Sunday Night Song

So sorry dear Sasketchewan

So long, Sovereignty,

signify

with your
left
hand

what you feel

yay
or
nay

they have the plant
but we have the
power?

Give me a break!

Like Christmas, only, erm, oh tuesdays child is freezing.

No!

You DON'T GET ME...

I'm part of The Union, the man explained gently creasing his crimpleen suit
for all to see, at least that is what's expected when he shows his card.

and pays his dues.

Who?

Who's on First, Indeed.

In deed and in death I swear I won't

oh, bugger.

maybe next.

oh.

never.

seldom.

oh never sell them my pretty.

my pity is not so seldom

sung. or wrung.

upon a wimpling wing.

Oh! my Chevalier!

How cavalier you were, with the Caviar.

And Col. Mustard And Lieut.

Lutyens.

And Ypres. Oh! BEEP!

Oh dear Auntie,

your bloopers are golden.

your bloomers are greasy.

So's the tin.

And, here's the thing.......

the thing about Jim Larkin, is.

melody at midnight

harmonize with me.

harmonizing, we.

dual dial tones,

dilly-dallying chords.

dread the dead dawn,

that sad sack o’ sun,

cold and wet and

just around the bend.

when sound swims

and sight vibrates,

when speech gets gummed

on wobbly walkways…

we’ll link arms and

lean into the wind.

harmonizing, we.

harmonize with me.

some front page drivin' news

"what a handsome couple we'd make,"
i said before i kissed his friend
and he hit on my sister.

i'm workin' on my night moves.

your side of the bed is cold.
so i sleep diagonally,
and think on the sunrise.

(night moves)

i saw the sunny sign
swimming in my vision
on my way to the train.

(night moves)

got that deadline
down cul-de-sac time
gone by gone by.

waitin' on them night moves.

bye bye,
birdie baby,
biggie boy

wtf
way off
wrong mongrel
wager
winger
mingus
motown
miller time
mailer time
morrow time
more time
more time
more time

no more time.

it's funny how the night moves.

a toast to tom o'bedlam!

i think tomsy deserves a round of conrats!

a sidemouth kiss

a sidemouth kiss

right where the geoffrey goes

when it’s been said n done

how I should a walked home

I might still be walking

instead of sickly typing

I waited like a sucker for a train

now I’m waiting for a train

a kiss on neither cheek nor lips

I felt your hair blow on my carotid

it whispered things like this is just a joke

in the wind that brought the funny rain

woebegone departed

begone by a woe

how I could have saved on train fare

and put these legs to use

Traditional Irish Ballad #4

whirl yer whiskey 'round like blazes
and a raise a glass
to pass/or prickle
the arms
of a loyal guard wrapped between a star and sickle

round a round a silver tangle tassie

&& remember with consternation another mans wound
to round
the turnpike and trip the coach road
like a lark in the mourning

A London Poem

These are open when others are not
- these are not others when open
or knotted
like tube lines / or other
things. others are open.
not balconies.
not security.

a punch in the arm. maybe.
love. definitely.

yellow reg. no return.

this sounds like a lie...but it's 911

tonight anna and i found a scaffolding...it was past midnight.
(the place was in front of a Brooklyn ambulance center)
i decided to climb. it went 4 floors up and wrapped around.
rickety ladders and crickety planks.
on my way down, anna lagged behind, trying to catch a view.
as i reached the first-floor ladder, i saw a man creep out a window
i'd just passed. he stepped onto the planks i had just tread.
he must have been watching us.
i panicked and hid around the side of the building.
still 12 feet up, i hugged the bricks and caught my breath.
as i peered around the corner, i saw him climbing back into
the window of the (totally gutted) building.
fuckin anna was unaware, 2 floors above me.
i climbed down the bottom ladder and ran to the edge of the scaffolding---
i wanted to yell up to her, but an ambulance pulled into the station
and all these ambulance bros crowded around and cheered.
something dramatic and heroic had just occurred,
but we had a major creep-fest on our hands.
i waited for the bros to close the ambulance garage doors,
then i yelled up at the roof: "anna! anna! anna! 911! 911!"
(ironic, the date. Ground Zero is currently projecting a twin spotlight straight at the moon. 9/11)
i waited, but heard nothing.
my thighs started shaking, then my hands, then something in my chest--my lungs?
really? is this.....really? "anna!"
i scurried under the scaffolding, around the other side of the building:
"anna! anna! the fuck!"
scuffling.
dust fell in my upturned eyes, pooled water fell from somewhere.
hurried footsteps above my head and over toward the first-floor ladder.
"cat? cat? cat?"
jeebus god, bitch, what the FUCK happened?
"he came out of nowhere. tried to molest me. i clocked him and climbed down---
he stood over me, so i grabbed the planks and shook them as hard as i could."
we're walking down the block, hands clasped and trembling together.
suddenly, HE walks out of a door underneath the scaffolding.
there he fucking is. with a shoulder bag and a high-waisted, short-torsoed gait.
he looks over his shoulder and skips (seriously).
"is that fucking him?"
"....that's fucking him---"
and she chases him into the street.
"YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE," i shout as she punches him in the head.
he reeles and speed-walks down the avenue.
anna rejoins me and we bee-line for the bar.
"shots, please, and don't stop the flow."
thank goodness that douche wasn't packing.
that's a september 11th courtesy for ya.

'double rainbow' it ain't

if you haven't seen Inception, i am sad for you.
if you saw it and didn't like it, you are a dead-to-me snob.
if you turn out your lights, close your doors, get under the covers and watch this video, it will change your life.
Inception probably won't do that for you--i admit.

What I’ll Miss About (Potential) Unemployment

My neighbor plays an all-day guitar

Not songs but scaling tunes

The notes he chose pass through the wall

Over the rat poison and die on the coverall

I take my lunch from Whole Foods

A sushi roll, the Hot Items Bar

They’re never far

I took it home and read the news

At a quarter to four

I open the beer-fridge door

And see a range of Blue Mountains

Inside each a spring, a fountain

That runneth down my chin and collects on the floor

I might watch the United States play Angola

And remember when I bought that R.C. Cola

Who drank all that R.C. Cola?

At halftime I’ll Wikipedia Pensacola

The seaport county seat of County Escambia

Home to the Blue Angels

Have they flown over the Blue Mountains

Those Blue Angels on high

Did they see pools of crystal clear Coors

And beer-battered fish fry aswimmin’ in the waters?

Were they ousted from Blue Heaven

Their tricksiness disdained?

Do they show Man Vs. Food in Blue Heaven?

Or even in Africa?

We are not so judgmental down here

We would love to see you pirouette in the stratosphere

I’d love to see you pirouette up there

I wouldn’t know how to miss that

LAHNDAHN

Expect despatches from The Bulb's office in London in the coming days..............

'i caught vince fontaine putting asprin in my coke at the dance'

kitty got knocked up again.
i came home from a failed date,
(with a stand-up comic, no less)
and there were three nearly hairless
long-limmed rodent-lookin' things
floppin' 'round 'neath the bed.

the fuck am i to do
with these fuckin' kittens?
they're disgusting with their
swollen eyes and squashed-up faces
like infected otters. pretty much
just sit there and flail.

mamma kitty skulks near my feet
as i try to drink down a klonopin,
my new favorite hobby.
i'd lock her in the back yard
if it weren't for the satisfying sounds
of the sucklings that force her supine.

trapped now, eh? smug slut.
readin' martin amis and listening to the Jackson 5
has stripped me of my psychological straight edges:
say goodbye to them right-angles, lady;
close your door to mamma K
and celebrate sentences 'bout beatin' up on a bitch.

SWAP EYES WITH A MACHINE.

Unlock hidden info literally floating around your head . . . Because when there's no limit to what Droid gets, there's no limit to what Droid Does.

john mayer is a FUCKING POET

in lieu of a post of my own, i'd like to post something by John Mayer. before you make fun of me, let me say this: yes, his pop music is uck, for the most part, but the man can SHRED some blues guitar. and he's a little crazy. and for these reasons, i love him.

that being said, he wrote something the other day that caused our managing editor to rain down fire and brimstone on the newsroom Friday morning. "I WILL FIRE EVERY SINGLE EDITOR IF THIS CONTINUES. THINGS ARE GOING TO CHANGE AROUND HERE," he threatened.

Was he serious? Would he really fire his entire overworked, underpaid (not to mention: loyal!) editorial staff? I doubt it. however, you ought to read what john mayer said to provoke this.

JOHN MAYER IS A FUCKING POET (link)

why is it that only girls get to lay there motionless during sex

why is it that only girls get to lay there motionless during sex

we men want to be afforded that same right

the distance gained

the breaking of waves on shore, heard from afar, uncaring

we want our feelings to act on us like we were somebody else, too

on our back like it rested in a grassland with wind, close to the ground,

our hair tucked behind our ears

wind shushing with the nervousness of a boy who shushes for the first time

yesterday I woke with a start from a dream. I couldn’t remember the eye color of any girl I’ve ever dated. where have I been looking, all this time, all this time, if not there.

Early Adventures in Page 220 - A Corrupt Text

twice he came to what might have been a turning point in his career [...] If she isn't chasing diamond, she is seeking solace in booze or blow.But maria said she didn't like nuts and they weren't to bother about her. In their forty eight hours of unwanted reprieve the men had more time to ready themselves. The patriarch doesn't seem to share the Church's long-standing suspicion of the theatre, as a temple of disorder and dangerous suggestion.

An Arrangement of Words Took From a Green Stickie, a Red One

Quick

She nicknamed him

Like eggs, and

My relationships with the dullest of blades.

Let's make

to finish

I sever

Scramble!

Because he was

Megaupload.com

Megaupload.com

Megaupload.com

"Instant gratification"

The Train

A mother brought her young son aboard the train. They got on at Ravinia, the southernmost stop in Highland Park, and got off at the uptown Highland Park stop, just one stop later. It was the child's first train ride, the mother told the passengers around them. One stop. Like wading slowly into cold water. The train is fun, the mother wanted her child to know. It is not scary or dangerous, though it is big and it is to be given a wide berth. You must exercise caution. But then it's fun. They rode the train for about four minutes, and then they departed. It was almost lunchtime; I bet they ate something soon thereafter.

I think this is the wrong approach to parenting. I think a child's first train ride should be a long one, at least an hour long, maybe more. Possibly Transiberian. At least to the city proper. Take the child to the downtown station. A train can still be a heroic thing, a fantastic journey. Don't take your kid on a five minute train ride and ruin the possibility for exoticism in daily life. There are only so many opportunities. Don't make everything so safe that adventure lasts all of five minutes and ends in chicken fingers. Don't ruin the train. The train will ruin itself years later, when the child is broke and the summer is hot and there is no car to take to and from his old job in the suburbs. The train will ruin itself. Let the train be an adventure; create a memory for that child. It's one of the many things wrong with overly cautious parenting. The toddler now owns the train. He owns it. It can never hurt him. Let the train own the toddler, let him build it up. Boys must idolize the big parts of the world around them. It is in their nature. It is part of boyhood. If they don't idolize the trains, if they don't respect them, they grow borderless. Boys are expansive. They will fill the space you afford them. Fear and admiration. Let the boy see the world, like a gleaming ornament from afar, but do not let him hold it in his little hand.

let there be lightheartedness!

i saw you in my house last night.
woke up with a two-day hangover,
and there you were,
sitting on the edge of the bed.

your naked back was to me,
and your ass pressed into the memory foam.
i mumbled your name and reached,
but i couldn't get to you.

son of a bitch, will you stop this haunt?
i bet if you came to me in the daytime,
i'd laugh at how your hairline, waistline changed:
less of this, more of that, perhaps.

i might slap you once for all the things we never said.
then again, i might buy you a shot and tell you
i'm trying to forget. but i'll give you tequila
because i remember how you hate it.

you outta know i loathe to wake and find you in the dark.
next time you sneak in and ruin my sleep,
i'll roll over and pretend you're not there,
the way i did the last time i saw you in the light.

(anyway, i can't trust a man who won't drink tequila)

by the way, the huffpost front page features a huge splash about the 2 upcoming gay marriage cases. The headline reads: DOUBLE RAINBOW! haha.

That Morning

"That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

I go, 'Holly, this can't continue. This has got to stop.'"

- Raymond Carver, "Gazebo"

Forty Flosser

Ironically, Catharine, I was just about to put this up when I saw your entreaty. Whoopsies. Maybe we'll see Israel tomorrow.

He’d quit at it so long ago that it’d almost been the beginning, age seven, not even a person. Almost as though he’d never started, and it felt that way now – like he’d never started. His hands shook because he knew there would be blood. Blood was to be expected. Blood like from an operation, not buckets but drops soaked into gauze, not all the way red but orangey at its edges on the gauze and thin as hot oil. His hands shook. And his jaw hurt, already, from stretching open that way, at such a forgotten angle, rearing to clamp.

He fit the twine into the dark spot between his front teeth, snuck it up into the gum, slipped it to and fro. He winced. With your face already contorted and reared back and spread, you can only see yourself wince in your eyes, which quake and howl. You can’t see yourself bleeding; you taste it. He pulled out the twine and spat into the sink. He reinserted the twine. He worked his way down the top row of teeth, slowly, casually, each tooth further removed from the first a greater obstacle than the last, more blood, a pervasive soreness throughout the mouth, harder to wedge the cut up piece of dental floss up into those long-neglected crevices. He was crying softly. At forty. Am I crying? He wondered. Will this be the start of it? I’ve had so much to cry about, so very much to cry about, and it’s never come. And now I’m crying because of sore gums and the sight of a little blood spat in the sink. Still, I’d prefer pain to soreness.

Will this be the start of it? Am I crying?

He got hot, then, that he was crying, hot at this rebuilding process with its simple-sounding first-step that hurt to the touch. It gets better, he knew. Two weeks from now there would be no blood, and the teeth would feel good and strong, and the gums pink and virile. It really would. He knew it.

He threw the tin of floss into the garbage. He hadn’t flossed his bottoms. He caught his face in the mirror. He saw some of the blood.

here's lookin' at you, kid

jon, your posts are making me sad.

i wish i could be there to drink with you. but i'm not, so how's this instead: tell us a story about israel? something that begins in the wide-open day-desert heat and ends in the close coolness at night.

if that makes you feel worse, then--fuck it--i prescribe the following: popov vodka and elliot smith.

in the dark, obviously.

Traditional Irish Ballad #3

sectional

yet


lectrical

plutarch

is

phleschy

sections

are pensive

penicillin
is making me puke

(not really tho')

get an emphasis
and

rely on it

sing my sigma

and pestle my mortar

sweep some stakes

and go to the hospital

to collect your winnings

instead i got high

it'd be funny if, like, deer, for instance, as an example, watched videos of other deer fucking, and then, like, deer-masturbated to the videos. really puts things into perspective, no?

without you, definitely without you

i am literally seconds away from listening to joshua tree alone in the dark

then i'm gonna read some raymond carver short stories

then i'm gonna drink

then i'm gonna give myself away

and i'll give

and i'll give

and i'll give myself away

Barf Redux

excuse me miss but put down your business and recognize that its time to get dissed by the man from the goblin clan, a real webmaster Stratocaster haver, fastest bra strap unfastener strikes at goal from distance and scores top-shelf, your mouth opened up like a trout, a whole mess of lima beans about to spill out.

so here it goes, touch your toes, touch your nose, walk in a straight line can you clutch your primrose purse with day-glo overtones and wait for the end of life as it’s known? cause you’ve been drivin drunk in a deaf dumb and blind children’s safety zone, you’ll get blown out the water when the judge drops the hammer, maybe read my book in the slammer:

second of all, your pores are the size of oar holes, like in Vikings’ ship hulls, remember that cause fuck are you old, your lunch used to be seagulls with black treacle, you fed eagles beagles, you had some greek myth shit done to your stepfather Reginald Regal, that’s how old you are, bitch.

some things I got: I got a koozie for my uzi, a bush of kush, a bucket of fuckit let’s stop this party from startin’ tardy.

i am literally seconds away from puking

Away Days - Irish Ballad #2

I've been away days lately

care-a-button days by the Lee

I've seen away lady sail away

&&

w/


the boys of fairhill

I sang I sang Bold Thady Quill

'tis me daza full of pep

'tid put the pencil in your lead

bedad

says I - I'll try cider I heard 'twas good

I'm no Sepera Woman waiting for a soldier boy
in Salonika

but I wait instead for the news of the threshers in the wars of Spain

and sit a quare wan down on me knee

&& call for another bottle of johnny-jump-up!

This Could Be the Start of Something

On our good days, it felt like taking a warm shower in a cold rain. On our bad days, the shower was cold, and the rain warm.

What that means in a precise way I cannot tell you; I was never the precise part of that relationship; but I can say with a feeling of certainty, I can say without feeling wrong for having said it, that you are neither the rain nor the shower nor the temperature inside or out. You are neither the fogged glass door nor the beaded one. You are not the chirping of the insects, the scurrying of the woodland creatures, the pickled skin of my neck, the flush of my chest in the cannon blast, the gasp that comes from knowing what will happen without being able to feel it, and then feeling it.

Giant Intense Rainbow: A Prequel

Ask and ye shall receive. Right before we were getting ready to go to that thing!



Furthermore, an interview with the videographer himself has been made available. There is a picture in the article.

http://videogum.com/199572/double-rainbow-guy-interview-almost-as-good-as-double-rainbow-guys-video/interviews/

old Leo is always relevant

last night was so hot it woke me up.
the kitty was running from room to room and crying.
(we gave away her kittens last week.)
she cried and i sweated and counted backward from 500.
finally, i called to her, and we laid together
in the close, dark heat and slept.

today i got a call: Uncle Leo is dead.
(Grandma's brother with all the money.)
for 20 years she hoped she'd inherit,
but he held on while teeth fell out his face.
and grandma can't remember anymore.
don't think i'll see her at the funeral on wednesday.

after work i went to Bryant's park.
i drank and drank, read some War and Peace.
and then lightening and rain were everywhere
and the asphalt steamed and everyone ran.
on the subway prince Andrei imagined his own stinking corpse.
(his girlfriend ditched him, his father just died and Moscow's about to rain froggies.)

i cried on the train. that's always awkward.
the rain was done when i got off and sloshed home through the puddles.
my shoes started to molt from the inside.
and the ground was cool; i could feel it with my feet,
up my dress, on my palms, under my chin.
but the air above my hair (and in my throat) was still hot.

at home now. i just rolled myself a lovely, lovely joint.
the kitty slept on my bed all day. she left her shedding in my bedding
and coughed up a hairball in my favorite chair.
it's been a hard days night, but i'm too tired to stay up and watch
(even if it IS the Beatles). my joint's nearly up,
and i have a busy day of aggregating tomorrow.

Full On Double Rainbow

You will all see this sooner or later, but, fuck, it has to be brought to the forefront of perception as soon as possible.

It’s so hot my stomach hurts I think I’ll head to the Speedway for a $.69 Any-Size Slushed Drink

I’ve seen lit up apartment insides, bright as human hearts, ladies’ feet dangling from couches, 20 under 40 New Yorker specials dangling from long and gripping hands on the couches. I’ve seen the people dancing, man and his fiancé to the blues tunes that pop like periscopes out from the sidewalks of my city street. But I haven’t seen the dancing. I only wished I had, wished I had when I saw intercourse, an uproar of intercourse in bedrooms without blinds, children banging pots against pans. But I haven’t. But I have seen shirtlessness. A bounty of shirtlessness parading about dens and cracked pantry slats. I’ve seen the congregation of dogs and their owners, big dogs and old dogs that tongue and owners who laugh guardedly and hold their big dogs close as unopened love letters. I’ve barged in on the congregations, dogless, and have pressed on, resolutely, knowing the stares of the species and hearing the tongues lapping at the hot air and the smell of me. I’ve seen children’s bucolic chalkwork drawings fade, I’ve seen stair-sitters learn to chain smoke without learning, I’ve seen distant siren Speedways full of slush and processed foods not bothering to call out, knowing enough to know that I will be there, I sing my own siren song, it goes like this.

son of a beach

come october, i have much respect for ladies with long hair. if you can make it that far, you've won. and i mean: nipple length, after summer. if your hair falls past them nips, you are the hardest of core. i myself have about an inch to go before i hit that target. and jeebus, i have never wanted to shave my head more. 18 months down and 3 to go...90 more days...i'm sweating behind my ears.

A Fifth Poem in Rome (parts 1-4 written Summer 2008)

what rolls in rome is this:

I remember when I was just a little boy, living in Rome
rambling on the Via Rasella...

taking pictures of Mercedes Benz with my camera phone
that was bought for me at Christmas

I remember gelato && I remember pizza

I remember drunk men singing "My Way" in the Piazza

I remember many things - the drinking done along the banks of the tiber

champagne && sex in the street

the inexecutable turns and dashes of a day blinking

blinkered

lingering

on the palatine hill
thinking of Seutonius and the Tax Office.

god damn it's hotter than a bishop at a boy scout rally.

What's a Droid to Do?

On a midwinter’s day in 2015, the snow piling high outside the houses at the top of the world, an application for the Droid Phone will be implemented by a Norwegian software developer and life, as we’ve sort of known it, will change forever, again. The application, or “app”, will be called “DoIt!Robots!” It’s purpose? To tap into the Droid’s latent intellect, that sticky murk tucked just beneath the motherboard, like the tip of a tie secured by one’s trousers, such that the phone is rendered capable of making basic, intuitive decisions, and acting upon them.

The television ad transcript: “You’ve got shit to deal with. Too much on the line, philosophically, economically, to send out dry-cleaning. The iPhone is for faggots. ‘Do it, Robots!’ Droid does it. Watch it get done. Pays your taxes. Orders itself an espresso. Shove it up your ass; see how it reacts. Friends betray you. Droid’s not a friend, it’s the part of you you never want to acknowledge but, until now, have had to. Think in the highest planes. Droid thinks about the rest.”

A new nickname was born: A.I. – Android Intelligence. It was artificial, too, but leading thinkers determined that human intelligence for decades now has been anything but organic. In a world of artifice, we’d do well to remember our own.

We forgot, however, that Droid Does. It does, and it does. Droid doesn’t watch “Everybody Loved Raymond,” the post-mortem Romano biopic. It just does. And it did, until everybody died. Basically. There’s more to it than that. But not that much more.

quick change

so tired of red, guys. i'm switching to green. or maybe i'll get emo and switch to black. guess i've already made up my mind.

the vuvuzelas are coming!

i can hear them from the roof and down the street or swarming up the ventilation shaft.

leaves rustle and i pause to listen, to enjoy,
to reflect on some madeleineousness gone by--
but whatever, almost conjured, is resubmerged becuzza that
bbbfrrt bbbrrft bbbrrfffft-ing, damn you.

i turn off the shower, and hovering just above the fresh-wet silence: bbbfrrt.
i fling open the window to let some air in this sweat mine: bbbrrft.
i lift my fingers from the keys and, in among the empty staves ballooning near my ears:

a jerky vuvuzela slither:
bbbrrffft.

Something New?

the first breath of life, for this new little blog, was taken in conjunction with A Bulbous Gold Goblin Blog:

The Static Sound

may its breathing be as voracious as this beast....

Ween Concert Highlight

"And with just one faint glance back into the sea . . . it put's the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again!"

--Gener, during "The Mollusk"

Traditional Irish Ballad #1

flip the intrepid

populate

scree

rough and ready

as Coltrane

reed

scr/

rupulous

lech

pre / late

offers confession from 9 to 5 (oh and its ALWAYS live)

&& the seed (of an idea

an inkling

of

an inkling

of an i-day

but if it's ramblin / rovin / football / courtin

drink black porter

fastas yill fill

Muskerry Sportsman

Bold Thady Quill

)

it could be otherwise

but, basically

were you at the Rock?

summer fucked

this corona is lukewarm
and the condensation's gone.
it's 90 degrees inside
my apartment, and the sun is down.


34 hours till i move out.
28 craigslist responses:
7 were legit, 4 want to meet.
there can be only one.


i told them all to come
at the same time tomorrow.
i might get drunk and propose
a highlander-style duel.







i'm all wet and melty and
my beer's got the sweats.
yesterday's hangover's
still goin' strong... ...

My Kitchen Smells of Rot

“Everything’s moving.”

her labored breathing,

“You’ve had one drink, sweetest pea.”

like a sigh, she starts to say something about tomorrow.

Is there any poetry

any atoms of poetry

to look at girls’ profiles

on OKCupid.com

it’s so hot

and the sky and that it’s all yellow

the yellow of some sick storm that’s passed

it was yellow when I looked

and yellow now cut with dark

and I’ve yet to find anyone

I look ‘til dark is cut with yellow

then out the stars

I’m looking by starlight

a search for riverbed baskets, subaqueous

weighted by smoothed breasts

licked by waves

or not by me, anyhow

I listen for the bubbles on the water’s surface

that’s how you know

cut my foot on the nipples

try to pry open the window,

it’s so hot

goddamn,

here:

I’ll put on our favorite record once more

and as it spins I’ll kiss you

I’ve never been to Humboldt Park

I’ll never stop looking

for it would be as a shark who stops swimming, dying,

no matter how few atoms of poetry are in it

we’ll taste them together, the record aspin, the taste of aspic.

Whomsoever Rides the Train

You’ll feel the train coming before you hear it. You’ll hear it before you see it. You’ll see the metal tracks beyond it illuminated by its headlamps before you see the train itself. Then you’ll see the train. It comes round the bend. Electric, it sends shocks of light up into the air underneath its skates, as it bears to stop, so eager to continue, to arrive at Southport, Fullerton, the others. The stops aren’t its many homes; they are its numbered haunts, and it patrols them like the night watchman. It makes the noises of motion and nothing else. Except once, below the cranks, my ear pressed to a wooden plank, I heard it let a simple gasp, and then a recovering cough.

desperately seeking subleaser

today my roommate
reached the edge,
balanced on two--on one
tricycle wheel,
slipped and fell.

roadrunner,
watch that whistling
speck until--
SMACK, poof.
then flee the scene.

now troll craigslist:
refresh page every 4 minutes,
rifle through inbox
while holding breath.
this time, this time.

this time i've got you.

Confessions

All girls all over the world
Original Mad Stuntman upon your case, man
I love how all girls move them body
And when you move your body
Gonna move it nice and sweet and sexy, alright?

Woman you cute and you don't need no make up
Original cute body, you make a man mud up

WOMAN! Physically fitter, physically fitter
Physically, physically, physically fitter
WOMAN! You're nice, sweet, fantastique
Big ship on the ocean is a big Titanic

I like to move it move it
I like to move it move it
I like to move it move it
You like to . . . MOVE IT

Canto I continues unabated

More from Canto I of Dante's Inferno


It was the first full hour of morning / the one when I don’t
want consciousness or green tea, rising bad as cream curdling
was the sun, hugging and kissing / grotesquely fondling the
lipid stars that filthily rose with him in ecstasy,
with the first shift and shake of heavenly hips: full of the hope of-
what filled me / queer yet beautiful skin
Of my prismic shifiting Panther, the dawn ripples the scavenger
and the season of the bitch. My joy was lost in view of fine, curling
locks, when the little lion man, big-hearted bastard, walked into my
flickering 8mm frame.

He was, like, ravenous & kept his head high,
even tho’ he licks the lichen from Formica streets.
A lupine lady, franc – o – phone / oh frank/ o’ hara and all frank spencer/
There was a want in her frame, disconsolate had she made many a barren, treeless hologram graphic. Small / formidable/ I was shitting myself eagerly in spite of her size.
I had, then lost, then wept and the floor was florid with my tears:
Sprinkling with sodium down a guttural utterance drain;
I was driven into night-time and made to wait there.

Somewhere / in a kind of hollow / a remorseless pit
I dropped and my head / sizeable but muddled /
caught, y’know, a shadow, with a crackling shellac’d voice, made
/ scratch/ from over-song and warping in the heat.
In the vastness I caught strains of his ballad
-Spirit or Living, whatever you be – I howled
– Take mercy on me –

Riposte: "Not now a man, man once I was,
And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both
By country, when the power of Julius yet
Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past
Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time
Of fabled / false/ deities A bard
Was I, and made Anchises' upright son
The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
When the flames prey'd on Ilium's haughty towers.
But thou, say wherefore to such perils past
Return'st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount
Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?"

"So are you that Blondell / minstrel man /
Flooding the static ether with your songs?"
Bashful and ranting, I spoke on –
"I always search out your records and my train has finally slept
and I can comb over you track for track - Legba and my Light!
I use your melodies and your chords / at court/ with fame and dexterity;
Look past my shoulder slung with song and see the Aquitaine who chases me
Sing a song / to revert other, I guess, siren-like and steam her howling away!

Everything that beets / beeps/ and flickers in my frame is rattled –
Soft salts began to liquid and drip my eyes, he answer'd, "Go another way
, if you want to be away from the trees/ the wild barren plains of my song /
Scream and this woman but you want pass the test / acid test/
To pass, whatever y’do, for fuck’s sake, don’t die:
Her evil will is never sated,
her gluttony is disgusting / untempted as she is by chains /
A sick and twisted marriage she manages with beasts of multiple feathers and fancys / disgusting and preying in her deprivations and captures
And will many more till the Greyhound bus will come and destroy her with a blunt and full pain. Great & gleaming His support will not be in the gravel /or the sand/
Or shiny steel glass of the new city on the hill
but by love,Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be
The land 'twixt either pelt.
Under his watch shall
safe Sherwood plains arise,
For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,
Nisus / athlete and stealer of drinks /
Euryalus / the pugilist / the peer of murderous Ares /
and Turnus / fierce King Rutuli / fell.
Ever chasing through every town
Shall worry, until he to hell at length
Restore her, when first envy loosed.

I think it would better, yeoman,
that my tracks you trace, when I bring you over the vastness
of the space, hearing as you go shrieks and shrivels of desperation
&& see old spirits tormented / tangled / invoking miserable states
Of Revelation;

Next peel eyelids to them who dwell
Contented in fire, bruning hopefully / hapless beggars forgotten/ to come
when the time gets to be that chime, among the lucky,
And if you want to tunnel further / bring a better Davy lamp /
Ascend with someone who has more &&
in whose charge, when I spin off,
you’ll be left: for that Almighty King, with the lion-locks
Who reigns above all and every, a rebel to his law, like you to yours
Has made the undelegated decision that
That to his city none through me should come.
In all the provinces sky or dust he holds sway;
Rules there hold / gripping / often grasping
His citadel and the City / the land of twisted April bankers/
Happy and lucky if he is your friend in his City – Robin spoke few words: -
Bard && Minstrel Man by that Lion, whose songs you’ve not sung ,
I beg you / penny for the ferry please / to lead me, where you say,
That I Saint Peter's gate may view, and these poor who I need to see –

He moved on / I pursued /

overheard at Navy Pier

"Water's like my favorite thing in the world! Do you know that Brad Paisley song, 'Water'?"


(Actually, it's a pretty cool video and a decent song)

got that cloblock

i've got the bloc

What are Bill Cosby's favorite deadly sins?

Jello-sea and Glutin-y!

droid quote of the "week" # 4 (with a demonstration of Droid's search algorithm)

"Answer the question, 'What's going on?' with the utmost certainty of what actually is."

Answer the question, "Who's your daddy?" with the utmost certainty of "who actually is your daddy" with the utmost certainty of "who actually is incontrovertibly your daddy" with the utmost certainty of "who actually converted to Diddy" with the utmost certainty of "who used to be P Diddy" with the utmost certainty of "who was once Puff Daddy" with the utmost certainty of "who was born Sean Combs" with the utmost certainty of what actually is.

A Night In Israel, Chapter 1

It’s an insufferably sweltering night in Jerusalem, the broken air unit in our share of the Hotel Leonardo a real contributor (that narrow, balding building with permanently fogged windowpanes and exotically graffitied epistyles, the one erected next door to the faded landmark hotel, like an ugly younger sister who stands always to the side of the beautiful girl, a hand on the shoulder and grey, crossed eyes askance at the floor . . . the landmark hotel’s name I registered once, briefly, a name I’d picked up in a short story, I think of Camus, and set aside, now scurried soricine across my tongue, while we, the fifty postgraduate, Chicago-homed Americans lazing aboard Bus Tour Group 747, crossed the suspension bridge and sighted the grand opulence of a place we would not repose this night nor ever, then forgot the pretty image entirely once the autobus moved along, beyond the vestiges of splendor [speaking of Jerusalem] - upon seeing where we would be staying - the Hotel Leonardo erases one’s mind like that).

In the lobby we received roommates, three to a plot, preordained from a folded up list taken from the taskmaster’s pocket, room keys, and instruction. “There is to be none of this, all of that.” A schoolchild again at twenty-three. No bother. The tour guides left to consider the Torah in their flannel pajamas and gauzy bed sheets while the group of tired half-Jews, still strangers despite the transatlantic flight and the endless layover in Frankfurt (of all places), the oily clothes and the bloodshot eyes, descended upon the unsuspecting lobby bartender en masse, where the Israeli man, in the nick of time, began at once to overcharge everybody. Israeli beer – there is nothing to say. We drank and spoke and I didn’t like many of the people. I’ve known them all my life without knowing anyone presently gathered and I didn’t like them then, either. It occurred to me thusly that this would be too long of a trip, that ten days would leave me in shambles, cracks in the frame that guards my tissue paper organs, that I should have talked a friend into coming along, if only for an echo of commiseration. If only, if only. The words spoken were formulaic. I feel like I don’t even have to expand upon what that means. I’ll say this: if I’m ever forced to discuss once again the television shows we watched as children, or the linguistic derivations of soft drink appellations betwixt neighboring cultures, I might start a fire.

Around one in the morning, Jews began to retire for their first night’s rest in The White City, one of the holiest municipalities in all the world. How would we sleep? I think if you’d asked me then, I would answer correctly, “Without grace.”

The boys who’d slumber beside me were all right enough on first glance - dark everywhere but in their pale skin, their curly hairs tangled from the strain of travel, clouded by the shadows of beards that would pursue their faces like kudzu for the rest of their lives. They were tired, like me, and reasonably unsure about the warm hotel room and the startling proximity of our beds. We, like men, set out to move them (the beds) as far apart from the others as we could, but this wasn’t far at all. We showered, separately, under a detachable showerhead that was too small for its sheath, such that it rattled and slipped onto our heads from its own whimsical exertions. So I stood with one arm raised above me, holding up the showerhead, while the other arm roamed for packets of liquid soap and shampoo that I tore open with my teeth and ably dispatched onto my face and eyes and mouth. The showerhead bounced along the bathtub floor, retching, while I clawed at my face. Scraping is a most hygienic sound.

In bed, in the swelter, I’d manage a light doze with the abetment of the pills young Americans stuff into their carry-ons like candies into pillowcases on Halloween; these are brim-stuffed carry-ons, the pills bursting forth into the world upon unzipping, piñata-like. Pillowcases stuffed so tight that they’re piñatas. On the airplane, as a first icebreaker, before names are traded, they barter with each other: Quaaludes for bennies, all that old hat. My family-sized Tylenol p.m. smokestack went unnoticed; it is the candy corn of barbiturates. But in icebreakers, the lonely go out on limbs and are received there, trembling in the wind, and I scored three Ambien and earplugs to boot. That night I would take half of a pill. They are so small, those Ambien are, and I wanted to eat the very bag they came in, but I had already in my mind the notion of ten days and the nights that would follow them.

At four a.m. on the sixth floor of the Hotel Leonrado, I was roused.

Terrestrial

All poetry is

doosh-wafting at

various frequencies.

Some can

waft so well they

catch a blister

of air and

shimmy up

to the nimbus,

like some

vaguely disoriented

turkey.

But most just flutter their

little doosh pockets and

keen some

terrestrial dirge.

I bet Nietsche

took a dump

with dignity.

let's talk cellulite and varicose veins

A First Foray into The Inferno

Segment of Canto I of The Inferno


Shove off, shove off me midway stream that I am,
I found myself amongst the horrible holographic trees,
Astray / Askance / And with no direction home:
build a ballad of the grand bois, how savage wild
That forest, robust / rough/ its growth,
Death before a melody like that again and other “thoughts”
Uncovered / unclothed/ uncouth/ restlessly relayed

The first steel door I can’t remember
Hazelight eyes plumbed my scope
when I left the high street
Kicking up against the mountain toe
The spread that pierced my heart needling /dread/
Burly brawd shoulders / brimming / I saw
dressed in the light of earthly colour / trees/
Bus driver who doesn’t steer you wrong

Something to get me over / a drug for e.g. /
the flickering agony in the pit
that came out of that nightime-like / pissed/ fully passed
Like a panting sailor running quick the other way,
Shanty && Sherry to his lips
I gazed out into the empty lots and Unreal City
Now empty of Spirits and Wine
Struggling with terrors / went looking for the straits,
seeing more life than what I’ve left behind.
Worn my frame / fraying at the edges /but complacent again /
I turn back to sleep and twitter in the peaks.

I’d rather run the fuck away. The climb up the charts had barely begun
When I saw a panther, nimble and made of light / prismic/
speckles of the sun in its skin making itself Houdini,
Determined to find my feet and chew them
With paranoid perception I re-traced and re-traced my
Thrashing steps.

see salty sea, man, see

tonight at the pool halls,

circling sharks eyeball

hooks that dangle--

sharp, waiting to rust.

shut up about age, oil spills, weather and logging.

just murmur at the soft spot

on my neck and yes and yes and

another switchback lager, please.

someday i'll be a shark:

deadly, unblinking. steady...aim...

for now i spend my time near land.

caught in the breakwater, his bed, his favorite bar.

someday i'll win back my money,

stop fishing and swim.

but for now, i'll chum the wake

and look back, hoping to see...

we could make a day of it

your hair smells of shells

like your tongue is an slippery oyster pulled over mine

breasts are mounded salt deposits-

-I could go on, how the sea tastes

but you’ve never been to the ocean

I have

how I have

Trot

I will canter out a rhythm

a song

I will sugar and sweeten

a song

I will sylvan and stylistic

a song

I will know my song well

before I start singing.

;'-/

Crying and winking at the same time would be the weirdest thing you could do to someone.

That is all.

Blondell

Bells-A-Song

Trouvere

Traversing

Tumbling verse

Waiting for lambs to be Lion-hearted bleaters
of a war song

procure a sense of smell / manage hatred / and weep little lion man

After Jon Schaff

I'll give up my words too
and wait to see what my vocabulary did to me...

r e c k / l e s s
f e c k / l e s s

and dreaming of San Francisco

Jack and Jack

Where's my drink?

i'll give up my words

i'm sleepy in the city

when it's hot

and i do not care to write.

the train behind the house:

i'm sleepy then, too

when it sounds a sustained wave

a wave a-crashin'.

ac: for people who can't live in season

ha, fuck those people

not me, though: i'll sleep unclothed

under a bed sheet

wake up before morning

i've sweat the bed

then i'm never sleepy.

Pusillanimous Pussyfarts

Thank you, Eli, for that warm and tender introduction. Your words have humped the folds of my heart. Or, did they fump the holds of my fart? In any case, my panties are moist.

I used to live in the sweaty breast-folds of antiquity. Now, after bursting forth from the labia of my subconscious, I can finally taste the nectar of tumidity. I am the meninges. I am the pons. There is a vas deferens between muscle and appetite, a meta-world of tubes, mcconaugheys, and fluttering mandy barftwats. I am the sperm banker that suckles the bailout milk from the tit of the capitalist scrodum. I am your swollen balls to bare (the balls of a bear?), your dangling albatross of aristocracy. But no matter how swiftly they sperm-churn, they will never bling you down.

Introducing: DAVID ROSS PINSOF

Ladies and gentlemen of the goblosphere, I would like to introduce to you a dear friend of mine, a compelling little creature and entirely beyond mythology, sicknasty. If I habitually wore shirts with breast pockets, I would keep him there and nothing else--little Pinsof resting his bearded cheek in the crook of my nipple, his vertebrae bumping against my heartbeat. A pretty girl would ask me to borrow a pen and I would fiddle in my pockets and brush Pinsof's eager body with my finger. My heart would sigh and I would suddenly remember that I needed a pen for this girl and accidentally swallow my gum or something. Thanks, David.

And as the girl recedes back into the mystery zone, I glance down at my breast pocket and say, "Well, I guess it's just you and me, Pinsy." But the pocket is empty. I raise my head in time to see old D.P. dangling from the hem of the girl's skirt, bellowing like an ancient warrior as he hauls himself up to seize his glittering prize.

And so as budding virgins shall we welcome David to the fold. So let it be written, so let it be done.

double-fist this piss popsicle

well, boys, i'm skippin' town 'till june.

gotta getta way, gonna leave these blues with you:

it starts like this, see, some dick dumped me,

and now there's this new broad.

wedding bells and all that. seems kinda sudden.

worse than a piss popsicle labeled "pineapple."

funny thing is, it's not the first time.

popsicles always come in pairs:

inconvenient to hold, impossible to eat.

the first half broke off when i was 18.

a similar ice phallus: bitches gettin' hitched.

took me 2 years of brainfreeze,

of wakin' up to the same hangover,

and there weren't enough booze to melt it gone.

you'd think: if ever global warming had your back...

but a frigid bitch, nature is. and science

can suck my popsicle stick.

i like how, in disney movies, there's an evil cunt

dressed in black and pulling all the cunty strings

offstage. somewhere. her cackle.

open chest, insert cock, thrust until dead.
i've got a salty case of brainfreeze.

Fridge Ballad

Lucy wafts white,

cold and milky.

Her breasts *huddled penguins*

migrate toward the fridge as

warm pockets tightly knit

a scrapped symphony

“Superb…”

her underpants agree

(…wafting breath…)

The fridge reveals its lonely inmates:

A brilliant cast of Chekhovian characters,

bleakly painted.

False hope?

It’s just a meat prison.

(…whispers behind her hair…)

“Whose plate is this?”

The Intersection of Appetite and Muscle

Cede your Apple


make supple your suck


afflict your affections


applaud the applicant


subjugate the convert


reduce applications
to your own body


See anything written.

Droid quote of the "week" # 3

"Droid: The buffet for the serious app glutton"

Last week's discussion of the relationship between appetite and muscle bore little fruit. Just some parsley and a tuft of hair in the goblin lobe. But lo-be-hold: from this week's quote a sprig of hope (?!) springs up, hinting at the cornucopia of insight that might lie beyond any bulb of fruit or leafy lobe.

Thus it stands: "Appetite" and "application" yield their common seed in the root "app." "App" itself is a mutation of "ad," or "to." "Ad-petere" roughly means "to seek toward." "Ad-plicare" roughly means "to fold to" or "to attach to." A computer application, then, would be a function that "applies" technology to a new or special purpose.

Inherent in the human/animal is an appetite (desire); inherent in the machine is the application (the tool with which desire is "quenched"*). Last week's "intersection of appetite and muscle" confounded because appetite and muscle both seem to be characteristics of the human/animal--how could a technology stand as an intersection between two organic properties?

This week's quote elucidates, terrifies. The juxtaposition of "app" and "glutton" reveals that Droid is playing on the shared root of "appetite" and "application." Whereas last week's "appetite and muscle" confused by not disclosing the route of intersection, this new connection plants the seed of intersection within the consumer/desiring body.

The fact that appetite and muscle belong to the animal at first led me to believe that Droid was simply portraying itself as animal, an organism with hunger and the muscle to wrangle its prey. This is an old advertising trick especially prominent in car commercials (horsepower, epithets, commercials set in the Serengeti). But the reality is much darker. No longer can the victim parse a one-to-one correspondence between device and analogue, product and symbol. Droid intersects, cuts across the organic and splices itself within it. What we face now is a virus of which "app" is the seed.

The abridged "app,**" as a symbolic unit but also a unit of desire, transfers the viral DNA of the Droid's "application" to the consumers body, manifesting itself as "appetite." Suddenly, we are machinic producers of our own desire. Appetite leads to application, application leads to appetite. Our hunger, our muscle, our intelligence, our affection reduce to applications of our own bodies***. Droid acting like human/animal is something we are equipped to understand; Droid and human subliming into a multiplicity of contingent desires gives me the willies.

One disorienting Droid commercial asks us, "does your phone do searches of the word 'human' on the web?" I say to myself at first: how cute, a machine wants to be human! Or I say to myself: Oh no, the machine is trying to enslave us! How Matrixy! Throw both of those conjectures out the window. I ought to ask myself: Why would a machine search at all unless it is a desiring machine? I should ask myself: are not we the searcher, the desiring machine? Does not this Droid commercial dramatize the growing desire of the human to define himself through search engines, applications, technologies of his own devising? My friends, the cyborg approacheth, and he is a capitalist. I leave you:

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Droid

For Thine is the App

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Droid

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Droid

For Thine is the Internet

Between the appetite

And the muscle

Falls the Droid

For Droid Does

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

* Or propagated, a we shall later see

** The "Apple" Corporation suddenly takes on a new cast--not to mention Johnny Appleseed, though that's neither here nor there

*** See anything written by William Borroughs; See Deleuze/Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus"