Via

2010-12-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

before I start this poem

you must know

there are some things I've been thinking about:

fingers sliding across keyboards

further now, telling the truth

some runoff of the human condition

I cannot, will not tell a lie

your identity jam is beautiful

but before I start this poem

you'll know

that what you are to me is wrapped in word parts

affixes and mouth sounds

and I's and g's and k's and u's and b's and r's

memories and future memories on a reel

phone, text, book, car

text, book, phone, car

book, phone, text, car

but before I start this poem

Performance Script

2010-12-09T16:32:00.001-08:00

my life it ain’t never been the same since
that day I saw they stringed

my daddy I saw he hanging from the tree by
he thumbs

ah when certain kinda things
happen sometimes you just ah

you just let the (w)hole widen
they tell you what makes sense to them
my mom would say
“That’s my little Jewish princess.”
and she would say
“You are a Goldsmith” “Yes, you are a Goldsmith”

What?

That’s my gran-gran-daddy/big paw/my father’s
father’s father. Every day they say he tell that story at
sunrise/he tell it like he praying/like he not really in
the room/like somebody else speaking it for him. they
say each morning when he tell it/it’s as if you just
happen to walk into a conversation he having cept
ain’t nobody there but him.

this is home. But where is home? Capital H- home.
Chicago?
Germany?
Denmark?

Israel?

The place that earthed you. The place that earthed me.
Zion.
This (dis)placed earth.
it’s a sore/a
wound/this ground/the place i grew up in.

that’s uncle daddy/he my father's father. I think he
done heard big paw's story once too many times/is
now a little touched by it
or something.

i am the cry that won't come out i am the pain stuck i
am the me that never was sorry
i am the me that never was sorry
white
Jewish
queer
woman
I was born too late in my family to exist.
scapegoat
existing now in a (w)hole
before you, buying Danish clogs
forced impostor alone
circumscribing outer edges
of the flat generational lie
through Belarus and Poland
eyes never falling on free terrain
no pleasure of dirt on a barefoot
somehow surviving our mother's land
wound up like a
splintered top
in sweet Denmark
to shake in a basement
rocking chair, starched calico dress
breakable as a Danish plate
and you weren't Jewish

under a black halo of curls
remembering day and night
handed down in a deep set eye
not a story
a thin undereye of blueblack veins

or a scarf for the cold nights
never revealing the bronze chain
dangling a delicate chai
around your neck
and you weren't Jewish

now I am for the
moments i choked away for the lost touches diminished
faded like yellow against the sun.
i was born too early to be allowed to exist i was
drowned the day i was born of heartache and loss
i am

assimilation is unfortunate
I contain the shudder, urban cramp
the smoke pole
a peer’s book

farewell French sparrow
me time is always here
when you need it

condensed packet sounds
like a receipt
motion distracting
the borrowed identity ink

inky smudge finger/smudge
on my hi five-r
too late to avoid this pen type
from the burning lip beans

it’s not pleasant
somebody diarrheaed here
pounding iron to Zion
sheetrock planks
cold and burnt
my oxygen bag

you seldom know
tested it for me, disparaged
I guess
you should remember twenty four
years and grasp, it
that okay?

this my available conversation
and stop opening the fucking door
she asked “Poetry or fiction?”
I point: stage left
she suggested returning two-fold
revisit the classics
check page three
review the neglected submission
relish the error.

inspired by and for sarah

2010-10-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

there is the fact

"we miss you"

we/i you
i don't know
i couldn't speaking
walking
talking
/knowing
not closing
opening mouths
lips,books
machines bones and sometimes i hate the world

2010-07-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

cunt
ripped out
heart
fuck me/with a
pencil

Sarah Chance

ENG 101

2010-04-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

2010-04-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

I am angered.
out poured on a broad base
bold on a clear glass base

crab alight white expended
less than a minute clocked
adjacent to that spoke

I a mangled
a managed, I.

guy in my class that i hate

2010-03-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

bluth
hairy half
stubble half
full
greasy top under
hat
shunt your flaccid penis
for posterity

keep talking B.O.
and cirgarettes
keep talking

2010-03-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

the last is only the loneliest fruit

xuxa rodriguez

Chapter 1 - Connection is not completion in the language ecosystem. Bitchez.

2010-02-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

Here is another wall of my office.

2010-02-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

I just finished the first chapter of my thesis. This hasn't been an easy process. Just ask the people I share a hall with. They walk past and glance in, usually just to see me sitting/laying on the floor, trying to organize peices of paper in an order that will eventually be completely re-ordered. Several have compared me to John Nash, Russell Crowe's character from A Beautiful Mind. I don't argue with them. The chapter draft is due on Wednesday. I'm done 4 days early ;)

Ode to Gina Cooke

2010-02-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

Look sales guy
quit talking
go away

no follow-up
no dropping-in
no walk-ins

Did I mention
I am busy at work
working when I'm at work

Now
quit telling me about your dreams
entrepreneur monkey
HP - and what is wrong with it

quit. telling. me. ANYTHING.

cept "goodbye" or
"I'll email you"

Now
get out of my office

Love,
Gina

2010-02-15T18:06:00.001-08:00

I work as critic of poetry
it's resistance to being critiqued

being her face stands a positive
legs don't either, hear that
high--
tiger you yearly wine fight
Oh Santa Monica - too quick
happy off the bicycle
high-date me.

This man
rides up to here
all in orange orange
happy, smiling
left no
no not left and smile
and (I wonder if she would date me)
bathroom. Don't make eye contact.
Must be craziest
happy. smiling. coffee tea bicycle muffin music sunshine orange suit

(her maybe) (I'm not desperate, am I?)
must be crazy.

Tickle Dip

2010-02-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

tickle dip
though only blue bristle
can though juice

hair and
skin

tight and mauve and voice

Reasons Why

2010-02-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

Just because I loves you-
That's de reason why
Ma soul is full of color
Like de wings of a butterfly.

Just because I loves you
Thats de reason why
Ma heart's a fluttering aspen leaf
When you pass by.

-Langston Hughes

God

2010-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

I am God-
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.

Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground-
But I am God-
I cannot come down.

Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God-and lonely.

-Langston Hughes

Suicide's Note

2010-02-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes

Fascination

2010-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Her teeth are as white as the meat of an apple,

Her lips are like dark ripe plums.

I love her.

Her hair is a midnight mass, a dusky aurora.

I love her.

And because her skin is the brown of an oak leaf in autumn, but a softer color,

I want to kiss her.

-Langston Hughes

One Year After

2010-01-23T10:22:00.001-08:00

Not once in all our days of poignant love,

Did I a single instant give to thee

My undivided being wholly free.

Not all thy potent passion could remove

The barrier that loomed between to prove

The full supreme surrendering of me.

Oh, I was beaten, helpless utterly

Against the shadow-fact with which I strove.

For when a cruel power forced me to face

The truth which poisoned our illicit wine,

That even I was faithless to my race

Bleeding beneath the iron hand of thine,

Our union seemed a monstrous thing and base!

I was an outcast from thy world and mine.

II.

Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted,

I shun all signs of anchorage, because

The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws.

New gales of tropic fury round my head

Break lashing me through hours of soulful dread;

But when the terror thins and, spent, withdraws,

Leaving me wondering awhile, I pause -

But soon again the risky ways I tread!

No rigid road for me, no peace, no rest,

While molten elements run through my blood;

And beauty-burning bodies manifest

Their warm, heart-melting motions to be wooed;

And passion boldly rising in my breast,

Like rivers of the Spring, lets loose its flood.

Claude McKay

To Lindsay

2010-01-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

Vachel, the stars are out

dusk has fallen on the Colorado mad

a car crawls slowly across the plain

in the dim light the radio blares its jazz

the heartbroken salesman lights another cigarette

In another city 27 years ago

I see your shadow on the wall

you're sitting in your suspenders on the bed

the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head

you shade falls over on the floor

Allen Ginsburg

"The Windhover" - Gerard Manley Hopkins

2009-12-14T20:36:00.001-08:00


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,	5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion	10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion

2009-12-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

If you are turned away by someone inscrutable whom you nonetheless love, what do you learn?

Fanny Howe, "After 'Prologue'"

2009-12-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Wanting to know is what makes me do things I don't want to do.

Wanting to know how far I can go with what I know.

Fanny Howe, "Catholic"

2009-12-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Church once demonstrated the belief that the brain is the site of consciousness; that the body is not an illusion; that a person can be injured by thoughts. In accepting this situation, the Church tried to influence people, to turn ugly words into radiant ones, to feed each mind with sublime vocabularies. To offer repetition, rhythm, an end to the separation between speaking and hearing.

Fanny Howe, White Lines

2009-12-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

Our field is the sky

Worked by the sweat of motors,

Faced with the night

At risk of motors

Who lived here? WHo has clean hands?

Who glinted in the phantom night

For other phantoms?

Who lives there below? Who is weeping?

Who has lost the key to the house?

Who cannot find the bed? Who is sleeping

On the steps of the stairs? Who, when the morning comes,

Will dare to interpret the silvery trail?

Look above me

When the water again pushes the watermill round,

Who will dare to remember the night?

Ingeborg Bachmann, "Fleeing by Night"

2009-12-06T20:56:00.001-08:00

Who is walking beneath the quayside trees? Who is lost, utterly lost? On whose tomb does the grass grow? Dreams have arrived, they came up against the current, they climb the quayside wall with the aid of a ladder. People stop. People converse with them. They know many things. Only they do not know where they come from. That they do not know. It is warm on this autumn evening. They turn to the river and raise their arms. "Why do you raise your arms, and not close them round us?"

Kafka

2009-12-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

Writers are afraid. Almost all those whose instrument of work is language are afraid: journalists, critics, university teachers, almost all of them. Fear and lies govern their tastes and their activities. Fear of what? Fear of death by social starvation, fear of not being invited to the dominant banquet, fear of not immediately receiving a pittance of compliments, fear of not being published, of not winning prizes, of not being invited onto the greatest possible number of TV programs. Fear of not belonging to the powerful cliques that reign over institutions private and public, fear of not belonging to the inquisition clubs. Fear for their reputation, fear of not being cited in the maximum number of papers, fear of not always being congratulated, of never being congratulated, fear of being unmasked and called inferior, fear of not getting in touch with the establishment, fear of never getting a taste of power, fear of exile, of cold, of solitude, of that sever climate that follows the artist, as Joyce well knew. Fear of being honest and of this old fashioned virtue costing them very dearly indeed.

Helene Cixous, We who are free, are we free?

12:42pm

2009-11-29T10:36:00.000-08:00

Single: adj: individual: being or characteristic of a single thing or person, solitary or sole; lone.

8:30 p.m.

2009-11-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

I don’t like it

I don’t like her

I don’t like it

2009-11-10T20:58:00.000-08:00

text tree n solid root you find, you roll

crouched like a crow

dress up as this though another

question o,k. knight may me my i

ow go further yeoman ch. chooo

invent my identity

social roll you are avail able

hi me a-don't recognize me, mi

you're my vegetalia

typing too loud in the car on the way back from Evansville, Indiana

2009-11-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

for k.

it's silver, not gray

could get it, no no didn't get it no no, you warned me

ah meeee, made noise enround

black bed horsey.

black bed window.

black bed open.

black bed yes.

black bed red and black and hingest hottest rug

need you (k)now

went up, and up hund, grood, no no you are you-your grooved pinion on little button carnival backdrop. leaf. leg to arm at mi. it's silver, not grey

o,k.

you-you're round, it's grey, not brown. getting somewhere here. like where this is going somewhere. now here we are getting somewhere no no again.

2009-11-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

"...the agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks (for it is she who is constrained), but in the one who listens and says nothing; not in the one who knows and answers, but in the one who questions and is not supposed to know." - Foucault

ENG 402 Post

2009-09-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hawkins' piece completely challenged the way in which I have been thinking about new media. Am I allowed to say that? It's just one essay. It's just one person's belief about the importance of new media, and the connections she is making to her experiences with new media and the pedagogy she employs. I was confronted and shaken by this text. In my apprehension to seek out and utilize new media, I was affirmed and consoled by this text. We as teachers need to work with new media so that we can feel and understand the extent to which our students feel confused and challenged by their projects? Hells yes, praise the lord, and pass the salt! If this desire to deconstruct, make new, make fragmented, make visible, make unsure, create tension, is a main idea or ideal component of the pedagogy I am developing as a new teacher, which it most certainly is, how can new media function for me as a teacher and a learner? I challenge my students to write an

essay

…

paragraph

…

sentence

…

word

…

letter

…

THOUGHT

This is not easy for them. The impossibility of a word. I am challenged to further develop a pedagogy.

Hawkins says it best when she says we are situated within a "current historical context." Our current historical context is not only a suggestive for new media. We are not. It is not an option! We are not being asked to incorporate new media into our teaching practices and pedagogy. Our current historical moment demands it. "And your resistance will only result in your own disability, your own immaturity" she says. I see my students resisting and resisting, paralyzed by the inquisition of a why, the seemingly perilous nature of constructing the sentence, expanding the thought. I am equally resistant to new media. Paralyzed! Para/lyzed. Para/lies.

Everything comes back to queer theory.

Hawkins writes, "I imagined what it means to my students to 'read' as a butch lesbian, how that would or would not differ from reading as a trasngendered person, how and why this may or may not affect their ability to learn to write in my classroom. As a writing instructor, I mark their essays and mark myself. How are these markings related?" I love the parallel she is creating between genderqueer (I would even argue genderfuck), and new media. What happens when we step outside of a prescriptive method of identity is what happens when we step outside of a prescriptive method of composition is what happens when we step outside of a prescriptive method of language. Markings emerge on my body as a text. My power is exerted through my body. The choices I make pertaining to my body are the scripts through which my students read my text.

I am comforted and challenged by what Hawkins says at the end of her manifesto: "All you need to do is believe that you have a shot at the magic, your own magic." When such mechanisms for invention as the typewriter or the word processor came into being and students were confronted with learning how to use these mechanisms for composition, I'm sure there was apprehension and distrust. How could these students and teachers adapt and embrace these mechanisms, and how is this different from what contemporary learners and teachers are faced with today? Not so different, huh? We can do it, 402-ers! We can do it!

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" - Wallace Stevens

2009-09-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfect to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

exerpt from "Infected Elegy," Selah, Joshua Corey

2009-07-22T11:12:00.001-07:00

ah the moment before letters form
burns heaven behind your eyes
to empurple enroyal blood-temper
though I parted your book not in order
think skin a place for the pulse
to kneel or clutch your knees or bemoan
meeting and missing in the orchard
the hopeless equivalence of systems
what we were a blind pair of throats
who teaches me hot to find God
on the volume and verse of being
on the pale printed page of your bed
we had no recourse but discoursing
look love the light's better here

"57=12=3," from The Dik-dik's Solitude by Anne Tardos

2009-07-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

Prostitution candy wrap gallivanting sweetie
Blues donkey, Jew's monkey, everlasting news junkie

Lavender elephant
Piggly Wiggly evidence

Grange wool simulacrum eigen perseverance.
Gangliated fitz-koh macafee connection, matz-koh.
Eagan again.

A baby gorilla mistook his hat for his gingiva. No shame, Sir. Your
hair is not my hair. No shame. Semiramis hubbub and a charivari
collarbone.

Fuck you, Semiramis. Macafee fromage desiration frock-coat.
I gladly form English sentences.

Iffy nanny incantations.
Five and seven make twelve.

The law says it all.
Maybe.

Steadfast kitchen drainage erosion darling.
V-neck validation negligenty critical.

What's my story?
Fifty-seven people were killed in the 1994 earthquake in Lost Angeles.

Words no longer pronouncing the letter l are walk, talk, folk,
yolk, palm, salmon, half, calm, almond, and a few others.

Vaccination metaphysics Iris Murdoch never mind.
Episodic nifty ginger.

Slide 57 shows an example of Acne Vulgaris. Ingenuity.
Fast Fifty Seven - Synovial Carcinoma.
Primitive simplicity.

Election enigma academic epidemic.
Maphtalene gossamer bioremediation.

The Male

2009-07-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

Epilogue

Rituals are like ducks in pink water, says the Male. Like everything else he says this is from out of the blue. In the background Baudelaire imitates an orator, "If I am not decorated for having my duty, I will cease to do it..." Words come to the Male. They are not willed into being. There is a sinking feeling at the end of any utterance. The last word may be accident use up the potential of all the others. Then the pitch downward will be into the eternity of the Male's mind, his endless spontaneity and lack of preference. When I drink pink water out of the bowl shaped from his head, he looks at my throat. Bolus, says the Male. This seems to cover up some kind of disparity. The desire to be touched is overwhelming. But who's desire is it? This relates back to our initial conversation, where one word could be taken to the land of many.

-Carla Harryman

2009-07-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

There is no first or last discourse, and dialogical context knows no limits...At every moment of the dialogue, there are immense and unlimited masses of forgotten meanings, but, in some subsequent moments, as the dialogue moves forward they will return to memory and live in renewed form...Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will celebrate its rebirth.

Mikhail Bakhtin, last written words, 1974

from The Cold of Poetry - Lyn Hejinian

2009-07-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

The Person

I love the weather
The scene in nervous snapping
Rocks rise in a rain bearing bridges, chairs
The emotions follow...watchful
My desire is dragging direction to say this
The pen is a nag
The bulb crackles
The sky was never a chipped ceramic
Bulk is brightened by collapse

On my skin are a million lozenges
And outside are stalks of dirt upon inspection
Dimension and longevity--they raise ridges of
description
Here are Rock-drop and Asylum, almost alone
Poem, or ragged prose
The pulse is not an omen of rhythm to come
Pedagogic love
Learning is like poetry-an uncalm practice
It makes the promise of unlikeness and discipline
I love a trilling bird with extended dawn
vocabulary

LH

2009-06-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm filled with holes. I used to see spackle in my relationships

with people. And I still have a hard time holding on. But really,

there is nothing to be filled in. Knowing this gives me some com-

fort because it means that I have to live with my losses as one

would live without an arm: being constantly aware of the phan-

tom lim sensation that wants so desperately to connect, to be

filled in, with flesh. But ultimately, I have to survive by rewriting

the script that assumes the spaces have to be filled in. They don't

-like the universe, my holes are filled with their own energies,

forces fields, and pulls. The challenge is to recognize this anti-

matter as some kind of sustenance; to find in holes a certain kind

of completion.

From Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife

2009-06-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

[Maxim]

Never fall in love with a text that attempts to convince you that you are already dead.

Or that says you are a vampire.

Or that makes you feel distant, aloof, removed from the scene.

Because the crime has already been committed.

You don't need to read about the gory details to know that it was violent.

We were both there, all along.

The only difference is that I see autumn leaves and immediately hear the gunshot.

You just want to see the body and marvel at how it fell forward, and then was left behind.

Some excerpts from "Castration or Decapitation?" - Helen Cixous

2009-06-25T18:44:00.001-07:00

She does not hold onto loss, she loses without holding onto loss. This makes her writing a body that overflows, disgorges, vomits as opposed to masculine incorporation…She loses , and doubtless it would be to the death were it not for the intervention of those basic movements of a feminine unconscious (this is how I would define feminine sublimation) which provide the capacity of passing above it all by means of a form of oblivion which is not the oblivion of burial or interment but the oblivion of acceptance. This is taking loss, seizing it, living it. Leaping. This goes with not withholding: she does not withhold. She does not withhold, hence the impression of constant return evoked by this lack of withholding. It's like a kind of open memory that ceaselessly makes way. And in the end, she will write this not-withholding, this not-writing: she writes of non-writing, not-happening…She crosses limits: she is neither outside nor in, whereas the masculine would tray to "bring the outside in, if possible."

2009-06-25T18:43:00.006-07:00

Let's look not at syntax but at fantasy, at the unconscious: all the feminine texts I've read are very close to the voice, very close to the flesh of language, much more so than masculine texts…perhaps because there's something in them that's freely given, perhaps because they don't rush into meaning, but are straightway at the threshold of feeling. There's tactility in the feminine text, there's touch, and this touch passes through the ear. Writing in the feminine is passing on what is cut out by the Symbolic, the voice of the mother, passing on what is most archaic. The most archaic force that touches a body is one that enters by the ear and reaches the most intimate point. This innermost touch always echoes in a woman-text. I see it as an outpouring…which can appear in primitive or elementary texts as a fantasy of blood, of menstrual flow, etc., but I prefer to see as vomiting, as "throwing up," "disgorging," And I'd link this with a basic structure of property relations defined by mourning.

2009-06-25T18:43:00.005-07:00

This is how I would define a feminine textual body: as a female libidinal economy, a regime, energies, a system of spending not necessarily carved out by culture. A feminine textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without ending: there's no closure, it doesn't stop, and it's this that very often makes the feminine text difficult to read. For we've learned to read books that basically pose the word "end." But this one doesn't finish, a feminine text goes on and on and at a certain moment the volume comes to an end but the writing continues and for the reader this means being thrust into the voice. These are texts that work on the beginning but not on the origin. The origin is a masculine myth: I always want to know where I come from. The question "Where do children come from?" is basically a masculine, much more than feminine, question. The quest for origins, illustrated by Oedipus, doesn't haunt a feminine unconscious. Rather it's the beginning, or beginnings, the manner of beginning, not promptly with the phallus in order to close with the phallus, but startling on all asides at once, that makes a feminine writing. A feminine text start on all sides at once starts twenty times, thirty times, over.

2009-06-25T18:43:00.003-07:00

Women who write have for the most part until now considered themselves to be writing not as women but as writers. Such women may declare that sexual difference means nothing, that there's no attributable difference between masculine and feminine writing…What does it mean to "take no position"? When someone says "I'm not political" we all know what that means! It's just another way of saying: "My politics are someone else's!" And it's exactly the case with writing! Most women are like this: they do someone else's-man's-writing, and in their innocence sustain it and give it voice, and end up producing writing that's in effect masculine. Great care must be taken in working on feminine writing not to get trapped by names: to be signed with a women's name doesn't necessarily make a piece of writing feminine. It could quite well be masculine writing, and conversely, the fact that a piece of writing is signed with a man's name does not in itself exclude femininity. It's rare, but you can sometimes find feminist in writing signed by men: it does happen.

2009-06-25T18:43:00.001-07:00

Now, I think that what women will have to do and what they will do, right from the moment they venture to speak what they have to say will of necessity bring about a shift in metalanguage. And I think we're completely crushed, especially in places like universities, by the highly repressive operations of metalanguage, the operations, that is, of the commentary on the commentary, the code, the operation that sees to it that the moment women open their mouths-women more often than men-they are immediately asked in whose name and from what theoretical standpoint they are speaking, who is their master and where they are coming from: they have, in short, to salute…and show their identity papers. There's work to be done against class, against categorization, against classification-classes. "Doing classes" in France means doing military service. There's work to be done against military service, against all schools, against the pervasive masculine urge to judge, diagnose, digest, name…not so much in the sense of the loving precision of poetic naming as in that of the repressive censorship of philosophical nomination/conceptualization.

2009-06-25T18:40:00.001-07:00

Women would then have to start by resisting the movement of re-appropriation that rules the whole economy, by being party no longer to the masculine return, but by proposing instead a desire no longer caught up in the death struggle, no longer implicated in the reservation and reckoning of the masculine economy, but breaking with the reckoning that "I never lose anything except to win a bit more"…so as to put aside all negativeness and bring out a positivness which might be called the living other, the rescued other, the other unthreatened by destruction. Women have it in them to organize this regeneration, this vitalization of the other, of otherness in its entirety. They have it in them to affirm the different, their difference, such that nothing can destroy that difference, rather that it might be affirmed, affirmed to the point of strangeness. So much so that when sexual difference, is touched on, the whole problem of destroying the strange, destroying all the forms of racism, all the exclusions, all of those instances of outlaw and genocide that recur through History, is also touched on. If women were to set themselves to transform History, it can safely be said that every aspect of History would be completely altered. Instead of being made by man, History's task would be to make woman, to produce her. And it's at this point that work by women themselves on women might be brought into play, which would benefit not only women but all humanity.

57+12+3 - Anne Tardos

2009-06-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Prostitution candy wrap gallivanting sweetie

Blues donkey, Jew's monkey, everlasting news junkie

Lavender elephant

Piggly Wiggly evidence

Grange wool simulacrum eigen perseverance

Gangliated fitz-koh macafee connection, matz-koh

Eagan again.

A baby gorilla mistook his hat for his gingiva. No shame, Sir. Your

hair is not my hair. No shame. Semiramis hubbub and a charivari

collarbone.

Fuck you, Semiramis. Macafee fromage desiration frock-coat.

I gladly form English sentences.

Iffy nanny incantations.

Five and seven make twelve.

The law says it all.

Maybe.

Steadfast kitchen drainage erosion darling.

V-neck validation negligently critical.

What's my story?

Fifty-seven people were killed in the 1994 earthquake in Lost Angeles.

Words no longer pronounced the letter l are walk, talk, folk,

yolk, palm, salmon, half, calm, almond, and a few others.

Vaccination metaphysics Iris Murdoch never mind.

Episodic nifty ginger.

Slide 57 shows an example of Acne Vulgaris. Ingenuity.

Case Fifty Seven - Synovial Carcinoma.

Primitive simplicity.

Election enigma academic epidemic

Naphtalene gossamer bioremediation.

some criteria of poetic analysis suggested by Lyn Hejinian

2009-06-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

a poem is not an isolated autonomous rarified aesthetic object
a person (a poet) has no irreducible ahistorical, unmediated, singular, kernel identity
language is a preeminently social medium
the structures of language are social structure sin which meanings and intentions are already in place
institutionalized stupidity and entrenched hypocrisy are monstrous and should be attacked (Professor Cynthia Huff particularly loves this one)
racism, sexism, and classism are repulsive
prose is not necessarily not poetry
theory and practice are not antithetical
it is not surrealism to compare apples to oranges
intelligence is romantic (The Language of Inquiry)

my poem of protection

2009-06-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Poem of Protection

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Protect Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, my rainbow, queen dyke, mullet walker, scholar of English studies and feminism, writer of beautiful words, intensely secular jew-ish, silhouette of androgyny reading Sexton, Whitman, Tennyson, driver of a bumper of social issues for peace and equality, wearer of hemp, burner of jasmine, drinker of soy milks, nosher of toast, sporter of numerous high fashion hoodies and blue bandannas

Shield her from all forms of water falling from the sky
acids rains, slight drizzles, snow pellets, hail storms, summer monsoons, wet socks, cold jeans, frizzy hair, the mist off Lake Summerfest
use uninvertible umbrellas, silver awnings, hoods of faux fur, petition to the rain gods! such as Cocijo of Mexico, Mulungu of Africa, Tawhaki of the South Pacific, Lei Gong of East Asia and Thor of the Marvel Comics

Block her irrational fear of hoo-ved animals especially those of North America who may attack like the White-tail deer, the Mule deer, the Sitka deer the Elk and the albino deer that roam Argonne National Laboratory with a vengeance, that are especially
ferocious

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Protect Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, who lived on a lake in Michigan below an indie guitarist named Charlie who wrote songs about Martha, a ghetto in Madison, friend of the Yahara River, a tiny square house in South Haven, a condo in Schaumburg, who now lives in modular home in Belviqueerville with a silver/green/silver pinwheel divided by the Kishwaukee River

Guard her weakened immune system from allergens and allergy-induced asthma, sinus infections, packets of nasal phlegm, cat dander, dust, pollen, mold, feathers and leppits with hypoallergenic breeds, air purifiers, nose spritzers, Zyrtec, Allegra D, forget Claritin, soap scum remover and featherless dusters

Hold her during the death of her mother, Martha Ann Trowe, who hugged me first and knew me later, lover of Door County coffee, teacher of giving, expert photographer of the Sycamore, the Pin Oak, the Buttonbush and the Sweet gum but who also has an office and a desk as a carpenter contractor, lover of Jenna so much

Hold her during the death of her Grandmother, Haroldine Bernadette Sorensen who married Herbert Trowe, divorced Herbert Trowe, married Herbert Trowe, divorced Herber Trowe, then partnered a woman named Caroline, fellow English professor, who she walked with on the beaches but could not hold her hand, lover of Jenna so much

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Find Jenna Lynn Goldsmith who spent her summers as manager of guest services, author of term papers, on Rape and Sexual power, the Stigmatization of AIDS, speaker of Spanish II, proof reader of my abominable prose, runner of town errands, genius conversationalist, maker of eye contact and mixtapes

Deflect her from my mother, Maria Anne Mazzola Coyle, who is trying
who knew me as girl scout, bride, boy crazy, Catholic school girl, soccer player, only daughter, virgin, Nicholas Sparks, honor student, sound breeder, big sister, collector of marbles, volunteer, teacher, her sweet Melissa she should have put in more dresses, bought more Barbies thought less of the saber-tooth, read more Babysitter’s Club, watched less Star Wars, planted a rose not dug up a worm
who forgot misprint on the upper middle class nuclear family, poet, vegetarian, bundle of social issues, queer, secret from Grandma, novus scholar of post-modern, traveler of the world, lover, idealist, foolish

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Adore Jenna Lynn Goldsmith who even before we met I longed for her thorax, hinge joints, carpals, fibula, the dear roof of her mouth and other obscure parts, who has her very own handwriting, a nose ring, two tattoos but wants another, fake poet glasses, a turtle named Buddy who is twenty-five years old, reminiscent of the Archelon ischyros, who likes ketchup but also chocolate chip pancakes

Protect her from mundane living circumstances
let her love her coffee every day, give her Sunday mornings with perfect toast, a bookshelf so collected, sun sliding in envelopes, an endless lover, real flowers, smile at bad drivers, let her notice every building on the way to work, find the curious intellect of every student, let the weather take her back with old feelings, have every lovely piece of word move her, have mercy on the kingdom of insects

Protect her from the story of us
mornings like yesterday
graduate schools and their state flowers

at Las Vegas the sagebrush
at Philadelphia the mountain laurel
at New Orleans the magnolia
at Notre Dame the peony
at Normal the purple violet
at Champaign-Urbana the purple violet
at San Francisco the poppy
at Chicago the purple violet
if we succeed there or there, future girlfriends who are not me, the drawer of poems we filled, the classes we skipped, hugs of absolute unselfishness, how I laid about you like a sponge, engrossed in identical breathes, that one time I took her to get sushi and let me pay, or that other time I showed her my bedroom and all my things, the other time we ordered pizza and wrote a poem together, or tripped to Northern Illinois under the siege of a snowstorm only to eat wheatbagels and drink coffee, or the last time we talked, when she showed me her bedroom and all of her things

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Face her to hatred
who replaced the human with dyke, faggot, rugmuncher, homosexual, feminazi, catlapper, butch, kike
forgetter of Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, who looked past the stares of hatred to the soft retina of face into the flubbery lobe behind
who taught me to make human humans, make them people to the point of their sleeping breaths in steady rhythms, be love in their dreams, blanket their distant hearts, see them in the kitchen plucking unwanted hairs, riding the elevator to the 42nd floor, vomiting bile, surfing porn, loading the dishwasher, pinching their fat, wiping their glasses, inserting enemas, praying to the sky, tripping up curbs, flicking their boogers, kissing their mothers, holding on to each other

from Juliana Spahr's Response

2009-06-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

VIII

an attempt to speak to the human moment will occur

in these moments someone touches someone

someone claims to love someone

someone moves closer to someone in prelude to a proposition

someone waits outside for someone to come by

someone becomes unable to live his/her life and succumbs

this is information that might be left out of witness

yet it has a bearing that is all the more strong

it speaks to the safety of immunity that does not exist

to the various other kinds of immunity that do exist

such as an emotional immunity to the world

a quarantine of engagement

a feeling of safety

which one do you believe?

some words to live by from Lyn Hejinian's My Life

2009-06-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

So that if I tell you my intentions, I force myself to maintain those intentions.

I found myself dependent on a pause, a rose, something on paper. It is a way of saying, I want you, too, to have this experience, so that we are more alike, so that we are closer, bound together, sharing a point of view--so that we are "coming from the same place."

If I couldn't be a cowboy, I wanted to be a sailor.

Now that I was "old enough to make my own decisions," I dressed like everyone else. People must flatter their own eyes with their pathetic lives.

When you've exhausted setting, topic, or tone, begin a new paragraph. The refrigerator makes a sound I can't spell.

from Juliana Spahr's The Transformation

2009-06-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

So there was a certain emotion in the air. This emotion was

trivial. It was not an emotion that would last. It was a passing

emotion. It was the emotion commonly experiences around

brushes with disaster and the awareness of having been spared.

The after a hurricane, after a black out after a tornado, after

an earthquake emotion. All of this gave the small parts of their

lives the same intensity with which they listened to poetry.

One night, standing in the cold out on the sidewalk looking at

the towers-of-light while waiting for friends to come out of the

bar, they realized that while the collapsing buildings did not

cause them to fall in love, make babies, give rings to one anoth

er, settle down finally after years of having trouble with com-

mittments, it did change the way they read poetry, the way they

looked at art, the way they thought about ideas. Even before

the buildings fell down, they had gone to many poetry read-

ings. They went to poetry readings where poems that used frag-

mentation, quotation, disruption, disjunction, agrammatical

syntax, and so on were read. On the odd occasion where the

poets used complete sentences, they were usually used ironi-

cally. The fragmentation felt reassuring to them. Felt like a

trance-induced chant. Like a philosophy of connection. Like

a model of intimacy that was full of acquaintances and publics

that recognized not only points of contact and mixing, but also

relationship difficulties, cultural and linguistic difference. And so

they often wondered in this time if perhaps all those who

claimed that poetry was a comfort were right. Even those

who claimed this were usually talking about lyric poetry and

not poetry that used fragmentation, quotation, disruption, dis-

junction, agrammatical syntax, and so on. They had noticed

before that they felt writing in their body. That they felt those

certain sensations, those sensations of interested calmness that

happened when their mind and their breath were working

together, that pleasant boredom. And they began at this time

to think of the poetry that used fragmentation, quotation, dis-

ruption, disjunction, agrammatical syntax, and so on not as a

radical avant-garde break but as the warm hand of someone

they loved stroking their head, helping them to relax the mus-

cles in their head and inviting them to just close their eyes and

relax for a second with the words of someone else. This feeling

somewhat answered that constant question of about the use of

the avant-garde in a time like this.

from Juliana Spahr's The Transformation

2009-06-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Because the town was dirty, whenever they read poems about

the beauty of the countryside or the rich, dark woods of the

eastern part of the continent or of the other continent, and

islands across the Atlantic, which was all they knew about

poetry because the only poems they read in school were about

stuff like this, poetry made little sense to them. So then they

found this writing of fragmentation, quotation, disruption, dis-

junction, agrammatical syntax, and so on in an anthology.

This writing was at the time over sixty years old and mainly

written on the continent and the islands across the Atlantic

and yet it felt completely fresh and new and because they were

looking for something that was not a weird environmental lie,

and because this writing of fragmentation, quotation, disrup-

tion, disjunciton, agrammatical syntax, and so on was so weird

it at least didn't seem to be lying in the usual ways and they

clung to it and they felt it was a part of them.

Really what it was was that they felt this writing in their body.

They felt certain sensations, the sensations of interested calm-

ness that happened when their mind and their breath were

working together. This sensation of interested calmness might

also be called pleasant boredom. There was something about

the artfully vague repetition of this writing from afar that

pleased them. It pleased them slightly but not too much and

from this mild stimulation certain thoughts formed in their

head and they felt they could pay attention to these thoughts

and their emerging symbols as much or as little as they wanted.

9:05 lost in Chinatown

2009-02-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

assimilation is unfortunate
I contain the shudder urban cramp
the smoke pole
a too hot latte
peer’s book

farewell French sparrow
me time is always here
when you need it

condensed packet sounds
like a tax receipt
motion distracting
the borrowed barista ink

inky smudge finger/smudge
on my hi five-r
too late to avoid this pen type
from the burning lip beans

it’s not pleasant
somebody diarrheaed here
pounding iron, Texas
sheetrock planks
cold and burnt
air and oxygen container

you seldom know
tested it for me, disparaged
I guess
you should remember twenty
plus years and grasp, it
that okay?

this my available conversation
and stop opening the fucking door
she asked “Poet or fiction?”
I point: stage left
she suggested returning two-fold
revisit the classics
check page three
review the neglected submission
relish the error.

2009-02-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

No parking sign
pre-paid parking feed, bye

synthetic down spread, bye

narrow cup for soy, bye

tenth floor windows and chairs
Chicago Cultural Center, bye

tenth floor: wood, stage, chairs
Columbia College, Chicago, bye

lowerlevel bookfair
Hilton, Chicago, bye

Mambo. Artists. Dunkin. Descartes, bye

Milkweed, Poet Lore, City Limits, Graywolf, Orion, Mandorla, Dalkey

bye
bye
bye
bye
bye

Six degrees of communism

2009-01-17T13:28:00.001-08:00

Kriemhild in-love with Siegfried
every wit as much
as Gunther in-love
as much as Gunther seeks Brunhild
equally as does Etzel, with Kriemhid
where Siegbant of Ireland
seeing Ute, the Norwegian,
as Hetel of Hegelingen that of Hilde,
of Ireland
not foregetting Siegfried of Morland
Harmut of Orman,
and Herwig of course, well, Seeland loved Herwig.

i lie prostrate

2008-11-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

after a week, i lie prostrate

i come down to
this last hour
this last journey
lilacs and bronze

you afforded me
i watched up up
together together and a part
and apart
and widen and part

then together
gone! a
nd together
this pole

i looked clear that day
sleeves of my sweatshirt up
let it be mine again
i shrieked isis, agape

shrieked it
lying prostrate

2008-08-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

thing is

still hearing the last goodnight
making it through a morning
reading isis, agape
squinting for poets
grasping for friends
not making it through morning

reading you love me in the morning
reading

holding onto each other

Tom Collins

2008-08-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

To and from Avis,
we take the bus.
The navigator or our journey
is a man filled with Jesus.
He does please us.
Las name Collins, first name Tom.
He listens to gospel
on a CD Rom.
From the looks of his skin
he could be a member
of the nation of Islam.
He's got a mixed drink named after him,
for a good time mix sweet, sour, and gin.
He's quick to help
when he parks the shuttle.
My bag is so heavy, he busts a nuttle.
But he's a trooper
no time for rebuttle.

Lime chips

2008-08-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

When I eat lime chips
I feel like shakin my hips
They make me so happy
I know it sounds sappy,
But I crave them when life
gets crappy.
Sometimes they are crispy,
sometimes stale, but either way
They would be my last meal.
In jail.
Thank you Lays, for you have brightened
my days.
Hey no joke, it's seriously making
me broke.
But like I said, they make me smile
For them, I would walk a mile.

2008-08-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

These are poems from the past. The said thing is, they are only from 3 years ago. Clearly I've grown...

Hairy leg

What I have is a hairy leg
When I show people, they beg
me to stop
they do a jaw drop.
It makes me feel sad, bad, not so rad.
Dang I'm mad.
My friend Hannah is it's biggest fan.
She doesnt care that it's not tan
or smooth.
What do I have to prove?
Nothing.
That's right father, you can't bother
me.
Grow hair, grow hair.

disciple

2008-05-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

she says interpreting is hard
she says she must make a thoughtful inquiry

i say the politics are hard
i say

the politics are involved in interpretation

she wonders how a field
of study becomes
discipline

i do not explain
i say the man the man society should understand

should

the narration, she wonders
the narration is how history
is interpreted

i am unrepresented
she resists the notion she studies
she says it should be turned into science

i say it involves too much politics
to be or to be politic or to be propogate
just master the manifestos, i say

she plays the personal in narration
she enters the philosophy different takes

through history, i say, lay the foundation it's 306/307

she uses
-the language of the masses

scene

2008-04-12T16:11:00.001-07:00

scene of

closet, closest daughter

rage in traffick

present in Spanish walls

she to the left of love

eager in doubt, velvet mother

culture in right, in wrong in

doubt

in loyalty plotted dots

to the ending

oyo oyo

2008-04-10T13:22:00.001-07:00

The importance of the titanium point tip situated, bright centering the circular metal dome. Measure for purchase, money switching child hands. Plastic, foam, cradle the paper mold. Worth glass is a visible, is shard still vision gain.

Taking this mold, its cold metal. About distanced a finger’s tip, palm meets wrist about right. Clipping a light volume. Preparing feet, legs, forearms and chin. Curl and release the projection at a rocket’s angle; gravity gains velocity, swing back to a balance, grind and whistle.

This taught feature vibration of a tri-finger joint. The velvet purchased, beside a separate thing, protecting a sheath. The bearing, an oiled groove. A match to an oily twine, release the sleep to an auditory ping, and the sharpened brick crack.

technologic

2008-04-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

technologic

jogged tongue to remember
writing in red ink
to be right not wrong
flipping cards rote and recall
flying by as

migrant to the cities
hunger, environment
for modernization
population and poverty
learning recycling codes
on diskettes
hard drives swooning
over spreadsheet,
house commitment, memory
our neighborhood
in well educated store
coming up surfing the net
to program,
to network
apply the database application
across the information superhighway
publishing, doesn't exist in language
to print, to develop
beauty slum
illiteracy, recycling
overpopulation, technology of slum resolve
account printers
to urbanize building
resources of undernourished
design, malnutrition

white cards a causation to recall
to forget for tomorrow

meg's parking ticket

2008-04-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

three classes with that guy
convertible it was a nice day
down for a day
hid it in the console so
it wouldn't get stolen
information about a car

scapegoat

2008-03-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

existing now in a (w)hole
before you, buying Danish clogs
forced impostor alone
circumscribing outer edges
of the flat generational lie
through Belarus and Poland
eyes never falling on free terrain
no pleasure of dirt on a barefoot
somehow surviving our mother's land
wound up like a
splintered top
in sweet Denmark
to shake in a basement
rocking chair, starched calico dress
breakable as a Danish plate
and you weren't Jewish
under a black halo of curls
remembering day and night
handed down in a nose
not a story
a thin undereye of blueblack veins
a scarf for the cold nights
never revealing the bronze chain
dangling a delicate chai
around your neck
and you weren't Jewish

in the cold

2008-02-27T18:19:00.000-08:00

the sheets cracked full of air
covering metal bed frames better
than i
more intent on framing you in the
minus four degree heat
my reaction to you was quite
the same as it could have ever been

in the cold

mornings after grains of
salt between my teeth and
the soles of my shoes teeth and
my veins staggering exquisite
break

at that time of morning joints cry as i sing!
and stretch ligament greeting
the coils sub skin
relax
and that's beautiful

as it could have ever been

in even a degree inferior
to the handle becomes an inside
which becomes a tree
which meets the ground
and ice which meets the hallways
to your door
and maybe an afternoon
with you

2008-02-18T06:55:00.000-08:00

eyes are frantic when the generational groan is covered
an anul sob is the extent of my relief
ingesting the rotten eggs and
"put it in your eye you fuckin dyke" but
straight mama he's ignorant and you don't have an in
you're daughter is one of them
today i get to be curtain twitcher
but yesterday i munched on carpet, but i also read a book at the library
and my roommate flicks beans, but she also teaches truth in a classroom
and my love is a dyke, but she's also a mentor to a little girl with braids who calls herself "T"

and the cubicle walls are thin and nothing cuts like the tongue of a
a bored farmer's wife
who takes it up the labonza herself
just housewives in drag

but why but why she asks
when it's in my walk
and it's in my hair and its in my tattoos
but why why she asks
when it's in my voice
and my tattoos and the marks on my arms
and the marks on my legs and in my hair
and the rotten eggs in my hair
and there is vomit on my shoes so shitting doesnt work anymore
chipped my tooth on the porcelain in a rage of thirst
cause i'm not better than a dog's tongue lapping in a spinal thrust
buy why why she asks
when he doesn't even know you
but it's in my walk and my hair and my tattoos and my scars

for as much as it is in me, it is in you
haunting you in daymares
where i'm waiting

another response to her

2008-02-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

i have made a habit
twirling my greasy strands
and now I’ve cinctured this bloody finger callous

the claw (the nail)
the blood bubble

outline your navel
in navigating the tendons
my rings get in the way

the snags
the divots are sweat bowls

belt sounds clinking resound
signal sex like the church at midnight
parishioners consecrate the holy fuck

hump the knob till the click, the sigh
your beauty peaks
in a concentrated stare on the needle, on the match-flame

the lesbian crack binge
the first sweet breath

where skin was bare
hair has grown thick and black
to the mouth to the nose to the eyes-mark it at the pock scar

you’ve caught me again

the claw (the nail)
the blood bubble

2008-02-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

Emmet Williams did this thing called "The Ultimate Poem." The rules of the game are as follows. 1) Choose 26 words by chance operations-or however you please. 2)Substitute these 26 words for the 26 letters of the alphabet, to form an alphabet of words ie a=dog, b=table etc. 3) Choose a word or phrase (a word or phrase not included in the alphabet of words) to serve as the title of the poem. 4) For the letters in the title word or phrase, substitute the corresponding words from the alphabet of words. This operation generates the poem. 5) Repeat the process described in step 4 with the results of step 4. 6) Repeat the process with the results of 5. 7) Keep going.

This is what I came up with.

"dorm room blues"

vienna escape check promise
check
escape escape
promise
blues guns fray
gone

apple magnets fray woman
woman fuss
fray
gone
switch fuss
rider fuss
switch humble
fray switch duchess
shotgun check escape
promise magnets gone
fuss

fuss
shotgun shotgun
guns
fray
promise fuss tidings woman fray groove gone
wait check
fuss killer
suddenly escape promise
fuss woman

wait waterfall
guns
guns

suddenly fuss magnets groove
suddenly fuss groove fray check
wait fuss
guns guns

gone waterfall vienna vienna fray
woman guns killer
wait waterfall gone gone
promise fuss tidings
woman fray groove
gone
tidings check escape escape
apple
fray

tidings escape woman fray
suddenly fuss groove fray check
wait fuss
guns guns
apple magnets fray woman woman
fuss

spring creek road

2008-01-31T13:04:00.001-08:00

on spring creek road
water in the gutter
doesnt discriminate
it's all filthy
rinsing pebbles or
rounding the teeth and gums

no such thing as concrete
river divider discrimination

where brown skinned babies
build things with two hands
inherited from the steel and spark
of the assembly plant
darkened leathery finish
kneeding black earth
and sweet meats

big brothers race things
with two wheels
true angel bodies
swing widely in the sun
raising glasses of pure water
to golden eyes
to ascertain the essence of their lives

across the road
using the curb as a springboard
raising glasses of pure water
to blue eyes
to ascertain the essence of their lives
natives of another kind face an indoor world
a white enameled season
too white to see cracked muddy surfaces
where the water ran
and didn't come back

2008-01-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

Response to WCW

what are pants, if not for drying hands?
other than to cover your privates.

Imagination
isms
la fille, Camille, on the cover screen is a cognate for dollar, no?
ta Daouleaur, no? Transgression tongue sounds
transpose the airwaves and become dense theory
the poet is nothing but a scholar making observations
Imagination
isms
WCW on another list of paperback books and ladders
lowering into a knapsack thicket
dark corners where crumbs take a nap after resting their minds
resting eyes is a synonym for sleep
words rest when human body parts slip them in empty spaces
Imagination
isms
the chair is a lucky mother fucker
socks make way for black faded guitar pants leading to green
bumpy cotton mountains
Mount Abercrombie and straps and pads and navel
with lint in it
and warm lips
and there is that tongue again
slippery candy can kayak taking a tongue trap ride
Imagination
isms
that dark haired beauty crawls through the doorway again
she sings happiness is a warm gun
but she doesnt know happiness is a warm gun like i
know happiness is a warm gun
she's a lone star on the range
but her baby buddy with the size small sticker on her foot
and is small
doesnt please her
who says please, please me again?
Imagination
isms
isms
isms

a google poem

2008-01-27T21:45:00.000-08:00

Lip Gloss,
PUSSY PUCKER POTS
..LESBIAN ...
PUSSY PUCKER POTS
..LESBIAN..VEGAN..
Strawberry Snatch

with gusto

2008-01-26T19:36:00.000-08:00

a poem by Cato and the Green Hornet (Melissa Coyle and Jenna Goldsmith)

The light slid in envelopes
stole a curtain for clothes
waking to open the rusty cages
letting the machines breathe

new electricity into the power lines
plagiarizing graffiti off the overpass
the stop today is dusty heaven

chickens hanging by their necks from the highwire
poor poultry, poor poultry
this shit would never fly in Denver

where the crowds paid us in what they could give
so chimps become gods and midgets got stoned

we wrote poems about things that never happened
and shook blood hands after carving “howl” into our palms with a “to go” fork

to the dismay of Linda our waitress
cause we tipped her in horse feed and the shavings from our pencils
and I said damnit, how’s that for educational!

so for one week I made and sold candlesticks
but a beard on a lady, on the road
is lies to a beatnik-revolving the earth

oh well we still have our eyebrows
whatever.

here you me

2008-01-10T10:12:00.001-08:00

tell me that you’re here.

remove the blinders that impeded my perception
(bolting to my skull bone like a helmet
not protecting me from anything)
so I can see.

unwrap my heart like a candy
placing it to you mouth
(the air is no longer swirling song
and unsafe)
so I can melt.

engrave my skin and make me understand
(don’t mind the hair, it will grow back
press your thoughts to my chest
hard)
so I can feel.

smother me in something dense
(like a wet sigh
or a muffled breath that you never meant to share
but I caught
only because I was under your mouth)
so I can hear you.

these things tell me you are here.

morning activities

2008-01-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

stripping
the bed, glancing at
chocolate honey hair
contrasting milky tones
cover insides that only hours ago
worked overtime
you became graceful between 3 and 4
you became a traveler around 5
taking time to go over the nights blur
you make me water
tiptoeing the floor which
has become a minefield of the sum of your parts
and I simultaneously count
the imperfections of your back
coming up with approximately
zero.

for anne, for living

2008-01-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

what was it about living, for living
was the problem for you.
words electric; life giving compulsion and spirit
and they spun a sticky web for you,
they buildt something made
to catch you.
the slit was enough to pass through
opening your mouth to death's morsel
still you pursed those ruby red's in affectionate disgust
and smiled in the accomplishment.

oh, i am your friend
i can glance across the table at you,
all neuroses and knuckles
stale smokes and cool looks, you are
amidst the smooth smoke balloon strings
they escape your face where they are able, driving heavenward
but not by choice
why would they want to

and what you needed was enclosed
in those four walls
if only you knew.
a radio, some words flush on the pages of a book
and the ink in the typewriter
because you wouldnt use a pen

did your Icarus ever ascend to you, Anne?
from the exciteable sun, for
you tamed the sea and sky
buoyed by words
just living to die.

hwy 173 (back to belvidere)

2008-01-07T20:06:00.000-08:00

jokes that i have become to her are contained here.
when the dawn came she took off
her gauzy white robe
positioning herself in the sun,
on the expanse,
behind two sturdy wheels (assuming a smooth ride)
but i was the crooked spoke adjacent.

this pinion gear (she built the hardware)
is the wheel of our circumstance and
she will not have it.
one, maybe two times i gobbled up bone-thin goodness,
obvious fleshy cheeks behind a turned back
and what was it to us but a fork in the road
albeit a wrong turn,
as it was so clear that i had rolled far
far ahead of myself.

is their room for function in form anymore?
we must dwell on the past for composition
easy for her to say, yet there was something
compelling in the wrong
of her right of way.

so was that really me in the days
she cites, in verbose speech she makes
from faraway places
i will never go.
beats her mind caught
just to catch.
adding growth and pressure to
her swollen brain which heavily rests on my hand
pacing on rainstreaked streets in time to
the excitement
bending through space
contained in her fluids,
creating excrement for my senses.
recalling hips under her slender fingertips
that shake like string on an instrument
only she knew how to play.

recall the crooked spoke
not meant to travel.
but the round faces i touch can turn
eyes to me for every uninhibited emotion.
and for the emerging energy
the most satisfying ride there will be,
will be.

ticks i can't get rid of

2007-12-28T21:33:00.000-08:00

And can I tell you even
though you already know (because I papered you in those three
words and forgot to tape the bottom).
When my nose takes a sip of you
opening wide, weeding out viscous
gossamer angel theory,
only letting pass ruby red scheming thought bubbles
exiting by way of the municipal great divide,
my thumb meets my pointer and says hello.

Excuse me did I say that, did I let it find it‘s way out of me?
Some fans are catching a glimpse of our code,
perhaps the code I concocted without your knowledge.
I signed it in what came out of me.
My words, of course.

Anne muther fucking Sexton

2007-12-28T16:27:00.001-08:00

Knee Song

Being kissed on the back
of the knee is a moth
at the windowscreen and
yes my darling a dot
on the fathometer is
tinkerbelle with her cough
and twice I will give up my
honor and stars will stick
like tacks in the night
yes oh yes yes yes two
little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires something like eye-
lashes something two zippos
striking yes yes yes small
and me maker.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Balance Wheel

Where I waved at the sky
And waited your love through a February sleep,
I saw birds swinging in, watched them multiply
Into a tree, weaving on a branch, cradling a keep
In the arms of April sprung from the south to occupy
This slow lap of land, like cogs of some balance wheel.
I saw them build the air, with that motion birds feel.

Where I wave at the sky
And understand love, knowing our August heat,
I see birds pulling past the dim frosted thigh
Of Autumn, unlatched from the nest, and wing-beat
For the south, making their high dots across the sky,
Like beauty spots marking a still perfect cheek.
I see them bend the air, slipping away, for what birds seek.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Black Art

A woman who writes feels too much,

those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.

A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wars were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.

Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hats,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.

the turning point

2007-12-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

it's the point at which this winding
river run has become blindingly straight
as in a deer's eye, daring the pregnant gun barrel
pushing through the screeching iron baby-bullet.

as in a hunter's resignation,
an ill-fated resolution to pull from within
knowing the nature of
nature's bloodbath.
when camo is cutlery
already ineffectual air sliced by modular liquid hell
if you are spotted and prickly backed
or smooth for water
or hooved for run
or clawed for climb, and feathered for flight
or to soar.
to the equation occasion, add insult to injury

let's make it dark
on a scale of water and totem marks
i can make a plea for sport
just to be fair, but this isn't your game
or is it, black rattler in the holy thicket
for almost black is rich blue which is
to say murky thick crimson
and the interval between the clicks
and the
time
before
the wound.

my girl

2007-12-04T19:41:00.001-08:00

My girl is a hard plastic
ice cube tray
Tinted window on a microwave
Bubbling over with fat, boiled rubber
mess
Hollow, emaciated
runway crawling and slithering
Stroking stick straight glue hair
died black
curled purple tips
My girl is
Rude
They just wanna fuck her
She just wants to be
Fucked

My girl is foreign;
Fine tuned machine
Hot tan skin, baking in the sun and lush brown eyes.
Big black moles
Touching him
under the table,
touching me on the floor.
Winking, slits for eyes, yellow tinted tits
My girl is militant, collar straight starched polished blank mindless:
Militant.

My girl is soft, and squishy. Blob. Boring, blah, devoid, gorgeous, gone. Fat and white muffin top with highlights! Blindingly transparent legs, back, chest. Reminiscent of…
My girl is not memorable, she amounts to nothing.

My girl is boi.
Gender? Curious. Questioning. Pin me down black bone hand tattooed
On my arm.
She is top: dom
Male AND female
Ze
Ass grabbing, shrieking, spitting, smoking, pierced piece of shit.

My girl is a trophy.
Back straight!
Chest out!
Bright eyes.
Glistening jagged fingernails.
Picture of beauty, reflecting bloody nostrils, white
smudged powder.
Hard, firm, ass.
Muscles, toned syringe pushing fingertips.
Luxurious full hair….
on a mannequin in 5 colors and styles…
Doesn’t she know that moderation is key?
They ask me?

I’ll let her down easy. It’s sad really, she has no idea what’s to come.
Piss ass drunk, stoned, and malnourished and rolling.
Clawing and fighting,
Naked in the cage.
Can somebody control this bitch?
Shrill screech is a plea.
Don’t worry, I say, she’s with me.

this is how i see you

2007-12-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

this is how I see you.
leg to hip, tongue to lips
woven in a perfect coil

this is how I see you.
spark in air to ignite
smoke rising in tiny ringlets
making dusk blue-black
smoldering words, white hot and wonderful

this is how I see you.
sometimes see through you
tough, too rough and you make me change
triggered by doubt that
crept by, kept by
seemingly unimaginable movement

this is how I see you.
a ship
christened, coated in a sheath of gold gleaming sheen
wind at the bow
black water breaking at the base
swirling song and unsafe

some fun

2007-12-04T19:25:00.000-08:00

love
my
sex.

bone and back bent
blasted
beyond breaking point
and dance that dance

open your eyes

like you open your mouth

like you open your legs
beautiful girl

i look down at your veins
i look down on fat worms on wet cement
i giggle gasp

tie your hair back in a ragged knot
to look older

when you get thirsty
pour the drink
when you get warm
open the window

do anything
but don’t talk to me
baby, it’s love

Ode to DK

2007-12-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

DK. A teacher? A lover?
must one be K. Aaron Smith to touch her?
the sky above her, is it a brighter blue?
the carpet beneath her tiny feet a deeper brown
her presence creates a creamier hue.

our words are our food
the lecture hall our shelter
the steps i take to my seat, oh the movement of her hands, what a treat!
notes aside, pencil aside, powerpoint aside
i am the microphone
cold, black, tiny in her hand
i wait on the table, lifeless until DK picks me up
puts her plan into action
all of a sudden, i feel the electricity pulsing through my once lifeless chord

my destination is clear and inevitable
as she places me in her nonexistent cleave
i wonder, is there any place sweeter than this?
i look down at the sparse bosom of the one i am drawn to
i am like a moth lost in a flame
except i am a microphone, lost in the creamy Asian colored flesh of DK
i am no longer the microphone

everything about her causes my tongue to tie
my skin is hot, my face flushed
when she flashes some thigh
i notice her, i see her
she is kneading the air
she is pointing her laser pointer
she is articulating the phonemes of my wildest dreams!

if she only knew, only understood how happy she could be if she let me take her back to wessex
does she see the danelaw in my eyes?

i cannot help but wonder
as she speak of language, comitatus
and plunder
did she mean what she whispered to me during office hours
late that night?
her voice was faint
but i will never forget

se lufode

one day you'll understand

2007-12-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

silly putty hands waiting at the baggage claim
for the unopened sugary cake cocoon
revealing to you inner eyelids
maybe other parts too

inaccessible, tell me again
how daring
when crowded waist deep
in failed attempts
in exceptional deluded prowess
if then this
well, you have succeeded

but if not
then what?

smile

2007-12-01T19:10:00.000-08:00

smile stealing
word junkie
slow climb in this world war
in the remembrance of me
so you’re skittish and wet
and all the while
wild for it.

i can’t travail this distance
between your hip bones
by sweet subservience alone
or by intimation
of the peak of your arched brow
and the crest of your bent knee
or even the softness of your inner thigh
on my cheek.

let’s rewrite petty history
or the a historical symbiosis between you
and any other.
for the matter at hand
is where mine rests
when you smile.

not yet

2007-12-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

not yet

day after day of amusing dismissal and diligent awareness
are a constant reminder of a potential invocation
of my muse.
or an untouchable face
on some days I can grip with both hands.
the remaining stored scents sit on my brain’s bone branch
heavy like iron, pungent like a fermenting memory.

which seems best?

every touch is a torturous tingle, a skin quake
every aftershock reverberates
through blood rivers, lip mountains, marshes of flesh.
a flood will recede
only after it has left its mark
on the trees.

forget forged investigations, framed in right and wrong
mother culture’s velvety cloak covers the thorny thickets
of what you really want.
traverse what matters
pseudo explorer.
for you are no traveler.

not to me.
not yet.

like brand new

2007-12-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

this dependency on reciprocity
surely divides re-creation into two worlds
sheltered by the counterculture
both seemingly lovely and mouth-watering
obviously unoriginal

give me an enclosed, untouched dome
only echoes of the brick snatch
unlikely consequences of the beautiful butterfly
a distant recollection triggering meaning
fortunate for us three