TIMES INFINITY

it's been a while

2011-05-30T16:18:00.003-04:00

but here's what i read in dc a few weeks ago. it's a series that is supposed to take place at a place called big bear, but had to be relocated, and of course i had written everything for big bear.

--

So thin there four no three “he said it freaked him out; our most honest conversations have been when he was drunk and I was out of my mind” he locked her in their room to sleep

now you look appropriately evident scalp is soil not suggestion hair is baby hair is baby it was like holding an Easter ribbon from within the hymnal then to drop carefully atop the trash the hair not the ribbon as in the tricks to hold your pants up

I’m in the woods I’m in the water the only thing between me and the sea are my parents in their bed their breathing rolling in and out unconcerned oh brother oh brother Grandmom is trapped between the adjoining rooms like a little farting gnome between me and the sea my parents between doors the one who is waiting to die and trying to give my chocolates back

Various contrived postures of surrender loose ends into bedrooms of heirlooms alchemy of time when things fall apart is or is not conditional depending on who are you now I mean who you are now

It does matter it does matter what you say when it’s the last thing it never doesn’t matter this saying there is no parallel to form there is nothing over there was what was said it sat and has sat continuously in absence and yours and years after your under

You look better, more friar-y
You look more like a person and less like a lollipop
He calls you The Bear
The hair is what I’m getting at here, and your new fingernails, and your new skin
My grief has been

Poems Written for Big Bear, Including that Last One, Sight Unseen and Now Not Even Applicable, So Instead for a House and the Bears Within It, More than Three

Wade is a nice name because it is a verb and connotes the obvious (slick rocks under water; you are with your friend)
Thank you, Wade
Bears live near the river

Some Things I Know About Bears

-there are many kinds, but the best is either the panda or the black bear
-most of the time their feet turn inward
-they are born in pairs or sometimes trios. I don’t think there is ever just one or maybe that’s why
-they are never as brown as you expect
-black bears trot with hunchbacks at dusk across the road
-bears live near the river
-something about Teddy Roosevelt

Emotionality of Bears

-bears do not tuck their bellies into their pants in the cemetery on Easter and don’t go there just to hang out
-bears do not constantly orient and try to look fulfilled or devoted to writing
-bears see the sun but don’t think of it as shy or as too aligned
-bears do not see loose dogs as bad people
-bears are not always melancholy when meeting themselves, but they perceive peace as sadness, boredom as sadness, fatigue, complacency, comfort, all sadness. They satiate, they prefer novel things, those that require vigilance, attention, not-homeness, anything but familiar or cows blanketed in gray or rough, assertive grass (actually bears don’t mind that) or Sunday; anything but upstairs or wait or pent-up. they might sort and keep urban with accuracy, recognize rote and name and personal information to keep just right at the ready and chance of rain. If they are hungry they do not ignore their hunger. However, they do not want to peel shrimp and break the shell and pinch the legs and tear away from the body.

Bears in Literature

J A Tyler wrote recently, “I felt like the bear wanted to say something, wanted to speak, but instead he just sat at the table I had built, in this second house, dejected.”
This is all becoming more appropriate; I didn’t know I had included such house things

Bears as Men

It might be dangerous to be part of any community that does whatever the opposite of anthropomorphizing is, no, that’s not really the issue; bears have roles too.

Bears in Education

I know seven little bears. Some of their very favorite pastimes include rocking and not rocking. One of them will one day be the world’s greatest theremin player. Many people see the little bears as not-bears when it is they themselves who are not-bears. I don’t know why this isn’t more obvious to everyone.

Cuddle Outlier

It took Temple Grandin like 20 years before she understood category dog
To understand category bear all you have to understand is run
Except in the case of the koala
So he cries, calls me “sir,” says everyone should go to work, that’ll be seven dollars
I don’t know why this isn’t more obvious to everyone

There is No Bear There (This Might be a Little Gross)

First he was hiking with his friend
Next he got between the mother and her cub
Then she bit off the front of his head
Last he was fishing with sunglasses on

First they realized the chimpanzee sanctuary had lost power
Next they kept getting their car stuck in the mud
Then he used a stick like this:
Last he saw his friend in a trunk without a jaw

First they were about two and a half
Next a dog came into the room
Then they explored it with their hands because they were blind
Last dog meant fur and wet and teeth and joy

Let’s retell the story together using pictures.

Ursa Major

The First Leap (for Adam Good):

two thoughts at once and the realization makes three
chase the train all the way to your mother
tell her you have dreamed of this place
you built your own house for someone else
there are herons

the little bear’s head is a planet pushing down
on his body
his allergies are too bad to go out in the spring
when it rains his body fills up and pushes back
so that he can roll down the window and
swim to his mother,
who is on the shore with cough drops
waiting to breathe on him

can I bring him with me to the herons
can we figure out why a bear in a car
with a planet for a head,
trapped underwater
do you live near the mountains or the sea

The Second Leap:

it’s not the crashing thing, it’s the ball of metal
hurtling through the atmosphere thing
unattached

Johannes Hevelius drew the bear “as if being
viewed from outside the celestial sphere”
according to Wikipedia
how presumptuous
how extravagant
and solid
(on the part of Johannes Hevelius I mean)

connect, and animals, and sudden boundaries
that their fur should muffle all this jabber
that they should sleep curled against the dome
fetal and insulating and blanketed grandly
by their own dust and stuff

The Third Leap:

O constellations, you enable me to do things like
listen to Ave Maria on repeat for two hours
and feel like I am in The Squeeze Machine
the window is open
the neighbors light fireworks for a death
fireworks then TV tower then pollution then plane then
satellite then stars then puppy-like curl

I will forget who I am, or idiom
Big Bear says this is the spice of life
Plurality in asterisms
Poems written for a house
Big Bear, help me with a transitional object
I need to know what is expected of me
And what types of rugs

And Finally, Conversation Between Human and Bear Inhabitants of the House

For this one you have to imagine a very small cat-like bear airborne but with its feet hanging floppily down, wearing a serious expression, floating backwards up the staircase and then reappearing over to the left, and back around and up the stairs over and over, really fast.

See that one on the end? I think that’s an Adbusters or something that I’ve had for like ten years but now it just marks ten years. Remember when I used to clean the kitchen and you would

well that one time you jumped from the roof to the top of the air conditioner

Why is this so sad

Because the very small cat-like bear is expressionless. Because the agency is not with the very small cat-like bear. Because the agent is invisible and the very small cat-like bear is oblivious, in terms of being in oblivion, not clueless, in fact he’s very aware. He is making no Biblical reference.

Possibilities for what happens between the top of the stairs and the re-entry into the frame.

Very small cat-like bear dry cleaning rack and alteration center, which would explain a lot about all of you

My cat is still alive, his legs make V’s, his head, he has nystagmus or something, it’s really noticeable in the morning when I walk toward him. His name is Otis. I named him Otis for you-know-who’s hospital roommate.

In the way that I wanted to be visibly aware I named my cat Otis after the roommate. I could have chosen to not even mention the hospital, after all almost all elevators are made by the company OTIS. I think there’s someone running for county council with the last name Otis.

It is impossible for me to look at my very small cat-like bear Otis and not think of his death. I am sure many people have this problem with pets, but hardly any with children. When he dies I will finally be able to hold him. I have guilt about the violence of need.

Is the very small cat-like bear rising to heaven?

You know what it’s not even sad because of the very small cat-like bear. I can’t believe I would think that. The very small cat-like bear’s body is so funny when his feet swing out. It’s the time of day.

In that way you were accessory—bricked-up fireplace, unused kitchen table. All we ever did was rearrange. When I lofted my bed some of the scrap wood had the name of a dead person on it. I had really dry skin that grossed him out and he misspelled my name in an email. I looked under his bed for death evidence and found vomit. Then later I got a very small cat-like bear and realized that happens a lot, so it could have been from his very small cat-like bear, but either way I’m sure he vomited when he died. Today Chris said that it’s a relief, when someone dies, and she dried her right eye, and I never grieved seeing someone else instead, even after what I’d said

Each part of a very small cat-like bear is a biome. One of my very small cat-like bears suffers from mosaicism.

She doesn’t really suffer, I’m kidding about that part. That very small cat-like bear could be laughing for all we know.

go here

2011-01-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

for Show&Tell, the series I'm curating at Minás.

marfa poems, re-worked-ish

2010-08-09T11:58:00.002-04:00

From Marfa

epic ochre

subverts other

desert going

white with color

---

subtle desert gesture

epic bluff

see the shrug and husks

the rock shop and the chick barn

stark is rich and wretched

hills heave epic ochre, nap agate

hear the train

heifer bodies bluff rain

bluff / sky / bluff / cinema

sky diorama

black rock imposters

lying in wait to wake and chew

---

as if the horizon had gently pulled your wailing body

toward its body (mute quilt)

as if you also stood wobbly in the middle of the road,

wondering,

where is the boundary against which

my bones are bones, and not weather?

what star looks back

at my death?

did you realize the graduation of bluff to canyon,

gold to verdant green?

a family of brown cows in the valley,

their foreheads churning ivory?

no, your back makes letter shapes in shirts

your hair feigning monument

your hair swirls, tumbles dark

over mountains

---

quartz, fool’s gold, geode, gravel

silly putty, mop the stuff

military hospital, mutilated cattle

vocal lilt, daytime grotto

wax upward, where is westward

horsehair bracelet, thunderbird

grecian minnow, empty timbre,

grief is a vowel to glean and sow

----

not the cardinal on the fence

his red a whirl, and the wren

not the weather

why is a weather

why is our folly, and our failure

why is what if, whether intending

not-red or not-wren

why is a tether to altogether other, not-boy

not a whisper in the ear of one who

feels it in their teeth

he likes the plosive, the not-bird

the foal, watch him blink

Barney

he likes the body sock

the hot dog

the corn dog

video games

he likes to run around naked

altered dogs

he likes to take his shoes off

----

my parents, she thinks

my beautiful black cats

the one with diabetes,

and the other one

new organs

and clouds

I will forget who I am

or idiom

----

she is a doctor

just imagine

the taxonomy alone

and the insurance

hyperbole of hyperextension

cumulonimbus solipsism

all of a sudden,

clouds make cloud shapes

----

ranches lit flatly

somewhat autumnal

subtle color

an animal

shepherd stumbles into water

cistern churning over ground

epic ochre subverts other

sweet coyote shot and bound

or did she just describe his forehead

like a bluff, a ridge

like a gentle slope

a panicked slip

it is not like a woman

it is a mental ritual

he conjures monsters

we will be habit

----

this time the fireman thinks

you said cat

find your wife

yearn and pine

you are bursting with purpose

beneath your arms

her silver mane

soft sheet

you roll, and pinch

say sorry

take on shepherd

take on sheep

fool’s gold, agate, bloom, and sand

thick dark, a roof, a mouth,

clouds as freakish geometry

hair as figurative approximation

to be looked upon with sleep

my love is always almost

there is far too much tin

in my mouth there was a garden

----

looking out of the canyon we see men

sepia legend

churning what few leaves there are into movies

this is really something

they toil deep into thin skies

small dogs of mythology

called foolish in the mouth

braid faces over the edge of the desk

wounded birds

what language

eroded into castles, great castles

rocks remain on fire, take pictures

and while terns rake the sea for whales

abiding always with the gale

small of back what westward wheat

protectorate and feral sweat

performance at the soundry next weekend

2010-05-29T19:05:00.002-04:00

Poetry Lab at The Soundry
Vienna, VA
8pm - 11pm

lauren bender
epic ochre subverts other (video/text performance)

&

mike maggio
Cloudism (two actors, a poet, a cello, and you)

from the soundry website:
"...Our goal is to develop a black box experience that features poetry amidst art, music and multi-media for a broader poetic experience..."

directions:

http://www.mapquest.com/mq/4-RILOlSok

LV KHLL (for js)

2010-05-19T17:02:00.001-04:00

my salim

my salim
i have followed you through
dust and desolate dreaming
hills bluff, become nothing
hills mountain

(sudden green)

national
(birds dip)

we swim, slip
may as well have hung
shoes

no vulture
no gore to fear
when you are near

more marfa tidbits

2010-05-13T21:33:00.003-04:00

desert is subtler than fear

or

ochre subverts other

*

we ate at chuy's and i'm okay
we ate at chuy's and i'm okay

what does it mean that the landscape
feels familiar

should i be comforted
should i be testing for nuance

i've had moments
and others

*

driving with the setting sun behind you and motivating music playing, you feel like you really have purpose. the purpose is just bursting out of you. then you realize you accidentally passed your exit a long way back and now you have to drive the other way for a while, into the sun. maybe your purpose is to persevere and not die.

*

cows!
bats!
foxes!
javelina!
deer!
hawk feather!
coyote!

*

an approach
tiny cows

*

who is with me in my body
whose steadfast piles going
greenish with hours

*

pig truck cirrus clouds rickshaw spaniels makeshift veranda gravel doves villa-ish men in hats husks walk and photograph small flowers desolate backyards one cat laundromat/ice cream parlor courthouse with a religious quality desert town desert desert texas flag bookstore railroad canopy transcendental fruit juice half-mexican supermarket succulents giddy freedom salmon white ochre tin aluminum brown variability gray maroon verdant green

*

what is this version of mind that does not know fear
can not conjure it under duress or open sky
instead birds in unforeseen collaboration
heat roof and sky
this mind fears being without fear
fears return to its familiar friend (recession)
a life without fear would mean another's life (a life unlived)
in my mouth there was a garden this morning
a puppy who did not share my glee
in my mind there is a more bearable ocean
wind is wind
soccer net

*

attempt at knowing unknowable quiet thwarted by ringing in the ears and fear of horrific coyote attack, absolute orientation, abject calm.

*

stark is rich
hear the train
eat to sleep
gnat to eye

*

agate, paul, and tonk
sanders, saws, and rock yard
house, collection, and mandolin
quiet, black hills, and habit hobby
note of thanks, modesty, and informal geology
favorite of the bunch, we marry, and he tells me of his dead wife
we hunt for rocks, sleep like cattle, and ache for rain

*

chicks for sale
wyatt's clumsily practiced fingers
one of each color
snow bears have white skin
and brown fur
wyatt has temporary tattoos
and an army brother

"what's over that next hill?"
asks his grandfather

*

hankie
hand kerchief
handkerchief

*

epic bravery
god is here i said it
want to drive through canyons
prairies and pickup
pull over and hold and behold
majestically climb on top
empires
empirical surpassing of and
extravagant memory
let me return and then to
sky, bluff, plateau

*

everyone came over
ate tacos
i don't feel comfortable
with the way that man
talks to his dog

recidivism

*

alpine again
and cloudy
and still
the cinema
sky diorama
heiffer bodies
bluff rain
bluff, sky
bluff, canyon
black rock impostors
lying in wait to wake
and chew

*

lamb bangers

*

james dean: incorrect
and now even worse

lou reed: wearing o.p.

*

flyin' brisket
it's so good
if i had a kid
i'd dip its litle hands
in there
and eat 'em

*

wrists on the wheel
baby faces
how tomorrow moves

*

tomorrow moves to
miniature, mundane,
altogether familiar
to dream becomes a dream
sleep in the bed like it has
an ochre comforter
the bed that echoed our color

*

rampant desert insists
that i am coming home to you
some devotion rendered anew
or even discovered, as a lizard

as if the horizon had gently pulled
your wailing body toward its body
as if you also stood wobbly in
the middle of the road, wondering

where is the boundary against which
my bones are bones and not weather?
what star looks back
at my death?

did you realize the graduation of
bluff to canyon?
gold to verdant green?
a family of brown cows in the valley,
their foreheads churning ivory?

no, your shoes brushed
the linoleum hallway,
your back making
letter shapes in shirts,
your body embryonic,
a turtle, resenting sleep

i am returning
but your hair swirls
tumbles dark over mountains
under it you feign rock
with steer
lie and chew
wait for rain

*

jukebox shuffleboard geodesic dome projections shooting out the streetlight clyde cigarettes desert flowers timothy sky dry/brown verdant/ochre clouds tumble over bluff storm bluff flat star party foosball tortillas and other corn-based products snoring sky late light flattened plateaus color-correct goathead burrs birds in cardinal on line startle response kid lizard tail catfish minnows deep underwater grasses hearts break hearts break suit

*

in marfa they name the washing machines
(the new ones, with their bicycles)
foundations
economic audit with quarters
mostly black agate

military hospital
mutilated cattle
vocal lilt
nighttime grotto
wax upward
where is north
horsehair bracelet
where is east
thunderbird
daytime agora
grecian minnow
where is north
glean and sow

marfa journal (bits and pieces)

2010-05-12T20:56:00.030-04:00

more haiku illustration idea poems

2010-04-25T19:16:00.002-04:00

(see below--more responses to s. barber's daily haiku. hers in italics, mine in...not italics. whatever that's called.):

hey rock, with your staid
imperturbability
don't mock my fluxes

quartz, fool’s gold, geode, gravel,
silly putty, all in a line

in the slow waiting
there is still the fragrance of
presumed offensive

lillies

a tree to offset
the many animals what
populate haiku

getting at the idea of an elm or maple,
but the drawing actually about woodland creatures
who would elude and allude to its texture

wooden cloth classrooms
and green ocean carpeting
choral hum of lights

just like it says, complete with hum

right on time you are
sunflower sproutling! i'm in
need of your symbol.

Aww, I am more okay with this kind of thing now. A seedling would be fine with me.

oh hale bespeckled
grass eaters, your turf is cast
in east side glory

feral cat or a type of ground-bird
a pheasant would be inappropriate given your neighborhood

here at the movies
a beam of light makes me cry
it is impressive

a dark room; an eruption of dust into the beam. reminiscent of american astronaut's reminiscences.

damn cluck pit cost 6
and i got ulcerated
that cost 21

is this about chicken?
one boneless, skinless breast

we could say that the
kind of kind opacity
they offer is shape

overweight women and other comforts
the properties of matter; autism

the mystery is
in the tiny hands they make
such quiet digits

as in the case of the seedling,
resolute infant hand with perfect nails
tiny moons and tiny white

red and black circles
blue and white squares—underwear
on the school's tile floor

still-life with crumpled underwear

the shell and the rock
nostalgize on a past of
long gone softnesses

conch shell refers to previous geode
somehow regards it like the boy at school
reading the minds of cartoon dogs

shade with juniper
SWJLT
soon it's her west jade

Stephanie taxonomy; Little Tykes

this long distance call
does not necessitate new
foreign policy

the oval office
maybe just the rug and a Bakelite phone

can you spell longing
with a pair of scissors and
a top hat in french?

Poignant eyelet; pinking scrapbookers; showgirl inflatable leg

"moist is such a word"
"yes. drainage too, don't you think?"
"oh yes, certainly"

two women with tin can phones
held against their facebook statuses

they're particular
with their bans on getting wet
or looking sidewise

a cast
a kid sticking a pencil in there
to scratch it

it's not those harsh words
that will quiet that mad dogs
ceaseless barking, yo

prehistoric pitbull head

the lighted machine
sings lets hear it for new york
everyone is glad

karaoke with Bonnie Jones doing Moon River

i can see you now
tapping your fingers against
your leg as you read

I’ve thought about this one a lot. It would be impossible to illustrate with a lowercase i, so maybe just a slack jaw, gaze over glasses, eyebrows up, screen reflection. I wouldn’t include the hand or thigh at all.

translation of this
vietnamese pop music
from 1960

hallucinogenic rice paddy; transparency

palm trees are swaying
i know you won't believe how
musically they sway

one of those battery-powered dancing flowers from the 90’s!!
okay, okay, palm trees.

los angeles hills
horse trails and high hedgerows
i yam what i yam

west coast landscape off to the right side, coastal, steep.

a thunderstorm of
crazies--the storytellers
gesturers and hams

literally, a ham hock and a hobo

sad balloons and rain
framed in a giant cut-out
coffee cup decal

Starbucks viewfinder coffee sleeve thing

"she repeats herself"
she says this four times, she says
"she repeats herself"

endless mirror

home turns out to be
exciting again even
though the heart seems gone

I used to think there would be presents waiting when we returned from the beach. Naturalistic rendering of “mudroom” or foyer.

oh so many wan
detectives and spazzed stray cats
in my neighborhood

gray tabby

thoughts on famous men (and dogs)

2010-04-01T21:30:00.003-04:00

he is probably asleep.

he is probably watching tv while his mom is in the kitchen.

he is probably in the pool at their lavish disneyworld family hotel, pulling his sister's hair. i'm not sure about their dog but i bet they boarded it or else her sister is taking care of it.

he is probably playing mario while his granddad talks to his mom in the other room. he has no idea that their tone could be described as "concerned".

he is probably replaying the flight simulator in his head until the conductor's hands go up.

he is probably helping grandmom check her email.

he is probably drinking beer out of a bottle and not looking at her when she talks. the great dane has its head in his lap.

he is probably on the computer upstairs.

he is probably down at the royal farms keeping up appearances.

he is probably worried about his son with mono, with easter coming up and everything.

he is probably looking at that fitness website, or on a date.

he is probably having a spirited conversation about improv theater.

he is probably making that "hee-hee-hee" laugh and jumping on the couch. his mothers repeat his name from the top of the stairs.

he is probably watching the opening credits over and over and over in japanese.

he is probably at a bar with his forearms slightly red.

he is probably waiting at the front door, looking into the darkness.

ideas of ideas of drawings, with s. barber

2010-03-28T00:00:00.003-04:00

stephanie barber has been writing one beautiful haiku per day since the new year, and i am going to illustrate them. here are my ideas of illustrations for each haiku (haiku in italics).

looser than Lincoln
more wishful than washington
john quincy adams

probably wooden teeth
represented by eyes and knots
large hands and diminutive fruits

they obtained two kids
and changed them into egrets
it was surprising

this one would be whimsical and illustrative
think shel silverstein meets audubon
with the same amount of endearing inaccuracy

look at the camera
now tilt your head to the left
act like you’re crying

I wish there was a way to draw an animated gif
once I had this idea to film women thinking about fear
I would be okay with this one being portraiture

some will be thankful
for real estate; pipes, pools, decks
some for sandless pants

I know it’s a stretch, GET IT?! but what about
a swinging lump of sand in the crotch of your bathingsuit?
a closeup would just look like curtains
perhaps with some summer overtop

i will have coffee
and salad and a small soup
and seltzer water

I feel confident in my cup-drawing ability
would it be alright if I included creamer containers?
I might omit in favor of lettuce, due to its
something-or-other
this one is hard because it’s presumptuous,
to assume your portion size

sometimes a punchline
is purposely elusive
or purposefully?

this one might just be rodney Dangerfield

happy panty day
that is what alyssa said
she wrote haiku too

giant underwear
like the pair over wyman park
by bob and theresa
a couple of years ago

in the new Yorker
a European beret
costs fourteen dollars

illustrations of illustrations,
now we’re talking

“my hvac guys said
he felt the line could be stressed”
“yea, i can see that”

either guys at the coffee shop
or the bottom half of a man
under the sink, although this is about
HVAC

it is difficult
learning that yul brynner is not
telly savalas

who are these guys again?
I’ll have to look them up
I think one is a conductor but
I don’t want to do the whole string section

some will be stupid
with their whole stupid faces
and their stupid hands

a more PC version of intellectually disabled
or clumsy hands with legos

all the biggest men
are pointing their fingers up
and see? a balloon

I will try to avoid strict illustration,
but for this one mylar stuck in a tree would be good

willa cather, wow
my antonia’s real good
nebraska is whole

maybe illustration is actually okay
honesty betrays my fear of the direct
and it would be more in line with the poems
flatness, and corn

not airline pilots
not the wives of fishermen
not a small petal

either a circle with a line through it
or wives of cranberry boggers
a mid-sized stem
pilots of sport aircraft

oceanographers
are sensing sonic spaces
the bluest hearings

imaginary creatures using
glow-in-the-dark pen
gel rollers, I think they’re called

the supposition
of moon, flower or sand storm
was proved incorrect

nice job using ‘supposition’
perhaps phases; perhaps the sense of blindness

because today rains
it isn’t a yesterday
automatically

touché.
oh yeah, my part. I forgot.

through piles of garbage
broken bricks and rat corpses
a strawberry plant

crops. so as to have that distance
but also the sentiment. on second thought,
let it be directive instead of making it my project.

a record player
on the nineteenth of july
hope is divergent

joni mitchell’s ‘blue’ and a moleskine planner
70’s shellacked plaque that says, ‘hang in there’
with a picture of a lion in a tree

a cloud bath is like
not the mists of russian wars
but rabbits’ small hutch

oh goodie, bun-bun.
but dwarf or german giant?
note that I ignore military history
in favor of fast rodent noses

he got me a cat
from mcdonalds, a weird one
it disappeared soon

obviously, a visor
and something emaciated
more memory than cat

shit gave a raw deal
ain’t hillside or damp hollow
just damn actual

a hobo; the new boxcar culture
a campfire of elected poverty
intentional B.O. but well-intentioned
would a turd be too literal?

gin, blue lu barker
rusticated anomie
thomas aquinas

ugh, you don’t want to know about this one. so pathetic.

driftwood is speaking
giving clues and instructions
right there—deer arrow
contour; more knots but lighter this time
buoyed bait and bobbers
but no boat

no, ghosts don’t exist
exist is fraught with worry
ghosts don’t worry

an empty room
but with a feeling attached

lockstep is marching
but needn’t be signature
like careening ships

I respond with clarinets
I hear ‘ligature’
again with melancholy oceanic

that daisy leans in
like to listen to the grass
it is empathetic

a drawing of Calvin from memory
you should have read the accuracy of his childhood astrology
not that Calvin—the one who spits baby carrots

the job is to fight
to avoid any dwelling
it is not well paid

boxing gloves? too much?

they fight most mornings
ask for alms, salves and tokens
then hope like dog paws

oh, that kind of fighting
and those kids of tokens
well then back to Calvin, a system of stickers
and a numberless clock
when the red is all gone, good job

perfume is licking
like lion fur through sharp fangs
the stone fleur de lis

the girl in the back who always eats her hair
I think she’s into quilting now
we’d say, “Do the wild thing, Cheryl”
yeah, I think I’ll go with that

the rose and tulip
like dolly p. and Jolene
blinking in sunlight

a caricature, overly Western
if you go all the way it’s academic

the shore does not doubt
the ocean waves will return
again and again

but what about in a tsunami?
anyway, either Hawaiian or
the beach with a smiley face

a snake in hair chaps
is not a fox or birdsong
does not bring the mail

oh, but would that it were so
I typed ‘fax’ instead of ‘fox’
but it will be the latter hopping down
the front steps, bill in hand
I mean paw

not for my pen pal
these new telegrams and texts
he’s hand, tears, and smudge

everyone knows
I will leave it blank for you
to complete

why is the slug nude
with its molluscian kin
shod so in spirals?

diagram of kingdom animalia
“trilobite,” I said, and was corrected
by the boy with the dog figurines
all turned toward me

a slug will be fun

take each sheet and fold
edges back toward center
fold in half and glue

origami without a ruler
and at the bottom, peeling fingerprints
for the first time
I think they’ll all be black-and-white except the curtain one

snow impersonates
a cat headed ace frehley
but so quietly

ohhh, now I get it
I thought you meant a cat going toward ace frehley
who, for those who don’t know, was the guitarist for Kiss
the original one

but you meant the snow, which is actually much more fun in retrospect at least

rayleigh scattering
absorbing spheres scaterring
dialectric spheres

I almost want to leave this one alone
leave its quiet stop-in-tracks
puss-in-boots
stomping tracks

the bee discusses
optics of moving bodies
wavelength in vacuum

thoughtful bee
shaking its bee-head, going
(click-click-click with disappointment)

the bear is praying
to the stoplight on elm street
with leaves in his hair

were you in my neighborhood?
man in bear costume or just bear,
depending on the costume

noooooooooooooooooo don’t force the wolves
they’ll show up at malls and fight
buddhist fur and fang

again with the animals
I don’t mind
wolves, especially, and maybe Game Stop

he telephoned a
ruby throated hummingbird
the ring a nectar

hummingbirds I’m good at
imagine an iPhone or if we’re going anthropological,
the old kind.
or a switchboard.

oh expectation
cast not thine insistent eyes
towards mine own visage

you, with your hand up against your forehead
in a jumpsuit

musical flowers
like peonies and blue bells
smell sounds in ether

again with the flowers
I don’t mind
my dad is a master gardener
how can I draw synaesthesia?
anybody?

cuz she saw a fox
at their new house, they’ll have luck
for love days like these

again with the fox
I don’t mind
but lower to the ground this time

asimina is greek
statuary and ape-like
in green plastic shoes

this one would require the addition of color
unless I included other things that the reader knows
to be green

the afternoon’s rain
was like a clock you could watch
and set a date by

pocketwatch with water droplets over the face

the memorial
blade of grass with cricket bent
low to sit upon

either a bent cricket or a bent blade of grass
back to the addition of color

is that the sound of
heracles blowing bubbles
in the agora?

people assume I know about the greeks
an agora I could do, though

a break is a rest or
irreparable; distant
product of brittle

Seinfeld would be insulting

that sliver of moon
is a thrushes’ warbling song
all silvery highs

my new alarm clock
or a night-bird, but we know better

on the hunt face-dogs
take a broad, campy approach
to the whole “kill” trope

again, with the dogs
I don’t mind
this time a bloodhound with
epaulettes

this aubade, off key
and unsure of today’s charms
be writ nonetheless

you struggling to get out of bed
like the cover of amelia gray’s book
but the eyes open instead of closed
I had to look up ‘aubade’ but now it makes
even more sense

sam cooke braids my hair
all monkey ash and golden
and supercharged tail

obviously, Sam Cooke and a braid
of white-person hair

flops the pet gerbil
versus ninety five percent
cosmic dark matter

this one could be the title, you know
a gerbil in space

nineteen eighty tow
ford ltd full of paws
throwing wolf gang signs

muscle car with dirty pawed-up windows

encephalitis
lethargica or small cuts
in off-white paper

paper snowflakes if that’s not too window-display

how the greenest was
given a right or chance to
photosynthesize

again with the addition of color
this time a botanic diagram
the reader infers and feels haughty

gold damask curtains
a handful of glue sniffers
and five jack russells

ahh, my favorite. it already goes:
gold damask curtains
a handful of glue sniffers
and five jack russells

she was real down and
got breast cancer of the eye
on top of all that

is it wrong to laugh?
a woman shrugs at her misfortune
her eye is falling out along with her breast

your mouths shooting spit
and cartoon radio waves
slapping my ear’s ass

is it wrong to laugh, again?
an ear with a butt

televisions in
bars clearly show cops sometimes
hyperventilate

a cop with a beer belly
and billyclub

photographs of cats
doilies in love seat arm rests
tv dinner trays

the horror of a retirement community
him crying in the hallway

I miss willistown
where hotdogs hold sing-a-longs
clasp bun hands and sway

grillin’

above pom pom trees
and west Virginian accents
the causal highway

abandoned coal shaft

emily ruete
princess sayyide salme
and german hausfrau

I don’t know these people.
a screen shot of wikipedia.

that is a pushpin
poking the song of their hearts
everyone is glad

Baptist hand-wringing

kids are off to school
with their dejected knapsacks
and small bags of chips

replacement insulating lunch bags

no one expected
this early in the season
these six crocuses

crocus tips
lewd and anticipatory
look, I changed your all’s idea of spring
forever!

they suck alley cat
venom out of disordered
sidewalk couch totem

two men pulling a toppled couch upright
but just at the point of grabbing

jiminy cricket
those damn ice skates won’t help none
not with this spring rain

ice skates in slush
but still on feet from
the knees down only

snake institutions
with their dense, inscrutable
morning rituals

cobra in a basket
although I’m sure that’s not what you meant, sorry

atrocities like
decrease not meaning to smooth
but reduce, abound

reference to ballard
and other books to be returned to their
rightful owners

oh helicopter
shoot thy paranoid beam of
love and search on me

search ‘copter
we should talk about the color thing
because I’m thinking of your blue lights
and other urban atrocities
want to gentrify them with pale hue

oh dear gentle wood
carver, is that lovely witch
you have whittled white?

your friend, that new york filmmaker I met,
in overalls, although he’s probably not a carver,
but maybe

she’s got issues
like the water for instance
or robes and texture

a britta, a bathrobe, terrycloth or dishrag

whistles, dog barks, “HEY”
band saw, drug deals, radio
laughter and sirens

you pulling weeds with large over-the-ear headphones
or just a stoop

bender, it’s not great
poet who must wear the cape
and tights, but super

me in a red cape and tights over wrinkled undies

replace “distant” in
marvin gaye’s “distant lover”
for the word “kitty”

marvin gaye portrait with cat head; reference to previous ace frehley page

the comedian
like the boxer, so lonely
so lonely with light

reference Rodney Dangerfield page

with nary a hitch
the leap was accomplished
and freedom attained

cornell university’s gorges

I voted for the
doctor because he makes such
very good short films

private practice office
stethoscope reflecting reels

super symmetry
sparks envy with its boson
and fermion twins

one of those victorian drawings that requires a silver sphere
the drawing is of me and so also of my sister
when reflected, missing a dimple

i heard that traffic jams
hired a new PR firm
looking for some love

michael douglas in that movie where he loses it on the highway
a diet of only flowers

he told the woods that
bird orchestration was for
it alone. god lies.

god shrugging, going, “mm-mm-mm (I don’t know)”
his robes full of birds

bad hat experience

2010-03-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

I started knitting because everybody else did, but I never stopped. I started knitting a red hat. When I got to where I wanted the top of the hat to be, I couldn't get all of the yarn to close. It just kept going around and around, closer and closer; then, it went like clay on a potter's wheel, wonky and wobbling in ovals and protozoan shapes. Wider and wider and back out to the original width. A hat like a Chinese finger trap; a hat impossible as a Pringles chip; a hat in shapes far too familiar to be comfortable--a hat like a hat but closer to something only slightly different, which is so terrifying in subtlety that now I can't leave the house.

So the hat kept going. The first few weeks it was like a hobby, mostly; then more like something you would call a hobby to your friends but feel sick about, as you kept felting a tiny piece of red yarn in your pocket. The hat became enormous. We had to move the chaise lounge. We had to call bulk trash to pick up the old broken folding door so that the hat could go from the bedroom into the hall. Every time I tried to close the hat, the hole would re-expand even wider than before, making another intestinal shape out of yarn. Red sine waves. Sphincters.

The last hole expansion cost us the dryer vent, in the winter. I had to knit right through the opening in the basement wall and out into the yard. Right when I thought my last stitch had finally arrived--that the hole had finally come together, after the hat had captured all of the dead leaves, the recycling, one of our dogs, the hot water heater--the first robin of spring lit on the rain tree out back and eyed the end of the yarn.

"It's not a worm," I said, defiantly. Robins are bigger in person than you would think.

When you put the hat on, you start where I started, in the bedroom, head-first. You tunnel around the house, down the stairs. Some parts are so vast that you can stand up and walk through them, and some tubes so narrow you have to start with a finger. At times the hat encapsulates, and at times it avoids altogether. The hat digests piles of the New Yorker, and swallows rotten garlic, and empty milk crates, and the microwave. It forms a room around the kitchen table, set for four. It stretches between the banister and the wall. Its shape accommodates and contorts. By the time you get to the dryer vent, you have wriggled around the history of this house, caught up and snagged.

At last the hat is a chrysalis around your tired body as you squirm into the backyard, the world diffused, cadmium, colonic; your hands at your sides; the robin perched permanently atop the last stitch, his rubbery feet tied in, his sunken eye reflecting red.

worms

2010-03-11T20:38:00.002-05:00

this is kind of a revised version of some of the stuff a few posts down, that i read for the WORMS series in feb.

WORMS

EATING worms will make you a braceface orthodontist. It will shine your teeth make you open space for your braces you will be cool in school. Worms can clean your teeth.

Work Worms and Century Storm Worms:

it looks like everything is wearing a hat.
the flowerpot holder is wearing a hat.
my car is wearing a hat.
i can't tell which one is mine.

*

"Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger. Feeling-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing. My birthday is March 12th. My name is. My name is."

*

Worm luge
Worm mogules
Worm aerials
Worm hockey

*
"Use some hand sanitizer, Jahmal."
He puts it on his foot.
Tears make a lake on his lip.
He either doesn't feel it
or likes it still like that;
tributary to math jeopardy.

*

Tears leave salt tracks on his cheeks.
His friend asks, "What's that powder on your face?"

His friend punches his other friend in the eye.

His friend says, "Fuck your ass."

*

Tears look weird and milky on his face.
His cheeks have always been kind of flat..

What happened to the Appalachian Trail?

He says, "Take care."

*

Grief is a vowel.

*

Knock-knock!

Who's there?

Chocolate chip cookie.

Chocolate chip cookie who?

Chocolate Milk!

*

"Snowy. Snow storm. Snow stormy."

Tomorrow? Tomorrow? Yesterday? Yesterday.
Mom. Dad? Mom. Mom did what? You went with Mom?
Bowling? Wal-Mart.
Take that rag out of your mouth. Where'd you go with Mom?
Wednesday? Spell it. S. A. G. G? H? I don't know, buddy.
Where's your device?

*

sit in the living room
for ten minutes a night
without orienting.

*

the news anchor is loaded.
he bends to pet all the dogs.
he talks about his wife,
also his son's dog Midnight
Midnight sleeps with her bowl.
she had worms once, like all puppies
or kittens do.
like white on rice.

*

fat finches.
i'm into honesty; birds.
girl anthropology--
it's a problem.

worms are antecedent to thought.

i'll do anything you want.
dig you out.

*

Stretch pants.

"Can't you see
my eyelid twitching?"
"My right tear duct
is half-empty."
"No you."
"No you."
"Anybody but you."
"Can't you see my
finger pointing?"
"th-fum-fffff."

Jigglypuff.

Hoarders.

*

gluten

Worms in the Movies

That thing in Beetlejuice

*

That thing in Dune
David Bowie,
No wait—Sting.

Recreational Worms

Split me in half and then we’ll see

Worms in Art

I had a friend who made paintings by worms
She called them, Paintings Made by Worms.
Here’s how to do it:
Go to the Burger King, then the fishing store.
Put it in food coloring.
Plop it on the paper.
Voila!
Crab nebula
Ribbon gymnast
Soft focus
Here and there
Unintentional hari-kari
Put ‘em out in the planter.

More Personal Worms:

The dog that belongs to my invisible twin
On the floor with his front legs under his body
*
Once I saw Stephanie Barber as a snake, snake-face to the radio. Alone in the rainforest, made more alone next to more fake snakes, stuffed. She is also not worm-like on the elliptical machine. There she appears much like a regular gym-goer, until under closer scrutiny her face is like a mother’s in skin; her eyes not; her voice not and like wet bark, Stephanie Barber.

*
The worm took me in its arms and onto its lap, saying,
“Now now, there there.”
I said, “I know,” but in my mind I was thinking,
“Worms don’t have arms and laps;
I don’t believe a word of this.”

*
The vestiges of our embryonic time together trail from our collective rump; my invisible twin checks hers against mine. Goopy. I wouldn’t call it wormy, exactly…

*
Remember it flayed open;
Remember the cow eyeball, the back membrane of it,
Iridescent—an extravagant pearl.
Worm experience aligns with innards
The worm dives into holes before despairing
Everything close to the surface
Turning silt to soil, turning to turn.
It does not loathe or feel alone
The ground shifts around its worm-ness

I know every way snow can fall onto
The parking lot I fear,
What with its cars, and places to put them.
Still you do not, and still, Dear One, stillness.
Let us take a moment of quiet solidarity
In our solitary ways
Our ironic wishes toward warmth and worm.

Little-Known Worm Facts

Did you know I am a worm?
Look at my heart thing.

Wild West Worms (5)

[el dorado worm]

Let’s set this Westward toward the weather. “Why” is a weather; “why” is our folly and our failure. Looking up out of the canyon. Looking out of the canyon we see men; we see something like a sepia legend churning what little leaves there are into movies; this is already easy epic; this is grievous monotony; this is really something.
[expansive worm]

One-third are physicists, one-fourth are engineers, one-sixth are chemists and materials scientists, and the remainder work in mathematics and computational science, biological science, geoscience, and other disciplines. Fourteen made it out alive, three-eighths sifting mucky want and whiskey, the rest took and toiled deep into thin skies, small dogs of mythology. This phenomenon has been called “foolish,” or “expansive fear,” or “calcified.” Thirty six square miles, 2.2 billion pesos, a fifth in your mouth; see it. This one time the girl next to me—her mother used to braid her hair funny and everyone made that face—she leaned over; she pushed the Carolinas over the edge of the desk; I hadn’t even asked.
[revision worm]

physicists, engineers, and the remainder made it out alive, sifting into thin skies, small dogs called “foolish” in your mouth; see it. the girl next to me used to braid that face over the edge of the desk; I hadn’t even asked. “puttering” would not be a good word but “scuffling” wouldn’t either; patterned disability thin-lipped, always prepared, always suspended in thin air until plateaus plateau.

[calamity worm]

Bucket of mud bath, small of back what sweat, what sheepish dump to take or pour or purr feral colonies, protectorates, wounds of the sea. For real. Bookbinding corset to whale. Wore men’s clothing. What language.

[mercantile worm]

Every summer we went out there, rental vans to tether the years together. Largest root system suiciding; largest organism reaches the timberline. Ranch ran off with my father. Them ponies ran off with his camera. Some things are funny forever. He found aviator glasses in the ocean. To barter; I wouldn’t know how. Ship waits; ship bobs into pier, sees commerce; ship feels disenfranchised. Ship robs a landscape bank, rocks remain unphased, drawn over, eroded into castles; great castles. Rocks remain on fire; every year take pictures.

Neil Patrick Harris Worm

One and the same but He Who How I Met Him did not recognize not blunder but as our own such blunder. I will not look. “I am wretched,” or, “I regret,” said He. Like cadets we regard one another, back to mother’s houses or basic cable for one young professional; the Whole Foods of my youth no longer gay with pilots, a condiment for every season, episodic product in the worm aisle.

And yet, lo. Extinct Thesaurus. Recursive Word. Recover to communion with a dental hygienist. Recover to always the Word, and He, and some self-injurious smack to the front of the head, the skull and the teeth within it.

Twin Worms

Oh, like…oh, like…oh, like…oh, like…Oh, like…oh, like…oh, like…oh, like
You’re so…you’re so…you’re so…you’re so…you’re so You’re so…you’re so…you’re so…you’re so…you’re so

One More Western Worm

[sediment]
We ran up in four dimensions considering color; the two of you first and falling behind my fear, behind the sky; at the top he coughed up blood, fits of rage about a bear movie or some combination of a visitors’ center or burned to the ground; try rubbings. No heritage there but they were proud of me; they bought me anything I wanted as we awoke again and again in layers. I still wake that way remembering dust around his teenage body considering light, remember this is my brother we’re talking about—different sun, different bladders through explanation canyons, resentments and peacock restaurants where I would hate the light until later, drunk on altitudes of bones.

Confessional Worm

Me me me me me me me me me me slither slither slither I I I I I I I I I I I I gulp gulp gulp gulp you you you you you you you you poop poop poop poop me me me me me me me me me me me me me me worm worm worm worm WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM WORM

i've been called prolific

2010-03-11T20:33:00.004-05:00

ugh

2010-03-11T20:33:00.001-05:00

meditating is so hard

post mop off the stuff

2010-02-06T14:24:00.005-05:00

it looks like everything is wearing a hat.
the flowerpot holder is wearing a hat.
my car is wearing a hat.
i can't tell which one is mine.

*

"Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger. Feeling-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing. My birthday is March 12th. My name is. My name is."

*

"Use some hand sanitizer."
He puts it on his foot.
Tears make a lake on his lip.
He either doesn't feel it
or likes it still;
tributary to math jeopardy.

*

Tears leave salt tracks on his cheeks.
His friend asks, "What's that powder on your face?"

His friend punches his other friend in the eye.

His friend says, "Fuck your ass."

*

Tears look weird and milky on his face.
His cheeks have always been kind of flat.
It's like there is too much water in the tears.

What happened to the Appalachian Trail?

He says, "Take care."

*

Grief is a vowel.

*

Knock-knock!

Who's there?

Chocolate chip cookie.

Chocolate chip cookie who?

Chocolate Milk!

*

"Snowy. Snow storm. Snow stormy."

Tomorrow? Tomorrow? Yesterday? Yesterday.
Mom. Dad? Mom. Mom did what? You went with Mom?
Bowling, but we're not talking about the bowling trip.
Take that rag out of your mouth. Where'd you go with Mom?
Wednesday? Spell it. S. A. G. G? H? I don't know, buddy.
Where's your device?

*

sit in the living room
for ten minutes a night
without orienting.

*

the news anchor is loaded.
he bends to pet all the dogs.
he talks about his wife,
also his son's dog Midnight
Midnight sleeps with her bowl.

*

fat finches.
i'm into honesty; birds.
girl anthropology--
it's a problem.

surgical tubing, i guess?
the good bacon.
this is MODERN.
antecedent to thought.

i'll do anything you want.
dig you out.

*

Stretch pants.

"Can't you see
my eyelid twitching?"
"My right tear duct
is half-empty."
"No you."
"No you."
"Anybody but you."
"Can't you see my
finger pointing?"
"th-fum-fffff."

Jigglypuff.

Hoarders.

*

gluten

2010-01-26T22:22:00.001-05:00

grief is a vowel

hey

2010-01-05T18:11:00.003-05:00

i'm guest editing over at everyday genius for the whole month!, performing some of jackie milad's drawings at flashpoint on saturday, and reading at minas on sunday. also you should go to asheville. also the ie release party was so fun.

polynogginal

2009-10-22T16:45:00.004-04:00

preorder the i.e. reader AND adam robison and other poems by adam robinson!

hey little girl

2009-08-14T23:22:00.002-04:00

last night i had a dream that i ordered rose ice cream. it was the most wonderful thing i had ever tasted, and i ate it on a school bus.

tomorrow i will write a story about two men who killed bats.

i am a graduate student, pursuing graduate studies. isn't that weird?

wowee

2009-08-10T15:16:00.002-04:00

hey kitten in space is going to be in triplequick fiction, an awesome project by the folks at featherproof! thanks zach!

maybe i'll write more stories when i'm off. justin is so good at writing stories and plots and all that. and adam is so good at acoustic guitar! you probably already know that.

2009-08-09T14:03:00.002-04:00

"Funny," he said, looking toward the corner of the deck.

I had been putting Band-Aids on for no reason. I can't remember now. Something about people thinking I was injured, or just liking the feel of it and the perfect pulling-apart of the paper wrapper.

We used to bend paperclips around our front teeth and take turns sitting in the doll stroller, being the twin from school with cerebral palsy. We made fun of my brother wanting to be called by a girl's name. I touched the white of my eye with a pine needle.

"I used to chase you guys around all the time," he said.

"I thought you were angry with me," I said.

cherry

2009-08-07T18:43:00.001-04:00

hey i wrote a story! i think we should call it, KITTEN IN SPACE. this is my first official story.

I had hoped I would never live to see the day. There is that feeling of familiarity. I remember my mother. She is in the new addition they put on the house, sitting in a wicker chair. The wicker is the color of my desk. There is a cushion on the wicker chair with flowers on it. Some kind of rose pattern, or dahlias. She is holding a kitten in the palm of one hand, with the other hand cupped to give it shelter during this time when it is more fetal than alive; more chick than kitten.

“He makes the c-shape, too,” she says.

“He makes a comma,” I imagine her to say.

I tried to hold a kitten up here once. It made me feel braver on the trip up, to have a living thing—something to watch over, even though it didn’t need me when it slept, which was most of the ride. It died within a couple of hours, but not from the pressure or oxygen as one would figure. I think the formula was too thick. It took those breaths she always called “angular” instead of “agonal,” and the kitten’s head on its crunchy little stalk lolled away from my neck.

I used to climb right from some surface dream back into my head, and wish that the downstairs noises were those of my mother—absently wiping the kitchen counter with a graying dishrag—not the dogs being fed in our rental apartment, our adulthood. The thought of her on summer vacation, making coffee and reading books by the great naturalists, would make me sick with despair.

Up here you can’t hear anything, of course. You wouldn’t believe how little surprise there is, and that’s the gore. It’s everything you’ve ever imagined it to be. It’s velvet, unraveling edgeless; to some, surely wondrous.

NOT CLEAR

2009-08-07T00:08:00.000-04:00

deet deet deet pcchhh dyoo deet deet deet

2009-08-06T23:55:00.000-04:00

"I no come to hear about how horse dead an' cow fat"

2009-08-06T11:12:00.002-04:00

jay has been listening to burning spear. research:

AGONY: the sensations felt during sex

BAFANG: a child who did not learn to walk the 1st 2-7 years.

BALD-HEAD: a straight person; one without dreadlocks; one who works for Babylon

BEENIE: little

BOASIN TONE: Swollen penis or testicles

BUMBA CLOT,
(TO GET) BUN: to have one's spouse or girl/boy-friend cheat on oneself, to be cheated out of something

BLOOD CLOT: curse word

CEASE & SEKKLE!: stop everything and relax!

CLOT: 1. cloth, an essential part of most Jamaican bad words, such as bumbo clot, rass clot, blood clot, etc. The essence of Jamaican cursing seems to be nastiness, rather than the blashemy or sexuality which is characteristic of the metropolitan countries; to hit or strike - from the verb "to clout"; literally means a used tampon

EVERYTING COOK & CURRY: all is well, all is taken care of

GAAN TO BED: an adverbial phrase; following a verb of liking or loving, it has a superlative meaning; Can be used in any context, such as "I love hafu yam gaan to bed!".

KISS ME NECK!: common exclamation of surprise.

PUM-PUM: a woman's genitals

SCIENTIST: occult practitioner

TOAST : (v.) - to rap or sing spontaneously over a dub track

gratuitous:

BOONOONOONOUS: Meaning wonderful.

historical:

"You KYAANT hav da CYAAN beef."

that they have in common

2009-08-04T17:24:00.001-04:00

off, and jogging

2009-08-04T13:00:00.006-04:00

well we read in atlantic city. did you know that monopoly was modeled after atlantic city? it smells like fish, AC. there is a huge feral cat colony and a handicapped hotel bathroom there.

on the way up in the car i wrote some monopoly poems. here they are:

Free Parking

Driving around to find a meter with money on it. Forced up and at 'em. A sheet on the middle seat. You had to be in control of the soda so that sand would get in it. Sand got between our teeth or at least that's how I remember it.

The Boot

Its elvin curve and relief.
It's benign, yet unapologetic, scampering singularly through your
housing developments and eminent domains.
Money is no object to the demure boot.
They use the rubber band from broccoli.
The boot wants out; doesn't want tactics;
wants a stump and a toadstool.

B&O Railroad

The guard walks over and squats onto one knee.
Guard: "I don't know what you think you're doing."
A kid climbs into a chained-off train car.
The roundhouse sounds like most museums.

Building

That they are constructed from wood.
That time has not plasticized as in the negative spaces and that spinny thing.
Kit-like, and kitchy when compartmentalized.
In the case of brass tokens, we hope you can make good choices.

Go to Jail

Stop this silliness.
Here, have a flat Coke.

The Scottie Dog

Why do they always look at the anus like that?

Oriental Ave.

Bill thought he was being politically correct. Cass was tired of it, this recollection with no regard for the way the last 50 years had actually happened, or altered the day's events. Her arthritic fingertips on the tabletop. The clicking ceiling fan. He grinned, Wrigley's gum clenched between his molars, mentioned his mother's ketchup sandwiches.

Electric Company

If one "Utility" is owned, rent is 4 times amount shown on dice.
If both "Utilities" are owned, we may be talking about the Constellation Energy Group. Good luck, chump, and budget billing. Rent from your sister. She feeds your cats. Do the stairs once a week.

Chance

TOOT!
Take a ride on the Reading.
Chance
TOOT!
Advance to St. Charles Place.
Your money matures.

Every morning you emerge from the comforter fetal and swollen. If you knew the pride I take in shepherding you into the world, as if otherwise you would remain perpetually in utero; calcify; wind up on the Discovery Channel having been happened upon by a witch doctor in some remote Casablancan village; or just keep sleeping. I get bored and stare.

The Iron

Timing of Buying and Trading

You can build or trade at any time, but etiquette suggests that such transactions occur only between the turns of other players.

Etiquette
If you see an opponent land on another player's property and the owner doesn't notice, it is in your best interest to say nothing.

Opponent
Other people playing the same game as you. The person you love most in the world. People you give money to when they need it, little boot, otter, dear one. People who pay you.

Maarvin Gaardens

The Color

As with the cadmium discrepancy, the 20-dollar-bill's matte finish differs from the board background. Mint and freshly minted. My laundry dampens barking dogs.

Hotels

I just wanted to go around a couple of times.
It's not the masculinity, but an inability to attend--
to strategy; tactics; long-term planning.
Also the potential to build on the reds and gentrify
until the color is not quite the right kind.

Saaint Jaames Plaace

Rich Uncle Pennybags

On the way from Bar Harbor to Halifax, my Dad disappeared into the ferry while we watched The Lion King even though we were too old. Another time he became a day trader, then a stamp collector, then a master gardener. Now he's putting in a pond. When he emerged, his eyes were all red.

Community Chest

I'd lay on 'em too, if I could.

Blues

Cerulean and shine interior, if that's not too painterly. Holders in shapes. Sky-like in the money; sky in Maryland over corn but not in Wyoming; not that green-y like in Utah. Foil exterior. This spaceship of a board game will teach you all you need to know about the economy and your family. Flat navy embossed lightly on paperboard betrays its making, and then on the boardwalk, back to true blue basics; welcome home. Vermont mist, Connecticut mist, Oriental missed the mark on the Deluxe Edition; it leans more toward purple when what I had in mind were rugs or even people.

Baltic Ave.

You were always my favorite.
The plum.
The sound.

Ventnor Ave.

Its proximity to other homonyms and lemon innards
The proximity of die-cast to the real deal,
as in what my bladder has in common with the thimble

I heard there are pools in every hotel.

The Way it Folds

Like a map; like something untethered; like the trick of leaves turning over in the weather. I hear the casino workers are on strike. I hear the firefighters did a bad thing. Cheat the fold; cut the teeth and fold the hand.

GO

Collect your salary. Direct deposit. A gift card to Target.
A kid's mom gives you a crystal candy dish. Etiquette demands that you write a thank-you note. Then the kid brings you Munchkins, then another thank-you note, margarita mix, thank you, all the fixins for an Italian dinner, thank you, thank you, a plant for Easter. Thank you. You watch the kid get fatter and fatter, watch her stutter not get any better. She is your favorite one.

The Money

You never use it all anyway.
This will be okay.

got a minute, toad?

2009-06-24T13:39:00.003-04:00

Last night we watched Gran Torino. It was probably the best Clint Eastwood movie I've seen. "Gran Torino" means "the great Turin" in both Spanish and Italian, according to babelfish, but because of Turin I'm assuming Ford meant it in Italian. Which is funny given the extremopatriot leanings of ol' Clinty in the movie (I won't call it a film)--you'd think he wouldn't even buy something with a foreign name. I laughed inappropriately a couple of times which signifies greatness (on the part of the movie and me).

Over the break we also watched a lot of Deadwood with JS, The Last Picture Show, Wild Strawberries, Gran Torino, some of the World's Strongest Man Competition (sawing), a considerable amount of Golden Girls, and Jay became obsessed with a capitalist blonde theologian on Book TV. Otherwise we just ailed.

This blog is becoming exactly what I don't want it to be, but patience, and I will return. Besides, are you there? One of you is in Austin and there are DC possibilities.

this is hard!

2009-06-23T18:20:00.003-04:00

Justin sent me a photo from I guess the airport in Austin. He says they serve Bugles (TM) in the severe weather shelter area. What does he mean by "serve"?

I asked if there are Flavor Blasted Goldfish (TM), but I also happen to know that Justin prefers anything in an "-ito" from convenience stores.

Basically until I remember how to blog I'm just going to write about Justin. So what else. Well you should definitely buy this. Although you are the yous who probably already know about it.

MLKNG SCKLS is arresting, and epic, and vignettes. It is like its cover in that way--a suggestion and also everything there is to know. So there.

Oh and Jay went to the dentist for a dry socket, and they packed the hole where his tooth used to be with a very technologically advanced clove in cheesecloth. Just remember, gaping hole = cloves. Wounds = Christmas ham.

remembering ric royer

2009-06-23T18:14:00.002-04:00

RIP

hey justin

2009-06-22T21:10:00.001-04:00

look at this!

sorry ryan manning

2009-06-22T21:06:00.003-04:00

but i'm not accepting your comment on my CV post, because i want that post to look p=r=o=f=e=s=s=i=o=n=a=l. so i'll put it here:

ryan manning has left a new comment on your post "cv":

A résumé is a document that contains a summary or listing of relevant job experience and education.

i would probably post a comment as a reply to your comment if i had posted your comment on the CV post. probably something about how CV means (loosely) "course of life," and how, maybe, on good days, i consider my art experience to be my "course of life." on most days, especially recently, i am afraid to leave the house and so would just call it a resume.

but i usually do write more on those days, the shut-in ones. what's it all mean??

cv

2009-06-22T19:35:00.008-04:00

Curriculum Vitae
L a u r e n C. B e n d e r
lauren.bender@gmail.com

E d u c a t i o n :

Towson University 1998 - 2003
Towson, MD
Degree: Bachelor of Science, Visual Communications
Honors Thesis in Painting
Graduated Summa Cum Laude

E m p l o y m e n t :

The Kennedy Krieger Institute January 2008 - present
Baltimore, MD
January, 2008 – present
Title: Assistant Teacher
Duties: In accordance with the special education needs of the populations served by each KK School, support the teachers who serve a varied population of students, assist with the implementation of the program as outlined in the IEP of each student, assist with adapting instruction that meets the individual academic, medical, developmental, and technological needs of the students, and fulfill all teacher duties and responsibilities in the periodic absence of the teacher.

S e l e c t e d E x h i b i t i o n s / P e r f o r m a n c e s :

2010
Everyday Genius (online blog): guest curator
Zodiac, Baltimore, MD: WORMS (reading)

2009

LOF/T, Baltimore, MD: Los Solos Series (performance of CorpOreo Part 1 & 2)
60 Writers/60 Places, film by Michael Kimball & Luca Dipierro (reading)
Center Stage, Baltimore, MD: STOOP Storytelling Series
Fleckenstein Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Everybody Draws (exhibition)
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD: Big Pink (performance with William Bender, as part of To Build A House You Start With The Roof: A Franz West Retrospective)
LOF/t at Load of Fun, Baltimore, MD: not BLUNDER but (performance/video) and WILL: A Retrospective (performance/video)

2008
Billy Fischer Memorial Building, Washington, DC: CorpOreo (performance/video as part of Girlish Ways)
The DC Arts Center, Washington, DC: CorpOreo (performance/video as part of the In Your Ear reading series)
Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD: Out of Order (exhibition)
Load of Fun Studios, Baltimore, MD: CorpOreo (performance/video) and Crystallomancy: Book of Twins
(performance with Leigh Bender, as part of the 5th Annual Transmodern Festival)
Carriage House, Baltimore, MD (reading, as part of the i.e. reading series)
Creative Alliance at the Patterson, Baltimore, MD: Why is there an “Ohh” in Poem?
(reading/performance)
Various outdoor sites, Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Is Reads (installation, by Publishing Genius Press)

2007
Theater Project, Baltimore, MD: The Hystery of Heat (performance, with members of the Performance Thanatology Research Society)
Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD: The Beaux Arts Fair (exhibition)
Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD: Collaborate Now! (exhibition)
1818 Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Whale Box (reading/performance)
Minas Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Canyon Suite (reading/performance)
The 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, MD: FRUMMSBO! (reading/performance, as part of the Yockadot! Poetics Theater Festival)
Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Reenactments (exhibition)
Various outdoor sites, Baltimore, MD: Dead/Dying (performance)
Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, DC: Anonymous (exhibition)
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD: Human Pyramid (performance, with the Lexie Mountain Boys)
The Red Room, Baltimore, MD: Big Pants (performance)
Pyramid Atlantic, Washington, DC (reading/performance, as part of the In Your Ear reading series)
Dionysus, Baltimore, MD: Whale Box (reading/performance, as part of the i.e. reading series)

2006
Load of Fun Studios, Baltimore, MD: SPHEAR (performance, as part of Macabaret)
Warehouse Arts Complex, Washington, DC: Exchange (exhibition/performance)
Subbasement Artist’s Studios, Baltimore, MD: Arbitrary Specifics (exhibition)
Wyman Park, Baltimore, MD: Event Staff (performance, as part of the Transmodern Festival)
Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, Baltimore, MD: The Beaux Arts Fair (exhibition)
SoWeBo Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Nostalgia for Almost (exhibition)
Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo, NY (reading, as part of the Just Buffalo Literary Series)
The 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, MD (reading/performance, as part of the Shattered Wig Review)
The Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD: Ground Songing (performance with members of the Performance Thanatology Research Society, as part of ArtScape)
Hysteric-Ontological Theater, New York, NY: The Hystery of Heat and The Mountain and the Universe (performance with members of the Performance Thanatology Research Society)
Center Stage, Baltimore, MD: LACK (performance, as part of These Are Your Instructions)

2005
Clayton & Co. Fine Books, Baltimore, MD (reading/performance, as part of the i.e. reading series)
The Bowery Poetry Club, New York, NY (reading)
Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Baltimore, MD: Picture Window (exhibition)
Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Group Show (exhibition)
Scion Lounge, Washington, DC: Burlesque Poetry Hour (reading/performance)

2004
CHELA Gallery, Baltimore, MD: Temporary Human Language (performance)
Spare Room, Baltimore, MD: Matchbox (exhibition)
Seed/Vector, Baltimore, MD: Systems, Codes, Chaos (exhibition)
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD: Cram Sessions (exhibition)
Mt. Vernon Square, Baltimore, MD: Artist’s Book Tent (exhibition as part of ArtScape)
The Talking Head Club, Baltimore, MD (reading/performance as part of the Mobtown Writers Collective)
ACA Galleries, New York, NY: Celebrating the Renegade Press (reading as part of the Boog City series)

2003
CHELA Gallery, Baltimore, MD: The Poetry Wholesaler’s Clearance Event (exhibition)
Blue Elephant Gallery, Frederick, MD: Group Show (exhibition)
Fleckenstein Gallery, Towson, MD: Works On Paper (exhibition)
The Talking Head Club, Baltimore, MD (reading/performance as part of the Mobtown Writers Collective)
Towson Commons Gallery, Towson, MD: AVIARY: Honors Thesis Exhibition (exhibition)

P r o f e s s i o n a l E x p e r i e n c e :

Board of Directors, Narrow House
http://narrowhouserecordings.com
2004 – ongoing

Guest Editor, Everyday Genius
http://www.everyday-genius.com
January 2010

Editor, SUCCESS!
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/thepixelplus/nhsuccess1.html

Curator, Yockadot! Poetics Theater Festival
Baltimore, MD, Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC
2007

Studio Assistant, S. Denise Tassin
2005 – 2008

Contributing Editor, Radar Review (a critical journal on the arts in Baltimore), 2001 – 2006

Feminine Arbiter of Phrases, Performance Thanatology Research Society, 2004 – ongoing.

Installation Experience:

The Beaux Arts Fair, Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, 2006, Maryland Historical Society, 2007
Their Eyes Are Watching You: Artwork Inspired by Surveillance, Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher College, 2006
Almost Solo, Too Few, Important Things, Make Believe and Pocket Productions, Creative Alliance at the Patterson, 2007

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y :

Interview by thunk/Ryan Manning
http://metaphysicalthinking.blogspot.com/search/label/lauren bender

Review, The Dictionary Poems by Lauren Bender, New Lights (2004)
http://repopo.wordpress.com/2006/09/29/the-dictionary-poems-by-lauren-bender-newlights/

Interview by Publishing Genius Press
http://www.publishinggenius.com/wbinterview.htm

Kevin Thurston. “From the Visual to the Verbal.” Artvoice [Buffalo] 24 March 2006, v5n12.

P u b l i s h e d W o r k :

Bender, Lauren. "ROY G BIV." Baltimore City Paper. December 2009. p.
Bender, Lauren. Kitten in Space. Available for the iPhone. Featherproof Books, 2009.
Thurston, Kevin and Lauren Bender (illustrator). I’AM BORED Part 1, Boys Are Retards. Maple Spits #9.
2008.
Bender, Lauren. Whale Box. Baltimore, MD: Publishing Genius, 2007.
Bender, Lauren. Poem. Washington, DC: Big Game Books, 2007.
Bender, Lauren. Dictionary Poems. Onedit 8. 2007. http://www.onedit.net/issue8/laurenb/laurenb.html
Bender, Lauren, Ed. WORD@PEEK Issue 1: Lovers 1 Haters 0. Baltimore, MD: PEEK Review. 2006.
Bender, Lauren. The Dictionary Poems. Tempe, AZ: New Lights Press, 2004.
Bender, Lauren. Guide to the Dictionary. Baltimore, MD: Furniture Press, 2003.
Bender, Lauren. “The Good Book.” LINK: A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World.
Baltimore, MD: Link Arts, Inc. 2002

Writings have also appeared in TITS: A 24 Hour Poetry Journal, The Shattered Wig Review, Rock Heals, f-hole, and The Poetry Experiment.

H o n o r s :

Artist Group Award Grant presented to Narrow House Recordings, Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, 2008.

Departmental Painting Award, Best in Show, Towson University, 2002.

and from then on i never opened a band-aid the same way again

2009-06-22T17:39:00.002-04:00

that it will turn to astroturf
that it turns to marshmallow topping

i hate vacation

hey

2009-06-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

i can't remember how i used to do this. somebody tell me something to do.

1 - 32 of 36

2008-07-28T21:50:00.002-04:00

one

to buckle

tree under weather

for scoured landscapes the

fief corps vacation pelican this

sex grotesque mathematics to square up

steven or even hand to mouth food

ate the maw from inside (ate itself) o

nein o oiu yes yes ja ya’ll mien (kampf)

tents schema pyramid heavenward sun some believe it to be

leavened (his age) (starchy) fish fatty theatricals testicle from god to

delve dirty cleave dirty chess deeper still that move that swung us

flirting lyric appropriate how chafed and chapping or chaff from grain believe it

for things fissuring open (cluster) dirty dirty mein all-inclusive specialer numeric globule peeking famished

drifting gravitationally earthward worms blood-like docking understanding the way we do into womyn cross (out)

cisterns chalice even (out) tragic situation into flames so unrecognizable as to baffle parents who buttressed

ketamine thief at the fief fair nova scotia super bang split tetris habit bathtub garble nowhere terror

eating mouth with mouth image tragic possibilities proverbially stratagems to tell us how to come to some agreement

binding mouth to mouthing best to flee with wealthy family to embassies all-suite all-clear alright already for penpal language

venti foam sentry moving westward as affront or northward as industries saffron out piddly century piddly pity we meant (well

lemon hum mustard cut all green (see tree) not well say ill see turbulence say engineering felt help felted hair hapless

buntings too take vacations summer homes random hooters in many ways familiar and developmentally on par save parsed out by the binary

cunty trees blooming springward arbitrary geography in arts district transitional committee wholesome liberal community listen hum listen ham up canned for questionable authenticity

Dinty Moore atop turvy limey in need of ease tater to commercial piddly toddler too old to run again eulogy for eunoia hear homage

gunky hive produces enough soup to feed the need no shave no shower look presentable upon favorably lukewarm soup pigeon soup soldiers into bee soup

perfunctory blitz and down signature mystery shoulder possibility heaving soldier magnetic sticker picture clotted bunting sticker driftwood bits upon epidemic stickpin royal memo mercury email puffin

monkey heaven they them lesser allegory sugar water ruby thrum to throat among hawkeye playbill cleave stupid nest with lawnmower pixie stick with weed whacker downy youths

penny rate house by strum the broker for some favor tiddly winks and suggestive banter I’m a renter from my sister among us she’s the one to recoup

bent-knee time trumpet funding into flow the water leaking from the ceiling see-through dad band-aids trash toilet chase for fear for fear cerebrally speaking in biblical sensible tongues

dirty hubbub aflutter with talent soldier riddled press wrinkles amidst upholstery botched jobs make the pleat bleat the squirrel noises ’cross reservoirs indeterminate impressions cross sounds putrid with littered dingies

curtly shunned aside petulant grievous or peeved boys build to take apart monotony kinetic all tyranny gargantuan silos aghast discharged maw yawning agape barnstormer pioneer drawn courted probably by some reporter

birdie shoo woven historically brush the dogs for fodder leave it ’round for wren and nuthatch scattered and speared upon stalky overgrowth briar bunny tree limb and tower hair of the dog

s u b m i t

2008-05-27T20:36:00.000-04:00

Hello,

Narrow House is gearing up for Issue 2 of our online/printable PDF occasional journal, SUCCESS!

Issue 1, CHIMERA: I Am My Own Twin can be viewed here:

http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/thepixelplus/nhsuccess1.html

Issue 2 is OUIJA. Some things to consider:

+ vowels
+ crystallomancy/telepathy/divination
+ automatic/ghost writing
+ nostalgia/invention
+ fakes
+ dead (languages)
+ collaboration/pairs
+ pronunciation
+ parker brothers
+ any flat surface
+ any flat surface printed with symbols
+ any flat surface printed with symbols using a planchette
+ seance
+ "oui" (yes) "ja" (yes)
+ patience worth, plath, twain, aleister crowley...

Please keep in mind that we here at the House tend to meet form and content in the middle, but strongly encourage submissions that favor the conceptual. We also strongly, strongly encourage works (appropriate to PDF format) that are based in text but expand upon the term.

Please also distribute this call to those who may be interested, and submit all works to this email address.

The DEADLINE for submissions is 7:00pm EST June 20th, 2008, more commonly known as the Summer Solstice.

We
Know
What
You're
Thinking,

Narrow House

thanatological tidbit

2008-05-05T22:04:00.001-04:00

http://forums.remorial.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=6327399b1676cf29c9d9f29a30b6cc3f&topic=2.0

wow. you can get $10 for every dead person you write about. consider yourself warned.

retractable

2008-04-17T22:30:00.003-04:00

statute of limitations upon
treaded stone (left serifs;
kids kick over and kids
walk to like dunkin' donuts and)

giant quiet
shining at night

tumor dog run between teeth
want to do things to you
very softly but don't
even know who you are

BEHOLD

2008-04-14T22:03:00.002-04:00

this is from when we watched part 3 of the power of nightmares, and then happened upon a show about mummies. awesome cinematic transitions; lens flare. guess who made the collage. ps does anyone have a digital projector i can borrow for sunday's DCAC performance kthxbye?

Couches have caught us up
(time couched in caches of fabric;
his presumptuous self-invitations,
her multitasking conversations)

In a country where nothing is feared
Everything can be our religion
Behold what the man said to us
Behold our everlasting pets

gypsies and gluttons

2008-04-08T18:46:00.002-04:00

yay. thanks to thereweretentigers.blogspot.com

this year's transmodern was the best ever, and i'm saying that because i was in two nights of it. jay kay!

no really. it was a carnival. my screen saver ("cosmos" motif; could have been worse) came on in the middle of my video projection and i just kept eating. that's how happy i was.

perchance i will re-enact the corporeo video/mime piece 4/20 at the DCAC for my reading, since there is text in it and i want to dress as a mime for the rest of my life. jgp and js now have mime fetishes because of me. jgp's is so significant that he brought me a corsage and asked me to the prom after my performance.

TLA is a three letter acronym for "three letter acronym"

2008-03-29T08:58:00.000-04:00

bender's gone wild

2008-03-27T13:52:00.002-04:00

we went to buffalo for spring break (small press fair).

highlights:

meeting all the men i've only dreamed of over listservs; implicit gender politics (open-ended) coupled with amazing curries as food for thought
the homemade elf shoes of the man in the band the golden calves (i think?)
new book with kevin (www.producepress.com)
abe lincoln print by the enthusiast (www.enthusiastprint.com)
a three-person baltimore nap that lasted from 530p to 730a post-TGIFriday's fried mac-n-cheese

***

now, upcoming (i'll be con twin friday night for crystallomancy fortune-telling with a three-headed turban, and sans physical twin but con third metatwin playing a rough match of oreo slap-head):

The 5th Annual Transmodern Festival (Live.Art.Action) will be held at Load of Fun Galleries and the surrounding Station North Arts District from Thursday, April 3rd to Sunday, April 6th. The festival expands this year to over 70 critically acclaimed local and international artists presenting experimental performance, sound, film, and installation.

This year, we're also including a special Sunday event! The "Pedestrian Services Exquisite," is a guided walking tour of North Avenue and beyond with over 30 site-specific, roaming, uncanny, planned/unplanned, and esoteric events and actions along the way, including the LOVE PARADE from Baltimore's own Fluid Movement. You do not want to miss this extraordinary outdoor event!

Dates: Thursday 4/3 - Sunday 4/6
Times: Thurs - Sat - Doors open at 8pm, show at approx. 9pm. Sunday outdoor performances from approx. 12pm - 3pm.
Cost: $10 for Thurs - Sat. Sunday Pedestrian Service Exquisite is free.
Info: www.transmodernage.com for details, schedules, tickets

Just a few of the featured artists include:

Adrienne Anemone
Lauren Bender
Blevin Blectum / Kevin Blechdom
Jai Brooks
GOBOLUX
Dynasty Handbag
Katastrophe
Dina Kelberman
Frankie Martin
Kim Miller
Anna Oxygen
Carly Ptak
Spoon Popkin
Snacks
Erin Womack
.... and many many many more!

a person's a person, no matter how small (appropriate at will for optimal douchebaggedness)

2008-03-17T23:03:00.007-04:00

air horn = bad

2008-03-07T06:31:00.002-05:00

talkin' 'bout staph, tranny

2008-03-06T19:47:00.002-05:00

ewwwwwww!

your gmail suggested link

2008-02-28T18:19:00.004-05:00

how does one subvert that??

i want to recreate my blogger screen using only this photograph:

(file name: crafty_putin)

!!!!!!!L@@K!!!!!!1!11!!!1!!!1!

2008-02-27T18:19:00.010-05:00

Part the First, in which my parents try various house ales:

here are some rushdie bits from last night, when I went with my parents to see him speak, copied from my question card. i'm not sure how i feel about most of it.:

+ "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't teach her to think." (re: Paris Hilton)

+ journalistic/naturalistic prose fails (is insufficient) b/c it can't meet/describe the strangeness of the current world

+ there is a kind of East at war with a kind of West

+ XXXhott bigot-on-bigot actionXXX

+ an ethic of impurity (mongrelization = symbiosis)

+ puritanism = the overwhelming fear that someone somewhere might be happy

+ orthodox Islam = "atrophy of intellectualism" by virtue of relying on Qur'an as literal truth w/o revision, although if it is to be taken literally, and god is larger than human characteristically (as the alternative would be demeaning to god), how can a linguistic acct be the true 'word' (vs translation)

+ "had it not been not funny, it would have been quite funny" (re: fatwa)*

+ we are a language animal; we use stories to tell ourselves what kind of creature we are

+ bordered on the canine

+ get religious on their ass

*i want to use "re: fatwa" as much as possible

Part the Second, in which justin sends me gems of the gaming world, and in which i again doubt my gaming ability in light of the need for 'strategy,' even in lands of drawn cars:

http://www.kloonigames.com/crayon/

Part the Third, in which um um um i envy others' work ethic (this is a story from adam re: baltimore is reads)

This morning I threw a poem in the trash heap along a chain-link fence and thought, "Well that makes sense."

for some reason blogger won't let me link to the site. it's just baltimoreisreads.com.

Part the Fourth, in which it is declared that bender is back on the market after a brief foray, but wishes there was a way to meet people in writing that wasn't the internet. ryan says there used to be something like that in the dc paper. also in Part the Fourth it is recounted that an extremely endearing student began to put hand sanitizer all over his feet in the middle of math class. job = teh c00l.

bender is back on the market after a brief foray, but wishes there was a way to meet people in writing that wasn't the internet. ryan says there used to be something like that in the dc paper. an extremely endearing student began to put hand sanitizer all over his feet in the middle of math class. job = teh c00l.

HOLY CRAP

2008-02-19T20:07:00.005-05:00

I missed you SO MUCH. I'm just so bad at talking on the phone. Ask Kevin.

Since I've been gone, Justin Edward Caligula Sirois My Pets III has begun to illustrate my employment sphere. It looks a lot like my unemployment sphere, but the terror is obscured by the joy of three initials: P P O. It has to do with health insurance. Now I can go to any doctor I want and pay a lot of money, except I'll know to label the money "deductible" in my head, which is much less threatening than "OH GOD MONEY," even if in the end they are the same thing.

Okay, this is from work, by Justin. It actually happened, all of it:

And you know what else? Bender, who was five feet of man-meat, now HAS about SIX feet of man-meat. I present to you the sweetheart of online dating and economic analysis:

Likes: cats, pie, circus peanuts.
Dislikes: driving, riding in the car, stuff to do with moving cars.
Between the two of us, there is nothing we can not fear. Try us.

I was supposed to have a double-header this weekend (this doesn't have to do with boning), but read in Baltimore and lost my voice and couldn't read in DC. Here is what I read at the Carriage House in Baltimore, in case you want to see it. Some of it has to do specifically with the place, so don't be intimidated by my snooty references. You wouldn't understand anyway.

**

Very little need in the modern world—by which I mean ultra, aligned, of course urgent (some friends say malignant)—at a club, for some barn or stable, with nominal function, and original storage and drastically small carriages, very little need for modifications. Because of their prestigious nature, please identify something unique to this large strata; note our differences in position; note the height of my prestigious nature; note my stature, my very little need.

Behold my marimba.

Consider the stove where there was once a different kind of stove; consider that song about things becoming lush and temperate, exchanging their retail for quiet return. For a moment, consider epic sleeping quarters; consider the job of warming the seat in the outhouse for someone; consider the story about doing that job in the dark morning, and when you go to sit you feel yourself sitting on someone’s lap, but there is no one there; you spring from it; you burst out into sharp frigidity with your wool pants halfway up and hit a root and fall—the earth has exactly the quality you would expect upon your arm and face. Huffing, you try to tell your wife but she won’t hear it. You saw your master’s horse dozing, his heavy head toward where there are now chairs with people in them. You can’t get used to this lifestyle. You caught a rattlesnake for dinner.

This place had a ghost and an environment.

Small carriage house. Mistakes will happen. Fanciful renderings of the interior. Kansas, New York, such structures regardless of their current use.

*
A suite for the whole family; expanses of terror.
In the mornings he rolled into low light from something atomic and lit
Couldn’t believe they were waking us up that early
To normalize the map in tow, the tether,
The years strung together by gaps

Hurrah
That I can recall the names of fruits and vegetables
Hurrah

Squeaking down Versailles in an inflatable
And following through aquariums
(Note the carpet—how it forces and absolves)
(Note the pattern—how it meets the chapel and retracts)
Scuttles by in an innertube and flip-flops
Scuttles toward the indoor pool wearing something inflatable

The Carriage House is a non-gaming hotel just off the strip
Our plane was delayed; we played nickel slots until
Flying home separately.
My brother rolls into certain light from other kinds of light

*

City houses could be
small, utilitarian,
and only adequate
to house one small carriage

small, fanciful interiors arranged along
slatted architectures
vast bodies of bays and prairies and plateaus
carriage bays adequate for small utilities

horses holding tremor in their vast bodies

*

think not on expanses of water but on the cliffs relieving them
small boys build their lean-to and throw metal folding chairs
sometimes it’s like a country inn by the sea, and others,
I had an idea sprayed with the foam of melancholy
I tried to draw a conclusion

The carriage house is like a country inn by the sea.
In it, it’s like waiting; the dunes are hospitable
You can imagine some southern fishing birds
There are no birds; look—no sound
On the dunes there are grasses

*

There is no current default page for your needlework aspirations;
Like the breath of small boys its recollection grows plaques of
Possibility—like certain farts it foreshadows small patterns and
Lack of follow-through.

Stitch Amish alphabets into slashed throats
Remember both throats against heavy polyester
Business casual behind the eroticism of sports injuries
One man holds the other, and fiddles down
For that retracted something

Pinched closed are the spurts of industry
Imagine marshes where there was once upstate
Stay with wholesome democratic surgeries
The throat within your neck hoarsely housing
Spaces to devastate and hold dearly

*

“MYTH was the product of another series, which began in February 1997 in Braddock Heights, MD at a carriage house on Maryland Avenue. Toby DeBarr and myself leased the carriage house for a year and a few months for $650 a month out of our own pockets ... and hosted BYOB potluck dinners with convivial readings on a monthly basis on Saturday nights, which were incredibly popular -- often more than 60 to 80 people would cram in, but it was so much fun ... we began asking out-of-town poets to come and do short features in 1998 ... and put them up in the loft of the carriage house. We remained there until August 1998, then moved to Other Words Studio in downtown Frederick by their invitation. We remained there doing the monthly series on the 4th Saturday of the month until May of 1999.

The first slam, in October 1997, was so large we had to rent out the Braddock Heights Community Center behind the carriage house for the more than 150 people that showed up to listen to the 20 slammers! People came from all over: Virginia, PA, MD, WV, DC ....

[read like slam]
we were stunned to find how
word of mouth
had travelled so far so fast!” My
last postal pony gallops lonely; my
mythical history bewitches me
pony tricks twist mixed-up destinies

*

Pretend that you are the horse
and your chair is the carriage
Imagine your efficiency
Your quiet subversion

Now imagine that you are a rogue economist
And your carriage is our recession
Nothing can move me like that octave
I hear it and lurch toward you,
My oversized head, my hot nostrils
Crusted and flexing against shiny weathers

Think of its efficiency as it becomes engorged
(its passive considerations)
Hear its contents coarse toward my equine guts and brains
Its proximity illusory beneath this baseball neck
Its filling held within or projected at trauma
Or in the car, like a donut
Plasma to deep color

My foal’s eyes are wildly rolling amidst
Its such visible physiology
I throw my taut weight atop
And snap its soft body down to marrow
We are in the bathtub
I have to live forever

*

Carriage houses get their name from
Where they were conceived

the out buildings of large manors where
at least it wasn’t Warsaw

owners stored their carriages
detached garage designs with living space above them
two to three cars
one bedroom and bath

in Baltimore we have bowling
he said when the pins crack they look like
a flock of flying ducks

These plans make an interesting alternative to
The idea of the Gestapo taking your mother
While you are deep in fever

*

A lifetime—which is taxonomic, multilayered, some would say shrouded in pragmatism or just really uncomfortable—laminated shingle designed to replicate scalloped slate, a lifetime of science and eaves overhanging a round hole in the door just outside of the bathroom, just right for one’s eye when no one is looking.

What was it?

It wasn’t. Just a hole to pull a door or look through. Ghost to tell, no story to project upon the alley, and what of the alley’s was, or was it? Just some stall to muck and think how deep to go.

*

lips of the cherubim

2008-01-14T21:28:00.000-05:00

will you think less of me if i post two promotional things in a row?

okay, well here:

narrow house presents

Lips of the Cherubim

by

Joseph Cashiola

Download both web (with sound) and print PDFs:

or

www.narrowhouserecordings.com

SUCCESS!

2007-12-28T10:18:00.001-05:00

this is important. look at the mouse.

SUCCESS!

(it's been almost a year, but)

mom

2007-12-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

TOUCH THE NERD

2007-12-14T23:01:00.001-05:00

what happened? i don't know. i don't blog anymore, and i don't read other blogs either. now that i still can't find a job (it's because we're in a recession; talk about it; it's real; it's not me) and am afraid to get out of bed in the morning, i have at least two boyfriends. my grandmom said tonight that it's "DERN COLD, LAURBABY."

can you help me? i have contracts and slightly more weight.

oh yeah

2007-12-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

here's an archived thingy from the radio

our cats love public radio

and now from charles shulz

2007-12-03T12:15:00.000-05:00

"I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time."

That is to accompany Ryan's third imperative as my motto. So this is my motto, and Ryan's third imperative is my imperative. I forgot to mail Ryan his birthday CD, so now I am revamping it to be particularly particular.

Did I blog once about the existential Garfield cartoon? I'm so out of it. I have a cold. Here it is; follow through for the follow-through:

you have no idea how alone you are

this is all true

2007-11-20T18:38:00.000-05:00

i really did, i quit. and tomorrow justin and michael ball and i will be recording for the signal on YPR. i don't know when it will be on.

look at ryan's great third imperative:
delusion imperative (aka the pragmatic imperative)

i live this imperative. the next time someone asks me what my motto is, i will say, well, it's not a motto, but here is my imperative. and then i will state it like i have never stated anything before. the beauty of this imperative is that it explains everything that's wrong with me. i need structure. i'm going to make a curry.

on the tv there's a man playing the hurdy-gurdy. i don't know why i'm kind of writing like a child and so much in a personal narrative--it's been a while; bear with me. i already apologized before during that beautiful card.

do you want me to do some work for you?
here are my skills: kale; hammer; wpm, they said we'd never walk.
this is not a poem.
in our PTRS theater project show, i played a heavy metal rocker.

because i'm too goddamn happy to blog, that's why

2007-11-15T23:39:00.000-05:00

meanwhile

a narrowhouse-sponsored event that even i am unsure i believe in

2007-10-29T17:06:00.001-04:00

twin angst

2007-10-25T23:42:00.001-04:00

we have it
it won't go away

it's not you, it's me

2007-10-21T11:17:00.001-04:00

i'm sorry. has it really been that long? i will fix that rotation problem below. it's just and my sister has cat scratch fever i made a lot of drawings the wedding was beautiful we're bleaching everything i strapped a turkey baster to my head for a blowhole i told a rich old lady that it probably wasn't gas i worked for 14 hours.

oh yeah
whale box>

ARMMY, C. 1986

2007-10-11T14:48:00.000-04:00

book mail bank hopkins

2007-10-11T00:11:00.000-04:00

like the origin of injury [some validity];
wrote a letter to the army and wanting to chart,
sunday morning, shoulder pads of
embarrassment [hymnal].

if you have a minute, i know you're busy--
like a stream down the throat
strung together; guitars like oboes;
guitars like how there it's earlier; corded.

when you get here the time will change
[everything into vernacular].

*

in footloose
there is a dismount
i was taught how to
jam a screwdriver
into a crab

*

maneuver
grief
maneuver

*

in footloose
the guy
has anger

later i read on the road
[there were glass doors
on the cabinets
and castors on the chairs]

when you get here
i will have remembered you
as much as that
or certain carpets

veritable treasure troves, vital treaded droves

2007-10-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

i always dread my nighttime routine, but it's really not bad and takes hardly any time. it's just brush teeth and pee.

tifprabap

can you spot the differences?

2007-10-06T22:05:00.000-04:00

from the ether of my nutrition textbook,
"Beriberi has afflicted polished rice-eating populations for centuries."

result for "polished rice"

result for "polished populations"

also tonight there was a reading event that may or may not have been successful. i have a feeling no one knows. the music was good. ryan was a good bum named carl.

this morning

2007-10-04T21:12:00.000-04:00

in the dream,
grandmom knew
she had a bird in her ear
she told the doctor
that her head had been
swelling near her jaw
and that she
could feel its feathers
for quite some time
it was a dead bird
the woman who lived
in the house before
or maybe in my
grandmom's ear
told my grandmom
not to worry
that sometimes
something about
dead things as antiques
either way it was like
some kind of
taxidermied finch
and my grandmom
had kind of lost
all hope
as if them's the breaks
to have a stuffed finch
in your ear and then
to have it taken out
and keep living
alone until you die

<3 this just in for serious <3

2007-10-04T13:54:00.000-04:00

Derry

their house was taken from them, but the house didn't shift or molt – it stayed rooted on its concrete pedestal – looking at the same celestials & strays, looking like another family's house as it became miniature in memory & refrigerator drawings. Driving away, he sang to them the Canadian national anthem, then a poem by a long dead local author; a road as a metaphor never gets old or when the new boy settles into bed in your old room will the house take his fears, like a chameleon, & color them calm with chamomile & Oreo. We drive. Eight shoulders crammed with eight knees pneumatic & sweat pulsed. I imagine strangling the new boy in a shallow stream; hide his little body in a tree

(justin sirois)
(you don't mind, right?)

hey look

2007-10-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

http://www.publishinggenius.com/wbdetails.html

there is a reading/release on 10/19 (friday).

food shirt

2007-10-03T22:19:00.000-04:00

problems with internal planets; beside you not this but this and this (i know); lips have all this mouth on them. look what i made. is it okay? your snob is like a song; your cell sounds like yoga class. look what i ate. it's not okay.

skin digests splinter
body devours 2x4
memorandums hesi

tate to walk
inflamed and
a tiny fever
hay fever he
problems
when woken

hard-pressed to overhead or survey immeasurable shifts; imperceptibly that thing to lean ahead (it'sokayit'sokay); lead with waiting, smells like rubber no burning no rubber no; imperceptibly the highway shifts until it shifts back again, like something not capable.

you should be recording everything you ate right now.

for ryan / adam

2007-09-30T20:21:00.000-04:00

every time you have a thought / phantom something
you will erupt into / crab republican
what would you call it / a cheeseburger says what
where did you park / not a funny joke
clumps or a wad / pig acronyms
an idea for a restaurant / job dissatisfaction
the best food / bland chutney

here is my letter to the armmy
i am humiliated by this room
here is this dandelion impossibility
here is a very small cat
she is small-boned, not just a kitten
i am humiliated by the band-aid trash
in my room
did you see what my dad drew
i am so embarrassed about my room

i know, that's, like, so boring to blog about

2007-09-27T10:50:00.001-04:00

well you know what? i'm boring. true. or bored. what's the difference.

the pasty deliverance-like underbelly

2007-09-27T10:45:00.000-04:00

somebody must have crashed into my car yesterday and left--the entire driver's side back door is smashed in. there were already massive dents in my car and i only have liability insurance, but it's just the principle. like, they had to have hit it really hard in broad daylight yesterday, backed up in order to correctly make the turn, seen what they did, and left. it's actually more violating than coming outside to find your windows smashed in.

ain't nobody want no shit and AIDS and shit up in they water, fuck that--what? fuck that, shit's fucked up. did he die? he fell down that chute? what,

2007-09-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

that's what the water people are saying in front of our house. i think maybe they are at a standstill. i shall transcribe.

"they got these trees and shit, and this man's arm start lookin' like snakeskin--that shit don't look good. it's all that bacteria, shit, this lady walked out in her bare feet, man, she got some a that shit on her toe, man, that shit turn black. wherever that shit get on you. erything grow abnormal."

"oh my goodness!"

"forty feet of shit water."

i want them to come more often.

google image search: "forty feet of shit water"

i mean, why she gotta be so elitist. shit. shit's troubling.

oh

2007-09-25T13:55:00.000-04:00

u dyxjws yo,

(that's 'i fucked up' with home row shifted one key over)

but i did, anyway. i didn't get my tetris on last night and as a result i forgot to go to one work and went to the other instead.

admission of joy:

was that really the last thing i posted?

2007-09-24T23:20:00.000-04:00

sorry ryan. i've been academic, which i wasn't for a while and so am reaping the consequences. one consequence is thinking about megaloblasts in a marrow biopsy. but then i think about tuna steak sandwiches and everything comes back to normal.

i would like to report relatively very little anxiety since my chicago trip. let's get personal at times-ballisms. major agoraphobia prior, somewhat less than proportionate euphoria afterward, but let's not look euphoria in the horse, shall we.

i have to go to bed, so here's from now:

begin by you must
predilection for leafy
pastiches of divinity
today stuff today
i had a near-life
experiences
i was in the car
this is my cartoon
head
look at my cat

afj daoifuduawerua09rufajsfnzdvkz;

love,
my dad

ps i wish anyone reading this could hear my sister and her bf warming up on their trumpets right now. there's weird dissonance about it because it sounds like any night at a conservatory but it's our house instead, so there is also TV noise and pet sounds (not beach boys). they are on different floors and they both have mutes in their trumpets, so are not listening to each other at all.

packed in olive oil

2007-09-19T22:52:00.000-04:00

poor karl

on the occasion of a beautiful line in a letter from senator dodd's father to his mother during the nuremburg trials

2007-09-18T14:13:00.000-04:00

back pressure
[vessel of the vessels]
valves in the veins
and resistance diagrams
as you can see from
this picture,
sat down taken a tums
and died

the buffy coat

2007-09-18T00:32:00.001-04:00

<3 anatomy and physiology despite great ambivalence worsened by travel <3

well then i guess i'll just continue on with it

2007-09-14T12:28:00.000-04:00

look, photographs in the bender style (with some edited out per the sirois public domain requests of 2007).

what should i do for a living if this nursing thing is a bust?

2007-09-12T21:48:00.000-04:00

hmm?

c'mon feel the illinoise!

2007-09-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

well, we're here, in chicago. look:

ryan is much more interesting to vicarious with, so i will just highlight:

1. justin, man in yellow shirt and i all have keys to same room. man walks in coincidentally during justin pants switch.
2. i was just about to have andrew bird'sbaby when i caught a collapsing man.
3. xanax for plane ride = best hand-held tetris score everEVER. xanax eases transition and delays agoraphobic tendencies for a good 24 hours. perhaps you thought tetris was a bygone--rest assured my bedtime routine is steadier than my noncommittal attitude.
4. this is a really great town. today flea market, bikes, honky tonk, the world, homework.

that was a pretty bad poem

2007-09-06T23:38:00.001-04:00

but she knows what i mean.

(toothpaste for dinner)

eh huh for c.e.

2007-09-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

do you pose in public
does it cowboy to standing
middle of the night in some
mapped study; some poignant
hospitalization of cleanliness
[do the thing]
one beautiful mimic to prove
muscle strung bone-like above
rake the sight to human

[time like poem; time going]

[A: camera]
[B: annhilation]
[C: my mother]
[D: let's be reasonable]

breath flap fish-like
chest with frame
rakes disorient
scrape your bird toward
middle of chest one
beautiful mimic for the hole
of it one
proof flashing through
the screen we
chisel to choose
[its contents]

1993

2007-09-04T22:59:00.000-04:00

spiral perm noted

2007-08-31T23:29:00.000-04:00

mistakes have been made
jarring like a little death

and yet the whooping crane
we do not wish to march

in the back of the eye are
inumerable falls; marches

after that and after that
crosswords come with fury

as we wait; wading across
whole beds of transient quality

banks of a person abbr. (when
a father tumbles the restaurant)

to frame stuff; this syndrome
to peek and rule with contents

the cow is suspended, its eye back,
the back of its eye like waiting

to peel and rule like a kitten
does anyone know its function

great plains gleaming with
the time of year elicited when

one considers great plains
when one considers nomenclature,

however, say prairie, say clocks (sea)
see the cattle in their weather thoughts

my elbow and they lay down for slaughter
this barometer for standing to sleep

peeling back the back further, to pearl,
who to know the sentient seal

alert: i deleted the kitten pictures

2007-08-31T21:21:00.000-04:00

it felt too much like myspace. i prefer to manage my various egomaniacal profiles without the use of the mac cam. also i feel much less like a hermit when i take pic\\\\\\\\\ <--kitten did that

pictures with a real camera instead of my computer. this becomes even more pathetic as we continue on to,

HERE IS AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ME:

i have already managed to miss two of my anatomy classes and corresponding labs by accident. but, i did color-code my calendar today. i can't believe i just...did that. and wrote about it. if you'll excuse me, i have to go buy a three-ring binder, reinforcements, a slide rule, and a few pairs of creepy sweatpants. bye!

oh, shit

the first wave

2007-08-30T23:32:00.000-04:00

we stood up in rows
and raised our arms over
our heads and screamed
all around the stadium
it was like the right
to vote

we just want to say

2007-08-30T10:52:00.001-04:00

that we're staying here in, like, days.

(it's apparently around $330 per night, not that we would need to worry about that.)

a swivel chair!!! be still, my heart!

something very exciting happened

2007-08-29T14:53:00.000-04:00

no, not that.

i received my free human genome landmarks poster, which shows every mapped disorder and the chromosome/base pair to which it relates. i can't say it's particularly pleasing aesthetically, but i realize that as much as i wish it were so, science isn't overly concerned with that. there are arguments to be made, of course; consider these (they are all science):

history in pictures

2007-08-27T22:19:00.000-04:00

tonight we went to my parents' house for dinner. sorted through some more childhood memorabilia, which is probably the most surreal experience of my life. i found my "corner," which was my version of a security blanket--i just carried around the torn-off edge of the blanket and rubbed it against my thumb all day (i have a scar). it's really the patterns/prints/textures of things that gets me. amazing the complexity of the reaction they elicit. here are two things i colored in probably in kindergarten or so:

and here is a picture of me re-posing as a zombie in front of my friend's painting where i initially posed as a zombie maybe 5 years ago:

i'm assuming it's not too self-involved to post pictures of myself. but that would also assume that it's not too self-involved to continue the emo log what, six months later?

medication. tation. shit.

2007-08-26T23:50:00.001-04:00

i want to write pretty bad right now but i'm just so tired. my new routine is kicking my ass: get up at 7, medimitate, runnish, good breakfast, rest of day. as a routine it's really just an idea right now, but that is tiring enough. (actually it began friday but unfortunately ended saturday. things are expected to pick back up tomorrow what with the reinstatement of school and dundalk and all.)

incidentally, on friday during the mediation i suddenly imagined this huge oak tree with very specific golden light coming out of the top of it, and when i breathed in it came in; when i breathed out blue goop came out (metaphysically) and was sucked back up by the tree. conjured the same tree periodically today with good results. this week i will try to incorporate my li'l animal totem and see what happens.

(note "hat," very important).

(note that in the time this took i could have written something halfway decent but want to try for something much longer or at least from somewhere more awake k thx bye BFF LYLAS lol <3)

free for a hiker in need

2007-08-26T11:49:00.000-04:00

"I have an old pair of American Eagle hiking boots (women's size 9.5-10). The soles fell off the last time I was hiking."

also i woke up laughing in the middle of the night but i don't know what the dream was about. this wasn't no giggle, either.

at last

2007-08-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

i hate when things fall and rock to stillness. i hate that noise. like this:

noise

noise

noise

noise

noise

noise

noise
noise
noise
noisenoisenoisenoise

(still)

i just realized that yesterday. it really bothers me.

last night we went to ethiopian (the country--it's next to ethiopia) and justin ordered a meta beer. that's what it's called. but they brought him a different beer, which is good, because if he'd had the meta beer he might have disappeared. there were a. ma. zing. music videos playing in the restaurant.

when we go to chicago in september the hideout music festival will be happening, and andrew bird will be playing an hour after we land--andrew bird is one of my favorites of all time. the government is paying for justin's swank hotel room, car, etc. there will be pre-planned incriminating pictures that will violate even this blog. trust me.

yesterday the mcdonald's arch deluxe was a crossword answer. but not today--today that answer wouldn't have fit in yesterday's crossword. this is all true. every time i dream about kitchens a beer disappears.

lost the game

2007-08-23T23:14:00.000-04:00

[“sediment”]

We ran up in three dimensions; the two of you first and falling behind my fear, behind the sky; at the top he coughed up blood, got high in the backyard, fits of rage about a bear movie or some combination of a visitors’ center or burned to the ground; try rubbings. No heritage there but they were proud of me; they bought me anything I wanted as we awoke again and again in layers. I still wake that way remembering dust around his teenage body, different sun, held bladders through explanation canyons, resentments and peacock restaurants where I would hate the light until later, drunk on altitudes of bones.

...

bloodsucking anatomy
and squeezes the pleasure
out of it
from whole countries
of enablers
we frame stuff
have lost the parse
how-to, and how

i said this in therapy

2007-08-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

"i'm gonna meditate, goddammit!"

(also "i'm gonna therapy this shit outta this!" but that was with the aid/humor of the therapist).

if anyone would like to be in on the design of my new active and anxiety-free identity, please leave suggestions in the comments box. we appreciate your participation, and you could win a free lunch.

house house

2007-08-22T08:45:00.000-04:00

yay yay

Saturday, September 1st-
8 pm

A Narrow House / Lame House Reading

Organized & hosted by
Justin Sirois of Narrow House Recordings &
Gina Myers of Lame House Press

The poets reading-

Cathy Eisenhower
Arlo Quint
Dustin Williamson
Matt Hart
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
M. Magnus

The readings are now held at
CARRIAGE HOUSE
2225 Hargrove Street
Baltimore, MD

CARRIAGE HOUSE is located right off 23rd Street
between St. Paul & Calvert Streets-

A big yellow light will illumine the building-
Easy parking & BYOB & ears etc.

for more info-
Michael Ball
410-727-1953

("narrow lame")

dadahaha

2007-08-20T16:05:00.000-04:00

a small giggle

you know what's great? crystallized ginger. i wonder if that's how christian bok got it all started.

(separate)

when i imagine it
there are two of us there
on the ledge, getting ready
i am in a light blue shirt and tie
and there is gel in my hair
i have a wife at home who
rides the elliptical machine
the woman next to me is
chinese-american in rayon
she is probably my assistant
i am not ready but
i always knew what it would be like
on the way down she screams
i try to send a message to my sister
with my mind, think about my organs
i can not imagine this scenario
or myself as a middle eastern person

if your grandmother was japanese
and your grandfather flew an american bomber
you are 1/4 japanese
and miniscule fractions of whatever is left
when my grandfather said we were bohemian
and that the guy on the evening news
had to be the son of his pilot
i wrote to the news
they said,
"tell the lady there's no relation"
i was not able to contact the bohemians
but either way he died
and left me a drawing of a cat
on a note i can not find

great neck

2007-08-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

quiver, day; conduct to new long-sleeve tee's. when one consumes one's weight in raw, or we walk to chicago, take incriminating hotels, take hostage our rampaging definitions; i have always been this way.

(go back and check the road)

(go back and check the road)

cram foot into empty handle of a milk crate. how to get. museums open into themselves; child sees child vomiting into hair, child sees child's arm ending at wristbone, child sees child reap movies of it. plastics filling, well-lost and opening where the chest was; it's okay.

(a year could be a trombone)
(a year could be mathematical)

a year could be like a fan with no function. shake, day; a person apart, a sieve patched with sand. like a museum. how do we like a museum.

do you need help appreciating me? i'm quilted.

2007-08-19T20:22:00.000-04:00

ryan writ that, but i wish i had.

believe the term is OMFG

2007-08-17T18:02:00.001-04:00

shelfari. SERIOUSLY. let my people go.

apparently i'm not the only one whose entire gmail address book was cookied and hijacked to oblivion. it's horrible that my only contribution to lucipo, POETICS, performancelist, spidertangle etc has been this goddamn invite AND REMINDER MESSAGE. i don't get angry a lot but when i do. well. i just do.

breasts of baltimore

2007-08-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

tonight i creped at the best of baltimore party. we each got a turn to wander around. we were supposed to play a game where we picked our top 5 attractive people at the party. i really couldn't pick any, but my, the ample bosoms. you have never seen as many ample bosom as at the best of baltimore party. it wasn't funny, because with no non-amples there was no context for comparison or humor. otherwise, and in addition, disappointment. really a networking/gen-X money event. once i got some seared tuna into my dressed-up belly everyone really blended together. i really did mean that my belly alone was dressed up.

people should really think about watching 2-year-olds eat tiny quiches, all the time.

yesterday my parents took me to the aquarium. true. much more true than belly statement above. highlights: hog-nosed turtle; obesity. it's nice to be an adult in a setting like that, where you can go, "mom? dad? i can't look at any more fish, i'm sorry. something about it makes me remember that time in the air and space museum when that kid with the mullet threw up his foot-long hot dog."