The lie wouldn’t last. They never do.
Somehow they're overpowered by time.
We’re always scrounging for a truth
No matter how scrawny or windblown.
I wish a red dress were true.
I wish your lips were true.
I wish I was already there.
I wish goodwill were true.
I wish all the smiles were true
and don’t you know they are?
Even when they’re hiding
in a mouth full of lies.
The granule of truth endures somehow;
in the blood flowing under the blood,
in the smallest intentions of each heart.
The minds clenched, the hearts clenched, the eyes clenched,
they are being opened
like empty hands
not to beg
but to be filled,
not by work
but by the sun,
by other hands.
We are finding our way again
in the dark creases
of each other’s hands.
16 November 2011
11 November 2011
You Men With No Destinies
You men with no destinies.
You men with no callings.
You accidents.
At the end of each day
you are alone
and you have no idea
who that person is.
Then, you close your eyes
and disappear.
You no longer have dreams
that live you through the night.
You are blank.
You don't exist
and neither does
anything else.
You have replaced
who you were
with emptiness.
You men with no destinies.
You men with no callings.
You accidents.
Reclaim yourselves.
You are the ones
who can save us.
You men with no callings.
You accidents.
At the end of each day
you are alone
and you have no idea
who that person is.
Then, you close your eyes
and disappear.
You no longer have dreams
that live you through the night.
You are blank.
You don't exist
and neither does
anything else.
You have replaced
who you were
with emptiness.
You men with no destinies.
You men with no callings.
You accidents.
Reclaim yourselves.
You are the ones
who can save us.
09 November 2011
Aphorisms for Myself
Listen, get rid of your blond hair.
Listen, nature is a love story about violence.
Listen, the glitch of motorbikes is necessary.
Listen, Dennis Hopper is not on that roof anymore in his cowboy hat.
Listen, how many generations of flies in each summer of humanity?
Listen, the stoplights seem to know what they're doing.
Listen, listen.
(Read fast.
Don't understand.
There's nothing to understand.
The mirror tells you
everything.)
What can the guidebook show you about Costa Rica?
You'll never find any legs in this book.
Madness is the only way to chart new ideas,
Insight comes as a frenzy.
Thinking can barely move a thought across a page
but that thought could roll the whole world.
You and the mirror have a confidential relationship,
the intimacy of a prisoner and his visitor across the glass.
The pure eyes of the mirror
will be whatever you are.
A mirror,
it remembers nothing.
It testifies nothing.
You need to make yourself
into some kind of desirable sexual product
otherwise, what are you? Why are you here?
That girls' dress is so pretty.
She must not need anybody..
The flower is it's own art;
The flower flowing into
it's body
imagining itself into
such a beautiful thing.
Nature is a series of catastrophes
which somehow caused us to happen.
Did anybody ever think so hard
as nature thinking us forth?
Or was it pure time?
Time gave the accidental collisions
of atoms falling in love with each other
a place to hook up.
It is impossible to waste time.
Time is always lived.
You can never not live it
unless you're dead,
Then time is moot.
All we really do is waste time
in the most creative ways we can think up..
Time is all there is.
Time put us under this sky to ask why,
to investigate and archive the circumstances of our being,
The upkeep of memory; these seem to be our chores.
Why does that girl wear her smile that way?
Why does she have that personality?
As if the world were mud
and each day should be a coat
laid at her feet?
That woman with the basket on her bike riding down Bleecker,
from her lovely white loft to her lovely glass office,
the heart on her shirt held firm by her breasts.
She must be happy. Her skirt is blowing in the wind.
She must be happy. If anyone is, it's got to be her.
A hawk tore a pigeon apart on the church roof today.
He flew across the sky carrying it in his claws,
it's red heart all ripped across it's chest.
Listen, nature is a love story about violence.
Listen, the glitch of motorbikes is necessary.
Listen, Dennis Hopper is not on that roof anymore in his cowboy hat.
Listen, how many generations of flies in each summer of humanity?
Listen, the stoplights seem to know what they're doing.
Listen, listen.
(Read fast.
Don't understand.
There's nothing to understand.
The mirror tells you
everything.)
What can the guidebook show you about Costa Rica?
You'll never find any legs in this book.
Madness is the only way to chart new ideas,
Insight comes as a frenzy.
Thinking can barely move a thought across a page
but that thought could roll the whole world.
You and the mirror have a confidential relationship,
the intimacy of a prisoner and his visitor across the glass.
The pure eyes of the mirror
will be whatever you are.
A mirror,
it remembers nothing.
It testifies nothing.
You need to make yourself
into some kind of desirable sexual product
otherwise, what are you? Why are you here?
That girls' dress is so pretty.
She must not need anybody..
The flower is it's own art;
The flower flowing into
it's body
imagining itself into
such a beautiful thing.
Nature is a series of catastrophes
which somehow caused us to happen.
Did anybody ever think so hard
as nature thinking us forth?
Or was it pure time?
Time gave the accidental collisions
of atoms falling in love with each other
a place to hook up.
It is impossible to waste time.
Time is always lived.
You can never not live it
unless you're dead,
Then time is moot.
All we really do is waste time
in the most creative ways we can think up..
Time is all there is.
Time put us under this sky to ask why,
to investigate and archive the circumstances of our being,
The upkeep of memory; these seem to be our chores.
Why does that girl wear her smile that way?
Why does she have that personality?
As if the world were mud
and each day should be a coat
laid at her feet?
That woman with the basket on her bike riding down Bleecker,
from her lovely white loft to her lovely glass office,
the heart on her shirt held firm by her breasts.
She must be happy. Her skirt is blowing in the wind.
She must be happy. If anyone is, it's got to be her.
A hawk tore a pigeon apart on the church roof today.
He flew across the sky carrying it in his claws,
it's red heart all ripped across it's chest.
The Long Way
How did I get so far
away from everything?
I am such a small person,
with such a small scope,
and such small knowledge,
How did I get such large opinions?
I've never been anywhere
close to love.
It's all I've wanted.
How did I get here
and not there
in your arms?
What is this misunderstanding,
this judgement
leading me to?
Is it bringing me
the long way around
to love?
Is it taking me
the long way home
to you?
away from everything?
I am such a small person,
with such a small scope,
and such small knowledge,
How did I get such large opinions?
I've never been anywhere
close to love.
It's all I've wanted.
How did I get here
and not there
in your arms?
What is this misunderstanding,
this judgement
leading me to?
Is it bringing me
the long way around
to love?
Is it taking me
the long way home
to you?
Love
Love is the only way
we have to fight against death
and death is not winning.
We are alive.
We make love.
We make each other.
For every one who dies
two more are born.
Yes, you will die.
Yes, I will die.
Yes, the beautiful flower will wither.
Life goes on.
Even if we all go
we will return.
There are seasons
to the universe.
we have to fight against death
and death is not winning.
We are alive.
We make love.
We make each other.
For every one who dies
two more are born.
Yes, you will die.
Yes, I will die.
Yes, the beautiful flower will wither.
Life goes on.
Even if we all go
we will return.
There are seasons
to the universe.
Lost
All these words
and nothing to say
It's lonely at the top
but it's also lonely
on the bottom
How many years can one spend
not getting anywhere?
Oh God.
I look up and
here I am
in this life again
Surrounded by
the same people
the same walls
the same food
the same words
But I don't want to find it yet.
I don't want to get there yet.
I want to stay lost.
I want to get more lost
so you will come find me.
and nothing to say
It's lonely at the top
but it's also lonely
on the bottom
How many years can one spend
not getting anywhere?
Oh God.
I look up and
here I am
in this life again
Surrounded by
the same people
the same walls
the same food
the same words
But I don't want to find it yet.
I don't want to get there yet.
I want to stay lost.
I want to get more lost
so you will come find me.
06 November 2011
To Charles Bukowski
I never liked
Charles Bukowski
but I'm starting to.
You've got to admire
the long years of
serious commitment
to drinking and rejection
it took to ferment
the anger that singed
a million minds
with only the true love
of a typewriter
to see him through.
He saw the gunky carpets
the cheap apartments
not with the eyes
of the trust fund poet,
that have never been shot
through with the blood
of ripple wine,
but through a face
of salted meat
and eyes hardboiled
and pickled in briny
late nights of
dinged up legs
and dinged up cars,
hungover days
when the dust
haunts the empty room
that the sun won’t
leave the fuck alone
and the empty bottles
chime in the trash
like the dying honks
of a seagull or
an old Ford.
The real days
we're living.
Sure, the clouds
are always there,
the sun, the stars,
but they’re so
high above.
When I see Hank
(If I may call
him that) sitting
in someone's hideous idea
of an armchair,
holding fast to a
cigarette, I see
my grandma coughing
like a muffler
her beautiful red blood
into the rusted snow
of Columbus, Ohio.
Hank is angry,
Hank is nasty,
but Hank is not
wrong
and he is
folding the cocktail
napkins of hotel
lounges into roses.
Charles Bukowski is still read
by the real people
in America
who no longer read.
The real people in America,
whose struggle
is not epic
but mundane, or rather,
whose unhappiness
is heroic
in how small
and ugly
it is.
Charles Bukowski
but I'm starting to.
You've got to admire
the long years of
serious commitment
to drinking and rejection
it took to ferment
the anger that singed
a million minds
with only the true love
of a typewriter
to see him through.
He saw the gunky carpets
the cheap apartments
not with the eyes
of the trust fund poet,
that have never been shot
through with the blood
of ripple wine,
but through a face
of salted meat
and eyes hardboiled
and pickled in briny
late nights of
dinged up legs
and dinged up cars,
hungover days
when the dust
haunts the empty room
that the sun won’t
leave the fuck alone
and the empty bottles
chime in the trash
like the dying honks
of a seagull or
an old Ford.
The real days
we're living.
Sure, the clouds
are always there,
the sun, the stars,
but they’re so
high above.
When I see Hank
(If I may call
him that) sitting
in someone's hideous idea
of an armchair,
holding fast to a
cigarette, I see
my grandma coughing
like a muffler
her beautiful red blood
into the rusted snow
of Columbus, Ohio.
Hank is angry,
Hank is nasty,
but Hank is not
wrong
and he is
folding the cocktail
napkins of hotel
lounges into roses.
Charles Bukowski is still read
by the real people
in America
who no longer read.
The real people in America,
whose struggle
is not epic
but mundane, or rather,
whose unhappiness
is heroic
in how small
and ugly
it is.
28 September 2011
21 September 2011
09 September 2011
Swan
She was a duck and not a swan and I was some kind of sparrow, maybe.
Maybe she was a swan but in the way swans have clumsy saxophone necks
in real life and aren't royalty like in fairy tales.
Still, she flew in the sky and, when the sky fell in the pond,
she swam in it, and there I was, unable to be anywhere but the dirt.
Maybe she was a swan but in the way swans have clumsy saxophone necks
in real life and aren't royalty like in fairy tales.
Still, she flew in the sky and, when the sky fell in the pond,
she swam in it, and there I was, unable to be anywhere but the dirt.
07 September 2011
Whatever Crutch Keeps You Walking
The old man goes further into night
down the same roads he always has
only slower.
The longer he walks
the less he knows why.
He forgot where he was going
a long time ago.
He has nowhere to go
and it's taken forever
to get there.
Life's been picking him over for 80 years
and he's left stranded
with no eyes,
no legs and no hair.
His body is dismantling itself
for shipment to the sky.
There's still some left though.
He isn't air yet
though his evaporated mind
is forgetting how to rain.
At first it's frightening
not recognizing the face
with the silver hair or
being able to remember the way
it looked before it crinkled up
like trash, but then life becomes
like a melody you've forgotten
the words to;
the shapes losing focus,
pink and green and blue,
are strangely pleasing.
He watches as a boy
he once knew
rises from all fours to retrieve
with the plant of his foot
every step
his own bones
are too brittle to take
and slowly
beneath the hum
of some 80 odd years
he hears his heart
beating
like a song
he used to sing
when he was a boy
before he had other
things to listen to.
down the same roads he always has
only slower.
The longer he walks
the less he knows why.
He forgot where he was going
a long time ago.
He has nowhere to go
and it's taken forever
to get there.
Life's been picking him over for 80 years
and he's left stranded
with no eyes,
no legs and no hair.
His body is dismantling itself
for shipment to the sky.
There's still some left though.
He isn't air yet
though his evaporated mind
is forgetting how to rain.
At first it's frightening
not recognizing the face
with the silver hair or
being able to remember the way
it looked before it crinkled up
like trash, but then life becomes
like a melody you've forgotten
the words to;
the shapes losing focus,
pink and green and blue,
are strangely pleasing.
He watches as a boy
he once knew
rises from all fours to retrieve
with the plant of his foot
every step
his own bones
are too brittle to take
and slowly
beneath the hum
of some 80 odd years
he hears his heart
beating
like a song
he used to sing
when he was a boy
before he had other
things to listen to.
29 August 2011
Kitty Litter Beach
Her legs she's withheld
from the sun,
they're perfectly right
for his camera. Perfectly
white and cracked against the
white cracked seawall.
This shabby beach is just right
because it's placed on a river
and Manhattan is across the river
and a bunch of warehouses are here too.
We like placing beauty
in the context of decay.
Beauty is just too obvious by itself.
The decay is right because it's a gag
about how everything sucks and is being
destroyed and ha ha
and some things used to be honest
and beautiful and now they're rubble.
Those glass condos embarrass
they try so hard.
They're ruining the neighborhood.
We ruined it first.
The sea is embarrassed, it's face red
under the red ass of the sun.
A kid walks by with a smile
that hasn't been ruined yet.
He's wearing the same sweater
as the photographer
but his Mom picked it out for him.
The sea pukes up trash
on the kitty litter beach.
Ewww, perfect.
The six orange halos
of the six pack are actually
a perfect accessory.
Blow my way, you little piece of trash.
This place wears this day perfectly
and I wonder
How did you all wind up
in the same beards?
and I begin to see
there must be something
nice about that,
they are so soft
and identical.
from the sun,
they're perfectly right
for his camera. Perfectly
white and cracked against the
white cracked seawall.
This shabby beach is just right
because it's placed on a river
and Manhattan is across the river
and a bunch of warehouses are here too.
We like placing beauty
in the context of decay.
Beauty is just too obvious by itself.
The decay is right because it's a gag
about how everything sucks and is being
destroyed and ha ha
and some things used to be honest
and beautiful and now they're rubble.
Those glass condos embarrass
they try so hard.
They're ruining the neighborhood.
We ruined it first.
The sea is embarrassed, it's face red
under the red ass of the sun.
A kid walks by with a smile
that hasn't been ruined yet.
He's wearing the same sweater
as the photographer
but his Mom picked it out for him.
The sea pukes up trash
on the kitty litter beach.
Ewww, perfect.
The six orange halos
of the six pack are actually
a perfect accessory.
Blow my way, you little piece of trash.
This place wears this day perfectly
and I wonder
How did you all wind up
in the same beards?
and I begin to see
there must be something
nice about that,
they are so soft
and identical.
26 August 2011
Tonight I lie with loneliness
Tonight I lie with loneliness
And a kiss dreamt from the air.
The room is blue, my new acquaintance.
The sheets remember the shape of her.
To see the world as one big shrine,
Love is the device for this.
It burns your eyes until they’re blind.
Tonight I lie with loneliness.
God is everywhere she insists.
I’ve never seen though forever stared.
The only place where I’ve known bliss
is in a kiss dreamt from the air.
Maybe He is hiding there.
My eyes grope in the darkness.
They can’t shape Him anywhere.
Tonight, the lie of loneliness.
It’s all around me, I make my peace;
Let flowers be what they are.
Through empty rooms I send a wish
for a kiss dreamt from the air.
Of all the absent the one I miss
is a kiss become a dream of air.
The room is blue, my old acquaintance.
Tonight I lie with loneliness.
And a kiss dreamt from the air.
The room is blue, my new acquaintance.
The sheets remember the shape of her.
To see the world as one big shrine,
Love is the device for this.
It burns your eyes until they’re blind.
Tonight I lie with loneliness.
God is everywhere she insists.
I’ve never seen though forever stared.
The only place where I’ve known bliss
is in a kiss dreamt from the air.
Maybe He is hiding there.
My eyes grope in the darkness.
They can’t shape Him anywhere.
Tonight, the lie of loneliness.
It’s all around me, I make my peace;
Let flowers be what they are.
Through empty rooms I send a wish
for a kiss dreamt from the air.
Of all the absent the one I miss
is a kiss become a dream of air.
The room is blue, my old acquaintance.
Tonight I lie with loneliness.
17 August 2011
Ophelia
Ever since you were
in that play with flowers
growing from your hair
and one of them,
the white one, fell
from your coffin
to the blacktop
and the rain came over it like boots
and the boots came over it like rain...
What a death
they wrote for you! The human flower
crying yourself down the stream
You couldn't sing but boy could you cry!
I’ve never seen anybody
cry so much, not even
in real life
It cracked our hearts
for a while but got annoying
and soon we disowned our feelings
like old bread.
I loved the way your dresses fell
I still hear your song
and every flower you cast down
(
they’re just props but they mean to me
what he said they mean)
You untangled death and blew new breath
in her lungs,
joining the others
who've put bodies over that soul,
new flowers on the Bard’s old tree
By the end the stage was a churchyard
and we yawned and clapped
walking with the dead
as a tree is itself
upside down
roots in the air
branches in the ground
I left the night into the opposite stars
thinking what a life death may be!
in that play with flowers
growing from your hair
and one of them,
the white one, fell
from your coffin
to the blacktop
and the rain came over it like boots
and the boots came over it like rain...
What a death
they wrote for you! The human flower
crying yourself down the stream
You couldn't sing but boy could you cry!
I’ve never seen anybody
cry so much, not even
in real life
It cracked our hearts
for a while but got annoying
and soon we disowned our feelings
like old bread.
I loved the way your dresses fell
I still hear your song
and every flower you cast down
(
they’re just props but they mean to me
what he said they mean)
You untangled death and blew new breath
in her lungs,
joining the others
who've put bodies over that soul,
new flowers on the Bard’s old tree
By the end the stage was a churchyard
and we yawned and clapped
walking with the dead
as a tree is itself
upside down
roots in the air
branches in the ground
I left the night into the opposite stars
thinking what a life death may be!
08 August 2011
Song of the Narcisisst
Today I masturbated to a rose
To a bird
To a tree
They're all me
I am William Blake
I am William Wordsworth
I am Will.I.Am.
I am what I am
against my best efforts
to be something else
Do we even remember who they are?
They're birds
Writing is healing
My voice is the company I find
in a time when everyone else
is distracted by themselves
Am I learning? Am I growing
in this little garden of lines?
Don't leave little bird
You're a Mockingbird
I found you in my book
"Mockingbirds will attack their reflection
in a window, a hubcap, or mirror,
with such vigor that they
injure or kill themselves"
That doesn't sound like me
I prefer my reflection
It's the only thing I'm sure
will be there when I turn to it
To a bird
To a tree
They're all me
I am William Blake
I am William Wordsworth
I am Will.I.Am.
I am what I am
against my best efforts
to be something else
Do we even remember who they are?
They're birds
Writing is healing
My voice is the company I find
in a time when everyone else
is distracted by themselves
Am I learning? Am I growing
in this little garden of lines?
Don't leave little bird
You're a Mockingbird
I found you in my book
"Mockingbirds will attack their reflection
in a window, a hubcap, or mirror,
with such vigor that they
injure or kill themselves"
That doesn't sound like me
I prefer my reflection
It's the only thing I'm sure
will be there when I turn to it
20 July 2011
06 July 2011
The Fly
I think about the fly landing on my hand.
It’s steel-wool behind, it’s stained-glass wings.
The gang goes ranting around a trash can,
those beautiful names of hideous things.
The flies do
what they are named to
in Goodale Park.
Fish called “Swim”.
His name a command you call to him
he can’t help but obey.
I urge him to relax.
He’s going to have a heart attack
drinking his blood so fast.
Savor it, I urge, make it last.
Why so harried?
What’s your hurry?
Are you worried?
Go be merry.
Cool your fury,
you storm and flurry
or you’ll be sorry.
Focus what’s blurry.
Go and marry
the blood you ferry
to skies starry.
Wings have carried
you through a varied
life unstoried,
too soon buried.
Your ass is furry,
The earth is sturdy;
Have a seat.
It’s steel-wool behind, it’s stained-glass wings.
The gang goes ranting around a trash can,
those beautiful names of hideous things.
The flies do
what they are named to
in Goodale Park.
Fish called “Swim”.
His name a command you call to him
he can’t help but obey.
I urge him to relax.
He’s going to have a heart attack
drinking his blood so fast.
Savor it, I urge, make it last.
Why so harried?
What’s your hurry?
Are you worried?
Go be merry.
Cool your fury,
you storm and flurry
or you’ll be sorry.
Focus what’s blurry.
Go and marry
the blood you ferry
to skies starry.
Wings have carried
you through a varied
life unstoried,
too soon buried.
Your ass is furry,
The earth is sturdy;
Have a seat.
08 June 2011
What Kind of Man Do You Require?
What kind of man do you require?
A little boy questioning your sleeve?
A wealthy man held together by a suit?
A rolling hog who won't perspire?
Whatever the answer, it's surely moot.
You're no use knowing what you should receive;
Only once given can you know.
There's hungers in us we can't see the source.
It's all well and good holding what you believe
but what you need comes without a choice.
You'd sooner stop the wind to blow
then stop me coming through your door.
I know your blood, I can stem the flow
and if you ask I'll make it roar.
A little boy questioning your sleeve?
A wealthy man held together by a suit?
A rolling hog who won't perspire?
Whatever the answer, it's surely moot.
You're no use knowing what you should receive;
Only once given can you know.
There's hungers in us we can't see the source.
It's all well and good holding what you believe
but what you need comes without a choice.
You'd sooner stop the wind to blow
then stop me coming through your door.
I know your blood, I can stem the flow
and if you ask I'll make it roar.
05 June 2011
She's Turning Into Flowers
The mud is such a soft bed is what she said.
She knew and I found out beneath the orange
flowerbed of the stars. The wolf was red,
killing and killing us, we slept. He cringed.
Her blood was thin with aspirin, her teeth
full of green drums. Though she was ragging,
I pinned her to the wall, telling by her breath
she needed it. Cereal through a straw
is all you can sip through a broken jaw.
Like pressing a flower in Shakespeare’s book
Your mouth only says what your bones can cook.
There’s reams of rhyme that surge from your scrawl
If you bend your eyes white and learn to look.
She knew and I found out beneath the orange
flowerbed of the stars. The wolf was red,
killing and killing us, we slept. He cringed.
Her blood was thin with aspirin, her teeth
full of green drums. Though she was ragging,
I pinned her to the wall, telling by her breath
she needed it. Cereal through a straw
is all you can sip through a broken jaw.
Like pressing a flower in Shakespeare’s book
Your mouth only says what your bones can cook.
There’s reams of rhyme that surge from your scrawl
If you bend your eyes white and learn to look.
Lake Erie
My Mom and Dad riding bikes by the lake,
my brother and I perched on the backs.
It never happened. I don’t recall.
I’ve got the pictures, that’s all,
in the photo album, gory and stained.
It looks so tired today, the rain.
It doesn’t want to fall.
The sun stayed home in bed.
The Rainbow shot itself in the head.
It bled all over the horizon.
We rode our bikes by Lake Erie
and it was never on fire.
Randy Newman wrote that song.
Lake Erie burns on and on.
my brother and I perched on the backs.
It never happened. I don’t recall.
I’ve got the pictures, that’s all,
in the photo album, gory and stained.
It looks so tired today, the rain.
It doesn’t want to fall.
The sun stayed home in bed.
The Rainbow shot itself in the head.
It bled all over the horizon.
We rode our bikes by Lake Erie
and it was never on fire.
Randy Newman wrote that song.
Lake Erie burns on and on.
01 June 2011
The Little Tapes Warbled
Those tapes and tapes and the mud beneath the tarp. She slept on them every night when she slept. She would’ve traded her life for a little sleep. The rain tiptoed it’s ballet across the tent, stars pushed out of Heaven, never getting any bigger, remaining pinpricks as they fell closer.
Desolation is nothing new
It's a perennial fashion of youth.
Everyone agreed the world would end soon but they maybe expected it would be beautiful. The land a cookie crumbling in milk. The mowed sea, jumping into the air in decapitated blades. Mother Earth and her tits of fire, her volcano tits gushing hot milk. Angels lowered down on strings of flame, running through devils with long, thin swords. Operas of light deafening the trees. Skyscrapers bursting in ecstacy. Skulls dashed against the sidewalks. A lovely choreography of total destruction. She and he will dance ring around the rosy as the meteors knock off their limbs. This was what Wally thought. His dream. This is what Wally thought she wanted. The end.
But the world would not relent. It kept looping the same path it had been since the sun hugged it into orbit and wouldn't let go however many millenia before. It retraced it steps like it had lost something, left something behind. The hula hoop of years. They survived. How boring. How tiresome. The whole thing should just shut up already. She and he hated everything and that was their bond. She’d rather be a crusty husk dead on a tree. Ideas are dumb. None of them are right. In a land of gas stations and boutiques and ring tones and buckets of chicken and beer pong and toilet plungers and whitening strips and condoms and corsages you were either dainty or rough and she didn’t want to be anything at all. She wanted so badly to hear the sound shelled in her own heart and she wanted it to be true and not like anybody elses and purely her own. She scoured the air with strings, trying to make out her heart. Her breath went into the tapes and came out but the life was gone. It was her voice and no life. The little failures hit the tarp.
How to shoot into the Heavens
and become a pulse of light?
A voice in your ear becomes your mind. A song pumps your heart with its fist. Wally didn't really care. Grace cared of little else. Wally wanted to breath the sky and taste the flowers and prick the skin of the lake. Wally dipped his hand in the sun and poured it in his cup. Grace led him there. She was his path, his ladder. She didn’t want the responsibility of him. His jello heart wobbling on her dish. His little guppy heart crawling through her stream.
He was nothing.
He was no one.
He became his responsibility for her.
The bird tied to her wrist flew away. She let it loose, he suspected, leaving the rope still taut, dragging on the ground. Grace decided to crawl into her grave and sail out a butterfly. She sunk the proboscis in her arm and sucked. She traded blood for joy and the pain went with it and it seemed like a great deal.
Please don’t do it, he thought.
I just found you.
He thought with all his heart. Surely she had to hear him he was thinking so mightily. Grace could always hear the words volleying against the ramparts of his skull. The words lying like balloons waiting for his lungs to inflate them. Grace blew them up, read their messages, and popped them with her needle. He coughed and coughed. That was almost like talking. The sentences that surfaced herked and jerked their way up his windpipe through a slalom of detours, never arriving where they were headed.
Please just get in bed. Stay in bed.
I’ll take care of you. I want to. It’s all I want.
I could be proud again, preserving you.
Something was spoiling. Everything he said made her nauseous. He drove wooden nails into her stomach. The flies piled up, fat and happy. He rescued what he could. The tapes. Wound their tongues back to their teeth. He couldn't stop the flow. She became a stone. She turned into flowers.
She left.
His eyes had nowhere to rest.
Her vacant chair
was lonely with air.
Clumps of grief shuddered through his body. Reverberations through a world wrenched of a soul of magnitude. Waves passing from the new absence of a stone plunged through the threshold of water. She wasn’t supposed to leave him here. They were supposed to go together.
She was sleeping now. He was wide awake.
The little tapes warbled.
Desolation is nothing new
It's a perennial fashion of youth.
Everyone agreed the world would end soon but they maybe expected it would be beautiful. The land a cookie crumbling in milk. The mowed sea, jumping into the air in decapitated blades. Mother Earth and her tits of fire, her volcano tits gushing hot milk. Angels lowered down on strings of flame, running through devils with long, thin swords. Operas of light deafening the trees. Skyscrapers bursting in ecstacy. Skulls dashed against the sidewalks. A lovely choreography of total destruction. She and he will dance ring around the rosy as the meteors knock off their limbs. This was what Wally thought. His dream. This is what Wally thought she wanted. The end.
But the world would not relent. It kept looping the same path it had been since the sun hugged it into orbit and wouldn't let go however many millenia before. It retraced it steps like it had lost something, left something behind. The hula hoop of years. They survived. How boring. How tiresome. The whole thing should just shut up already. She and he hated everything and that was their bond. She’d rather be a crusty husk dead on a tree. Ideas are dumb. None of them are right. In a land of gas stations and boutiques and ring tones and buckets of chicken and beer pong and toilet plungers and whitening strips and condoms and corsages you were either dainty or rough and she didn’t want to be anything at all. She wanted so badly to hear the sound shelled in her own heart and she wanted it to be true and not like anybody elses and purely her own. She scoured the air with strings, trying to make out her heart. Her breath went into the tapes and came out but the life was gone. It was her voice and no life. The little failures hit the tarp.
How to shoot into the Heavens
and become a pulse of light?
A voice in your ear becomes your mind. A song pumps your heart with its fist. Wally didn't really care. Grace cared of little else. Wally wanted to breath the sky and taste the flowers and prick the skin of the lake. Wally dipped his hand in the sun and poured it in his cup. Grace led him there. She was his path, his ladder. She didn’t want the responsibility of him. His jello heart wobbling on her dish. His little guppy heart crawling through her stream.
He was nothing.
He was no one.
He became his responsibility for her.
The bird tied to her wrist flew away. She let it loose, he suspected, leaving the rope still taut, dragging on the ground. Grace decided to crawl into her grave and sail out a butterfly. She sunk the proboscis in her arm and sucked. She traded blood for joy and the pain went with it and it seemed like a great deal.
Please don’t do it, he thought.
I just found you.
He thought with all his heart. Surely she had to hear him he was thinking so mightily. Grace could always hear the words volleying against the ramparts of his skull. The words lying like balloons waiting for his lungs to inflate them. Grace blew them up, read their messages, and popped them with her needle. He coughed and coughed. That was almost like talking. The sentences that surfaced herked and jerked their way up his windpipe through a slalom of detours, never arriving where they were headed.
Please just get in bed. Stay in bed.
I’ll take care of you. I want to. It’s all I want.
I could be proud again, preserving you.
Something was spoiling. Everything he said made her nauseous. He drove wooden nails into her stomach. The flies piled up, fat and happy. He rescued what he could. The tapes. Wound their tongues back to their teeth. He couldn't stop the flow. She became a stone. She turned into flowers.
She left.
His eyes had nowhere to rest.
Her vacant chair
was lonely with air.
Clumps of grief shuddered through his body. Reverberations through a world wrenched of a soul of magnitude. Waves passing from the new absence of a stone plunged through the threshold of water. She wasn’t supposed to leave him here. They were supposed to go together.
She was sleeping now. He was wide awake.
The little tapes warbled.
Vigil
On a bus rushing by Goodale Park
An old black man teases a younger one
about the huge Bible he’s carrying,
its wild mane of color-coded bookmarks.
The younger man opens the book,
stands up, removes his coat
and runs his finger along a passage as he preaches,
pointing up in the air, back to the book,
the long nave of the bus
his impromptu church.
In the park
a homeless man lies punch drunk
on a stone picnic table, wondering
where his way of life went, the dignity
of two busy hands, filled with sun,
how they were emptied,
why he didn’t migrate with the others,
where he will pass the night,
where he will pass the winter.
A fly circles him, in love with his stink.
An engine quakes nervously,
drinking the pond through a straw.
It’s not yet a ditch
but a forest of lily pads.
A table at a tavern across the way
is bereft of conversation,
the faces are all at the bar
mesmerized by the blue screens hanging above.
Dennison Avenue
bordering the west side of the park,
the first home I ever made for myself,
where the sovereign lives of
a block of citizens
lie peacefully against each other.
You’d never know people lived in
these houses, so empty during the day,
so dark during the night.
In the front yards political signs
withstand the wind like stubborn sails,
their chests bulge but the land does not budge.
I lie in the magnolia grove,
a trunk my pillow, my ear leaned
against a yard of dirt,
bombed-out and war torn,
every inch a civilization
consistently defying ruin.
The twig makes sense in the dirt,
the order of disorder.
I come upon the top of
an acorn’s skull,
the faint concentric circles
rippling outward.
What a little acorn lid,
I think it is my church!
I press my palm to the chest of the earth,
these forty acres I strode the season long;
I went walking with the trees at night,
The magnolias, the violet bush
suddenly burst at the foot of my porch, cousin to
the garden of July fireworks grown in the sky.
This park, this street, this open air,
where I wooed back my soul,
my laboratories all, my teachers and companions all,
whispering things to put on the page,
whispering things to put in my heart.
I spent my summer hanging out with the elms
and their squirrels, unsure as they were
about this world storming up all around us,
estranged from humanity,
but not from nature,
not from myself,
and getting to know God.
The last light of day
is ascending the trees,
burnishing the leaves
an incandescent yellow.
Long shadows stretch
over the earth like stockings.
A helicopter seed gently
whirs down into silence.
The sun is singing
to a great reef of clouds
as spring flowers
aspiring flowers
lie in their graves
waiting to be born.
A thousand generations sleep
in the womb of an acorn.
I am swept up by a great wind
to laugh with the leaves
dancing at the crest of the trees
above the shadows
rising like a flood.
The sky reaches down,
offering its hand,
and snatches up
the liminal strip of light.
The whole neighborhood is dark
except for a a window
illuminated like a manuscript
where a young man writes at an oak desk
by a little flame
burning in the corner
that will stay on all night.
An old black man teases a younger one
about the huge Bible he’s carrying,
its wild mane of color-coded bookmarks.
The younger man opens the book,
stands up, removes his coat
and runs his finger along a passage as he preaches,
pointing up in the air, back to the book,
the long nave of the bus
his impromptu church.
In the park
a homeless man lies punch drunk
on a stone picnic table, wondering
where his way of life went, the dignity
of two busy hands, filled with sun,
how they were emptied,
why he didn’t migrate with the others,
where he will pass the night,
where he will pass the winter.
A fly circles him, in love with his stink.
An engine quakes nervously,
drinking the pond through a straw.
It’s not yet a ditch
but a forest of lily pads.
A table at a tavern across the way
is bereft of conversation,
the faces are all at the bar
mesmerized by the blue screens hanging above.
Dennison Avenue
bordering the west side of the park,
the first home I ever made for myself,
where the sovereign lives of
a block of citizens
lie peacefully against each other.
You’d never know people lived in
these houses, so empty during the day,
so dark during the night.
In the front yards political signs
withstand the wind like stubborn sails,
their chests bulge but the land does not budge.
I lie in the magnolia grove,
a trunk my pillow, my ear leaned
against a yard of dirt,
bombed-out and war torn,
every inch a civilization
consistently defying ruin.
The twig makes sense in the dirt,
the order of disorder.
I come upon the top of
an acorn’s skull,
the faint concentric circles
rippling outward.
What a little acorn lid,
I think it is my church!
I press my palm to the chest of the earth,
these forty acres I strode the season long;
I went walking with the trees at night,
The magnolias, the violet bush
suddenly burst at the foot of my porch, cousin to
the garden of July fireworks grown in the sky.
This park, this street, this open air,
where I wooed back my soul,
my laboratories all, my teachers and companions all,
whispering things to put on the page,
whispering things to put in my heart.
I spent my summer hanging out with the elms
and their squirrels, unsure as they were
about this world storming up all around us,
estranged from humanity,
but not from nature,
not from myself,
and getting to know God.
The last light of day
is ascending the trees,
burnishing the leaves
an incandescent yellow.
Long shadows stretch
over the earth like stockings.
A helicopter seed gently
whirs down into silence.
The sun is singing
to a great reef of clouds
as spring flowers
aspiring flowers
lie in their graves
waiting to be born.
A thousand generations sleep
in the womb of an acorn.
I am swept up by a great wind
to laugh with the leaves
dancing at the crest of the trees
above the shadows
rising like a flood.
The sky reaches down,
offering its hand,
and snatches up
the liminal strip of light.
The whole neighborhood is dark
except for a a window
illuminated like a manuscript
where a young man writes at an oak desk
by a little flame
burning in the corner
that will stay on all night.
24 May 2011
Books
I love these books I’ve never read
lying around like bodies I've never fucked.
I love these books that I have read.
I keep them right here by my bed.
I can hardly cross the room without taking two or three
with me for company and security.
I pick one, a cherry cordial
from a box of chocolates.
Ulysses
would be delicious
if I only had the patience.
Keats
I read
a line here or there
but my mind won’t adhere.
The Bible
I'm liable
to get around to it one of these days,
I've heard Jesus had some pretty good things to say.
Parker and Twain in Viking Portable,
Their greatest hits yet still affordable.
Salinger. We’ve all read everything he’s ever done.
He’s given us such attractive people to become.
Proust, his pages an aged brown
I put my nose in the spine and swoon.
Shawn and Chabon,
O’Hara and Crane,
Whitman, Rilke, and Lorca,
Shakespeare, the indisputable,
thank you, thank you, thank you all.
You are as dear to me as any friends I’ve ever had.
lying around like bodies I've never fucked.
I love these books that I have read.
I keep them right here by my bed.
I can hardly cross the room without taking two or three
with me for company and security.
I pick one, a cherry cordial
from a box of chocolates.
Ulysses
would be delicious
if I only had the patience.
Keats
I read
a line here or there
but my mind won’t adhere.
The Bible
I'm liable
to get around to it one of these days,
I've heard Jesus had some pretty good things to say.
Parker and Twain in Viking Portable,
Their greatest hits yet still affordable.
Salinger. We’ve all read everything he’s ever done.
He’s given us such attractive people to become.
Proust, his pages an aged brown
I put my nose in the spine and swoon.
Shawn and Chabon,
O’Hara and Crane,
Whitman, Rilke, and Lorca,
Shakespeare, the indisputable,
thank you, thank you, thank you all.
You are as dear to me as any friends I’ve ever had.
23 May 2011
Solstice
The solstice nears.
The darkest day of the year
becomes Manhattan, a city
most fetching at night.
She throws on her finery,
windows x-ray the diamond
bones of her skyline.
The sun is lowered
into it’s vault.
Worklights peer into the cavity
of Ground Zero, an autopsy tourists
think it's their duty to watch.
In the distance, beneath the vanquished stars,
a tiny glint of orange: the frozen torch of liberty
blazing it’s warning against the airplanes in the night.
The darkest day of the year
becomes Manhattan, a city
most fetching at night.
She throws on her finery,
windows x-ray the diamond
bones of her skyline.
The sun is lowered
into it’s vault.
Worklights peer into the cavity
of Ground Zero, an autopsy tourists
think it's their duty to watch.
In the distance, beneath the vanquished stars,
a tiny glint of orange: the frozen torch of liberty
blazing it’s warning against the airplanes in the night.
Showers
We were on the stoop chatting last night
and the sky threw a little rain on us
so we went inside and when you changed my fifty
you threw the dollar bills in a little shower over me;
a happy imitation of the rain.
and the sky threw a little rain on us
so we went inside and when you changed my fifty
you threw the dollar bills in a little shower over me;
a happy imitation of the rain.
21 May 2011
On the Occasion of the Rapture
Sun. Clouds.
Timid drops of rain.
Pensive wind.
The day is confused about
what it wants to be.
Timid drops of rain.
Pensive wind.
The day is confused about
what it wants to be.
18 May 2011
Inspiration
We can’t help but
keep each other alive
even as we struggle and fight
with words sent to hurt
A “Fuck you!” rides
a resuscitating breath
into the tree,
is sent out again and received
by you, an invisible gift
sustaining another breath
which you return in kind.
keep each other alive
even as we struggle and fight
with words sent to hurt
A “Fuck you!” rides
a resuscitating breath
into the tree,
is sent out again and received
by you, an invisible gift
sustaining another breath
which you return in kind.
16 May 2011
Poem
A little boy adjusts the boxes
containing the ashes of his grandparents,
squaring the corners
so they are still equal,
so they can still touch.
containing the ashes of his grandparents,
squaring the corners
so they are still equal,
so they can still touch.
10 May 2011
The New Sod is Establishing Its Root System
The lawn in Bryant Park is not open yet. The sign says
"The new sod is establishing its root system".
Good. Okay. We will allow that.
I can relate. I am also establishing my root system
in the colossal garden of Manhattan
where it can be so hard to reach the sun.
It's a tender journey into a new soil;
They are the arms of new lovers
inhabiting each other for the first time.
The kids are sitting on their horses
waiting for the carousel to begin.
I am sitting at a cafe table
on my break from work. A girl nearby
reads "The Catcher in the Rye."
I see a rabbit the size of a pony
begin to hop through the hedges
with a child on it's back.
It is not at all a convincing imitation
of the real thing.
I get up and, as I walk over to get a closer look,
the ramshackle rhythm of the calliope's song
dawns in my ears.
The children go smiling and twirling
and I'm smiling right along
to the beautiful, victorious song.
My life is becoming what I wished it would be.
The sprinkler blesses it's new constituents
then dwindles and is gulped back into the earth.
As I leave I see a shovel
standing upright in the dirt.
It is time to get to work.
"The new sod is establishing its root system".
Good. Okay. We will allow that.
I can relate. I am also establishing my root system
in the colossal garden of Manhattan
where it can be so hard to reach the sun.
It's a tender journey into a new soil;
They are the arms of new lovers
inhabiting each other for the first time.
The kids are sitting on their horses
waiting for the carousel to begin.
I am sitting at a cafe table
on my break from work. A girl nearby
reads "The Catcher in the Rye."
I see a rabbit the size of a pony
begin to hop through the hedges
with a child on it's back.
It is not at all a convincing imitation
of the real thing.
I get up and, as I walk over to get a closer look,
the ramshackle rhythm of the calliope's song
dawns in my ears.
The children go smiling and twirling
and I'm smiling right along
to the beautiful, victorious song.
My life is becoming what I wished it would be.
The sprinkler blesses it's new constituents
then dwindles and is gulped back into the earth.
As I leave I see a shovel
standing upright in the dirt.
It is time to get to work.
08 May 2011
Hipster University
Even the leaves don't mean it
in McCarren Park.
They bloom sarcastically,
a bushel of quotation marks
with no words inside them.
The pink buds are LA Gear
and the shaggy lawn is a big, pubic mustache
misplaced on Rollie Fingers' face and green.
Look what these beautiful people have done to themselves.
They seem determined to escape sincerity.
They don't even know if they mean it
but they do mean it.
They mean it so much.
in McCarren Park.
They bloom sarcastically,
a bushel of quotation marks
with no words inside them.
The pink buds are LA Gear
and the shaggy lawn is a big, pubic mustache
misplaced on Rollie Fingers' face and green.
Look what these beautiful people have done to themselves.
They seem determined to escape sincerity.
They don't even know if they mean it
but they do mean it.
They mean it so much.
09 April 2011
23 March 2011
Incorrect Sonnet
This sonnet neither of sound nor sense
has lines landing nine syllables each.
I beg your pardon this rank offense
but ten for me is an awkward reach.
The hopscotch of the iambic line
is a schoolyard game I never learned,
though I'm older now and have the time,
I'm much too lazy to feign concern.
Though some still count beats like Ye Olde School,
most poets today, for better or worse
(ruler'd rhythm sadistic and cruel),
puke on the page and call it 'Free Verse'.
It's those Beatniks fault we do what we want.
If I want the last line to be 46 syllables, it'll be 46 goddamn syllables. I'm an American, I couldn't tell you what a 'Trochee' is without Googling it. Who needs 'Trochees' anyway if they feel the line beating in their hearts and various other body parts? Bukowski and Ginsberg showed us how brilliant we are drugged on our own voice. To hell with metre'd confines. Rebel! Disrobe your sentences! (The beaker breaks. The concoction spills all over your mind, effectively BLOWING IT! It's now 'experimental'. No longer rhetorical. Not an emotional or psychological diorama. Not a poignant exhibit from the past, but the raw feed. A brush fire sweeps the rose patch.) Flaunt your undisciplined nudity, amateur genius’ everywhere! You've got to let things splurge if you want them to have that romantic force. It wouldn't be right to simply graft our hearts onto the schematics of long dead British guys. Trying to speak with the cadences of ghosts is treasonous to our own, much more discordant age. (this is where I demonstrate my vocabulary) Besides, God, they're Boooooo-ring! We've got to light the maps aflame and survey the trees and rivers ourselves, to verify we're going where we're going. HOWEVER (and this is a fine example), wandering can be arduous too. Sometimes you're just fleeing across the page, speaking to reaffirm to yourself your own genius. Convinced, it's time to wind this down. Trying desperately to find a rhyme to let me out. I can't.
has lines landing nine syllables each.
I beg your pardon this rank offense
but ten for me is an awkward reach.
The hopscotch of the iambic line
is a schoolyard game I never learned,
though I'm older now and have the time,
I'm much too lazy to feign concern.
Though some still count beats like Ye Olde School,
most poets today, for better or worse
(ruler'd rhythm sadistic and cruel),
puke on the page and call it 'Free Verse'.
It's those Beatniks fault we do what we want.
If I want the last line to be 46 syllables, it'll be 46 goddamn syllables. I'm an American, I couldn't tell you what a 'Trochee' is without Googling it. Who needs 'Trochees' anyway if they feel the line beating in their hearts and various other body parts? Bukowski and Ginsberg showed us how brilliant we are drugged on our own voice. To hell with metre'd confines. Rebel! Disrobe your sentences! (The beaker breaks. The concoction spills all over your mind, effectively BLOWING IT! It's now 'experimental'. No longer rhetorical. Not an emotional or psychological diorama. Not a poignant exhibit from the past, but the raw feed. A brush fire sweeps the rose patch.) Flaunt your undisciplined nudity, amateur genius’ everywhere! You've got to let things splurge if you want them to have that romantic force. It wouldn't be right to simply graft our hearts onto the schematics of long dead British guys. Trying to speak with the cadences of ghosts is treasonous to our own, much more discordant age. (this is where I demonstrate my vocabulary) Besides, God, they're Boooooo-ring! We've got to light the maps aflame and survey the trees and rivers ourselves, to verify we're going where we're going. HOWEVER (and this is a fine example), wandering can be arduous too. Sometimes you're just fleeing across the page, speaking to reaffirm to yourself your own genius. Convinced, it's time to wind this down. Trying desperately to find a rhyme to let me out. I can't.
23 February 2011
Times Square
Whose square?
Just where it that apostrophe anyway?
I know where it goes.
We all know where it goes.
Time owns everything.
Just where it that apostrophe anyway?
I know where it goes.
We all know where it goes.
Time owns everything.
17 February 2011
Retaliation
Ashes of trees shroud the neighborhood,
a fresh dusting every morning
rises from the jaws of the bulldozers.
Wendell, determined to keep his car shiny
returns to his driveway
with sponge, hose and bucket.
I'm sitting Shiva with the forest
next to the three brawny machines
in the clean dirt swath they've
rolled out like a carpet
not at all like the junkyard heap
of a forest floor.
I can't tell what's the wind
or the creek or the moan of the freeway
between gusts of silence.
In the middle dozer's windshield
there's a bullseye-shaped crack
where the Earth, resilient, feisty
old bitch that she is
kicked a stone into the Goliath's eyes.
a fresh dusting every morning
rises from the jaws of the bulldozers.
Wendell, determined to keep his car shiny
returns to his driveway
with sponge, hose and bucket.
I'm sitting Shiva with the forest
next to the three brawny machines
in the clean dirt swath they've
rolled out like a carpet
not at all like the junkyard heap
of a forest floor.
I can't tell what's the wind
or the creek or the moan of the freeway
between gusts of silence.
In the middle dozer's windshield
there's a bullseye-shaped crack
where the Earth, resilient, feisty
old bitch that she is
kicked a stone into the Goliath's eyes.
16 February 2011
Dime-A-Dog Night
12 thousand people all holding their breath
or yawning or clapping for the little men
down on the grass. We came here to eat hot dogs!
We came here to drink beer and see baseballs
climb the sky! To see outfielders launch
themselves into smooth green walls!
Beautiful women and beautiful children
were in the crowd and beautiful weather
hung in the air. Everyone knew
it was a perfect night. The lights
winked on like Diamond earrings.
My cousin Tony and brother Max and I
snuck down to the front row,
where we could yell insults at the
bullpen or the umpires and they might
hear us. We ate green hot dogs and spilled
Pepsi on a statue of a businessman.
An accident, we decided it was a protest
against them building a statue of some guy
just cause he spent a lot of money.
We yelled obscene things about #34's wife
as he warmed up in the bullpen
and when they released him into the game
we felt almost a little proud
like he was our friend or a guy we knew
in high school. Top of the ninth,
we're up 3 runs and the crowd chimes
according to every ball and strike.
Our friend #34 threw into the emptiness
of the batter's swing three times
and we heard the ball swallowed into nothing
and stood and woo-hooed! We won! The whole
skyline was on it's feet over the outfield.
We walked the three blocks back to my house
and two men in a silver car stopped
us on the corner in the dark.
Who won? Clippers. Score? 11-8.
It was minor league, they weren't playing
for anything, but it was a stadium record
attendance. Me and Max and Tony breathing
the same Summer air as everyone else, alive.
or yawning or clapping for the little men
down on the grass. We came here to eat hot dogs!
We came here to drink beer and see baseballs
climb the sky! To see outfielders launch
themselves into smooth green walls!
Beautiful women and beautiful children
were in the crowd and beautiful weather
hung in the air. Everyone knew
it was a perfect night. The lights
winked on like Diamond earrings.
My cousin Tony and brother Max and I
snuck down to the front row,
where we could yell insults at the
bullpen or the umpires and they might
hear us. We ate green hot dogs and spilled
Pepsi on a statue of a businessman.
An accident, we decided it was a protest
against them building a statue of some guy
just cause he spent a lot of money.
We yelled obscene things about #34's wife
as he warmed up in the bullpen
and when they released him into the game
we felt almost a little proud
like he was our friend or a guy we knew
in high school. Top of the ninth,
we're up 3 runs and the crowd chimes
according to every ball and strike.
Our friend #34 threw into the emptiness
of the batter's swing three times
and we heard the ball swallowed into nothing
and stood and woo-hooed! We won! The whole
skyline was on it's feet over the outfield.
We walked the three blocks back to my house
and two men in a silver car stopped
us on the corner in the dark.
Who won? Clippers. Score? 11-8.
It was minor league, they weren't playing
for anything, but it was a stadium record
attendance. Me and Max and Tony breathing
the same Summer air as everyone else, alive.
12 February 2011
Lines Written While Looking Up At The Helmsley Building and Chase Manhattan Headquarters on the Corner of 48th and Park
New York City Skyscrapers
Kick the fucking shit out of the stars.
They are the stars
Only better. They blow
the stars right the fuck out of Heaven.
Stars don't need to exist anymore.
New York is the only Heaven you'll ever know
Dickhead.
Kick the fucking shit out of the stars.
They are the stars
Only better. They blow
the stars right the fuck out of Heaven.
Stars don't need to exist anymore.
New York is the only Heaven you'll ever know
Dickhead.
07 February 2011
Song Of the Open Road - New York - Extracts
The Fountain of my country's destiny
And of the destiny of Earth itself,
That great emporium, Chronicle at once
And Burial-place of passions and their home
Imperial, and chief living residence.
-Wordsworth
He said to me: "Where are you from?" And I said: "New York." He said: "Ah, New York! Yes, that's a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave but never do?" And I said: "Oh, yes!" And he said: "Why do you think they don't leave?" I gave him different banal theories. He said: "Oh, I don't think it's that way at all." He said: "I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built, they've built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia, where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they've made, or to even see it as a prison. And then he went into his pocket and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said: "This is a pine tree." He put it in my hand and he said: "Escape, before it's too late."
-My Dinner With Andre
Eventually we all wound up in New York studying or looking for jobs-- which reminds me of a point I would like to make about New York, namely, that is you live in most other places, like San Francisco, Paris, or Bloomington, you are, almost against your will, taking a stand of some kind, and the stand is that you are not living in New York. If you live in New York, however, you are probably not doing so because you like it or feel it expresses you, but because it's the most convenient place: there are people, jobs, concerts and so on, but it doesn't add up to a place: one has no feeling of living 'somewhere.' New York is really an anti-place, an abstract climate, and I am not prepared to take up the cudgels to defend such a place, especially when I would much rather be living in San Francisco.
-John Ashbery
"I had a dream that when I woke up, the city was under siege."
-A friend of a friend, who is kind of a Bro
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
-Wordsworth
Paul Allen has mistaken me for this dickhead Marcus Halberstram. It seems logical because Marcus also works at P&P and in fact does the same exact thing I do and he also has a penchant for Valentino suits and Oliver Peoples glasses. Marcus and I even go to the same barber, although I have a slightly better haircut.
-American Psycho
Sitting in a corner of the gallery
I notice that Albers scratches a tiny A
in the lower right corner with the date
and the paintings are like floodlights
on my emptiness
that I am out of context waiting
for the place where my life exists like a tree
in a meadow
the warm traffic going by is my natural scenery
because I am not alone there
as the sky above the top of a tenement
is nearer
which is what the ancients meant by heaven
to be with someone
not just waiting wherever you are
-Frank O'Hara
The little island wedged between three rivers,
from which our letters come and go, is the personification of hope.
The buildings are black and white like sonnets. And enveloped
in between the first sweet cherries of the season are being delivered.
-Henri Cole
And of the destiny of Earth itself,
That great emporium, Chronicle at once
And Burial-place of passions and their home
Imperial, and chief living residence.
-Wordsworth
He said to me: "Where are you from?" And I said: "New York." He said: "Ah, New York! Yes, that's a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave but never do?" And I said: "Oh, yes!" And he said: "Why do you think they don't leave?" I gave him different banal theories. He said: "Oh, I don't think it's that way at all." He said: "I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built, they've built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia, where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they've made, or to even see it as a prison. And then he went into his pocket and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said: "This is a pine tree." He put it in my hand and he said: "Escape, before it's too late."
-My Dinner With Andre
Eventually we all wound up in New York studying or looking for jobs-- which reminds me of a point I would like to make about New York, namely, that is you live in most other places, like San Francisco, Paris, or Bloomington, you are, almost against your will, taking a stand of some kind, and the stand is that you are not living in New York. If you live in New York, however, you are probably not doing so because you like it or feel it expresses you, but because it's the most convenient place: there are people, jobs, concerts and so on, but it doesn't add up to a place: one has no feeling of living 'somewhere.' New York is really an anti-place, an abstract climate, and I am not prepared to take up the cudgels to defend such a place, especially when I would much rather be living in San Francisco.
-John Ashbery
"I had a dream that when I woke up, the city was under siege."
-A friend of a friend, who is kind of a Bro
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
-Wordsworth
Paul Allen has mistaken me for this dickhead Marcus Halberstram. It seems logical because Marcus also works at P&P and in fact does the same exact thing I do and he also has a penchant for Valentino suits and Oliver Peoples glasses. Marcus and I even go to the same barber, although I have a slightly better haircut.
-American Psycho
Sitting in a corner of the gallery
I notice that Albers scratches a tiny A
in the lower right corner with the date
and the paintings are like floodlights
on my emptiness
that I am out of context waiting
for the place where my life exists like a tree
in a meadow
the warm traffic going by is my natural scenery
because I am not alone there
as the sky above the top of a tenement
is nearer
which is what the ancients meant by heaven
to be with someone
not just waiting wherever you are
-Frank O'Hara
The little island wedged between three rivers,
from which our letters come and go, is the personification of hope.
The buildings are black and white like sonnets. And enveloped
in between the first sweet cherries of the season are being delivered.
-Henri Cole
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