reasons for living - october 2015

Poetry
Advice From 1 Disciple of Marx to 1 Heidegger Fanatic - Mario Santiago Papasuiqaro
Wallace Stevens
Eileen Myles
John Ashbery
James Schuyler

Movies
The Shining - Stanley Kubrick
American Psycho - Mary Harron
The Burbs - Joe Dante
The Addams Family - Barry Sonnenfeld
Raising Arizona - The Coen Brothers

Reasons For Living - September 2015

Poetry
Song of Myself - Walt Whitman
I Must Be Living Twice - Eileen Myles
The Vermont Notebook - John Ashbery
Patricia Lockwood

Prose
Wayne Koestenbaum
The Grotowski Sourcebook - Richrd Schechner, ed.
The Braindead Megaphone - George Saunders

Comics
Watchmen - Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

on and on #1

on

and on

and on and

on and on and

on and on and on

and on and on and on

and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on on and on

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on and  

on and on and on and on 

and on and on and on 

and on and on and 

on and on and on 

and on and on 

and on and 

on and  

on  

Reasons For Living - August 2015

Poetry
James Schuyler
John Berryman - Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

Prose
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business - Neil Postman
The Decline of the West - Oswald Spengler
Spalding Gray's America

Movies
Her - Spike Jonze

Plays
Judy - Max Posner
Cymbeline - Shakespeare in the Park
Las Meninas - Lynn Nottage

Reasons For Living - July 2015

Prose
10:04 - Ben Lerner

Drama
The Proust Screenplay - Harold Pinter
As You Like It - Shakespeare in the Parking Lot

Poetry
Nothing to Declare - Henri Cole
Joseph Brodsky
Arthur Rimbaud

Reasons for Living - June 2015

Plays
The Flick - Annie Baker

Comix
Lucky - Gabrielle Bell
The Beats - Harvey Pekar

Prose
Selected Essays - Joseph Brodsky
The Theatre of Revolt - Robert Brustein
Harold Bloom on John Keats

Poetry
Yeats

scenes from a life - the compleat first season

ep 1 - friday - aug 2014



ep 2 - burrito bowl - aug 2014



ep 3 - degas' brushes sang  - sept 2014



ep 4 - rocky mtn hi - oct 2014



ep 5 - holy smokes - oct 2014 - march 2015



ep 6 - the snow - jan 2015

Reasons for Living - May 2015

Movies
Key Largo - John Huston, dir.
High Fidelity - Stephen Frears, dir.
The Last Waltz - Martin Scorsese, dir.

Poetry
Three Poems - John Ashbery
John Berryman
Emily Dickinson

Prose
The Human Stain - Philip Roth

Reasons for Living - April 2015

Prose
Journey to the End of the Night - Louis Ferdinand Celine
William Hazlitt
The Portable Jack Kerouac
D.H. Lawrence
Confessions of an Advertising Man - David Ogilvy


Poetry
James Schuyler
William Blake
Eileen Myles
A.R. Ammons

Movies
Badlands - Terrence Malick
Amadeus - Milosz Forman
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books - Richard Linklater
The Cruise - Bennett Miller

TV
Mad Men

scenes from a life - burrito bowl

The companion series

2 poems

parables for the rhinoceros

who knew the scarecrow flew

with the gummy red

of the hippopotamus

cooling on the muddy river

when I’m walking down the street I’m looking people in the face

cause they’re humans

even the bad ones

even the criminals

even me

even you

we’re humans

isn’t it great to have problems too?

like, problems are so much fun

they really give you something to do

you know, like, if you don’t have problems

you’re just bored

how do you feel sorry for yourself

if you don’t have problems, man?

give me surrender

give me a golden give me a broken charge

give me yesterdays full of travesty

they make such good memory

give me the river that goes unnoticed

give me the rain aslant the sky

give me the smokestacks gone dormant

pastures of wide ripe grass

the church built itself

out of god

I am full of toxic information

trivia from the bottom of my heart

I know every age

I know every

age

sometimes the words come out of your mouth too fast

sometimes you’re happy that they’ve escaped

sometimes they do you proud

sometimes you hate yourself for who you are

and what you did

and what you’ll do again

but you survive

you can’t wait to see the wrinkles on your face

you can’t wait to see yourself age like the dirt

you can’t wait to be a pattern

of resistance

there was an earth here once

it was wet

with rain

the mud felt like your skin

then tomorrow collapsed

and yesterday came asking to collect

so now you’re stuck between

yesterday and tomorrow

then

and

now

***************************************

sea of tranquility

paradise climbs the ruddy fence

the split bricks choked with last year’s leaves

shrugging the lamppost

streetward

saturday night before Shakespeare goes on

the man with arms for all to see

reads the pre-show disclaimers

turn off your cell phones

give us money

enjoy the show

catfishing in lawnchairs in the pond across the street

boombox at our feet cooing 98.9     
Luther Vandross       Teddy Pendergrass           Wishful Radio

a pack of boys on a bicycle

riding the handlebars like a wheelie

in a wifebeater          swimtrunks    flip-flops with socks

the blonde boy’s hair

combed skyward

and here comes the Scottish play

the one you shouldn’t do

and it ruins everybody’s life for ten years

the actors hiding in the dressing room

under the stage

from the thunderstorms whipping the trees

with sheetmetal

all of my good friends died

it’s proof of their goodness

so thinks the naïve heart in me

that is sinking into the sea

of modern tranquility

Reasons for Living - March 2015

Prose
Invisible Republic: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - Greil Marcus
Bossypants* - Tina Fey
The Masks of God: Creative Mythology* - Joseph Campbell
Bobos in Paradise - David Brooks
Helen Vendler essays
Don Delillo stories
Jorge Luis Borges stories
Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet* - Paul Zweig

Poetry
Ezra Pound
Joseph Brodsky
The Double Dream of Spring - John Ashbery
Jorge Luis Borges
W.H. Auden
The Duino Elegies - Rilke

Images
Barfly - Charles Bukowski, Writer. Barbet Schroeder, Dir.
Wrestlemania XXXI

*partial

Reasons For Living - February 2015

Prose
Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock and Roll Band - Ian Svenonius
Raymond Carver stories
The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School Poets - David Lehman
Sound and Form in Modern Poetry - Harvey Gross
Memoirs - Pablo Neruda

Poetry
T.S. Eliot - Prufrock
Pablo Neruda
Cesar Vallejo
Rilke - New Poems

Movies
Reality Bites - Ben Stiller, Dir.
The Left-Handed Woman - Peter Handke, Dir.

Plays
Big Love - Charles Mee, Signature Theatre

Last Christmas by Meezy.biz aka Doctor Proctor aka Frank Lee Fabolou$ aka @shoyish

DISCLAIMER: I am

The biggest piece of shit ever

I write all my own t-shirts

Punjab Footjob    Cripple Epic     Child Riot

Blog: Foods Which No Longer Exist

This that I don't have a real job

Being born was nonconsensual

Wiped their ass with my chin

The years went on in statuses

Ricochet biscuit       I only trust

Beloved childhood figures: Michaelangelo

The ninja turtle, not the artist

The professional wrestling circuit

Junk put onto shelves
Never joke about Denver
Left an orthodontist at the altar

You can always rely on accidents

At the opera        with pornstars

All women are Disney Princesses

And I’m vaccinated by the nipples

The sonar of emotions

I’ll be a rich man when they make the biopic

It’s cool then it sux then it’s over

The Snow

 

Reasons for Living - January 2015

Novels
Double Duce - Aaron Cometbus
Herzog - Saul Bellow

Prose
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante
Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell (excerpts)
The Anxiety of Influence - Harold Bloom

Movies
Kingpin - The Farrelly Brothers
Cast Away - Robert Zemeckis
Mean Streets - Martin Scorsese

Poetry
Mayakovsky's Revolver - Matthew Dickman

TV Shows
Broad City

props

say what you will
about working
on a comp, it is a boon
for enjambment. you can play
with line breaks all
day long
like
lincoln logs

Public Access

a few odes to a local hero, walt peterson  

 

The shot endures for a Warholesque duration, stretching barren seconds until it becomes philosophical
in its emptiness, the quake of room tone
tidal
on the audio track.
Every
edit
abrupt, knocks the viewer out
of the story

With the force of the stage punches that never
connect

In the saloon riots of his westerns. His framings oblong, zooms searching to a

sandstorm
of grain, lighting clerical
as a mugshot. Like porn without the sex, home
movies broadcast for the whole town
to see,

these are the loose
ends

never meant
to make it
to television.

I wanna make bad movies again

I wanna make em like Walt Peterson

I interviewed him for the high school newspaper,
asking questions from The Proust Questionnaire,

a survey I’d found in in the back of Vanity Fair

typically used by actors or writers to muse philosophically.

They were famous. It mattered what they thought about Life.

I’d often fantasized about answering the questions myself.

“What do you consider the most overrated virtue?”

“When and where were you happiest?”

”If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?”

It was like he’d never though about these things before.

Walt talked mostly about his faith. God was the answer.

He was a kind man, unpretentious, accountant by day, TV star on Sunday afternoon,

One week a secret agent, the next a cowboy,

Moses on Easter Sunday.

Hair the calm snowbank white and gray of television static,
Eyebrows thick and black as videotape,
Walt had the comforting vacuity of the old cowboy stars,

the ones you never hear about any more:
Roy Rogers, Chill Wills, Audie Murphy,
Eyes like rusty wells

maybe something in'em

maybe not.

As Ace Diamond he had all the swagger
of the best singer at a bowling alley karaoke,
more Barney than Andy,

timid, polyester, narcissistic without cause,
but with such good manners and earnestness
that he was
watchable.

I wanna make bad movies again

I wanna make em like Walt Peterson

How many mortals get to play Moses?

How many cast themselves in the part?

His Commandments left-overs from Halloween,

Two styrofoam graves carved with Sharpie,

His Red Sea parted of Play-doh and nail polish.

Walt Peterson affixing scripture to magnetic tape

In the back of a barn in Grove City, Ohio.

I wanna make bad movies again

I wanna make em like Walt Peterson

Let this accountant fire his Remington and ride his Trigger
across the muddy Re-enactment Villages of Central Ohio!

Let this man of Pataskala seduce and murder his way
through an entire Cold War of Supervillains!

Let this man who keeps a Superman costume in the trunk of his Buick
bring down the Word for all to hear!

On Channel 21! Local public access television!

scenes from a life - jan 16-18 - the narrow road to the deep north and other poems

ep 1 - the narrow road to the deep north and other poems



ep 2 - Now That I am Old and Mature I can Go Back to Myself



ep 3 - birds in a bus station
 

Reasons for Living - Dec 2014

Movies 
The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson
Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
Almost Famous - Cameron Crowe
Thief - Michael Mann

Novels
The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem

Prose
Roxane Gay essays
The Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Peter Biskind
Jonathan Lethem essays
The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein
Do The Right Thing: The Book  - Spike Lee

Poetry
John Berryman
Ted Berrigan
Ted Hughes

TV Shows
True Detective - Ssn 1

City Limits

Great names painted on the mural

Of the Temple of Knowledge

In the café of the Barnes and Noble.
NIETZSCHE      KAFKA       DICKENS

Are they sitting among us right now?

Here in the shopping mall?

Eating Cinnabons in the wash of smooth jazz,

“music made by CIA agents” my dad used to call it?

A man down the bench has a stack

Of yellow books: “Currency Exhange For Dummies” 

“Crowdsource Funding For Dummies” 

“Hedgefunds For Dummies.” An amateur psychotherapist,

Using “Psychotherapy for Dummies,” performs

psychotherapy on himself. He tells me I’m suffering

from an Oedipal Dilemma caused by withdrawal

of maternal affection at a young age. I’m creating a great drama

Of failure, culling a subject out of my misery,

It’s the way a coward gives his life meaning

when he refuses his purpose.

That will be $400 for the hour he says

And his straw rattles as he sucks the last

Of my iced frappaccino.

I leave the café        (strange gulag)     my Toyota snarling

Smoke from a hood dented

Into a curled lip.

These two lanes will take us anywhere

Croons Bruce Springsteen

From the simultaneous dashboards

Of a city stuck in traffic.

I take refuge in the White Castle,

my alma mater turned to trash.

Eating sliders and working on a half-assed novel

I am exactly where I was

When I started

And it’s taken me ten years

To get here.