i've suddenly seen the lies in the sounds called words

I'm Goin' To New York City, I'm Leavin' On A Train

2012-01-12T00:33:00.004-06:00

god made food

the devil

the cooks

- joyce

slopery slip sliding talking remembering no can't solvering some mystery or other nor nother

tip trod toward tequila bar mexican settling wrestling and football t.v.

saloon door swing open music stop dead silent heat...

air broken by moustache laugh and step forward in

by back slap how-de-do and a welcome never felt so and much

belly up to clink glass accompaniment set to music of the spheres

and the pure joy of it all covers up, washes over, the pure truth:

the mind is past its glory

-the road is out before me

the moon is shinin' is bright

what i want you to remember

as i disappear tonight....

show me a poet

who didn't drink

and i will proudly

raise my glass

and toast

those shitty poems

The Sun Was Shining Everywhere

2011-09-07T01:15:00.004-05:00

i sit down to write. and what do i have? what is the only thing i can find? a blue pen. a blue. fucking. pen. and a shit pen at that. ugly to look at. ugly to write with. someone's free gift from some animal clinic in some Ohio town i've never heard of. and if you really think about it, Ohio has a lot of towns, comparatively speaking, that i, or any other relatively well educated person, has, if nothing else, heard of. Cleveland, Columbus, Kent, Dayton, Youngstown, Canton, Springfield (or one at least assumes). but this town? i don't even know that many people in Ohio, have only been there a handful of times, and each visit brief or simply passing through. a blue fucking pen. i certainly don't know anyone in Ohio with a pet.

i forgot Cincinnati...

no... that's not true. a cat. an old friend living in Ohio has a cat. but i haven't seen her in years. and besides, she knows better than to give me a blue pen. although there was once that she did, in fact, give me a blue pen. she was working at some terrible place, tex-mex cuisine, pre-packed and franchised out. i showed up late under the guise of craving quesadillas and cheap margaritas, pretending to write with an ink-less pen.

- we're slow so i can give you this... to a waitress a pen is worth its weight in gold... i'll need it back.

i believe i wrote that she saved my life. did i mention that i was there because i was in love? do i even need to? but i haven't seen her in years.

and Akron...

i loved another girl in Ohio once, or rather, i loved her before we went to Ohio, and i loved her once we left, but our time in Ohio... it's all over now and as often is the case it's impossible to believe you were ever in love or that you could be anything but. and now, at this moment, a blue pen is the only thing that connects me to her, to what we shared.

Bowling Green...

and like a sieve these vague ethereal memories hold nothing more than remnant drops, like faded blue ink on a whiskey soaked page.

new poetry blog

2011-09-03T05:13:00.001-05:00

http://writepoetryfucker.blogspot.com/

Yo Those Niggaz Be African Or Some Bullshit or... Why We Live In Brooklyn

2011-08-04T00:33:00.003-05:00

girls stumble slip forward out of franklin ave doors into franklin ave steppin forward steppin out while joel staggered home heavy and full, street home and heavy. The Prospect. the one named building in his hood not proper named. not carved in stone. all clean lines and glass. no home for a cop for a good police two aspirin washed down, chased with a brooklyn. Rachel, the Raquel, with hipster jeans and andy warhol tits had kicked him out and hard so a night spent on the street at the two for one bar filled with catholic restroom aesthetic or pagan or what's the fuckin difference. memories of a brick. though a window.

- raquel
- rachel
- that's not a good jewish name
- well i'm not exactly a good jew
- the tattoos gave that away
- fuck you
- among other things
- you gonna buy a drink or does andre have to kick you out again?
- i'll buy anything that comes with those tits
- are you off duty?
- yeah, of course
- fuck. that means i can't sue the city. andre get this piece of shit outta my bar

at 6:45 in the morning he stepped from the platform at 7th ave onto a manhattan bound q train, screamed, "fuck all you vodka slurping russian motherfuckers," vomited down the front of his shirt, and collapsed. when he woke up he felt like he had been beaten in the head so badly with a metal pipe that his brain was leaking from his face. for all he knew he had been. it would take him almost twenty four hours to even realize that his payot, those side curls that, more than any other single physical characteristic marked him an ultra-orthodox jew, had been ripped out at the roots. he was just lucky to have woken up at all.

- what you want, boss? usual?
- coffee cream and sugar three old fashion plain
- cops and their donuts enh?
- hey, diego, why don't you shut the fuck up and get me my breakfast
- you keep talkin that shit and i'm gonna file a brutality complaint
- you pull that shit, diego, and i'm gonna give you some brutality to complain about
- how bout you get the fuck outta my bakery
- how bout you go fuck yourself
- three eighty
- here's a five keep the change
- tomorrow, boss?
- see you tomorrow, diego

those that stayed were committed, refused to give in to white flight, one driver fucked up and all hell broke loose. it shook his faith. tore it up. august 1991 and joel looked out the window of his family's third floor apartment on kingston. angry black kids, some his age, throwing rocks, bricks, bottles, anything with weight into any home with a mezuzah in the door frame.
- joel, get away from that window
just as a brick comes toward him, slow motion, slow enough that he has time to wonder whether it came from a house or was found in the street. slow enough that he has time to wonder why a brick would be in the street instead of holding together someone's home. slow enough that he has time to wonder how anyone would be able to remove a brick without the whole house falling down. slow enough that he has time to wonder why he didn't move before it hit him in the side of the head.

- so some kid comes winds up at downstate in the e.r., blood pourin from both sides of his face, screamin about russians, bloomberg, and the prophet isaiah all at once, fightin so hard they have to stick him just to get him under control, three guys and they can't get this piece a shit in a bed let alone do a goddamn thing for him and on top of it all this asshole show up with no shoes, lookin like he's just walked a couple miles barefoot, feet nearly as bloody as his face
- this says he was checked into kings county
- kings county, downstate, same fuckin thing. they'll walk across the street with a spike in their arm just to shave ten minutes off the wait time. anyway, i thought you might be interested because he's one of yours
- one of mine?
- yeah. one of yours. jew. black suit, fedora, curly sideburns, well, not anymore
- what are you talkin about?
- maybe you oughta see the kid

New York Epilogue...

2011-07-09T03:27:00.005-05:00

...for z harvey

a $30 cab
brooklyn
to brooklyn
should i even tip?
certainly not the shortest route
but he did have three stops
aw fuck it
merry christmas mr. raza
middle of july

i'd come from a good bar in a too hip part of town. a bar that sold me british beer the way it should be served: hand pumped into imperial pints with a side of crisps. salt and vinegar. plus the empenada man showed up. but he ain't got nothin on the tamale guy. chicago tamale man. now see that's what made the second stop so hard to take. the chicago... not the tamales. not the man.

tonight ny city is losing one of its finest to that third coast empire. that breezy town i love to complain about. that frigid bitch of a city i fuckin hate. that midwestern mecca that will always hold special place in my heart. a city perfect, at least for a time, for a good southern man i watched get out of a cab at 5th and 20th brooklyn time and disappear into the night. the night spent with people i love. (with people who might just love my girlfriend more than me (but really... can't say's i blame em))

27. homeless. unemployed. i feel that, son, i feel that. i know where you comin from, and in this case i know where you goin. know it better than some ain't goin just are. i know its midwestern mexican, its hazy vague southside, its meat markets, donut bakeries, warehouse theatres, its 4 am beer bar holy grails, its northside stretch 'a long streets deserted at nights 'cept the occasional old timers bar make you feel like small midwestern town all wood board and darts marked only by slow swinging sign out front. old style. exactly.

i know it. did my own time. cracked her wide open. now it's his time. and so off he goes. that man among men. the one faced challenges we'll never know because they was his and never meant to be our own burden. faced challenges hid behind face 'a joy. he will be missed. he will be accepted. welcomed into other open arms not our own but just as warm. but for him... never warm enough. 'cause none can ever be quite so.

27. homeless. unemployed. for some folk - and usually the good ones - ain't no better way to be. i feel that, son. i feel that.

You Are Men Of Stones

2011-06-03T00:49:00.004-05:00

it started with the four.
moving between cars
as the train moved between
boroughs, counties, islands.
and as we hit the light
of the brief aboveground
the music it did play.

spins, flips, drops, dance moves i'll never do, they did on a moving train and in close quarters. deft maneuvers inches from commuters they dared to ignore them. and as we slipped back beneath the same city yet always the other - or i suppose the original depending on how one perceives it - they moved on. and just like that... it was over.

and then it was hours spent selling happiness in the place i never feel good enough for but never feels up to my standards, and then, as always, it was over. those last hours always seeming so terribly long and so terribly quick, spent with that mysterious thin film on skin, that drunkish feeling in head and limbs, that same desire to stay and fix what i've forgotten, to get the hell out. but just before the final curtain fell with bike lock on front door... is that? i think... well he and his wife certainly look happier than they did after that prostitution thing came out. but ultimately i leave with that unbalanced feeling that comes with an unbalanced till: four dollars over after ten dollars short is almost too much to take. it's like i tell mike: i feel like i'm losing my mind... i haven't been getting much sleep.

but fuck it. i got a train to catch.

and do i how i do. just before doors closing and i'm settled in, eating cookies too broken to actually sell. a substitute dinner akin to the breakfasts i used to make from the day old tray precariously balanced on bakery machines.

and just after making it back to my own island, my county, my borough, my home, he steps through the door asking for change, for dinner, for attention. and then the latter he demands though in not so many words: "from the halls of montezu-uma, to the shores of tripoli," somehow sliding his way into america the beautiful with such skill clearly not available to his ability to hit the notes he's aiming for, into that song which i can never hear without being reminded of sinatra emoting his own version in his later years. the tired sinatra, the sinatra that still somehow had it, the sinatra who had a cold.
and then...
the transfer.
not running not walking senses shifting somehow alert flowing with the crowd to the other stair that leads me to my own train on the wrong track a new route and just making it just barely to find out we're skipping stops we're expressing past all those i never care for anyway this train is goin' places and then finally...

a stop.

a next stop announced, but at this point... how can i trust it? i get off and walk the long way turning onto streets that seem vaguely safer, somehow smarter, some kind of a more full. but as i cut across the rare two-way street in the dead traffic night i see it in front of me and the first thought i have: is it breathing? and i watch and i wait but i don't stop walking. and there is no breath. there is no panting, there is no up down up down of a body being guided by lung.

the dog is dead.

i don't stop. somehow i am capable of instantly realizing the possibility of death, capable of checking for the signs without a slowing of step, and yet something in me that will do something after the fact is gone. it's simply not there.

howl, howl, howl, howl! o, you are men of stones:
had I your tongues and eyes, i'd use them so
that heaven's vault should crack. she's gone for ever!
i know when one is dead, and when one lives;
she's dead as earth. lend me a looking-glass;
if that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
why, then she lives.

and yet i know,
now she is gone forever

...

i come home to another, very much alive other, signaling it's intensity through shrill yaps and yelps that have kept me up for nights on end. i come home to bugs and heat and hunger not satiated by leftover sweets. but i come home. home to last cigarettes and a glass or two of gin. home to a shadily rented apartment where i am no more permanent than the occasional breeze - blow winds and crack your cheeks? i should be so lucky - but i am home.

come home, come home
ye who are weary come home
calling, o sinner
yes, i am come home

Making The Most Of Rapturous Nothings

2011-05-21T02:29:00.005-05:00

"if you asked me what music i like most... i reply, the sounds around me i haven't composed."

and what haven't i composed lawd lawd i ain't even a composer. not per se. but what don't ever one of us compose?

every day and every moment we each and every one of us compose our desires, our secret hidden fantasies buried down so very deep coming to the surface in fits, starts, bits, drops, pops, bangs and sometimes all it takes is walking a midtown street in the rain trying to remember how you got to that place how you got there how you are how you were and all of a sudden and a very suddenly it's all too much to hold in and then. just. like. that. pow. bang. hmph. it all comes out. tears. sobs. wails. tears sobs wails drop to knees holding on barely holding on trying just to try hoping to keep it together but failing so miserably but succeeding succeeding succeeding yes yes yes yes yes this is something something something SOMETHING this is happening and fuck it all FUCK. IT. ALL. "every day is a beautiful day every day is a miserable day." this is something that happens. every moment. every day. and you. or her. or him. or someone else entirely. and that's just how it is. that's how it was how it will be. every moment a funeral every moment a festival. can you honestly tell the difference? ha. i dare you to even fucking try. good luck, because it's all the same in the end. like a new york conversation it's impossible to tell if it's argument or agreement. and every night we fall asleep with the same in our heads and wake up with.... well the same. tabula rasa? bullshit clean slate. it's always the same and it's never so. we're left hanging on the edge of reality. hanging on the edge of everything that ever was and ever has been. how exciting is that!? we are, at each and every moment, on life's edge. the end of the world cannot be prophesied. it's just gonna happen. just like that. so at least at the very fucking least... enjoy it.

Greatest Who Song?

2011-02-08T00:50:00.003-06:00

The question came in a text. But it's an answer that needs more than 140 characters. An answer not simple enough for simply a title. So.

Quadrophenia is an epic piece of art but that works best as an album. Same goes for Tommy (sorry Pinball Wizard), and The Who Sell Out... almost. So. I Can See for Miles is allowed on the short list. My Generation is on there because it's an amazingly raw Who song that works completely without the context of an album (a single that stays a single) and does that whole "capture a mood of the moment" thing.

But... the best? Without question it's Baba O'Riley. And maybe it's because it's from an album that failed as a concept that it's something that can stand so well on it's own. And maybe it's that it's a sort of funeral for the 60's, a modern rock second-line for the generation that had little left to offer. Or maybe what it comes down to is as simple as the sonic landscape, the sonic assault, it lays down. That unrelenting arpeggiating synth combined with that crazy Irish violin at the end combined with Roger at his screaming best combined with one of the most satisfying drums intros maybe ever combined with a guitar virtuoso who could play anything but is playing power chords. Fucking power chords. And it never resolves. It just... stops. It always leaves us wanting more. One of those perfect rock songs that at the same time makes us want to drive a hundred miles an hour, makes us remember our first girlfriend, makes us want to fight any asshole who gets in the way, makes us remember dancing in our bedroom to the first band we discovered on our that was ours and no one else's, makes us need to throw our arms around our friends and drink far too much far too fast. So yeah. Baba. Give it a listen. And turn it up waaaay too loud. That's what i'll be doing tonight.

Don't Pay Heed To Temptation

2010-10-09T22:58:00.005-05:00

- do y'all have any headache medicine?

- there's bottles of it behind the bar.

somebody's telling a strip club story of 5,000 down to 5.

the hippos are being electrocuted in their tanks all around me.

like frogs in the slowly boiling water.

like the rhinos in heat fighting for control.

walkmen like cigar store indians still watching over me.

this is where i'm ended up.

the same yes the same ol same.

with a hometown cocktail just the right touch of french.

more than herbs than can count.

"dye your hair yellow and raise yo hem"

lawyers talk about shows i watched to hear bands sung by singers i met one night to have drinks with years after my french class crush had faded with ex-girlfriends whose hearts i broke by giving in to the poor planned staying arrangement desires instead of spending nights with improv friends who first illuminated the academics of language before disappearance into unknown frontiers into which i had once trekked with broken hearted ex-girlfriends of the men whose women i then loved with women who lived with women i had once almost loved when my own were somewhere else being beloved by loving strangers over the phone...

it all comes back to somethin don't it.

and all this over a hometown cocktail that never was my own but the drink it sure could be.

the hometown where i once met that girl, no not that one, or that one, nor that one, but yes, her right there, for a lunch just to run into the past i had left behind and had seen the day before.

something else?

naw, the something same.

the shrimp and grits were perfect.

"what i want you to remember as i disappear tonight"

good strong drink makes the connections.

just like the time i was with but still without that girl no, not that one, not that, no wait yes her in the city where i was with my girl.

- it's such a good message for the kids.

Don't Belong To Every Choir

2010-10-01T23:43:00.008-05:00

each song a profane prayer
a dirty joke
an anthropological six-day drunk

amblin in and outta towns with dead leg limp and lazy eye. roll. roll it round. roll it roun yo mouf. cigrette slowwwwww shtep. shit. done an gawn. oh gawn you jes flattrin. flattrin me i keep comin round this place to be overhearin all a kinds a my peoples but do i say a thing? naw naw naw i am in affect choo AL! eastern european cheese farmer tired lawyer granny smith apple drink maker! these is all the sort's my peoples but do i speech? do i throw a hey hey hey!? naw naw naw in affect choo AL! shiiiiit naw nothin like the sort i should go home and drink for free wait...

- i's s'posed to have a pipe shoved up my ass. i mean, you're asleep an everything.

- it's still a pipe shoved up your ass.

...my folks' liquor cabinet ain't but bible verse crochet and best wholesome intention so "free" ain't quite a right "cheaper" now yeah thas the word drink fo cheapa cheap cheap cheap sang the little birdie bird so's like i say go home and drink fo... aw shit "home" ain't right neither god damn if i don't keep gettin stuck on the words. i s'pose it means i oughta get another drink and make a few more false courage friends. or maybe jes another drink.

i come back to the red shirt girl with black hair accent a southern and tits all a big doing pirouettes on the back deck to not quite a plause to igor stravinsky to social distortion to everthin else and nothin a t'all wouldn't i mind settlin myself between them an all. an other and i ain't nothin but a listner. frank. frank listner. pleased tuh meat cha.

a stum bull back
the mutant faced child
looks up in wonder

In All Union All Is Hid

2010-07-28T00:56:00.006-05:00

- what is it i want to say on this day the day of your marriage...

i remember hearin those words and thinkin i must be the luckiest man alive hell i didn't even make it through the sentence much less the service before my mind set to wanderin on the what was to be. just gettin lost in her shinin face. and her starin straight back.

______

eyes. windows. into the soul. burnin. open and burnin. seein knowin cryin out beggin. somethin. somethin. somethin more. inadequate. a not quite. never quite. but almost. just enough to. no. won't. cain't. wouldn't ever. but maybe. if only. open and burnin. the soul. windows. eyes. window. eye.

who are all these people and why are they really here and why?

______

i was there, watching the two of them standing before god and man, but i was the only one who saw, was the only one who heard, was the only one who really knew what would come of this union, and i sat there being ripped to pieces somewhere between knowing what i should do and what i couldn't do and realizing that the two were the same sides of a different coin, and even though i knew he was standing at that altar feeling as though blessed by some holy spirit... she was as good as laid bleeding before us, an entire open wound, unexplained and muttering.

______

- oh my good lord it's just some kinda wonderful. them two's gonna make just about a perfect match ain't they.

The Stranger Shows Up In Town

2010-07-21T05:55:00.001-05:00

well... i remember he showed up in town hell what was it. earl! when'd that fella show up round here? earl! goldangit good fer nothin sonofa. that boy. his brother ray ain't right, but earl, he ain't none closer to right than his brother. course they's both so young neither of em prolly remember when he showed up anyhow. it musta been thirty odd years or so. i do remember he showed up leadin a mule packed with none much but a few satchels a what looked mostly fulla books, a cardboard travelin case, and a shotgun. he had one good eye but he looked like it ain't seen much a the same. and that girl. lord amighty that girl. she was some kinda somethin. he looked near abouts forty years her senior but with a fella like that it's hard to tell if it's calendar years yer lookin at or if it's the way life's done treated him. i reckon that fella had seen a thing or two he'd rather have commenced to forgettin. never knew how he got hitched up with a young thing like her but like my grandaddy always said: that's one a them questions you don't ask your acquaintances outta respect and it ain't a question you ask a stranger cause it ain't none a your business. around here... everbody's one or the other.

she musta been averse to age cause i don't think she looked a day older at her funeral. oh we all went. didn't know them two well even then but it's just common courtesy to show yer face. pay your respects. they went ahead and buried her in the churchyard even though i don't remember seein neither of em in church one single sunday in all their years in town. i ain't sayin they weren't christian. just seemed their way a doin things. kept to themselves. stayed on that farm a theirs. saw him in town from time to time. never said much. never stayed long. got the necessaries and moved on.

hthere was once we had what might be considered a conversation. i remember we made our pleasantries whilst waitin on that boy from the feed store to get back from an errand but we left it at that. after near abouts what seemed like all durn afternoon i was about to leave and by way of common courtesy said i weren't gonna wait all day - c'aint just walk away leavin a man standin alone without sayin somethin - and as i was set to step off a the porch he comes out with "until the day when god will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope." i turned round and stared. saw some kinda glimmer pass across his eyes til he looked down all silly grin cross his face. we all knew he was somethin of a literary man so i s'posed it was some line or other from one a his books and thought about askin as much but there was a somethin about the way he leant on that porch post, somethin about the way the sunlight hit that still smirkin face below that hat pulled down low, that one good eye sparklin, that i remembered my grandaddy sayin: that's one a them questions you don't ask your acquaintances outta respect and it ain't a question you ask a stranger cause it ain't none a your business. and like i say: round here... everbody's one or the other. so i walked off. leavin him waitin. leavin him hopin.

Have You Ever Felt The Feel Of Status?

2010-06-26T02:05:00.005-05:00

the thing is... i'm near to certain you ain't gonna understand. but i s'pose i gotta tell you. or i should tell you. or i might as well tell you. At the very least.

it ain't so much that it were a different time - it was to be sure - but what it is at the heart of not understanding has less to do with a historical shift in perspective and more to do with the simple fact that a story changes over time. hell, when a story is actually happening it ain't even a story. it's just an "is," a some kinda thing simply going on. the story of it don't come 'til later. the story of it usually shows up on the doorstep right about the time it becomes necessary to actually understand just what it was that happened. sorta like the science you learn in grade school: you learn that your body needs to breathe in order to survive but that don't mean that the first breath you ever took was sitting in some school desk staring at the blackboard. sure it's easy to conflate the act of breathing with science proper, but not knowing how your lungs work don't make them do so any less.

hell, now i'm talking in circles - an easy fix to get yourself in when you get to be in my position. but like i say, the story and the thing are two different things entirely, and, in this particular case, so much so you ain't likely to understand much if any of it. but you're here. listening. and i'm already set to talking so i might as well keep on.

they say the best place to start is at the beginning though some would contend that the just before ain't bad neither. right before the stranger shows up in town, when all is still right with the world, but as i got no stranger to talk about as such i s'pose i'll start somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth shot he fired straight into that animal's skull. it was the twelfth what finally done it so i reckon that the important one. the one that counts.

______

i have read the diary of Jerimiah Edward Macintosh nearly every evening for the last seven weeks, and each time i begin again with the hope that i will glean some new... something, some previously hidden fact, a deeper insight into who he was. but while it always feels as if i am reading it with fresh eyes, i have as of yet not been able to walk away with anything more concrete than i did on my first reading. the simple story plainly understood. not simple but rather... innate. it's almost as if i were breathing his words. automatically. necessary. unnoticed. i, of course, will return again this evening, though i expect little in the way of revelation. though, as always, some small part of me clings to the possibility.

When You're Lost In The Rain In Jaurez

2010-04-21T04:59:00.004-05:00

they sat together in the park
as the evening sky grew dark

there's somethin in those two lines. somethin like the patience it takes to really watch a sunset. somethin like holdin hands for the first time with someone you love or at the very least pretty damn sure. somethin like knowin that everthing is gonna be ok. somethin like that which doesn't happen all too often and not enough.

i pick off the hours like a sniper at a half click out.

and i smell the smoke in my hair, smoke from another fire i set alight, hot oil on the coals and incense in the blood - this ain't holy service and it ain't whole no not while somethin's missin and not while somethin's amiss.

i contemplate the droppin of my g's and realize that doin so is another false somethin but recognizin that voice out of the ether makes me remember that i do come from somewhere and somewhere is where i'll one day be.

how long will i be ridin?
how long must i keep my eyes glued to the door?
will there be any comfort there, señor?

i was once told that home is a place worth dyin. i didn't believe it for the longest of time, and i still don't know that i do and fully, but i can say for certain that i've finally come to the point of understandin. i've finally come to the point of knowin that home ain't just somethin imagined, ain't just somethin pulled from nothin. home is a place worth waitin for. even if it ain't never gonna come.

music of children pulls me out but only just for a moment. a switch to the next to hear the soft tones of french into the most american of english puts me back on track. just a quarter past four minutes is all it lasts, but if i had my druthers i'd stay there indefinitely. but there it is, the soft blueglow of sunrise pokin through trees in front of what i currently call home, so i s'pose that means the end of one more ramblin.

i'm at the end of a rope that i didn't even know was there 'til i was nearin the end. but ain't that how it goes?

when i was sittin in front of a fire tonight i remembered a lyric i once writ:
home is where the heart is
read crocheted mantle piece
and that's all i could remember. but i s'pose that's all i needed to.

So Proud To Be Alive

2010-04-15T01:41:00.005-05:00

bird faces, iced hair
pink and white
tights like sex
of the unknown kind

south loop train stops
for college girl mysteries
for high skirts
hiked up high

like the first minute of
a public transportation porno
stop after stop after stop
getting more and more

dense crowded intense
faces tired and hispanic
black and beaten down
young and hormonal

this...
is chicago
birthplace of house
and of slam

of improvisational
of sound design
hog butcher for the world
mecca of and for the midwest

"voices of broken hearts,
... voices singing, singing
... silver voices, singing
softer than the stars
softer than the mist"

blues brothers sunglasses
spring time's 'a comin'
and on a mission from god

A Psychogeographical Saunter-Step

2010-03-22T21:43:00.008-05:00

wait... no just wait. Do you hear that? No, really try. That's Moscow in the telephone, and they're waiting for a reply.

Now i've never been to Moscow. Mike has. I haven't. But i've known city streets like you wouldn't believe. Europe. North America. The Caribbean. South America. Australia. The Pacific. Don't believe me? Check the map. And with a fire amidst face and belly i've walked those streets looking for something, for anything really, trying to find more than just the next stop on the itinerary. Prostitutes in Valparaiso. Blind harpists in Quebec. Cabbies in St. Kitts. Homeless in Memphis. Coconut vendors in Tonga. Drinkers in Filey. Lovers in Paris. Pretty much what you might expect - more so if you expect the unexpected. Now. All of this has left me with no more than party conversation and dinner party stories, but here's the thing: I'm no storyteller. Like Dylan in the movies, i'm a farmer... and who ever heard of a storytelling farmer? What it comes down to, what it is that matters, is home. And where is home? Your guess is as good as mine. What does one do without one? "But surely!" you'll say, "One must have a home!" Well that's where your exclamation gets a little sticky. Because fact is: one mustn't. Or not necessarily must. If i were once again a college freshman i'd write a dictionary entry for "home," but those days are long since past and sadly. If i were a crocheting housewife i'd point to "home is where the heart is" above the mantle and say that's that. C'est ça, c'est la. But again... not so simple, pas si simple.

In his Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography Guy Debord wrote that psychogeography, "could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Ok, ok, i know i'm defining like a college freshman (and Guy Debord no less), but there is something to this. He goes on to write, "The adjective psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery." Pleasing vagueness? Yes. But if you want direct straight arrow aim-is-true bastardized some kinda direct: The streets we walk make us who we are. I'm gonna write that again if for no other reason than to drive the point home and hard. The streets we walk make us who we are. Now. Like i said: I've walked streets. I've seen alleys and avenues. Boulevards and back gardens. Cross ties and cul-de-sacs. Have they made me a more of a person? Hell, no. But have they made me? Most certainly.

In Kushner's adaptation of Corneille's L'Illusion Comique there is a line spoken by the Maid, Lyse - and so well spoken - "To want. But to want less." It's one of the vaguest, most difficult to judge lines in the genre of modern classic theatre. "To want. But to want less." It isn't a strong character choice. Where does she draw the line? What is the difference in want and want less? Here's the tough part: there isn't. There is no line. There is no Haussmannian boulevard to barrel through the vague declensions of human desire. And that's the goal/problem/paradox of psychogeography. The smallest something is something, and the greatest something is still nothing. We can walk the streets of the world, Broadway from Battery Place to Yonkers, the grid of Chicago, the Boulevard Périphérique from Porte de Versailles to Porte de Versailles, but where does that get us? The same place from which we started, that's where. But with a something else.

What is that something? "I'm not sure of... i can't remember the name." And oh yes oh yes it's a nameable thing, but no one can remember the name. "It was down the street from my apartment. I used to go by there pretty often." Nameable but unknowable. "Once a month or so." Every so often we lock into these places. A name, a smell, an odd convergence of light. "It was set back from the street in a courtyard garden." And we think, if only for a moment, that we are home. "A courtyard garden. A winding path. A stone gazebo. A..." And the transmission is lost. But wait... something from the ether... something... "Beautiful tall windows and red stone walls." And the signal fades.

But if you listen close... you might hear Moscow in the telephone. "At every step, the riddle of human behavior and the nature of love appeared bound up with Russian." ...What?

Resignation of the soul? Or spirit of discovery?

"I never went inside. It was clear to me i should keep it as it was in my imagination. The most peaceful place."

Les Communards Sans Soixante-Huitards

2010-03-02T02:00:00.007-06:00

we roll from banlieue to arrondissement avec triumphal arch all electric magentic cord attached to the back pulling it down in the process all the while a fuck you smeared across lips, and
- you changed your hair
- yeah
and then she was off with age old an older than expected but still not so very old yet not so very young should'a seen it wish em the best hey when's the wedding!

and we were left with the before all a beers bar sittin waitin to be somethin useful when all of a
- i know you!
- yeah you too!
and that was that.

next!

so this is what is a community... les commune? fuck i cain't keep up. just simple southern boy whooo-wheee just country boy tryin to keep from gettin too overwhelmed... when the reality is somethin more like: yeah. i got this. we run this town. the music playing in my ears is more like:
assassin for hire.

the ring road our castle wall parapet. we. are. les centre ville.

have you seen the city on it's own and famous holiday? i have. it ain't nothin all too much worth shakin over. i promise. grab a seat. watch a firework explosion and boom. that's all they is. the wine and roast chicken is worth more a somethin more for payin attention to.

- let's do this again.
- i like that idea.

you see... sometimes the painful tortured oh-my-god-how-can-i-ever-face-this-shit-again becomes the: yeah... alright. And against all better judgments. How does it happen? If you don't know then i'm not telling.

oh alright.

fine.

here goes:

¬ a couple outside relationship working
¬ a headphone music loud experience
¬ a new hair white t-shirt
¬ this time baby i'll be bulletproof
¬ questionable decisions
¬ bad decisions
¬ a vague email that is undecipherable to the point of giving up on
≈ is what is.

there you go.

oh is that not answer enough for you?

well goddamn aren't you a needy fucker.

let me put it likes this:
we roll from banlieue to arrondissement avec triumphal arch all electric magentic cord attached to the back pulling it down in the process all the while a fuck you smeared across lips.

still not enough? that's too bad. because that's all you'se gonna get.

Nothin' But Clouds Of Blood

2010-02-23T02:27:00.005-06:00

and i can't help but wonder what Ginsberg thought on and upon and around during his own long walks home after late nights, evenings, soirs, nachts und noches with his very own stumble-step versions playing in repeat. did he come up and over with new thoughts poetic and plain filled with mixes and free and friendly given him by accidental neighbors in squalid flats of lonely dive?

now seems a moment in worth staying in and on of peripatetic lifestyles neither rich nor famous to discuss another cityscape love song but i'll suffice it to say - and with words of another - "well the winds in Chicago... have torn me to shreds."

and if you've ever wondered how deep is deep:

well there you go.

and if you think this unsatisfying in the most, least, and any other wayst, well to that i'll say: yes. yes it is. it's all unsatisfactory. factory burning bright.

"well there's too many people.... too many to recall."
and somtimes you're mistaken for strangers by your own friends,
and the smallest voice can take you to the worst of places.

The Fish And The Cow

2010-01-28T08:19:00.004-06:00

the sun is out in a far southern corner of my window to the point that slightest head motion forward blinds and reverse does opposite - but isn't this just the natural way of things? and it leaves in its shadow everything all a blueish white. and it leaves a parallelogram projection screen on my wall with dazzling shadow effect. and the leaves... well, there are none to speak of. a coffee and leftover lentil breakfast the first thing in my stomach since white wine and fine french cookies; rosé wine and a dinner of pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes; red wine and paté, cheese, and crackers. there was also the simmered veal bones, but that's not finished, not even yet. the entire experience now just memory and list. a catching up, a getting closer. the process measured in hours, the meal, minutes. the end rarely more than the means. but isn't that just the natural way of things? at least as we see them? did i forget to mention the bread?

Angels On The Console

2010-01-20T04:28:00.005-06:00

unknown Japanese candy, spindle cells, cheap red wine: and i go slouching toward Bethlehem. the signal chain is faulty and i'm the only one who knows it. multi-adapted many cable run and there it is, the beginning of the universe in one more room while i lie awake trying to crack the electric code. i'm told that thoughts can sometimes suppress feelings, that we can't, like a dog, just hump every other dog and see what happens, that our social interactions are very complicated. well... yeah. and dancin, oh how they dancin.

The Birds Will All Fly From My Head

2009-12-23T01:29:00.012-06:00

readin out loud

i cross the yellow snow of streetlight fantasies
passion plays of late night winter
and i try to remember clever alliterative lines
from late last night as i saw them running
to get home together
to fall into bed faster
to be closer that much sooner
but they were only running to catch the bus

late night transit before bars and boys and taxicabs home
a night out on straight streets
grid locked, land locked except for a dead lake
and too many legs of the same damn river
"this winter shit has got to go" she said with such conviction
but go where?
this winter shit was here before any of us
and is most likely gonna be here long after

it's simply the acception we gotta do to live
in this downtownish concrete kinda city
and $30 for a gallon of caramelcorn?
fuck that hot corn and burnt sugar
enough to fill a milk jug
no i can't i'm a man of principle
even if i am wearing a dr. pepper hoodie (a woman's, an ex's)
over a ravaged gap sweater (discounted, 8 years old)
and under a track jacket (polyester)
i still have principles

i step outside for my legal break and i wonder what's become of mehrdad and his american dream - well let's be honest his american dream home because isn't that what it's all about? i mean he could be sellin crystal meth to nine year olds but it's really about the house you live in - when my train of thought gets derailed by a leather jacket twice my size vocal exhalin the beer or maybe just the outdoors climate that seems to have settled in so i do a semi-sidewalk street flick and out and stumble step back in to my snifter of beer, beer so strong they serve it like brandy and i'm thankful for such cause anything more and i'd be on my ass sooner than i could stumble home and then a skirt steps in front of my window all dark haired tattoed and gum spittin sexy, probably turns her vowels into diphthongs and her men into assholes but damn if i don't want to get to know that fleur di lis on her forearm a little better, but wool coat over steps her and its probably for the best cause i got me a lady damn fine one at that and my own personal lydia-the-tattooed-lady steps back into the insides pullin heels like this were a airport check in and i can't even imagine the face i'd pull bein out on a social occasion with that, fleur di lis be damned, i'll get my own before i get to know that one any better.

and this seems like a time for tellin: i'm still a sucker for curly hair and red hair and boots knee high, for pencil skirts, for accents un-american and eyeglasses, my god talk about spectacle, but then again i'm just a man and i s'pose this makes me a sucker just on general account cause those of us at least what are the decent ones are decently enough well and awares to know that ain't what makes a something into a some kinda thing like and whoa. that takes a little more and not too little after. and if we're lucky there are still surprises - a day called in sick to spend in bed with our own lazy selves, underpants smaller than expected, an extra bottle of wine purse hidden and secret - but that ain't never what makes it some kinda thing worth havin because that is something undefinable, something unknown until you're in the very midst of, until you've washed up on the shore and realizin that you're no longer drownin, no longer lost at sea.

The Gift - Part ?

2009-12-01T01:41:00.003-06:00

we walked in to a cash in hand beer and a shot sit down but in the meanwhile passin,
- somma dees guys couldn sell life insurance tuh duh Kennedys.

which seemed a hard foreshadow to what i'd been waitin to tell her my own self. my very own life insurance policy if that's what you could ever really in good conscience call it.

and so i did. did that which i'd been plannin for but with poor less than a plan.

and she shot back a quicker draw than i coulda ever gave her credit
- how can you give the gift a Death? what the hell even is it?

i said nothin but a shot sip and stare but she with a shot swig and stare down,
- a gift is somethin but Death that ain't but a nothin and that's the why we the livin have so much trouble understandin. people adapt, learn to cope, learn to deal, learn to live with all the things that happen but Death... Death is a no-thing and when someone goes off into the never quite it of it we lose with them all ability to adapt and we lose that pocket of every thing that was them and that cain't be a gift. can it? sure you can give the gift a life it's the most meaninful of which is why Death is the least of, an approaching negative infinity a boom, no, anti-boom a sucking sound and done and done. it ain't a somethin i can appreciate and it ain't a somethin i can thank you for and it ain't even hell a some thing but a no thing. a less than every kinda thing. it is only that which i can accept because that's all and only what Death is, a that which we accept cause in the face a it there ain't no response.

and then in that staredown the tamale guy showed up. rurnt everythin. makin life beautiful again,
- hot tamales! ¡pollo! ¡puerco! ¡y queso tambien!

six for five and another round. her tab.

we eventually walked out into what we'd been hearin on the jukebox weather forecast,
- well the winds in Chicago... have torn me to shreds.

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

we walked into the buildin with it smellin all a steak frites at the bottom and cheap vanilla candle at the top and we still went to bed that night and we still went together. an undress a teeth brush a customary fuck but how could it be anythin more than just bodies when somethin like this had come up? and in certainly less than casual conversation.

- there's some kinda things... you never can... kill.

and then in those late night hours, after what two such as ourselves often do in those hours the very same, there came quiet like and straightforward a simplest of sayings,
- i loathe your methods but hell if'n i don't admire your ideals.

and somehow we fell asleep with limbs all a tangle soon to be numb in later night hours when you wake up just enough and only to realize why it is you're wakin up.

The Gift - Part 1

2009-11-20T00:17:00.004-06:00

i hit the Kennedy heading northwest to a suburb i had only heard of in passin and hoping passin wasn't what i was gonna be doing too much of cause i was on a mission and the radio playin loud told me such. this weren't no simple thing, this was the thing and this was.

she had found it for sale online and couldn't believe, nor couldn't contain, nor couldn't help but, and i believe her exact words were,
- oh my fffucking god.
...but maybe i'm just paraphrasing.

it weren't really a thing that anyone ever sells. it's usually somethin that gets forgot back a mind back a closet gets lost gets displaced too much trouble to find not that that meant she hadn't been looking for it since before we were what we were. cause she had and surely. some look up movie stars or check on pop bands from years past, but she, but nah very much she searched and scanned and searched again for this very thing that stared her down at that very moment. there. it. was. a thing bein offered up and for mere money hardly a sacrifice and yet... a hesitation. a slow to phone call waitin for somethin i still don't really know what but there it was. and there she was. a two separated by a few dollars a few miles and a somethin much more than few. so there it sat and there she. so an too.

i found myself callin, an office ring up several days past the point of what shoulda been expiration but no. there it was. and still. an across the static still up for grabs still up for sale and a sale that put all capitalism to shame.

- is this Mehrdad?
- yes. dhis is Mehrdad. are you calling about -
- yes i am.
- i haf been waiting.
- i know.
- and here you are.
- here i am.

New York A Love Song - 1 of...

2009-11-05T01:45:00.004-06:00

it all makes for a wanting of one day living in that city the same and such that's never needed me from the first moment i stepped foot from train that liberty's statue had passed before onto under and deep into station fantastic from a gilded age surround. that once niuew amsterdam of stretched islands of perfect harbors now brim-filled and shock full of eager wanting next stop chasing and oh did-you-hears the ups are greater than the grounds. that summer spent city of evaporating summer streets drifting upwards in nostril full summer heat filling insides out to the point of knowings and to all points and beyond. and that city blessed city seducing and still after so many years the wantings still there and different no less strong coming from dark corner insides hidden in hiding for one third a life lived out well if not long. the city of a thousand languages in chorus wavelengths of shouts and whispers of cheers and psalms.

The Beet Is The Ancient Ancestor Of The Autumn Moon, Bearded, Buried, All but Fossilized.

2009-10-29T01:42:00.008-05:00

a time and a place for everything under the sun yes, yes of course, most definitely, most assuredly, who could even doubt? who me? never! but the moon... the moon is a trickier and less let upon, less let into, less than let on than our just as easily eclipsable ami, monsieur soleil, but madame lune... well she's another story altogether and less a story than a few stories to tell and let me tell you cause i've heard a few and damn do they get better with the tellin. and we all know the ones on werewolves and tides and les période menstruel (she's also occasionally quite french - we've all read a french poet or two have we not?) but what about her other stories those less told? perhaps less understood or less digested like too much liquor that vanishes in our sleep despite, perhaps, our best efforts? but they don't stick with you no not in the way you think to when thinkin stuck because they have on and in them tendencies for sneakin back and into the back of hidin places and hidden corners and places well hid that seem to been meant for forgettin until they sneak back out again. and let me tell you.

what i am tryin to tell. what i mean to say. what i'm gettin round to... don't forget that there's somethin more and no not always a somethin else in the out there nor somethin for discoverin nor somethin' not known because her stories are already somethin known and in the in there and already on the insides. and don't you forget. don't you ever let that somekinda fact get forgotten.

I Believe That It Is Rightful I Believe It In My Mind

2009-10-20T00:01:00.013-05:00

and there's some kinda things you just cain't kill.

i remember sayin something clever i wanted to write down. i remember seein her familiar face. i remember bein on the ground. and then i woke up. and i woke up to more sleep. and i woke up to realizin that i had been in a wrong way a thinkin i hadna even thought before but there it was and was right where is in front a me right where you cain't shake no matter how much you commence to squallin nor shakin and hangs heavy in front til you reach out, grab a hold, and remember that very much of a time between ground and wakin up that time that was between time and was time that very same that was existed for an almost just so (and so and so and clearly) and this all becomes all to and all too clear.

and i would cry out 'is there a perhaps a someone out in all of there?' and i must go to them, reach out to them with a hand's gentle caress and ask them 'did you too cry late into the last of nights? did anyone even begin to kiss you?' and even supposin their answers come quick and clean it still ain't their answers cause their answers ain't meant for this questionin nor none other cause their's is the questions we ought not be askin. questions not new nor never was, but old as old is or ever was.

and your torn sounds will scatter in the wind.

The Way The Sunlight Hit Her Skin In What Was To Be Our Garden

2009-10-10T03:07:00.003-05:00

how much better would life be if every night meant falling asleep with face buried where cheek meets shoulder?

There Is No Hope

2009-10-05T23:38:00.003-05:00

turn out the lights. now! we have to keep them away and oh are they coming. they are fucking coming. don't you understand? they. are. coming. they feast on flesh our own and they care not for souls or humanity or ideas or beliefs or... quiet. did you hear that? they're coming. and you who are still not afraid. think of anything you have done with your life. anything that you think matters or makes a difference. they don't care. they will tear your flesh like the flesh of any other they will rip flesh from bone but the worst part? they know. they know everything you've ever done. every shame every fear you've ever had they know. but they don't judge. they laugh. as they rip to pieces they see into you and they know. but that isn't why they tear you to shreds. they tear you to shreds because it's what they do. but they know. they see. and they and they laugh. everything that you have hidden deep inside yourself is, in a moment, some trivial thing, nothing more than an unnecessary weight that you've carried your whole life and in that moment, lying exposed lying torn to pieces you are nothing more than a pathetic piece of flesh. your whole life you believed the secrets you carried mattered, were what would kill you, but no, they are what is killing you. killing you alive like nothing else can. your secret humiliation that you woke up to every morning is now nothing more than a joke to the those that kill you now and all regrets that you've ever had are in an instant worthless. quiet. i hear them. they are breathing down our necks and we are running in place trying to escape them. but there is no escape. they will catch us. any move we make they know. they know. they will find us and they will devour us. you cannot hide. they will find you. they will find us. their yellow eyes will stare you down in the darkness of your soul and they will consume you. they will consume more wholly and completely than any guilt or shame you could have ever possibly created in your heart. we are surrounded. they will be our end. there is no escape.

We Carry Hatchets In This Family

2009-09-09T00:38:00.005-05:00

fiery fiery fiery them flames was burnin' burnin' bright and he felt hisself inhabited by the sprits, the smokey folk hell and even the old man of the mountain hisself had crawled outta time and hidin' places to see what he could do and boy was he doin' and doin' goddamn. he was tables turned and slates cleaned and nay were this simple hodie est tabula rasa bullshit if were a so simplement simply for doin' and done 'cause naw this were somethin' and a else do you even understand? this were't a slidin' through to a other side that not nothern's a been to but just that that othern's had been, had returned, and even done so with tells amongst a belt they's own. this was a somethin' separate, apart, disparate, and any other latin root you could think for this was and this is all to say this was not a unique experience no no, but rather a communing of the dirty saints of the black arts of sorts who knew that there was, had been, and always will be a secret side to all everythin' known or otherwise so there he was with no less'n john a leiden a sneakin' over shoulder and arms a wrapped round guidin' to the less traveled.

and he faced it down like one who knowed what he was doin' for, temptin' satan and all his fallen angels darin' 'em on callin' out and loud,
-here i am you dirty sons a bitches and here i stand and here riskin' all damnation as sure as i's known from the earliest of days to stare you down. to call you out. demandin' you show yourselves whether it unleash all wrath or no here i stand and stand do i ever.

and the devil answered him with a laugh dark as any had ever heard nor will likely hear again,
-skinny whoreson, a gale force full from that which she blows, thar look at ye skinny whoreson of babylon look at ye don't ye know nuthin' good fer nuthin' haven't ye heard across the sea son across the sea. may you survive til i pull the trigger. church on sunday and alls in the hole un-whole and not a chance in hell. but hell if i didn'a so did i, did i ever to the fullest and the full.

he thought on and unto hisself,
-that scoundrel of scoundreldom and all unholy sacrilege left with skin like rubbermeat in the gale force full holdin' us all together like the hands of jesus in a sunday school paintin' like when we was learnin' the good book amen jumpin' the wall into hornets' nest graveyard turn the corner playground ditch canal glory glory hallelujah but sneakin in to the otherns' when i got the chances excitement in the last of places goin to hell for it i'm almost nearly sure which considrin' the let down not quites cardboard brick junk store atmospheric considrin' what? i don't regret. no lightning strike down heart attack car crash explosion rapturotic release maybe wrongs alongs i get by. wake up the next day maybe wrathful vengeful safe escaped by a hair when thank fuck i gots one more to face.

and he came back across and how he did it and hard but came back harder with axe and all fire flamin' word of the lord or word of someone or somethin' with little more than no words a'tal screamin' skull splittin',
-back to hell with ye and all yours what are some.

and with that he commenced to slingin' round hatchet fallin' hard and fast upon him what had fallen deep and into his soul and his very own.

and as he stood over starin' down at a handiwork work a hands he caught the last of dyin' breaths,
-skinny face skinny whoreson. skinny whoreson of babylon. look at ye, don't ye know nuthin' good fer nuthin' haven't ye heard across the sea son, haven't ye heard across the sea.

his first was a thought back to that sea and the very same that had left him here in the first of places but starin' down into the face a satan hisself he stated for histry books and all what like 'em,
-now the satan is dead. me and my babies are safe.

he turned away with a hatchet drop walk away never to return. leavin' weeds to grow up and over all and everythin' he had done. all up and over he had ever known.

And Mr. Jones Was Screaming Along With The Tea Kettle

2009-09-07T03:09:00.003-05:00

one was trying to pick up the girls. one was offering work. one was trying to out-accent. one was talking tales of chile. one was with new employment. one was on the radio. one was taking photographs. one was apologizing for jobs never happened. one was sharing ideas about art. one was serving drinks. one was smoking cigarettes. one was mugged. one was assisting the director. one was looking familiar. one was looking particularly good. one was telling jewish jokes in the late night diner. and i think one was flirting... but i can't really be sure.

and one was missing.

Fall's A Comin' / And So's The Autumn

2009-08-30T00:01:00.009-05:00

he hit the ground runnin'. and runnin' and runnin' and runnin' 'cause after the leap he had taken there weren't nothin' else to do but and so he did. a leap all leg kick and arms all a flail fallin' and fallin' faster aproachin' a ground he was dead set on meetin' and he coulda sworn dead. but with a stop catch look quick he was there. ground. a look up. and before he coulda even known the last moments he was already legs a flyin' runnin' faster and faster across the vast nothin'ness a'fore. sand dusty flyin' him kickin' it up and flyin' fast on the two feet god gave 'em headin' towards what would most likely be another edge a cliff beggin' out for a leap over for nothin' but another fall.

it all started when he had left the homestead flyin' less fast than his current incarnation but flyin' some the same. leavin' behind him a burnt and broken land ravaged by time and all hands of man none very diff'ernt his own. born on a cold summer evenin' in the middle of which they was the first snowfall ever seen to eyes a them parts since old man lacey had been but no more 'n a sprout - and they ain't called him old man lacey for nothin'. so it only stood to reasonin' that our boy would be somethin' more than just some other a thing growin' old in those parts. so he left carryin' nothin' but a plug a tobacco, two pints a whiskey, and with a last minute thinkin' on after, the shirt on his back.

he slowed his runnin' just enough to catch sight or maybe perhaps only glimpse of what the olduns used to travel far to see. a some of a thing risin' up and out of the landscape meant to remind of the salvation of all mankind that most had long since forgot and found they didn't need in the first damn place. he sped back to speedin' but still thinkin' on a childhood all his own sanctified and hymn filled.

come home, come home,
you who are weary, come home
earnestly, tenderly, yes he is calling
calling, o sinner, come home.

he kept to runnin' knowin' that home weren't nothin' but a place to which he weren't never gonna make.

Everytime The Phone Rings It Sounds Like Thunder

2009-08-25T22:51:00.004-05:00

come on now sleepy boy and shake to awake for you've gotten work to be done 'cause you've a place and a person for to be goin' to see.

come on now lazy bones and scratch your head right outta scratchin' for you've got more beneath than even you seem to let on.

come on now wastrel sinner and get to runnin' for happinesses not so very far out of graspin' reach.

You Will Overcome Difficult Times

2009-08-23T23:50:00.003-05:00

there are a million others in this world that could be for both of us. but we met. on a warm summer night on a rooftop in this very city and the same. green dress and funny hair. relaxin' into one another like already lovers. and continuin' to be despite all evidences to the ord'nary.

further and further and into the furthest.

So Here's The Deal

2009-08-15T20:24:00.005-05:00

number 1) i'm gonna be reading some of these stories / prose poems / stream-of-consciousness mini-essays on humanity as it loosely relates to my own life (very loosely - you think all this is true?) and as preparation i'm interested in how these are perceived by the people who've read them - at least all the people that aren't me. so i wanna hear any thoughts, criticisms, ideas you might have or have had as a result of these posts. which brings me to...

number 2) if you have ever read this or are reading this now, please leave at the very least a short comment, a name, a dirty word, just something to quell my curiosity over just who the hell has been digging though my drawers and just how many drawer diggers you might be.

now i said "deal" so i'll uphold my end by continuing to write. maybe even more frequently. maybe not. think you're getting the short end of the stick? tant pis - start paying me for it. i accept cash, antique musical instruments, and beer.

love love love
-m

A Razin' And A Reivin'

2009-08-12T02:19:00.005-05:00

i had stepped outside for closin' down of a one and on to an othern when i stepped into familiar faces an after a handin' across a friendship an good relations she stepped to close,
-do you have a light?
an i new from half a instant what i knew yet unknown yet even after her short steps away with bike helmet unlock leg over and a takin' off with cigarette fire glow she was hangin' on and after short pointin' and a good evenin' to all and present hers was a face stayed with me.

and for half a walk home and sidewalk stare followin' synapse circuits into the dustiest corners i tried to remember from where and just where i mighta coulda known from where and maybe even how and of course all these things in front of a backdrop of thinkin' i had been doin' on lost loves and those not quite and pieces left in the hands of otherns we'll never know again i started to thinkin' on a good deal many other things and indeed.

you see i had spent most of the day full a thought but a aimless wandrin' sort after learnin' upon that which had somehow snuck by me in the innocence of what coulda been called youth in those days when it was still of a sort. a sort of life that i know and very well indeed that had yet to come at me like the force it would in my more recent of years. a life of love and vaguenesses and all misunderstandins and romance and choices from it all needin' to be made at the most inopportune of times - 'cause that's when they always seem to be, and don't we all know, needin' to be made. a life i usedta thought that i knew and quite well but that had surprised me in recent hours due to its humanity and frailty and all else that we all must face but so often and quite usually never get to know. i had been tryin' to formulate thoughts and beliefs about situations such as thus when it was that she came up to me,
-do you have a light?

and she asked all a curly haired and nose pierced a straight line into the unconscious that comes when you're already halfway there ignitin' all thoughts all aflame. and even then i knew that my knowin' most likely came from a stage seein' and that i should keep to quiet but there was somethin' personal in the way she inadvertently worked her way into my thinkin'. nothin' that was a thing between me and her but the somethin' that was a between me and her the very essence of a thing i had been thinkin' on all since the most of the day.

and really it was the not knowin' that got to me and into the insides that i couldn't quite correlate with conscious knowin' that led me to thinkin' that this was a chance encounter better left not to chacnce but to figurin' but she had already sped bicycle peddled into the night leavin' me with the uncertainty that carried me for a good several blocks.

and it wasn't until i had nearly caught to evenin' friends that i recognized remembered and knew that i had sat on the arm of her couch playin' party games and formin' a disallowed crush on her and the very same. an evenin' i had meant and even yes tried and attempted to enjoy myself with the company of otherns in what could be called an attempt at normalcy. a time when i was in the midst of not carin' about in the most intimate of ways though pretendin' to because i was meant to as decided by all and everyone outside myself. a time when i was recoverin' from heartache and the pain that seems to come all too often and yet not often enough in my shortest of lives. i had yes i knew seen her astage in what had been a finest moment of sorts for one i had never given too many fine moments myself. i had seen her talk an act of love and love lost and love failed. i had spoken to her over patriotic pastimes on front lawns avoidin' what i knew to be a very soon painful period in the life of another or maybe not so very much but if in fact a yes very much so a very much so due to my own and a very much myself.

and all this because i was near approached and asked,
-do you have a light?
all this that turned me to thinkin' on a life so intertwined with my own, that self same one i've known so well and so little that had furiously furrow-browed into thinkin' on my own. of loves lost. of loves betrayed. of loves let go.

and of loves lately hoped.

by the time i had made it to the insides of what i'm even just now startin' to call a home i realized that there are sometimes necessary steps for takin'. lettin' go and lettin' live are what we sometimes and must be forced to doin'. forgivin', and this is most important, ourselves when even we don't know the why and what for.

movin' on is movin' on in all its myriad of ways. and movin' on is movin' on in the ways to which we cain't so no. a lettin' go that frees up toward and most wholly to that worth embracin'.

Chin Down Gorgeous And Out

2009-08-04T20:40:00.005-05:00

he walked in like he owned the damn place sittin' hell crashin' into it like he meant to be there ages ago and without waitin' to even be asked,
-sonofabitch.
-what's your fuckin' problem?
-what ain't.
-wanna talk about it?
-fuck no.
-you want a drink?
-don't see no reason to stop now.

i walked out to get the necessaries near to dreadin' what i knew was goin' to be another...
-and i don't need no glass, he yelled into me,
...emotional tantrum
-long as you're in my house you'll use a goddamn glass, i yelled back.

i walked back out with bottle and glass to find him drainin' what was left of my own.
-i was gonna finish that, asshole.
-i saved you the trouble.
-why're you so damned sweet.
-i's raised on candy. it's why i take my coffee simple - i'm sweet enough as it is.
-yeah yeah i heard that one before. now s'pose you tell me just what the hell is goin' on.

i dropped a needle. and he proceeded to unload upon me a moanin' older and tireder than a catholic mass.

-i climb aboard busses with a liquid fire in my gut gettin' ready to turn loose up out and every which-a-way with soulless stare out windows at couples and suits and fancy cars and hapinesses i ain't never gonna have and i know i know it ain't the wants i should be wantin' what with my constitution but it's becomin' thoughts i cain't shake nor seem to and i look back and i cain't even tell where it all went wrong 'cause i'm so far in, so deep that there ain't no gettin' out nor even a clear view a such.

i had heard this same from him long as we'd been what you might could call a couple so i looked at him with those eyes a mine he's always goin' about,
-i got an idea.
i took his hand
-and bring the bottle
and pulled his depressed dysfunctional ass off a my couch

we fought with the basement key like we always seem to be doin' but after a minute or five we got the lock to slide a satisfyin' click to the left with what always feels to me like a tiny little orgasm but i always feel foolish for thinkin' such so i said nothin'. i took his hand and pulled him in leadin' on through the darkness of cobwebs and forgotten memories to the back shelf that's seemed laid untouched since as long as my people been here which is to say a very long time indeed. and with a lighter flicker flame afire we were all at once illuminated in the glow standin' face to front with a diffrent time starin' us down and darin' to be unlocked. he shot a look,
-what the fuck is all this?
-exactly what it looks like. canned goods.
he picked up a jar labeled like so few in front of us and read,
-pickled green tomatoes. with dill. july twelve nineteen eighty one.
-i been savin' these for a special occasion.
-whose are these?
-fuck if i know.

we grabbed a few and took 'em outside just in the case they was noxious toxic explosive or maybe just a little whoa. we cracked the tomatoes first figurin' that if nothin' else it had a label givin' in to the human nature of needin' the comfort of classification. a twist. that age ago sound of metal on glass. a screwdriver. the sucking pop seal break. and there it was.
-you gonna taste it? i asked
-smells alright. why the fuck not. if i don't wake up in the morning i cannot imagine it would be a huge loss or a major loss or any sort of a loss at all.
-shut the fuck up, jackass.
he dipped a slow finger inside and brought it to lips,
-tastes alright actually.
i slipped a finger into the dark ill lit liquid darkness and had myself a taste. he pulled a piece out and held it to his face,
-here goes.
he took a bite of tomato about my own age and all a sudden started to smilin',
-let's open the rest, he said, that smile still face spread all over like i hadn't seen in so long a time.

we spent the next bit awhile openin' fightin' with age old lids laughin' bottle washin' down tastes of what coulda been figs and blackberries and who knows what a else endin' up grass layin' side by side. and after a time of silence and star speculation he managed to say,
-you really do make it hard to be hard on myself.
i looked over to him and knew that i was askin' for trouble. this some silly boy next to me on greener grass than any other side of a fence could ever dream.

Pt. 3 - Beyond All Thinspace With Only Faintest Hope Of Ever Someday Landing And Dream Only Of Ever Returning To A Condition Vielle Et Belle

2009-07-22T16:01:00.008-05:00

your sense a time gets all a little skewed out here and everywhere on earth seems so far away. they say that we's connected and globalised and that the world is all a tiny and a flat and a navigable thing, but from my seatin' advantage, if an advantage is what you could ever really call it, i think i might be leanin' toward disagreein'. an i don't aim to be ornery ce n'est pas moi no no just aim to disagree because despite the current grass is less greener on my own side a the fence - hell what grass is there at all not to mention hell what fence - i know that travelin' to a where ain't exactly the easiest thing if it ain't what's been set and what's been set up for doin' and what's been aimed for by otherns other than myself who cain't understan' why i got what's there in my head in the first damn place. how can i even attempt to convince based on memory and hope?

and then the radio switched to hummin',
-it has come to our attention that you do not fully appreciate your current situation and do not seemed pleased with the blessings you've received and believe that you are somehow deserving of something more, an extension perhaps of what you have been lucky enough to already experience... is this correct?

and i held back from puttin' my fist all the way through the million miles of electrostatic blindness it woulda took to get my point across and hard.

so i took a breathe deep and a slow talk to say,
-you've seemed to caught me at a inopportune time to say the least... i'm workin' through a few things currently just at the moment.

-it's obvious.
and then nothin'.

obvious? obvious hell ain't nothin' obvious no more. this is somethin' that even i cain't understand and i was there. was there. now i'm here. some useless other where. and they try an tell you that this is the most amazin' and intense and unreal to the point of disbelievin' once you're back again but once again i hafta disagree because i know amazin' and intense and unreal to the point of disbelievin' once i'm back again and this, this ain't nothin'. this is sittin' in a box waitin' for a rock. but that? that was a thing unexpected and hoped for all at once a thingless thing because ain't no thing cause this much trouble in a man. this was what scares a man and at the same time sustains him, this some kind a beautiful that cain't be described or explained cain't be put forth for explainin'.

but on i shot through a nothin' darkness empty and closer to a somethin' i didn't want to hit because the closer i got meant the further i was and that was a somethin' certainly less than a want.

i could see it gettin' closer and with it all future and planned for necessity and here i was approachin' and fast.

a then and all at once and all the crashless landin' slidin' like a curve approaching the infinite easin' in to be somewhere still movin' out farther and farther from the all i wanted the just such as was already so far away in so quick a time pushin' further and further a force that rips the heart right out a man's chest and then...

silence

a turn 'round. and there it was. in all its glory and magnificence. i knew i was supposed to be awed by it all but i couldn't help but thinkin' on a perhaps of a tiny little spec lost somewhere in the midst. i just set down and stared. my eyes seein' how used to be seen like beams flyin' out fast tearin' through that electrostatic blindness hopin' to catch just the smallest of a glimpse of facewise too far to be grabbed. and wonderin' what it could ever be like. and wonderin' if maybe i was in store for a little more luck. and wonderin' just how she really felt about all a this.

and i was just sat there. a man on a rock that will outlive us. thinkin' on a few moments. waitin'. wishin' i could be another where. knowin' that nothin' could ever be the same.

Pt. 2 - A Someone Currently But Upon Landing Will Be More A Someone Recently Somewhere Above Clouds In Thinspace Above Everything And All

2009-07-20T01:14:00.008-05:00

and you'll just know when they was singin' 'bout the north sea, and i said i was gettin' lonely for it was when he turned to me,
-is this all gonna make you into a tortured weepy soul fulla heartbreak and all what else what comes a with it?
i laughed it to the aways but i knew i didn't know yet couldn't know yet 'cause i walked outta there with heavy foot and hazy eye to cigarette coffee outside chirpin' airport mockin' wishin' it to be somethin' longer and somethin' more an impossibleless some of a thing that i know is not impossible just difficult just problematic just but i refuse to say improbable 'cause i ain't never been one for playin' the odds 'cause the odds ain't never been in my favor. 'course when i look at it now and i look back at the seven day weekend that was just it's seemed to been that maybe the odds are in my favor 'cept i know them ain't the odds and them ain't the breaks ('cause i'm so far from broken that it ain't even a thing) but rather that them is a sign of a thing what is signifyin' what i knowed all along,
-i'm just one a the lucky fucks.
-how's exactly your meanin'?
-i could fall into the tay and come out clean. hell i could fall in and come out covered in gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
and he seemed to take this into quick-sideration and accept it all with a shrug less chalance and was then right there i come to realize that this is a thing for self-contemplation and quiet-sideration a thing all my own a some thing for me and alone 'cause it ain't the understandable that others can understand want to understand not with fault of their own but fault of my own but without fault. i know for sure and surely.

and yet still a thing i couldn't know yet and couldn't yet know for reasons unreal yet so very just such 'cause passenger side pillows are lonely once again and for who knows how long and even longer now i can't even begin to describe.

and i can't even begin to know how to understand this.

when black and white photographs and the memory of golden green eyes sunburstin' at you in the dark is all that's left to keep grabbin' you more than facewise, well that's when you'll know that nothin' can ever be the same. you'll just know.

Pt. 1 - The Beautiful Condition

2009-07-16T01:29:00.008-05:00

moons and stars and stahn cahld graveyards. these are the things that outlive us. by most and much more. and all's we's got is the moments. but then there's them worth havin'. and those days where in which everythin' works out to just such enough that one'd dare not say a thing nor anythin' for fear of jinxin' it up so we keep to quiet for just so. and then once all is forgot over cheap beers and open mic music and free beers from david or william or whatever his shaky walk a name might'a been it happens and happens so lovely and so much so that it takes most a whole walk home with stupid grin and string swell brain to remember that we was holdin' out for just such for just such as just happened for just such as we just got and were lucky enough to gotten because who are we to ever deserve just such nothin' and that's who and that's that but it happened a moment worth for holdin' and holdin' onto because that's all we got and that is all we got.

and when we come home to alone and to lonely passenger side pillows fakin' awake with the nighttime dreams of wantin' and think this ok and actually believe that this is ok and somewhere down on the inside know that all is ok well that's when we know and believe and think that we will be ok. that is when we will be ok. we will be ok. and that is when.

somwheres around the time a lock in the throat becomes a sound that grabs you facewise... that's when you'll know. you'll just know.

Old Mashed Potatoes

2009-07-12T04:52:00.002-05:00

these things not me things a shaky hand twitch things a shake a hand a shake a hand a buffalobill. this ain't no party. this ain't no disco. except it is. bitch be cool. be more cool. stand. walk. be.

people don't need love. they need success of one form or another.

Gitanes Gitanes Gitanes

2009-07-09T02:37:00.003-05:00

gypsy jazzbos was hot club de whoa, and i was all a overtaken with it all some en more les morts si sweet si bon c'etait good. drownded in the tide of flood like flood water overflowed when there she was a waltzin' 'round with bettie paige bangs and the short length style skirt (that is the style). cuffs out. hair up. take a sip and wink 'cause there's three when nones and i'll be damned ain't it my luck not that i'm complainin' ... 'cause my luck c'est si sweet si bon c'est good.

-did we wake you up, buddy?
-give me some milk or else go home.

It Is As Though Upon A Face Carved By A Savage Caricaturist

2009-07-04T00:49:00.003-05:00

"in a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. and before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. and when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. and when you are filled with sleep, you never were. i dont know what i am. i dont know if i am or not."

(faulkner)

Hazelnuts Sourdough Country Loaf With Ham, Cheddar, Salsa, Sour Cream, Mayonnaise,

2009-06-30T02:05:00.006-05:00

everything i write is a written from across that lonesome ocean

of course the thought of "everything i write" is really kind of a joke considrin' you ain't never read nothin' i ever written other than a few drunk folk ramblins 'round these parts an we both know these parts ain't no more real or workin' than my own. lawdy ain't it the truth. an i ain't mean tuh scare you wid all that depression talk - i ain't goin' nowhere by my own hand. hell i cain't even get my own self outta bed let alone do nuthin' drastic like. whoa.

iss like she tol me when we was hangin' outta that window and gettin' lost in the sea crowds a people an makin' laughs 'bout hot young boys in tiny pants,
-i think i'm goin' crazy lately
i understood certainly an i tol her the same. i wanted to say it's all fallin' apart. sideways an noways an all sorts a ways an all them things i been waitin' to tell to someone an anyone willin' to listen but i kep it to myself 'cause it wudn't no time for that talk course i don' know what is a time for that talk so maybe i should'a an even right then an there. maybe i'll get me another chance. maybe not. hard to really care one way or another these days.

i need me a aventure. some kinna illyadd shit. life an' deff you know? 'cause i ain't got nuffin' leff. 'cept my shades - i ain't take them off in days. but other 'n them...

And Yes There's Something You Can Send Back To Me

2009-06-27T01:03:00.011-05:00

listen

and now i'm all a head scratch and wonder with what and why i'm even writin' cause i know this ain't a problem for you and yours. it's just that's all is conflicted just a bit because there was a time a before of the new old city of a time when i was still ok i'll say it "in love" and now's a time clearer for understandin' a time that when "in" is more a "wanting for" or maybe "wanting for like before even if with different because the before was a so very good kind of" might be a more accurate and close to a truth that is. so there's that to deal with. and now i'm all amphetalike shakysome and yeah i know as well as you 'bout the empty not away goin' from such but i also know that the such is a thing lovely and footholdish reasonin' enough to be a reason to get outta bed in the mornin' and i most certainly refuse to believe otherwise or else. even if i have given up on it.

I'm Beginning To Hear Voices

2009-06-26T02:18:00.002-05:00

take a look around not a damn soul not a damn soul oh no sir no. just like a woman (they sat to-gether in the park). they're abstracts.

silence, experience shows, is what terrifies people most

some people just want a good line of work, or maybe to make a difference. me, i just wanted that third thing. but i am beginning to believe i have given up on it. though i still see nothing fundamentally wrong in wanting it.

A Between Wake Up Where Am I Oh

2009-06-21T04:46:00.002-05:00

i'll never be the type always the huh ok safe and sure, but a chance the only lost by water somewhere down and drowntown sinking swim oh i know but lawdy do i know.

From Somewhere In The Northern Caribbees

2009-06-16T03:22:00.006-05:00

sweet sweat so good mosquito bite swell oh sure what i got (and got so good [so good (so very [yes and so])] so sweet and very so good. a cigarette smoke hangover cure grin and bear (necessities sure) it coo(l?) none (so ok, sure).

i was drivin' all again and allover town around cardinal direction less dead movin' south again down for by water livin' tour all around uptown downtown cadillacin' gas pedal whore passenger seat coffee cup where i belong to bayou saints stop and shakes dashboard six pack cruise arounds back downtown for smoke and chats with baker school sugar friends but back insides old school heart goes out in time ov love for sidewalk cracks and coffee shops miss you more you law school princess you grant fund queens outside old ale house none quite in outside seen.

this knowed'a'nothin' never been
this north lake chump never seen since when
a cockroach slug fire gone since missin' fren
...
i a up woke with start to punch in lower faces of parts forgot to realize... to realize... to... to hell with it really because what's there to do at this point without knowing not a single how or why?

We Live With Hearts A' Broken Down So Hurt So Sad So Down A' Broken

2009-05-31T02:13:00.005-05:00

if god's on our side? hell what god 'cept that one the one i know and have known from since knowin'.

and it seemed like everyone was movin' in on broken hearts the same as kind we's all know and known because who hasn't i mean you tell me if you know but then came a hope or two for lookin' forward to in the littlenesses i've come to learn is what it is what with a pretty face or two and after a four i was down and out done drown.

a last second recognizin' kept me set for a little longer than had plannin' so i said a sure and why not because always good company for havin' when it unexpected happens so a so and like i said why not. so a walk mostly for listenin' to while hearin' talk for nervous talkin' and after a goodnight and goodbye with cloud plans full of air full of puff of smoke full i make a stop and turn but before the late night splittin' a flower. little plastic flower. before i hit the bare key lock i know where it needs for growin'. sunshine of failed love a twice over and soil of sidewalk toy from a pair what's lost its other half.

i stutter into the inside toward the to and make stop for tea and such before turning out lights for young lovers and while slow fallin' into the very most in i stop and i ask more times than once... did judas iscariot have god on his side? i s'pose i'll have to decide. little plastic flower.

spanish mitts of spanish leather?
if only but know a never.
but to be useful.
that's what it is to be.

Creatures Void Of Form Bound To Crossin' Lines

2009-05-28T00:20:00.006-05:00

he took one long jukebox look but dropped a dozen palos and punched play all when and once he noticed they was all about leavin' and just like that with a settle in stop trot all over was a flood wave come floodin' like blood inside liquid all overs. next time to nothing he was swimmin' deep drowned was heavin' a lighter flicker back-a-forth between fire and smoke and who knows what all else when he heard her walkin' through the side door. she sat down like shrimp boat lemonade with a smirk eatin' grin and a packa' double 45's but looked like she was bus-waitin' sick or somethin' so he couldn'a help but askin' her what was on her mind. so she said suh-lowly,
-i been thinkin' 'bout short-timin' it outta here someplace nicer someplace warmer someplace another place anyplace understand?
-you ain't gotta tell me nor twice, he said. i been thinkin' 'bout sinkin' this iron home for quite some time.
-say that you'll stay.
-i promise.
he grabbed her face wise for all that could ever come next when next was an imperative lost not quite found. like blood inside. and for the very fleeting ever so brief, a next was an almost. and in that there was flowered the bloemen of the next thousand years. until the songs ran out and the time like brickforce came crashing back into lake of fire burn eternal.
-you know i can't stay, he said, a fervent regret only for sayin'. i got someplace anyplace allaplace else.
-you promised me, sunshine.
-but this ship has taken me so far away.
-i know. and i miss you more than you'll ever.
and in that instant he remembered that he had already left her standing coastal seafront rainstorm adifferent so far away.
he dropped the match.
he waited the eternity it takes.
he raised up a felt farewell take care.
and then, like blood inside, felt flames a'risen all over.

...And Your Milk Is Turning Blue

2009-05-23T23:45:00.003-05:00

the frying pan met the unfortunate end of the oven
(over and over)
while the knives found themselves embedded in the wall
(deep)
don't even ask about the dining room chairs
(dead)
and the wedding china was just lucky
(in the other room)
if yes is a pleasant country
then no is a kitchen wrecked
if i could only change my way of living
it would mean so much to me

charmed when sprung
but after a fall just gone

you better come on in my kitchen
it's goin' to be rainin' outdoors
you better come on in my kitchen
i dare you

Improvised Organ Epiphany

2009-05-15T23:48:00.004-05:00

the clothes, like everything else, were starting to pile up and had been for months. the hazelnuts had been roasted too hot or too long depending and were running out besides. and that wet smell wasn't seeming to let go none. but despite it all the music hit hard and fast with that snare not missing a single upbeat no not one. and it seemed like no one could keep off their feet with skirts and curls a' flyin'. all it took was those two chords to scream down the world outside, but six minutes is more a battle less a war so it was only the matter of time before that deranged guitar got locked up a silence. but if you're patient and you can hold steady the road and good luck making it through the late night piano minor key accusatory of alley puddles cobblestoned - another six minute battle but from the other side - then you get the best of bible story barn burners ever put to the reel complete with slide whistle and fire tongue. but don't forget that like all the good that gets you to goin' this one's ornery and mean like a knife without a handle and no matter how loud you scream down the world outside it's only going to scream back louder and the only thing to do is start it over, turn it up, and scream right back again. me, i kinda like getting blasted outta my skin.

if you've ever been through the crossroads then you've felt it. you know exactly what i'm talking about.

The Room Is A Mind Is A Room Is The Mind

2009-05-09T01:15:00.007-05:00

they're coming in they're invading they're everywhere and don't they know about the stories i read when i was wee small readin' the stories what were nightmarish with eyes pictures invading oh they know they know they know everything and all.

he had passed out dead asleep and here i was drinking back leftover his beer because what's the usin' in wastin' am i right and with nights' last cigarettes when all of a sudden i seen 'em in windows and sills and edges and shells creepin' and twitchin' and back'a'forth scuttle scury into rooms and beds and dreams what once were mine but no not now but for now i'm safe and for know i'm mine but afternow is another story because it's always another story when the mind inside starts to remindin' of current situations what start to remindin' then back again of a mind inside and worry frustration shutdown starts to remind that's it all gonna be over and all too soon when the room starts to feelin' like the insides and every little tingle twitch on skin starts to feel like the end.

if i don't wake up in the morning i want you to know it was not because the bites devoured me. it was the sensation of being covered and suffocating when i opened my mouth to scream.

... to all and every a post script to an already post scripted:
wake up in the morning. please. wake up fighting every invasion and every hereafter and just please so.

A Snare Intro That Sets The Heart To Racin'

2009-05-05T02:09:00.006-05:00

(a poem is like a naked person)*

a message to myself from who knows who
-hey, are you the guy who cannot make love?

a message from myself from who knows how or when
-no seriously body want me ok

and thinkin' on these things the both i think i find a little too much truth in these words called words because i've been all over and i've heard a thing or two not to mention seen the same such and after my years of things or twos and twelve times as many months of sames the such i think i've learned that it's important to keep a pen and a working lighter on one's person or perhaps persona non grata as the case may diplomatica may be because anything else is just baggage and we all know that's nothin' but that which is to get lost in foreign countries without a language or even a kiss when you need it most and all you can do is sit and wait with a coffee or two. which is all you can ever do. just sit. drink coffee. and if you've got that pen and the lighter you can at least write the life everyone thinks you're having and smoke cigarettes to remind yourself that you're actually having the life you're having or maybe it's the other way around... i never could tell. it's all gets so very all complicated you see no?

and then there are those oh so very nights complicatio when you're feelin' like you're still somewhere along the antimeridian central in between the halfs and halfs nots that the world has tried to make and unmake in its all oceans and seas and gulfs and lakes and dreams in a great state of turmoil when the basic structural principles are in question and no i didn't say it first but no i don't just mean music.

he quick called to slow ask
-has she heard blonde on blonde?
-i doubt it
-how could she and then not?
-i sure as hell don't know
-but you've heard it right?
-how could i not?
-then you know everything you've ever written on the subject or will ever write is already there waiting to be heard discovered experienced embedded known to the point that you don't even need to bother writing another word on the subject because it's all going to be derivative drivel an impotent hammer slamming down on dead nails already driven home
-know? how could i and then not?

and then we stared into a shared darkness for days on end until he came back with a new listen and some aidvice old
-her railroad gate?
-aww hell it ain't about her
-but if not her then who?
-does it matter?
-fuck no
-well then
-but still yo
-a gait it was indeed

it taught me something sure, but it all does and after a time it's all too much to take in. it's too easy to get buried under a feverstorm category five fire lit sunk drowned out drunk dead.

it's scary to stand on the edge and look down. but it's dangerous to stand there looking up.

*(but a song is something that walks by itself)

A Final Once Over Before The In The Moment And Now

2009-04-26T00:41:00.006-05:00

a shaky glitter legs train stop is not what i needed not tonight nor not ever certainly no if in fact we're bein' not to mention specifyin' so i thinks on to other things which are other things worth thinkin' on much more of much less but much more and so much so because they're things worth thinkin' on in the circumstance or otherwise things like the origins of 'circumstance' and all its latin originations what with the 'with' embedded because i know a certain someone who would understand such an embeddination and the same certain someone who is worth thinkin' on in the latest circumstances which have turned out to be pleasant in the surprises yet not surprises that come with and it's a good feelin' this thinkin' on a good thing indeed. and so much so.

i roll through my head like a mouth full of marbles the decline of families and the missed opportunities and the left behind escapin' that i have might just maybe have done in my life or at least read through the words of the othern who have made my life that which it is in and of itself and of course of othern because who are any of us with out 'em. nothin' that's who. the who what are the who that which we are because of and no other reason except for that same and very who what let us down while we do the same in the cities too numerous to name.

and then a ring like phone but not quite but close enough

and then a buttoned silence like an acceptance of such

and then as i was listening and ready a...
-it's me
-who else
-i just called to say
-i know
-sometimes you are nicest
-in the early morning hours
-when you are even
-dead to the world
-i know

and we repeated reversin' that self same conversation until those same early morning hours that had lost all that magic that they were used to havin' back when what was was more an is until it was all just words on a page but still not quite page like we grew up knowin' continued until she faded out across a sea i'd sailed so many times before with waves and wind and hull battered back and forth.

and all this after a birthday party for a mangy pup among the hollows in the well painted walls of the old little new paris of this city's straightened boulevards where i was quizzed and tested and subjected to likin' a somethin' i ain't never gonna and no how but all with a love casual hands and friendship i don't get all too often enough.

i felt alone and at the same time i felt found like i hadn't in so very long.

Happy Is The Only Map, Freedom Is The Direction Of Walking

2009-04-23T14:15:00.031-05:00

from somewhere in central nation, middle kingdom, or
maybe it was china
by way of russia, finland, sweden, norway, united kindgdom, or
of course:

三月
想去海边、去沙滩、去花市、去游乐园、
去商场、去琴行、去星巴克、去吃草莓慕斯
去每个迎面遇上的地方
想鬼喊鬼叫、想狂跳、想迎着风大笑
尽管那像个疯子
不经历冬的严寒，又怎能体会春的温暖
不经过枯萎的日子，又怎能欣喜花开的幸福
这个春天
快乐是唯一的地图，自由是行走的方向
系上希望的安全带，出发！

or... (maybe?)

march
you will go to the beach on the beach,
on the flower market, the park
go to department stores, piano,
and starbucks, go to strawberry mousse
each head of a local event
ghost want to scream, i will,
laughing as the wind
even as the madman
not bitter experience of cold winter,
how can we evaluate the thermal spring
you do not want every other day,
how the welfare of the joy of blossoming
in our
day is the only card
that freedom
to the foot area
i hope that the safety belt
is a line that starts!

and she just might be right
except it ain't no march
it's a train goes slow
so maybe that's why i saw
and i saw judas iscariot
carrying john wilkes booth
so maybe that's the why
the why are you so beautiful

On That Train And Gone But Maybe Who Knows Where

2009-04-17T02:17:00.004-05:00

a good peoples in my corner oh yes out of nowhere and then new people that make me have faith in this thing we all know but are so very somewhat scared of and an i love you we will make good theatre goodbye and whoa that is not what i expected but what i needed so much more than i can put into these words all scattershot, these fallover words a' comin' out right. how could i say no? how can i a no when all is so much a yes and a pointin' to what i cannot a no towards? me i have no ideas how so but if you all of any have a clue let me know but here's a havin' a feelin' you'll only be all a yes and a keep pressing on.

who is gonna shoe my purty little feet? who is gonna glove my hand? who is gonna kiss my red ruby lips? who's gonna be my man? i got all the answers i need.

takes a worried a man to sing a worried song
i'm worried now
but i won't be worried long

All A. Bird Lyrics Fit Into Tiny Space Of This A Title Space Too Small For All That It Needs

2009-04-16T02:15:00.005-05:00

i got there early. she did too. but i got there earlier. so there was that.

i ain't gonna say it ain't a problem no it most definitely is i agree YES ok but among all the other things problematic and problemish it really ain't that much of a big whoa watch out because it is a thing in and of itself a thing i more or less understand sure so maybe i'm gonna be ok with it as a problem and maybe with that an ok sure because it ultimately is a very nice and a perhaps wonderful thing with out the problem because without the problems that come with so many of the things mine and yours so many of those things are in fact very nice and perhaps wonderful and maybe that's what we're a' needin' because we are the problem creators us folks when in fact we're only staring at the nice and the perhaps wonderful because we're easy frightenin' and shakyscared at the good that happens because what are we deservin' of the good right i know but we are still the good and deservin' of such so maybe all those problems should be laughed away and we should meet for that coffee and a say hi good to see you again in the light of day even when it is a somewhat little awkward nervous shakyscared because these are the goodnesses that we want when they're not happenin' so when they do happen we should maybe perhaps enjoy them. am i wrong? i do not most definitely in fact think i am NO.

i've never felt so good about feeling like such a fraud. a fraud in the crumbled financial institutions of this land. there will be snacks. there will. there will be snacks. there will. be. there will be snacks.

Words Words Words Only Just No Something Oldofatime Words

2009-04-15T02:00:00.005-05:00

love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we[']re)

שאול (pt. 5 - the dramatic climax)

2009-04-09T20:58:00.006-05:00

so it turns out...
it ain't sheol
it's just life
but there ain't no de profundis either
it's all quite different my boy
quite different
now you can see it
it couldn't care less about you
the world couldn't
because we live in a world
where strangers share their bed and get you high
and friends make you walk to the bus station in the rain
so i don't know what to think
and i doubt i ever will
but that might be half the fun
because the world needs different guys
not made of sugar
but of sugar and dirt
and all mixed up together
guys who make it their life work to be who they are
guys who make shit
just don't forget:
there's a little black train a comin'
coming down the track
you've gotta ride that little black train
but it ain't gonna bring you back
so make the best of it...
whatever the fuck that means

שאול (a momentino)

2009-04-04T03:14:00.003-05:00

sometimes it's hard to know whether you're peeking up over the edge, or if you've slipped through all the way to the other side.

it's even harder to know which you'd prefer.

שאול (pt. 4 - a strange[r] interlude)

2009-04-02T01:47:00.010-05:00

She called to say
-I found your number on a bank receipt somewhere in the lining of a coat i haven't worn in six years due to the fact that it was buried in a box out behind the grave we dug for our first dog when it died suddenly from what they called an ear infection when i was that age somewhere between what would have made it traumatic and what would have caused me to simply shrug and call it a fact of life because i was looking for an old letter you had written me that i decided i was finally ready to listen to even though it had gotten lost in the mail and ended up somewhere in the french alps or maybe india because i always got those two confused when i tried to remember the exact location of that scar you had on your hand that you got from an accidental knife wound while slicing up that twelve pound bag of potatoes for some soup or other you never got around to making which i was looking forward to even though i understood you'd never get around to bringing it down to the post office which is fine considering they weren't around back then and i knew i had your number somewhere which you told me to use if i ever needed in case of an emergency.
-Is this an emergency?
-It's too slow to be an emergency.
-So what's on your mind?

She proceeded to say much more.

-But before i go any further, she asked: Have you been practicing?
-My diatetratonic scales?
-No the what to say the intaking it all in in quotable bursts to vomit up later on strangers' shoes.

I stopped because i didn't know what else to write. Looking back i knew instantly that it all pointed to me being a fraud. I knew i wasn't, but i also know what it's like to catch a reflection in a window and want to be that guy. So really... what the hell do i know.

But she was waiting on the line and i had to say something.
-"What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second, per second. Law of falling bodies: per second, per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight."
-Yeah i've read that before but i don't want that i want the from you that is you and not something else an other not you.
-Nobody really honestly ever wants that from me.
-But i do.
-Then you're a liar.
-Well then can i ask.
-You know you can.
-Have you ever heard the same song only to realize that you wrote it with your life in such a way that it's enough to be what you never got in the first place?
-On a monday not so very long ago.
-Then you know what i mean.
-If you mean that we walk down residential streets listening to a song that is the apologia to our hearts that no one is ever strong enough to give of themselves because they are the more broken versions of ourselves that we could never imagine without their years and bad eyes that happened while they weren't noticing because they were busy being us with the sameness that we now know as being unknown because in our ears we've got the music they should've sung from perches of passenger side pillows in darkest hours when our eyes were closed and we were unknowing and unknowed until then before their leavings without explanations, without the same old sames olds, without... anything really just a leaving that leaves us and leaves us feeling left handed awkward left behind and left? Then yeah. I've got a vague idea.
-Exactly.
-That's the probably and the most ridiculous thing you've ever said.
-Yeah, well i don't read French, Spanish, German, or Latin, and my Hebrew's less than great so you better remember what Shaw said.
-I don't give a fuck what Shaw said.
-And i don't give a shawing fucking shaw fuck what you give, gave, or gived, you can at least remember what you wrote.
-I've never written a word in my life.

She paused as if reading the reading of the dictionary of my life's denotations.

She spoke as if knowing the knowing of the dictionary of my life's connotations.
-The worst part is not being able to tell whether you've managed to somehow climb out, or if instead you've fallen back in without noticing.
-I may have said that in passing to the blind, deaf, and dumb of another's subconscious i never met when i was sailing around the world as a-
-Yeah well claw your way out mother fucker claw your way out until your fingers bleed and your mouth fills with dirt just claw your way out mother fucker claw your way out.

She slammed down the phone and i was left with a ringing in my ears i hadn't experienced until since.

I had so much more to write, but she was so right it pretty much finished me.

I didn't expect to hear from her again for some time.

שאול (pt. 3 - a strange interlude)

2009-03-29T22:05:00.007-05:00

first spring snow sidewalks melt slick city songs rising up and out from every which-a-way medieval market day and then a something or other unexpected but not unsuspected a thing not wholly unknown but unknowed.

we knew each other as we knew ourselves which stands to reason in certain circles of understanding once when one considers that we went back about as far back as could be given conditions as they are and once were and had continued to be or so she says to me.

she says to me she had been writing lists of her failures making inventories of shortcomings documenting what she hated about herself as if she were the secretary of her own discontent.

i says to her i had spent the night smashing glass with the baseball bat that i had been given as a wedding gift the one with my name engraved really burned in to be more accurate which seemed appropriate given the state i was currently and had been for quite some time.

we sat and stared.

and then she says to me,
-i don't take care of myself there's nothing desirable about me i'm in love with the ones who treated me like shit i make bad decisions i make terrible decisions i can't seem to do anything to make my life better i don't use what little talent i have i'm secretly a disappointment to my family i have no close friends because i have nothing to offer anyone i'm pretentious i'm really fucking pretentious i hate my life i hate myself i have wasted my life doing nothing more than being a weak pathetic unfulfilled cunt and if i don't wake up in the morning i cannot imagine it would be a huge loss or a major loss or any sort of a loss at all.

so i says to her,
nothing at all because i was just sat there waiting and i was sat there wanting to tell her that we all feel like that at least us worth wanting but instead i was just sat there waiting was sat there wanting to tell her about her about the knife i've kept not because i don't have better because i certainly do but because i once held it to my wrist on a particular christmas when i myself wasn't being too particular about waking up in the morning but instead i was just sat there waiting.

so she says to me,
-i just want to have a fucking reason to exist a reason to get out of bed in the morning and not hate my life i just want to fucking matter

so i says to her,
-the worst part is not being able to tell whether you've managed to somehow climb out, or if instead you've fallen back in without noticing.

so she says to me,
nothing.

we sat and stared

so i says to her,
-want another beer?

and she says to me,
-might as well. i ain't got no reason to wake up tomorrow. if you will kindly remember.

and i says to her,
-i will remember. and kindly.

we drained our beers, cleared the empties, and took 'em out back along with the baseball bat where we spent the rest of the night smashing bottles into the clear night sky.

שאול (pt. 2)

2009-03-28T03:01:00.002-05:00

nothing in life is stable
everything comes crashing down
try as hard as you like
everything falls apart

so as you lie in bed at night
wondering why you'd ever wake
remember there is no reason
everything falls apart

morality will not help you
religion will not help you
reason will not help you
everything falls apart

nothing you can do
will keep you from Sheol
only inertia keeps you moving
until everything falls apart

שאול (intermezzo)

2009-03-27T03:09:00.003-05:00

This is my best friend, Blueberry. She's a hippo. She's not a real hippo. Ha! Real hippos aren't pink. Hippo is short for hippopotamus. Hippopotamus means river-horse. You know in what language? Me either it's all Greek to me! Ha! That's my favorite joke every time. I know so much about them because i saw the hippo show on t.v. They mostly live in Africa, but Blueberry's not real so she doesn't live in Africa. But she is my best friend for real. If she was a real hippo she wouldn't be my best friend. She might eat me. Ha! I saw a movie at school with some dancing hippos in dresses. It was silly specially because i know real hippos don't dance. Blueberry never dances even when i play her favorite song. She only just sits and listens quietly. If it's very late in the night sometimes she cries a little tiny bit but only because the lights are out and she thinks i can't see her crying but i don't make fun of her because sometimes i cry a little tiny bit late in the night too because the lights are out and i know she can't see me crying. When she cries i just hold her close and get my umbrella and open it over us and say to her in my quietest nighttime voice "it looks like you have rain drops on your face so i got my umbrella to keep us dry" and that's our favorite joke every time because we both know it can't rain inside. Ha!

שאול (pt. 1)

2009-03-26T02:39:00.017-05:00

und ich wandte mich und sah an alles unrecht, das gefchah unter der Sonne.

(we feel we are nothing)
(we feel we are something)
(we know we are nothing)

franz biberkopf has reached the end of his mortal path.
the time has come to break him.
der mann ist kaput.

quo vado?

j'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
c'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;

out of the depths i cry to you, oh Lord;
oh Lord, hear my voice.
let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
i wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word i put my hope.
my soul waits for the Lord.

[part B]
the knife:
a sharp knife is a must.
your knife, more than any other piece of equipment in the kitchen, is an extension of the self, an expression of your skills, ability, experience, dreams, and desires... it can also be the most direct and glaring expression of your complete ineptness and uselessness. if you are incapable of demonstrating pride in your tools, you will richly deserve the deep and jagged wound you will undoubtedly inflict upon yourself.
the world would soon become a better place.
do i need to belabor this point?
you sin against the Gods.
it's that simple.

quo vadis?

los cien enamorados
duermen para siempre
bajo la tierra seca.
donde puse cien cruces,
que los recuerden.
los cien enamorados
duermen para siempre.

so that the word is the upright beam whereon I am crucified and the sound is that which crosseth it the nature of man and the nail which holdeth the cross-tree unto the upright in the midst thereof is the conversion and repentance of man.

where i am going, you cannot follow

come let us curse our Master ere we die
for all our hopes in endless ruin lie
the good is dead let us curse God most High
come then and curse the Lord over the earth
gross darkness falls and evil was our birth
and our few happy days of little worth
i wish i had some whisky and gun
my dear
i wish i had some whisky and gun

all dimpled cheeks and curls
Desire
your head it simply swirls
at the end
those girls
was a malady
those girls
or a madness
those lovely seaside girls
or both.

The Only True Object Of Study In Linguistics Is The Language...

2009-03-18T00:54:00.004-05:00

*
i was gonna all with ireland and women loved from and to made a mark but then and shot and a stout and shot and a stout and back through the archives all the way back to 'and then i saw the snow' and rejection and then another sitting in parks snowstaring musichearing soulsaving and coffee shop sitting waiting for a girl to pass who will not pass hoping she would notice when she would not fantasizing that she would pass by she would notice me she would come inside she would sit at my table she would look at me she would see something good she would see something in and of me that is worth loving she would talk she would take my hand and she will as the camera pulls back the strings fade up the screen fades black.

but... prior to... a bus stop... some whiskeybreath... an underdog, an...

and so:

therefore:

there is a thing within us, some thing, a samething or not quite. this cannot be(,) a new depression i will fight and fight and fight must not be - a week and two days a vacation not long enough unacceptable none of the above none of the other only a what the hell how did i get here doing this a young people's game before the after of ideals and hopes and famedesire the afterfade that steps one step before resignments reassignments resignations sovereign states of settling nothing will come of this no legs for public sphere no rhythm no flow no poetry of a sort like the others the end of one more things not quite neverall that good to begin with like all else flash-in-pan idea hope desire only ways out that dead end but outways from what? why escapes and running and leavings?

what was so terrible to begin with?

'always something more' bullshit is what is. nothing more. only is. is est is.

and then they started to playing the jukebox and he walked up outta that bar never to return and out into a night he would never understand nor ever give up.

no way no how.

* the problem with is the backward nature such as the end of the last the 'so this is it this which is nor never was this which i know so well or so i know the was never not so quite so ever such like desire never so?' at an end when should be a begin for later be should not an end.

A/The Children's Play

2009-03-14T02:14:00.006-05:00

don't go through that door cracked door old steel and wood slam shut any second with fingers toes chopped slam danger in there don't go, don't go through that door the other side anotherside broken scary world through that door.

but this side safe side a warmth and love side with me no other only us together this side without doors only tender loving we have balloons so many all for you and no other only you just for you just you.

i cannot keep or protect you like arms of jesus like arms i know armslike an ache sick for cuddle-up or curl no whisperbreath of tenderest tendresse i know so much i know so disbelief yet like that which i do nor do not know.

so this is it this which is nor never was this which i know so well or so i know the was never not so quite so ever such like desire never so?

This Day Full Of Promise And Potential

2009-03-11T01:54:00.003-05:00

why were we scared so scared? why have we always been we born before time living after and inside something smaller than we, infinitely small so overwhelming pulling us inside uninspired while we plan our escape that won't ever really happen because we're too aware. this other people hasn't planned well enough clearly because, as you can clearly see, we is unprepared since the beginning to the end and back again. wandering inside the homestead, a kitchen back and forth and back and forth ah hell. same old thing. over and over. no shared paths just a one back and forth ah hell. scared at what? scared that there's nothing to be scared of? ah hell.

Swapping The Blood With Formaldehyde

2009-03-08T03:31:00.007-05:00

-the one-two liquidium punch.

-the what? i asked.

-the curry whiskey clove pepper bang right in the middle of the middleface of all that ails and all that falls up tight too tight to begin with, he replied words slinging 'round the room. but now you're talking about some kind of whoashit - am i right i know i am.

-i'll take two.

-two? his eyes a-brow raised.

-one and half then if that's all that needs be done.

he slipped it me 'cross the agitated nervy tension edge, the kind that comes from love and sex of others too close to avoid and i swallowed it down nearly all but not quite nearly thinking on the days to come and the knowed needed relief i knowed i'd be needin'.

as i started to slipping into the inside i started to thinking back on dark night with face-a-flush inside the tension box remembering the just before sleep memories that come into the head as the head is emptying all else for a moment's peace, for some kind of release, and as the doubling back came into view i felt again the ache sick for a cuddle-up and a curl with whisperbreath of tenderest tendresse unknown, unfelt, le parapluie parfait doux. jesus don't you know that you coulda died, you shoulda died, but a quarter of a century after a fact of a life or a choice (depending on your slant) that leatherold question has changed still air hang heavy but changed for all intents charged intensely changed.

and then dim lighting flash silent thunder strike just this go-round not so dim not so silent so bright so loud teeth shake bone rattle crushing down into the innermost of insides a feeling that fades as if through pores unknown untested but with a question left...

-what's your preferences on thunder? he asked.

i, silent blinking unphrased,

-i'm not sure anymore.

We Will Rebuild And Emerge Stronger

2009-02-25T03:21:00.005-06:00

but how? how is it done? how does one? how will we? how can we, falling apart, stronger emerge? when we can't even rebuild.

Loneliness Tears Cracks Of Madness Even In Walls - or - Hand On A Hand, Hand On A Back

2009-02-24T01:01:00.009-06:00

whilst berlin alexanderplatz melts my soul meine Seele meine Seele i sit and i stand long and tall and Drip. and water running down and Drip. and can't stand to stand can't stand to sit (who the hell would want to know this) watching face fall down like all falls down like everything that laments like everything converging like everything must rising like everything must crashing and shit can't stand can't quite can't sit.

and they's ones onstage and off and standing smoking cold post breakup post mortem post hole digger holes used to could fit when i's small child small child court of dirt court of that quart of this naked like the night can't seem to shake all that is or used to be at very least but not no longer quite this.

they was depressed angry lament heavy coat rain heavy blood soaked teeth ground down all pygmy-like aching jaw glassy eye come ye sinners come ye all come ye sinners come repent.

with a pale face turned to the sun.

they was all rat scurry and rain fall down broken feet low down sorry cornbread when i'm hungry corn whiskey when i'm dry holes deep dug holes gathered round holes deep dug holes in cold, cold ground.

think of the way you have done.

pastry chef stabbed right through the heart park walking just walking park two kids and a life not his two kids and life not this and this ain't no metaphor for luminous effect and this ain't no metaphor for soul purge intent and if this is metaphor is for a nothing and a death and for nothing still a fact look it up don't believe me check the book 'cause it happens and it happens and it happens all the time with a death and a fury and all run through with a knife like a knife through the heart like a heart not mine.

and it's all tenuousness.
and then.
like dim lightning flash silent thunder has struck.
a hand on a hand and a hand on a back.
and it all becomes more something a little like tenderness.

Seven Jewish Children

2009-02-18T03:04:00.005-06:00

This is (to the best of my knowledge) the entire text of Caryl Churchill's latest (short) play. It's being railed against as anti-semitic by many: some feel the problem is that a gentile author is portraying the views and attitudes of Jews. Others believe that it portrays all Jews as "inveterate liars." Personally i think the play (despite its politics), and more importantly this entire situation, is more complex than these blunt criticisms acknowledge.

I don't think a ten minute play will solve one of our current world's most complicated of crises, nor do i think this is the worst crisis in our world, but i do think that this is important, and this play says something that i've been thinking and does so in a rather beautiful way.

Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza

No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents, and if you like, other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as the time and child are different. They may be played by any number of actors.

1
Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.

2
Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.

3
Don’t tell her we’re going for ever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe
come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and
the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.

4
Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in
this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.

5
Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.

6
Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.

7
Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army.
Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why
not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell
her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got
nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell
her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them,
tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them,
tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk
suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog
of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I
laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if
the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re
chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.

(Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza is being performed at the The Royal Court Theatre in London.)

Torncoat Lonely Coat Côte-d'Or Only Coat

2009-02-16T11:48:00.000-06:00

Drinking ourselves into the hole like a warm blanket We dropped how much? Torn up stomach torn up not to mention throat sore hoarse Look 'em in the face can't help can't stop but mostly just can't you ever heard of shame son let me tell you sir can't live with it can't live with anyone can't shouldn't why live? Can't help but. But we all knew that. But all we always knew that and always and then some. We bone eater Sunday folk messed up a mess we water sick lost & sad broken out plastic waste stuck inside shrinker and shrinker inside deeper coats and warmer and warmer like never ending inside deeper and deeper blankets drinking warm.

French Cuff - or - A More Perfect Pisco Sour?

2009-02-15T02:37:00.000-06:00

they's talking 'bout that beer he spilled all up his shirt and then throwin' the bottle up the stairs at them college kids them what was just trying to get to home or the closest proximation thereof when you's that age and not knowin' what's to come next, what's to come 'round the corner, what's to come 'round the corners of life, what's to be, so's i told 'em you's best not aks too many questions of 'em 'cause you keep aksing questions of 'em and you keep aksing questions of 'em like that and you's lible to get some answers you don't much like.

that shut 'em up for near 'bout four and a half minutes give or take.

A Plane Crashes In Buffalo

2009-02-13T02:12:00.002-06:00

Skinny whoreson, a gale force full from that which she blows, thar look at ye skinny whoreson of babylon look at ye don't ye know nothin' good fer nuthin' haven't ye heard across the sea son across the sea.

may you survive til i pull the trigger.

Church on Sunday and a job in the hole. un-whole and not a chance in hell. But hell if i didn'a so did i, did i ever to the fullest and the full. Til Saturday when la petite fille francaise et le petit francais (her's) arrivent dans la ville. et apres... etapray. etapray? He et it all up and didn't even bother with prayin'. Scoundrel of scoundreldom and all unholy sacrilege i took absolutioning him from all, but then only some 'cause i ain't got no authority to do so in the first damn place. Shiiiit i ain't got no authority no how to begin with not to mention endin' i ain't got none. But i'm tryin'. Aimin' for authority on a little cardboard card and a library pass you can't even buy on the street. Card me at the door i'll be a good goddamned well ok alright gotta do a job. and that's just what i'm hopin'.

Quaint streetlamp busstop 'round the corner where i am what i am but not no more because too much is embarassing and too long is exhausting tired dead on your feet goddamn. But still i am fine wines and... can't read the rest parking meter gotta get me a pipe cutter gotta get me a cause gotta get me a red leather jacket so i can give it away so i can get me a telescopic projector of the heavens like the one they got back home, like a sattelite landmine all mine like that rock that weigh too much in the little plastic case gotta break it open and take home my own little piece'o'space

Skin like rubbermeat in the gale force full from which that "pull meat please" begs from a taped up wall holding us all together like the hands of jesus in a sunday school painting like when we was learnin' the good book amen jumpin' the wall into hornets' nest graveyard turn the corner playground ditch canal glory glory hallelujah but sneakin in to the otherns' when i got the chances excitement in the last of places goin to hell for it i'm almost nearly sure which considrin' the let down not quites cardboard brick junk store atmospheric considrin' what? I don't regret. No lightning strike down heart attack car crash explosion rapturotic release maybe wrongs alongs i get by. Wake up the next day maybe wrathful vengeful safe escaped by a hair when thank fuck i gots one more to face. Skinny face Skinny whoreson. Skinny whoreson of Babylon. Look at ye, don't ye know nothin' good for nothin' haven't ye heard across the sea son, haven't ye heard across the sea.

Самый высокий интерес для немедленного рассмотрения

2009-02-12T03:37:00.000-06:00

a satellite crashing. at 250,000 mph. 400 miles up.

hundreds of debris. floating in space. up there all alone.

irreducible fragments of an already forgotten.

it will be weeks at least before the true magnitude is known.

they say.

it is unclear what caused the crash.

they say.

authorities believe it is the first incident of its kind.

they say.

but,

i wouldn't be so sure.

it all sounds awfully familiar to me.

If You Were Here - or - I Might Be More Able To Invent A New Thing

2008-04-15T00:39:00.000-05:00

Drinking the perfect Pisco sour and wondering: What's the worst that can happen? A broken heart? Not like i haven't lived through that before.

Meet Me Tomorrow?

2008-04-10T01:01:00.000-05:00

Between Olympic protests, U.S. elections, (as well as elections in Zimbabwe, Nepal, et al.) and what may be the worst financial crisis since the great depression, not to mention what's going on the world of food (from celebrity chefs to famine) i'm starting to get the feeling that something bigger is going to happen, something bigger is already going on. Maybe it's just because it's the fortieth anniversary of '68, but i'm thinking 2008 is going to more consequential than we expected.

Why am i so nervous about tomorrow? Oh. Right.

"More than one to whom adventures happen, the adventurer is one who makes them happen."

Tomorrow Meet Me or Mus Es Sein? Es Mus Sein!

2008-04-09T01:29:00.000-05:00

I just watched the movie i made in England. Its actually good. Really good. I don't think i'd be able to do it again at least not where i am now. It's a strange thought to think that you were more of the person you wanted to be four years ago.

We've been sending emails back and forth for the last week and a half... a week and half. It seems like nothing, but maybe it's LA School time because the two or three emails i get from her on a daily basis have meant so much. I cannot believe that i've found someone who i'm almost sure will be a very dear friend in such a way. I was just looking for some casual acquaintances outside of theatre. It looks like, as usual, i got much, much more. Apparently i'm one of the lucky fucks.

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

2008-04-07T02:53:00.000-05:00

i feel more like a kid

and more like an adult

every single moment of the day.

stuck in the middle.

and to make it more confusing,

i think i might just have a crush

on a 32 year old music teacher...

ok. so i know i do.

Searching Words, Sinking Music or To The End, My Dear

2008-03-29T03:48:00.000-05:00

Smitten sounds ridiculous. But it also sounds right.

A dance party was just what i needed.

Indian music. Vegetable Napoleons. Rite Of Spring.

I missed a witty joke in there somewhere.

Maybe "besotted" is a better word.

It Began With The Daily Press Opening Up To Its Readers Space For "Matches"

2008-03-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

It turns out that it didn't hurt one bit.

It actually feels pretty great.

The Laden Camel or The Imagined Catharsis That Never Comes To Those Who Need It Most

2008-03-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

When i got home from a designer meeting tonight i went online. I went to the Reader (local free weekly paper) Matches site. I was looking up live music info at the Reader's main site a few days ago, and for those who don't know (or notice) there's a section of the page that randomly displays a picture of one of the registered users of their Matches section - a "meet me" kind of thing. I saw a girl. I signed up. It's also a bit of an experiment in meeting people and making new friends. I still haven't sent her a message - she's significantly older than i am. Probably not interested in a 24 year old. I feel like a child. Everyone tells me, "You're only 24. You've got so much time." That only makes me feel younger. Because if i were to feel any older it would require me to have accomplished much more in my life... to have accomplished anything in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, i've had cool experiences and i've been really lucky but after spending time on Facebook tonight and discovering people my age who have started families or have become amazing photographers or have become e.r. nurses and are saving people's lives, i don't feel like i've so much "made my mark." But that's ok. It really is. But it means i'm still really young. And maybe it's a hang-up because i look like i'm 20 or younger (which people are always cheerfully pointing out to me. Thanks!), some sort of subconscious blah blah blah fuck that. The point is: i feel like a child. It's like i told Andrea in Paris: "Being around you makes me feel like a little kid." She told me i was being ridiculous. But i did. I do. Sometimes i still think i'm that little kid sitting in his room playing with his legos, and it feels like everything i do is in some way an attempt to combat that. I went to a protest march last week and i wanted so badly for something to happen. Something drastic. A brick thrown. A window broken. So much pent up angerenergyfrustrationrage i just want to fucking scream. FUCKING SCREAM GODDAMNIT... but i don't. I won't. I want to fight, to sing, to cry, to dance, to break a bottle on a bar, to kiss a beautiful woman in the street and declare my love, and... but... i... it probably won't accomplish anything.

I got curious on Facebook. I found my nieces

a straw

*snap*

there went my fucking back

Maybe i'll send her a message - what can it hurt?

Lines To Lift For Dramatic Affect (sic (transit gloria mundi))

2008-03-25T01:20:00.000-05:00

in a sea change

nothing is safe

i am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam

turn it up turn it up turn it up turn it up

turn me on

so you found (/ gave a enough of a shit to look at) this... but can you find me anywhere else on the electronicinternetmotormachine?

First Addendum

2008-03-23T01:57:00.000-05:00

Heidegger just called. He said i don't "fear" death, but rather i'm "anxious" when it comes to death - he swears there's a difference.

He also said i owe him fifty bucks. Somehow everyone else remembers that i paid him back at Darren's party, but because he was off his face, apparently that means it didn't happen. He kept going on and on about, "The wine in the jug, the wine in the jug." What wine? You drank it all, Martin!

First

2008-03-23T01:39:00.000-05:00

I am afraid of death.