Whose square?
Just where it that apostrophe anyway?
I know where it goes.
We all know where it goes.
Time owns everything.
23 February 2011
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
22 December 2010
Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray
Where is the Staten Island Ferry taking you today?
You’re inspecting the Hudson, gauging it’s suitability.
The MTA is watching you.
They’d escorted you off earlier that week.
Its’ a foregone conclusion,
You’ve made us laugh with it for years.
Step away from the railing, Sir.
Did you jump or did you slip and fall
trying to talk yourself into jumping?
All it takes is one flake
Of courage, one lapse in neurosis and
You’re in flight, Spald.
You’ve disembarked
From the body that abandoned you,
The defunct mind,
down the hole after your mother.
A glorious hiatus in thought occurs in that splice
after you’ve left the earth, before you’re buried in water.
It's as if you'll never come down.
Then you slap the skin of the river and something is jolted
Out of you, like a body hitting the end of a noose
rudely yanked back when it would prefer to keep falling.
It’s very cold, much colder than you imagined
But after the initial trauma
The river welcomes you.
You’ve slipped back into your berth.
There’s the familiar tranquility of swimming
with the new gravity of the ultimate.
If only you could live through it
It would be your best monologue yet.
And you could. There is a choice
In the white of the searchlight
Peering down at you,
But you can almost see her
Down in the dark,
So you gulp and dive to get there faster.
A thousand silver bubbles
Bloom from your nostrils, your ears,
Your legs and arms and teeth
like stardust.
Now that you’ve vanished
People see you all over town:
In the glass of a bus stop,
At Sardi's, skiing down Park Ave,
flying through the light
on to a movie screen in the Village.
Yesterday I went out on the Ferry
to look for you in the water
And though you washed up
On the shore in Brooklyn
I find you everywhere
sleeping in the East River.
Where is the Staten Island Ferry taking you today?
You’re inspecting the Hudson, gauging it’s suitability.
The MTA is watching you.
They’d escorted you off earlier that week.
Its’ a foregone conclusion,
You’ve made us laugh with it for years.
Step away from the railing, Sir.
Did you jump or did you slip and fall
trying to talk yourself into jumping?
All it takes is one flake
Of courage, one lapse in neurosis and
You’re in flight, Spald.
You’ve disembarked
From the body that abandoned you,
The defunct mind,
down the hole after your mother.
A glorious hiatus in thought occurs in that splice
after you’ve left the earth, before you’re buried in water.
It's as if you'll never come down.
Then you slap the skin of the river and something is jolted
Out of you, like a body hitting the end of a noose
rudely yanked back when it would prefer to keep falling.
It’s very cold, much colder than you imagined
But after the initial trauma
The river welcomes you.
You’ve slipped back into your berth.
There’s the familiar tranquility of swimming
with the new gravity of the ultimate.
If only you could live through it
It would be your best monologue yet.
And you could. There is a choice
In the white of the searchlight
Peering down at you,
But you can almost see her
Down in the dark,
So you gulp and dive to get there faster.
A thousand silver bubbles
Bloom from your nostrils, your ears,
Your legs and arms and teeth
like stardust.
Now that you’ve vanished
People see you all over town:
In the glass of a bus stop,
At Sardi's, skiing down Park Ave,
flying through the light
on to a movie screen in the Village.
Yesterday I went out on the Ferry
to look for you in the water
And though you washed up
On the shore in Brooklyn
I find you everywhere
sleeping in the East River.
19 October 2010
Song of the Open Road: June - Los Angeles
L.A., the delirious fever dream of the world.
The sun is a spotlight that never goes out. The clouds come visit sometimes, but they know when to leave.
Oranges are bursting off the trees. The orange juice there is much more radiant, closer to life than in Ohio. Not as long deceased and preserved and frozen.
Enflamed flowers. They can't stop them from growing. The sun and the flowers decorate an otherwise grungy place.
Ohio weather has such bearing on everything, such presence and dominance. The seasons arrange and shape all life. L.A. weather just kind of leaves you alone.
A relaxed, stoned vibe to everything. Very warm, low key wavelength. Like a Beach Boys song playing everywhere.
The traffic is a procession of iron and smog going everywhere at once. A great snake devouring itself. The 405 is strangely unmonumental, not a gregarious American superhighway. Everyone drives slow. You change lanes anytime you need to. Cars do not swarm.
Operatic mountains, great red martian surfaces. Roads tangled through like intestines.
It's a holy place, the Hollywood Sign. We drove up to see it in the night and it was gone, vanished into the fog.
Hollywood mirrors the night sky. There are stars in the sidewalks.
You can't hardly get a glimpse of the ocean over the wall of houses. It's like standing tip-toe in the back row of a concert.
Color everywhere. Pink, orange, green, red. Hand-painted. A surprising lack of joy. Lapped over crumbly little apartments and strip malls. Little variety in architecture. Simple shelving for people shooting for the stars.
Presumably the beauty is all hidden behind topiary walls and shubbery.
A strange continuity to the place. Few breaks in style. Even Musso and Franks looks like a shithole from the outside.
The Hollywood Hills have unbelievable roads, lashing like a county fair ride assmbled and operated by a junky.
Paint flaking off the battered walls of the Paramount lot.
The women are fucking gorgeous. Professionally gorgeous. L.A. sucks up most of the beautiful people from everywhere else. They were born that way, they might as well try and derive money from it.
People very nice and not in a fake way. I'm nobody, after all, and they treated me well.
Little altars with candles and incense and effigies and pictures of mahareshis and yogis.
Everyone is in pictures. A little girl told me how to frame a snapshot of her and her friends.
It's like the sky has been botoxed. No snow. Little cold. Just a smile, lips.
The sun is a spotlight that never goes out. The clouds come visit sometimes, but they know when to leave.
Oranges are bursting off the trees. The orange juice there is much more radiant, closer to life than in Ohio. Not as long deceased and preserved and frozen.
Enflamed flowers. They can't stop them from growing. The sun and the flowers decorate an otherwise grungy place.
Ohio weather has such bearing on everything, such presence and dominance. The seasons arrange and shape all life. L.A. weather just kind of leaves you alone.
A relaxed, stoned vibe to everything. Very warm, low key wavelength. Like a Beach Boys song playing everywhere.
The traffic is a procession of iron and smog going everywhere at once. A great snake devouring itself. The 405 is strangely unmonumental, not a gregarious American superhighway. Everyone drives slow. You change lanes anytime you need to. Cars do not swarm.
Operatic mountains, great red martian surfaces. Roads tangled through like intestines.
It's a holy place, the Hollywood Sign. We drove up to see it in the night and it was gone, vanished into the fog.
Hollywood mirrors the night sky. There are stars in the sidewalks.
You can't hardly get a glimpse of the ocean over the wall of houses. It's like standing tip-toe in the back row of a concert.
Color everywhere. Pink, orange, green, red. Hand-painted. A surprising lack of joy. Lapped over crumbly little apartments and strip malls. Little variety in architecture. Simple shelving for people shooting for the stars.
Presumably the beauty is all hidden behind topiary walls and shubbery.
A strange continuity to the place. Few breaks in style. Even Musso and Franks looks like a shithole from the outside.
The Hollywood Hills have unbelievable roads, lashing like a county fair ride assmbled and operated by a junky.
Paint flaking off the battered walls of the Paramount lot.
The women are fucking gorgeous. Professionally gorgeous. L.A. sucks up most of the beautiful people from everywhere else. They were born that way, they might as well try and derive money from it.
People very nice and not in a fake way. I'm nobody, after all, and they treated me well.
Little altars with candles and incense and effigies and pictures of mahareshis and yogis.
Everyone is in pictures. A little girl told me how to frame a snapshot of her and her friends.
It's like the sky has been botoxed. No snow. Little cold. Just a smile, lips.
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