10 January 2014

Reasons For Living - December 2013

Books
Point Omega
Mao II
Into the Wild
Life Work - Donald Hall

Movies
His Girl Friday
Crybaby
Into the Wild
Assault on Wall St.
In the Name of the Father
Side by Side
Room 237
Shepard and Dark

Articles
Samsa in Love - Murakami
On Norman Rockwell
Interview-Errol Morris on JFK Assassination
On Boredom

02 December 2013

Reasons For Living - November 2013

Movies
The Darjeeling Limited -Wes Anderson
Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders
Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania - Jonas Mekas
Don DeLillo BBC Documentary
Vine Compilation Videos

Books
Try! Try! - Frank O'Hara
New York: A Serendipiter's Journey - Gay Talese
Return to A Native Country - Aime Cesaire
Reality Hunger - David Shields
Salinger - David Shields, Shane Salerno
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
Impossible Vacation - Spalding Gray
Stories and Texts for Nothing - Samuel Beckett
Chekhov short stories
Guy de Maupassant short stories

Plays
Grasses of a Thousand Colors - Public Theater, Andre Gregory, Dir.
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Theatre for a New Audience, Julie Taymor, Dir.

11 November 2013

I Was Ill-Prepared for the Effects of Not Being Famous

My younger self, culled from cartoon,
bulged his lip and bugged his eye like John Lennon.

There were cameras everywhere.
I was playing to them before they appeared.

There were cameras on John Lennon.
I was a star being shot into a cannon.

My dad was God throwing stars across the sky. 
I was a fiery twinkle searing his eye.

In a picture on top of our fridge, which I thought was him,
John Lennon gave the peace sign from the Statue of Liberty.

I have awoke but lie still in bed, listening
to my Dad sing "Hey Bulldog" in the living room.

Why am I telling you this? I am not
even interesting to myself.

Write what you know.
I am what I know. 

                                             I am not
even interesting to myself.

I am the star of all my poems.
There is no one between me and my camera.

Do not get in the way.

18 September 2013

Words That Occurred to Me As I Was Writing Them

Florid Commandant Speaks      Raisins called to arms
Field-tested hand gesture        Cauldron horizon        Magnolias stab at wonderment
Overarching barbarous shingles     New hats off to creedo'd layman       Italian refrigeration
Squalid wheel, burn low        Take-mouth, you're a take mouth!
Feud of released cabbages          Table          Manure, a collaborative borax dispatch
Ruse dressed feedbags          Stench newborn          Chairs sanction horseback chat by
Slouched carbine of lewd psychology        Comptrolled afternoon sightseeing crests of charbroiled incest
Barndoors of light imply jetskis piss 3 cents          Lillehammer'd chickenmatter  
Fretboard speedbumps adjust waterfallen, braised hen         Deteriorates old Frambes of Dodge
Grandfather daubs oilslick stomach          Buckeye         Rediscovering surrealist tactics
Da Vincis summarized           Hoards of tempo powder wood floorboards            Lilt, gravestone flower
USA renews clawmarks on bedridden sheik           Macabre hooligan bouquet unshooed
Blizzard pasta floats        Vapor           Snot eyes look up      
Walking is incurred        Too many nods          Brick weavelines bob solely from alleyway mismatch
Key turns rave back and forth           The Folio Account         Sawtooth penguins slump coconut
Striding shoe-polish cobbled from Depression-era dreadlocks           Classic Rock pantry
Need well-heeled childewhore          Baretta schlock           Desert lack of foot lift and close
Plastic container suicide note: "Shut the door"         Moonrock nickel deposit
New currency with nosebridge and shadowed eyes         Strut mood carries singe touch
Unplanned therapist cosigns underwear lease         Broodmare casualty, sit down in the empty blue chair
Just kidding. Sit anywhere, staunch marble panther
My epitaph;
[                     ]
[      ] son
[                      ]


Quote me on this, after my death;
"It is what I is
I is what It is"

12 September 2013

The Rain and Me, Me and the Rain

I'm sorry, rain, I can't hear you.
You trickled off at the end of your
Diatribe. What's gotten into you?
You wet everything like it's yours.
When I need you, you're never there for me.
Certain days, and I would never call them mine,
Certain days, the sun looks down so kindly at me,
These days, the sunny, I'd never call them mine.
I want to stay inside, to be away from them,
That's what you're there for, rain, so they
can't get at me. I'm not one of them;
I've spent my life insisting this. They
fend little rooms beneath their umbrellas. We
should stick together, rain and me. We.

What Nurse Ed Said.

"Well, we've taken a look at your chart.
As suspected, the problem lies in your heart,
but don't be afraid, surgery is a kind of art

and Dr. Hughes sculpts like Michaelangelo.
He'll be by shortly to say hello.
If, in the coming weeks you're feeling low,

there's no reason to be alarmed.
The pain may threaten, but it's rarely armed.
Just make sure you stay on top of your meds.

If you need me, just ask for 'Nurse Ed.'
I'll see to it you're properly nursed."
There. That's what the nurse said.

21 August 2013

Addendum To a Break-Up

She'll do.
She's a rough approximation of you
without the sense of humor.
She'll do
and she did.

Rough drafts come through
the window.
A woman like that will only let you
get away with her for so long.
Every time she left
I was paranoid she wasn't coming back.
I'm turning into John Cusack.
She's never coming back.

I write my fuckin heart out for you.