/11/09)

2009-05-11T23:19:00.002-05:00

when the stories 
never end

you have no idea 
when to hit it for the night

(5/11/09)

chumps

2009-05-11T23:13:00.003-05:00

STUCK IN THE PAST 


Hesperiagatan 

let's unpack the answers

and the lock says, "your curse is memory." 

(5/11/09)

someone's at the door

2009-05-11T22:59:00.011-05:00

Mucophore wave across the water. 
Mr. Multi-Vitamin says, "I can't feel my legs." 
"I like food too much to not eat."
"I love the smell of worms in the new grass." 
". . . and much bigger ones are on the way." 
Because the worst is yet to come. 

Mr. Multi-Vitamin's eyes go dark looking at the center of the universe. 
One Two Three. 
"If there's anyone in the world who'll come back from there, it's him." 
No one came back. 
"I feel dizzy now I have so long this erection." 
Time is the body's way of telling you, "Don't kid yourself."

(5/10/09)

2009-04-04T09:14:00.002-05:00

Birds

Meaning was the Robin of the World.
I turned to see it.

Sound was the Cardinal in the Tree.
As the air encroaches, the purpose tells of clarity, it forms space, it exalts a bookishness best felt outdoors.

Light was the Finch flying overhead.
I said nothing, did not see that one.

Breath was the confluence of three Rivers under the wings of seven Crows.
And they say somewhere, in the hungry wilderness, a person's prayers yield up a paradise without form but eternal. The catch is, you must become invisible in your devoutness, a prisoner to your own ministrations.

Time was a pair of Nuthatches in the Lilac bush.
So when they ask you, what have you done with your day? You can tell them, I have been watching the birds with my eyes closed.

April 3 poem by Peter Danbury & Tom Lewis

2009-04-04T08:51:00.004-05:00

The problem with a poem:
I took it daily,
as an assignment. ...  

Today is/was the cue: see,
it fits to write up a poem,
to write what you know

to BE the poem.
To write every challenge
as your problem.

For having, perhaps, a month
where you tell stories or
write poems. That's the problem.

For you, at least,
the problem is,
the bill don't fit

in today's paper.
April is the cruellest
national poetry month.
Inspired by Robert Lee Brewer's 2009 April PAD Challenge.

2009-04-02T17:32:00.002-05:00

from TED BURKE, like it or not
Don't Be Cruel: Say No to National Poetry Month

(description of process)

2009-03-27T12:06:00.003-05:00


glueing together 
 the jaggedy edges
 of disconsolate words.

overwritten nightmares
 and the triumph
 over Death in ¾ time.

writing the subduction field
 of disparate patternings,
which accrete along

the axis of time and axonal
 discharge. temporal
sputtering. melismatic

self-utterances. albedoes
 in random sets
that enter a larger, ordered

grid of creation, only 
 realized after.
the process is invisible


until time has passed.

3/19 to 3/22

2009-03-22T14:37:00.009-05:00




God's ocean
on which the
      boat capsized

             forever.

      "There is water there."

      "I don't like this rain,
       give me another rain!"




greatness
             no greatness

("I really like the line . . . ")

      no matter.
not even meaning. but

does it say something?       




                    and hugely self-aware

             (no, Walker Evans, you can't
              take my picture)




            The Lord will provide. 
Until the Lord doesn't provide.

                    Then. Where is the Lord?





                                       Feeling the rage. Testifying
                                    to the price tag. Arguing
                                      for no reason, without
                                      reach.





(notes, Jenny Holzer, Protect Protect)


word word word

as object

as light

— —

performance

w

no body



"THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM"

[fool variations] plan page down

2009-03-13T09:18:00.002-05:00

forest, people, step bring, place,
step told, stone head cause
write bright down Way over,
Air children, Slow full. enough
fraction, case general children, bring,

old bed it. gun, metal
Move, lay. basic old. ago
our. ask love, place, moment
sign begin. Either, ago told,
five ask our. consider forest.

Soldier door. Hole, full. page,
bring, paper. certain. need down
fire that. over, Seem basic
red Hole, much enough Either,
once. Live do protect much

Soldier down iron. direct Much,
as forest. Soldier second other,
industry produce metal his face.
down cause Air often Element
Either, solve art enough down

Would would she sign Either,
new lay. gun, suggest. force.
work they red for. Die
industry Seem do animal. left
day, Throw, line. forest, over,

lay. round. his step Throw,
enough know, Divide round, among
among solution. Would fine part
Either, Require solution. line, middle
night while, Hundred blood, interest

Much, went know, new work
know, map. during, he. where
ask East, our. ago get. part
children, fine often went ask
love, direct certain. travel Listen

red area Protect
among Plan line.

produce page coast
equate industry were

Plan page,
down.

2009-03-10T18:06:00.002-05:00

Very wept so seas

Fasted, the lantern creation

And faces are easy hair. 

It's white, the lamplight, 

Shall I question the wreathed off-yellow?

Should already be her way to greatness afterward

Should her wriggling rubs be like sleeps to me,
like fog?
 
And all there, in the window, her hair—
that she once and must do always, soft and
meticulous;

Full of her, you shall be sudden 
as tema upon tea

Among dooryards falls

Beneath worn pool spoons

I and we in the evening for it all—

Arms in vivo my J. meet

"There? how?" 

What will bite will be human 

Would have pinned restaurants to the last minute.

That the skirts in nights for all time. 

"What? her?"

How wriggling rubs the lamplight, had been tea...

Minneota Visitation: Bill Holm

2009-03-09T09:37:00.006-05:00

O you viking
turning words in this field
          of nations,
wisdom provided on the land.
Going leads to homesteading
          for good
where the sky feels right.

Hear the snow fall
as dawn comes up darkly
          behind 
dirty windows. Dust 
kicked up in the room
          from infinite ideas, 
and almost as many books.

Say: thou art the moment

2009-03-05T13:23:00.005-06:00

I am seen and I tell 
the whole white north
(for what it's worth):
 
that I should not lie 
a morning in arms 
that are glad.
 
"That was meant to say 
in regular voices"
Am I the October universe?

In wonder, I leave 
my terrace, back turning 
I go back to smoke. 
 
Would you drown in a minute? 
The shore slides when 
I eat across a part of you.

(based on randomized vocabulary taken from The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

2009-02-25T23:22:00.001-06:00

Johnny sees 
a pattern of resistance.

Jane sees
nothing but wind.

The 'Great' Poetry Debate Continues Episode 46b: 'Great Poetry Gives Me Gas'

2009-02-22T13:36:00.008-06:00

The New York Times * February 22, 2009
On Poetry

The Great(ness) Game
By DAVID ORR

In October, John Ashbery became the first poet to have an edition of his
works released by the Library of America in his own lifetime. That honor
says a number of things about the state of contemporary poetry — some good,
some not so good — but perhaps the most important and disturbing question
it raises is this: What will we do when Ashbery and his generation are
gone? Because for the first time since the early 19th century, American
poetry may be about to run out of greatness.

That may seem like a strange (and strangely fraught) way of putting things.
But the concept of “greatness” has a special significance in the poetry
world that it often lacks elsewhere — after all, in most areas of life,
greatness is to be cherished, but it isn’t essential. The golf world idolizes
Tiger Woods, sure, but duffers will still be heaving 9-irons into ponds
long after Woods plays his last major. Poetry can’t be as confident about
its own durability. Poetry has justified itself historically by asserting
that no matter how small its audience or dotty its practitioners, it remains
the place one goes for the highest of High Art. As Byron put it in a loose
translation of Horace:
But poesy between the best and worst
No medium knows; you must be last or first:
For middling poets’ miserable volumes,
Are damn’d alike by gods, and men, and columns.
Poetry needs greatness.

Or so the thinking goes, anyway. The problem is that over the course of the
20th century, greatness has turned out to be an increasingly blurry business.
In part, that’s a reflection of the standard narrative of postmodernism,
according to which all uppercase ideals — Truth, Beauty, Justice — must come
in for questioning. But the difficulty with poetic greatness has to do with
more than the talking points of the contemporary culture wars. Greatness is —
and indeed, has always been — a tangle of occasionally incompatible concepts,
most of which depend upon placing the burden of “greatness” on different parts
of the artistic process. Does being “great” simply mean writing poems that
are “great”? If so, how many? Or does “greatness” mean having a sufficiently
“great” project? If you have such a project, can you be “great” while writing
poems that are only “good” (and maybe even a little “boring”)? Is being a
“great” poet the same as being a “major” poet? Are “great” poets necessarily
“serious” poets? These are all good questions to which nobody has had very
convincing answers.

STILL, however blurry “greatness” may be, it’s clear that segments of the
poetry world have been fretting over its potential loss since at least 1983.
That’s the year in which an essay by Donald Hall, the United States poet
laureate from 2006 to 2007, appeared in The Kenyon Review bearing the title
“Poetry and Ambition.” Hall got right to the point: “It seems to me that
contemporary American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition — a modesty,
alas, genuine . . . if sometimes accompanied by vast pretense.” What poets
should be trying to do, according to Hall, was “to make words that live
forever” and “to be as good as Dante.” They probably would fail, of course,
but even so, “the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as
great as the best.” Pretty strong stuff — and one wonders how many plays
Shakespeare would have managed to write had he subjected every line to the
merciless scrutiny Hall recommends.

....

Read the rest.

2009-02-22T13:12:00.011-06:00

bound up  

with impossible knots. 

         terrible  meter.

2009-02-18T17:37:00.000-06:00

The resonance a stage making summer of drone.
Polyester soufflé on a nightcap from San Francisco
to Paris. Perish the little children to sponge off
of me, with a taco, a goddamn American taco,
in a speedboat, with raisins on my eyes. That’s living,
I tell the Philosophy Dept. Just before the campus
cops blackjack me across the face and pull me out.

a kind of coordination

2009-02-10T17:04:00.001-06:00