Dec 30, 2003

I have discovered a computerized Scrabble game.

Soon I will be like Jackie Chan, except with Scrabble instead of Kung-Fu.

Dec 29, 2003

To the 100+ "Rapping Golem" Searchers



Check your copies of the friggin' books (I know you have them), it's spelled "Gollum"...

I am happy to have so many hits to the blog, though. READ MORE POETRY! OVERTHROW GEORGE W. BUSH IN 2004!

Thank you.

Dec 24, 2003

cyberculture floozie
You are a Cyberculture Floozie. The theoretical
aspects of postmodernism interest you only
insofar as they can be used to make cool blinky
things. You probably take psychedelics and
know at least one programming language (HTML
counts!). Other postmodernists call you a
corporate whore. They're probably just jealous
because you make more money than them.


Dec 22, 2003

I [HEART] Godless Communists



Endless Christmas Carols Irk Czech Clerks
Mon Dec 22,10:35 AM ET


PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Labor unions in the Czech Republic demanded Monday that stores stop playing Christmas carols incessantly or pay compensation for causing emotional trauma to sales clerks.

Some stores here play the same songs all day — and play them loudly. Employees say shifts have become unbearable.

"To listen to it for eight hours a day is not healthy, that's for sure," said Alexandr Leiner, a union leader. "And for the customers, it's almost unbearable as well."

Leiner said unions have written to major chains, such as Tesco, and demanded that employees be compensated. He said the unions want 500 koruna (US$19) or two days off as a possible compensation. They've received no response.

Unions in neighboring Austria have lodged similar complaints against stores there.

Al Quaida is after me Lucky Charms!



As the day approaches, I find my general disdain replaced by a shimmering indifference. I found myself thinking this morning, "crap, I'm going to lose a day of mail service this week."

I finished buying all of the books that various members of my family will not read in a record 1.75 hours on Saturday.

I finally finished up the translation of my Danish friend's manuscript on Saturday with the aid of a big honkin' Danish-English English-Danish dictionary. It took me about a year in toto to finish it, so it feels pretty good to be done.

For the record, no, I don't speak Danish. Just call me Robert Bly.

Dec 19, 2003



Palace Ghost caught on film.




The sun phoebus
ignites the glass box, the
forgotten public
art,
swallow's wings blades
of shadow carve out
my heart to bake
in those rays
the ghosts will eat
it all.
Steaming manhole covers
the ghosts live
there, pluck
hard purple berries from
barren vines that cling
to the grey stone,
roseate sucker patterns
casting lattice shadows,
all this cold beauty, make me
a machine sans
ghost in the, freeze me
in the cold beauty,
the bleeding thing
lies down
in marble arms.

How to sleep with the weight of ghosts squashing the air out of one's lungs? A gate of horn and a gate of bone and specters and demons behind each. Wake with the motto 'I can't go on,' caught on my lips when there is every reason to keep going on. Saturnian folly in the holy days of Saturn. Those savage old gods staking their claim in the blood. Phoebus Apollo battles the Rabbit in the Moon; the blood of their wounds records a narrative on the paper skin of the world. A ghost's apocrypha. The ghosts sing those hymns in the caverns of the ears in the desolate hours. Thus they steal one's dreams and those hollows under the eyes are stained grey-black with the layers and layers of their fingerprints.

Dec 18, 2003

Aaron says this story made him think of me. Can't imagine why.

Every Thursday morning for the past few weeks an elderly mentally-impaired
gentleman (who has quite the drooling problem) comes to Barnes and Noble. He
heads straight for the newsstand. He begins at one end, and methodically
removes all the subscription cards from each and every magazine. Depending on
the mood he's in, he'll either collect them in a bag, or as he has recently
been doing, heap them in a single tremendous pile on the floor. This process
takes him several hours, during which he is quite fond of engaging in
conversations with other customers. As nearly every single customer at Barnes
and Noble in Northville, Michigan believes themself to be better than the rest
of the world's population, this proves to be incredibly hilarious. His favorite
Target is mothers with babies in strollers. "Can't s/he walk YET?" he'll spray
to the mothers, who look at him as though he were a pile of shit that fell from
the sky and began singing opera. After an awkward silence, they'll usually
laugh nervously and explain that the children can't or that they are too tired.
This is the wrong thing to do. "I know what you should get him/her!" (He only
speaks in exclamations.) "What's that?" the mother will reply, with an
increasing look of terror in her eyes. Once again, this is the wrong thing to
do, as Mr. 'drool on the subscription cards' is approaching his punchline. "A
STICK OF DYNAMITE!" he yells, and then laughs maniacally

Latrine!



Do you remember the character "Latrine" from the movie Top Secret? I'm pretty much the spiritual analog, I think.
Somebody got here by way of a search for "golem + rapping + funny."

Now I want to see the funny rapping golem.

Dec 17, 2003

Just when it seemed like the quizzes had gone away...

blackpanther
You are a Radical. Right on!


What kind of Sixties Person are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Anyone who is looking for a room, or knows someone who is looking for a room should consider the following:

Large room available January 1 - apt is 2nd & 3rd floor of a two family
house in Somerville (near Somerville Hospital - Porter and Davis within
walking/biking distance )- rent is $600 (and $600 deposit) + utilities
(phone, electric, heat and cable modem tho no TV). Hardwood floors, sunny,
pantry, front porch, large living room, dining room and kitchen. Landlord on
premises.

Housemates: one guy: Harvard extention student, 24, into music, fiction,
current events, beer. Vegetarian but not militantly so. One gal: poet, works
at non-profit in Boston, loves and collects books. In general, a laid back
environment. Email for more information xtinastrong@yahoo.com

Io, Saturnalia

Dec 16, 2003

Apres moi, les grincheux.
Note to Self:

Do not mention Communist sympathies on first date.

Dec 15, 2003

Here is an article which describes the capture of Sadam Hussein as a "Christmas Gift" for G.W.B. It employs plenty of Santa metaphors.

Maybe I am refusing to look on the bright side of things today. I honestly don't know why I'm in such a foul mood. After an awesome weekend I should at least be neutral if not chipper. Yet I feel unusually bilious, even for me.

If there is something to smile at today, somebody please let me know, because I would like to smile. I really would.

Insert Quarter



"My gunner said: 'Is that it? No shooting?"' said Capt. Desmond Bailey, a commander of troops that encircled Saddam.

"He's the best gunner in the troop, so he was a bit disappointed."

Go home and play a video game, Einstein...
Now *THAT* was a party...

But back to the land of Samuel Adam's impotent blunderbuss, after a 6 1/2 hour bus ride.

Surly. Grrrrrr. I'm back. Kiss kiss.

Dec 12, 2003

Holiday Gift Ideas



For the perfect gift for your mate/boss/mistress/favorite 24-hour convenience store clerk, you may wish to consider this bag of rocks.

Or perhaps this old wooden lobster trap.

If they already have enough rocks and lobster traps, maybe some human hair will bring a smile to their face.

For the young people in your life, how about some used play-doh?

Saddam's Palace May Be New U.S. Embassy



"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

I will be in NYC for the Ugly Duckling Presse recent chapbooks release party and reading with comrades Tieger and Hoff. Hope to see as many of you NYers as possible.

So no blogging this weekend. Listen to the wind beating your windows if you miss me, for we amount to the same thing.

Dec 11, 2003

I keep shaking, but I can't break them! Argh! Pesky larval humans!...
What is the ghost saying?

**** Free Poetry ****



That's right folks, this numbskull from Craigslist will write you a poem for free. That's right, gratis. "Suprise your significant other with some rhymes about your feelings or just a paradise setting on a rainy day to bring a smile to you face, it is completely up to you."

I know you were all thinking that the post was me. However, I do not work for free. I do however accept beer, sexual favors, or trades.

If anyone is interested in the text of the little presentation I gave last winter about Rexroth's 100 Poems from the Chinese, it seems to have made its way here.

From the Tomb



Haven't posted any poems on here for awhile because all of my poetic efforts have been focussed on print stuff. But here's an oldie (hopefully the formatting will work) that I'm posting because it holds some obscure personal relevance this morning.

 

SELF PORTRAIT AS A TALKING SNOWMAN

Megalo
perturbed perhaps
austere:
In this new climate, I'm made of puffballs,
styrofoam orbs
stuck with drinky things,
litte swords, little umbrellas, a sparkler
or two. Brain
a matrix of bilious conjecture embedded
in grey slate. Slate piles
to indicate status. Status queue,
reservoir of raspy laughter,
watershed of auld lang syne,
straw hat indicates, I'm a cowboy,
you're a cowboy, we're all cowboys here,
snapped shepherds' crooks for arms.
Excess hourglass
sand extracted from the round corners of my eyes,
that tiny foo-dog ball merely revolving,
occular, occult
like an undisclosed agenda: I say
frozen tears but you know that's wrong
because saltwater can't freeze,
the glaciers say so. I want to be a glacier
when I grow cold. Tell all my loves,
my falcons:
the countenance hopper makes Frosty a real boy.

All you falcons
I dare you to return
to my arms they're sticks.
You falcons regardant you falcons recursant
everyone
wants the ratte of wings
for their birthday.

Shaking palms indicate the flutter
of hummingbirds,
hirsute curlicues drawn on dun colored napkins indicate
the waves of the sea.

Yes, my legs are a sphere,
& my ribcage & my two eyes
metal marbles I think
you tell me as they fall in your lap.
I'm stuck here but
my armies of ocean-monkeys, of evil robots
bring me the names of the swan.
You names
I dare you to return
to my arms they're sticks.
The Y-shape indicating hands is rumored to intuit
veins of water under asphalt.
Divination nation, memos
in the tea leaves,
the river is the same river, when you're not looking.
The river freezes the river is my daughter.
Pause. Don't tell me
about your dream.


Dec 10, 2003

Clinton Googles Self


No doubt about it



It is a grey hair. It is slightly longer than the adjacent hairs, but seems to have relatively the same tensile strength. It does not dislodge when gently tugged, which rules out the possibility that it could be someone else's hair that has merely become lodged in my own. I have not been in the vicinity of grey paint or bleach recently. If I pluck it out, will it return as two more of its ilk? If I cut it off just above the root, so as to not remove the hair from the follicle entirely, it will still be there (thus mitigating the plucking out/two growing back problem), but below the canopy of the rest of the normally-colored hair. Or perhaps I should apply color with my red editing pen. Perhaps I should snip it off, put it in an envelope and send it to my ex-girlfriend with a note saying, "I hold you responsible for this..."

Boots



I finally bought a pair of boots. I don't know how I went through all of last winter without a pair.

And they're not combat boots, not Dr. Martens, not Fleuvogs or Sabras. I suppose this means I'm grown up now or something. They're from Australia and they are those kind that you don't have to lace and have the little elastic thingee on the side, sort of retro, sort of no-nonsense.

You know, I looked a lot edgier when I was alot less edgy. I had a nosering and a leather jacket and docs. But I was a puppydog.

Now I am a pitbull. A pitbull in aging-hipster boots...
Only the actual lyrics (as verified by the internet) are:

"Marching feet, Johnny Reb, what's the price of heroes?

Six in one, half dozen the other,
Tell that to the captain's mother,
Hey captain, don't you want to buy,
Some bone chains and toothpicks?"

At least I was close...

Dream



What would Freud make of this?

I'm getting ready for work, to go in early and proctor the exam which I'm proctoring today. Going through my closet and looking for a white shirt and tie (why am I wearing a tie?). I can't find a white shirt, I find a light green, a blue, and a magenta shirt, but no white? Didn't my father give me a white shirt for xmas two years ago? I decide on the light green shirt, and begin looking through ties. I select a really amazing grey and green op-art print tie that I really wish I had in real life. In the midst of the pile of ties is a pair of sparkly women's underpants. "Those are my girlfriend's..." Wait, I don't have a girlfriend...

What is that annoying sound? Thus the spell was broken and I woke up to get dressed to go to work early to proctor the exam. I consider wearing a white shirt and tie, but decide against it. Explaining to the folks at work why I'm wearing a tie would be too weird ("I had a dream I came to work in a white shirt and tie.")

Also, inexplicably, when I awoke from the dream, several lines of that old R.E.M. song, "Swan, Swan H," were lodged in my head.

Hey Captain, what's the price of peas?
Six and one-half dozen the other,
Tell that to the Captain's mother.

Hey Captain, don't you wanna buy some
bone-chains and tooth-picks?

Dec 6, 2003

While 'smiling' might be a strong word, this certainly caused an inexplicable relaxation of the facial muscles. Thanks to tiny voices.


OK, I smiled at the self-disecting rat. But I'm not supposed to admit that.

And I also finally finished the "29 Cheeseburgers" manuscript.

I suppose all and all, today could have been a lot worse.

Was that a moment of levity?

I'd better be careful lest it start snowing anvils.


Actually, I might sorta like that...

Back from from frozen armageddon & the Iijima / Scalapino reading.

Brenda's reading was perhaps the only thing which could have possibly made me smile today.

Fortuitous.

I am going to attempt to go to the Dunkin' Donuts down the street and get some coffee and an egg,bacon, and cheese on a croissant like a civilized human being.

So help me powers that be, should anything prevent me from reaching my destination, or upon reaching my destination, should the Dunkin' Donuts be closed, I will consume the world in a fiery ball of...um...flames.

I think that is sufficiently hyperbolic to describe how exactly I'm feeling right now. Mind you, some years I am able to accept the coming of winter with grace and enjoy the beauty of the world covered in white.

This ain't one of them.



My rage knows no bounds. Somebody knock me out until May.

Aaaauuuuggghhh!!!



Little white parcels of agony.

Here we go.


Dec 5, 2003

Public Service Announcement



To those of you out there who are having sex: please close the door to your room.

Just because you haven't seen your roommate doesn't necessarily mean they're not home.

Thank you.

Brought to you by the Equal Rights for Celibates Commission.
Conservatives want to put Reagan's face on the dime.

How about the Nickel?

They could start making them out of wood.

Dec 4, 2003

Saturday, Dec. 6th at Wordsworth Books:

Poets Leslie Scalapino & Brenda Iijima



Sure to be one of the most spectacular readings of the season. Escape from the relentless mental torment of December by hearing truly amazing poems.

Creepy



This would seem to fit the definition of "Uncanny":

Somebody got to the site by doing a search for "Oracle ventricle," which is the first line of one of the Astrometry Organon poems which was posted here months and months back, but hasn't been published anywhere, nor have I ever read it in public. I know this for a fact because it's about someone I try not to think about anymore and I've tried to sort of put the poem to rest.

The other creepy part of it is that the referring domain for that hit was from "splitrock.net." Around the time that the poem was written, I think in fact the same day, I had typed in and sent to the person in question, William Carlos Williams's "A Sort of Song," which features the famous line "Saxifrage is my flower that splits/ the rocks." I remember this because the person in question and I had been having a discussion about snakes. The title of the poem with the "Oracle Ventricle" line is THUBAN ("The Snake"), Alpha Draco "The Dragon."

Of course if one does a google search for "Oracle Ventricle," it leads you to only one place. Here.

It is a pun on the word "auricle," auricle being one of the other chambers of the human heart, so somebody else I guess must be interested in the pun.

But very strange.

Since I'm sure you are all wondering now, here is the poem which I had wanted to put to bed along time ago. The ghosts are busy, I guess. The poem becomes a revenant.


THUBAN

Oracle, ventricle:
dilated serpent torc:

the way she moves like a metronome
into and out of
sight:

grasses wilt & rise.

Sunlight
turning to dust
or pollen
on her lips
as if
inside her:
100 years
of peace.



David Rees at Gallery 108


Friday, December 5th at 8pm, 108 hosts a book release party for David Rees's "My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable" (Riverhead Books). If uninitiated, please check out www.mnftiu.cc. Rees will do a reading and there will be a Live Action Performance!

108 Beacon Street, Somerville. 617-441-3833.


Dec 3, 2003



Incidentally, Saturnalia is December 17-20.

Of course Christmas is depressing, it's a stand-in for the festival for the Lord of Melancholy...
Ugh. Staying at work because it is TOO FRIGGIN' COLD outside to want to walk home and then walk back to my class in Harvard Square.

Why is it that hell is characterized as being hot? I for one wouldn't mind some fires burning under me right at the moment.

Of course I say that now...

Though technically speaking, hell is the absence of God. If God is hope, than the absence of hope would also imply the absence of God. Ergo the absence of hope is also hell. Looking out the dark window...hmm...

In the Buddhist tradition, if I am correct, hell is to fail to be reincarnated and subsequently wander the material plane as a Hungry Ghost, an entity who's infernal hungers and desires can never be satisfied.

Saturn is the lord of Melancholy, and also connected to desire. The greedy god who wants to swallow his children again after he has vomited them up. To reintegrate all the parts of the shattered self in a form, also, of unsatiable hunger. Thus the melancholic is tormented not necessarily by an excess of despair, but rather an excess of desire. The desire to reintegrate the fractured god, the absent God into a formless whole. The idea of God itself as a Hungry Ghost, so hungry it seeks to consume its own children.

The ascetic seeks to be like God: if we take God to be a Hungry Ghost, then said Ghost, the melancholic, is holy. A saint in hell longing to be reunited with the insatiable creature which has spit him out, the host of infinite, unquenchable desire. Thus we are all holy in our human scrabblings, our infinite despair and longing. Thus despair is the divine impetus, the sound of God; the immortal scream of the deity upon regurgitating its children and seeing that they are apart from it.

Cheery, huh?

Don't worry, we're all really just hairless apes who like to tell stories...

Some cool poems from Guillermo on Venepoetics. (Or at least I think they're Guillermo's.)
Suggestion for a latinate name for Aaron's November/December chimaera:

Infernus


Oh yes...

Something else to come out of the Thanksgiving trip to Connecticut was the knowledge that Fat Al is dead.

Fat Al was my mother's boyfriend from the time I was around 12 or so until I was 18. That age when what a boy really needs is an unemployed 300-pound bully bent on completely realigning his personality hanging around the house, eating dietetic cookies and watching daytime television.

Fat Al did teach me how to fight (dirty), and also gave me his Saint Christopher medallion ("You're going to need this, you little shit" or somesuch) which I wore (religiously?) until the chain it was on on my neck finally gave out this past summer and the object disappeared into the folds of my room, where it most likely remains. Unless the ghosts have it. This, I suppose, is the only aspect of the religion he tried to instill in me that took.

Inexplicably, Fat Al was a Catholic, even though he was also reputedly half American Indian. He was also an incredibly ignorant, bigoted, and in general mean-spirited human being who believed that homosexuals and the disabled should be euthanized.

Fat Al would not drive into Hartford because he had allegedly severely beaten two black men with a tire iron during some sort of incident and feared the repecussions of this act. I suppose a white man of his size does most likely stand out in Hartford.

I cannot honestly say that he was not kind to me in some psychotic way, but if his God exists, I must say I do fear for him.

However, as you most likely already know, I am an agnostic, and no-one's judge.
Walk over the bridge on JFK, the wind whipping up the screams of ghosts from the river. Not frozen over, but soon. It is their river now. Their city. This savage wind their breath on my face, soon it will be frozen like theirs are.

My heart flares a little when I see the skull and crossbones in black and yellow on the back of her car. See her through the window, twisting beads onto lengths of wire. Remember that she is beautiful, my nose running all over my face.

She is always angry when I'm early I say I walked too fast because of the cold.

I give her the little yellow books and she fans them across the ledge in front of the window. I ask her if the sculpture is hers and she says it's just for show.

Closing time, "can you stand outside please?"

"Are you ready to walk fast, it's very cold?"

I realize I can only love the ones who move faster than I do. And I move like a stray. How fast a ghost can move, as death is inertia and a ghost defies death as surely as it defies life.

In the bar pretend not to know what to order for her. I can see that she is in pain. I know I will never see her smile again, at least when she is looking at me.

Why ask me what it's like to be a poet when you already know? We pretend not to remember our friends' names. We are wondering why we're here. A ghost does not know why it haunts, a ghost is like a barnacle attached to another barnacle. The other barnacle can turn inside out and there's a world inside of it.

I say that the advent of trains and busses and automobiles is important when considering the splintering of the narrative. She says we can hear voices from other places now in our heads and that is also important. We agree that the voices are important.

She says it is the movements, physical movements and abstract ones that constitute our lives. Even the movement of breath into and out of the body when one is still.

But a ghost doesn't breathe. A ghost is still even when it is whipping around you, even when it's dancing in the cord of the phone or on one of the points of a pair of scissors.

We will never forgive each other, not really. The narrative cracks. We go on making the movements of our lives, moving away from each other, but still our ghosts appear in the same mirror. I pretend to smile because I'm not really in the room.

Dec 2, 2003

*This* is what I'm talking about when I say "Alienation."



Boy Punished for Talking About Gay Mom

"A teacher who heard the remark scolded Marcus, telling him "gay" was a "bad word" and sending him to the principal's office. The following week, Marcus had to come to school early and repeatedly write: 'I will never use the word `gay' in school again.'"

Airtight logic, no? When I am done with them, they will beg for my Fist of Death, my pretties...


For you NYers out there...

Saturday, Dec. 13 7pm

BOOK RELEASE party for UDP's most recent chapbooks:
TEN MORE POEMS by James Hoff
CITY/TEMPLE by Mark Lamoureux



at The Nest, 88 Front Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
(F train to York St., A/C to High St.)




Pshaw



It's cold and it's wet and we will be up to our armpits in it soon enough.

I know my disdain for all things winter conflicts with my wannabe Canadianism as described below. Oh the great conflicing ironies of life.

Genetically, I know I'm supposed to like this crap. But, argh....

Oh Canada, Oh Canada!



As per this article, I find myself increasingly saying that I am "French Canadian" when asked about my ethnicity these days. Somewhat of a pose because my family left Acadia in the 19th century. However, if every marblemouthed New England yahoo is allowed to trace their lineage back to Miles Standish, I think I am allowed to declare myself French Canadian. "Lamoureux" is, after all, like "Smith" in Quebec. But as the North American divide deepens, I find myself wishing that Canada were more like Ireland with its immigration policy.

I think a good way for the land of the North to cement its cultural and world identity would be to offer asylum to disgruntled citizens of the United States, as Trudeau did with draft dodgers in during the Vietnam War.

If only it weren't so goddamned cold up there. But people seem a little more laid back about...keeping warm indoors if you get my drift up there, so maybe the long winters would feel not so bad in a culture where one did not feel completely alienated, frustrated, and alone...

Nov 30, 2003

I'm really sorry about all these quizzes

I think I have a quiz problem.

And I'm not funny, apparently.

Not Funny
You are *NOT* funny, you think you are, but you are
not. You are the person who sits next to
somebody on a long bus or plane rides telling
anectdotes and stories that are interesting
only to you. People find ways to avoid being
trapped with you while you tell stories and
jokes, and you don't even notice. Stop trying
to be funny, you just aren't. Not everyone can
be the comedian. Not everyone can be the clown.
You are neither. Your humor isn't happening.
Move on.

How funny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I found the noose on the picture to be kind of funny.

At least, as I said, I crack myself up.



Blah. Purple just does not go with red hair.

Thanks, Yuri.

PURPLE
Purple: Yours is a rare aura. The rebel and
nonconformist, you don't care what other people
and are often considered shocking and
outrageous. You see life from a different
perspective than most people you know, but you
are completely at peace with your beliefs. You
are intuitive and like to explore. You can be
compassionate and are prone to temptations.
Secret emotion: Aggression and Imagination


What color is your aura?
brought to you by Quizilla

I went home to Connecticut and ate some turkey. I feel more or less the same as when I left.

I am thankful that I do not have a hideous second head protruding from the side of my head like a tumor with human features.

Highlights of the holiday include two, count 'em, two, Bernice Burgers at the inimitable Shady Glen with Liz and her friend Erik. Afterwards we watched The Exorcist, which was nice but it didn't cheer me up as much as I thought it was going to.

For all you seekers of points, watching disturbing horror movies with me during holidays is a sure way to rack 'em up. For Christmas I'm thinking maybe The Omen or perhaps Burnt Offerings. It'll be like the winter wonderland in that song. Only with blood. And ghosts. And demons.

For Christmas I think I would like a possessed devil totem. The perfect gift for the man who has everything...except a soul...and a heart...and well, you know the rest.

I'd really like to be able to projectile vomit at will (cuts down on those bar tabs), but in lieu of a possessed devil totem, a bottle imp or a Jenny Haniver or a prostitute who likes Language Poetry will do.

Thanks.

Nov 26, 2003

Oh yeah. You ghosties seem to like this one. Though I hope the phonetically-spelled "prolly" doesn't disappoint. One can always substitute "probably" if one prefers. Until later. In the meantime, a disembodied voide:


ALTAIR

Four miles
over the basilica

note how she
traverses
the isthmuses

A longing
to be smudged

Distance pills
& bloodless
resolution

Since there are monsters
you should prolly
give the monsters
names

I will be away from the computer until Saturday. Have a good holiday everyone. Remember to buy nothing on Friday.


Nov 25, 2003

Blame the Following on Aaron and Bibliogal



First real kiss: When I was about 10 my Grandmother on my Dad's side was really drunk at Christmas and decided she was going to teach me how to properly kiss a woman when I was kissing her goodbye.

First job: K-Mart, "Assistant Helper."

First screen name: Priapism1972

First funeral: Cat: "Frosty." Kitty cancer. Very sad.

First pet: Cat: "Frosty."

First piercing: Done professionally or myself?

First true love: Rolling Rock, 1st day of college

First big trip: Pennsylvania, Dad brought us to Antietam. He really likes sites of bloody historical battles and massacres.

Last big car ride: Cab, to the dentist. Not very long, but it seemed like years because I had to pee.

Last good cry: I'm crying right now.

Last movie seen: I don't know what it was called, but it was on the internet...

Last beverage drank: Coffee.

Last food consumed: Roasted Mushroom Turnover with Tomato Chutney. Gotta love the HBS cafeteria.

Last phone call: To my boss saying I slept through my alarm again.

Last TV show watched: I hate TV. Sometimes at P & K's house they have the TV on. They really like "Everybody Loves Raymond." I don't understand.

Last shoes worn: Some cheapo Italian looking things from Berk's (on feet as we speak).

Last CD played: Frou Frou, "Details," I'm afraid.

Last item bought: Psychopharmaceuticals.

Last disappointment: GH

Last soda drank: Ginger Ale

Last ice cream eaten: I have no idea.

Last shirt worn: Um, a white T-shirt. Over which is a blue sweater. What kind of stupid question is this?

Yes, I'm probably lying mercilessly. Or maybe not.

Cracking myself up again.
I passed Robert Pinsky on the street on the way to my shrink last night.

He crumbled easily before the might of my shimmering butterfly kick.

No wait, I'm conflating that with someone else. I just kind of walked by him and scowled. He didn't see me.

Nov 24, 2003

I find this to be more appropriate.

Dagon
King of the Deep Ones and their marine realm, you
prefer to keep to yourself, content to let your
minions keep things in control up on the small
shore areas that are part of your domain. Even
if they have an insatiable fetish for mammals.


What H.P. Lovecraft Entity/Character Archetype Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

It must be my magnetic personality and my optimistic outlook on life...

Um...OK...

HASH(0x87da68c)
Idol


The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla

Bilbiogal gets 100 points. A more or less verbatim assesment of my agenda in my poems. Except I would alter it slightly to "Fierce, heartsick, sublime." In intent, at least. Perhaps they only go as far as being merely beautiful. I have no particular interest in beauty, though. Any beauty is incidental or perhaps accidental. Do not adjust your TV set.

Nov 22, 2003

On Yahoo! News this morning there's a headline that says "Theories Surround Assasination of JFK."

Um, yeah...this is news?

Thank you everyone who came to my reading with Joe Green.

Nov 21, 2003

Fulcrum Annual Presents:

Friday, November 21, 2003, 7:00

@ Wordsworth Books, Cambridge MA

Joe Green and Mark Lamoureux

"Later in life JOE GREEN decided that he would write about
the big subjects. Sadly, he has forgotten what these are.
Thank God he has discovered a trove of manuscripts left
behind by various personages who have passed over to the
Other Side. Saved just as Yeats was --- however, no woman
named George was involved.

He currently lives in the American Midwest and received the
best sort of literary education at the University of
Minnesota where professors would point to where Berryman
jumped and remark, always, that "he didn't hit the water."

"MARK LAMOUREUX was born in Tolland, Connecticut, where he
was raised by appliances, mere miles away from the University
of Connecticut where Charles Olson spent his final days. He
received his Bachelor's Degree from Marlboro College in
Marlboro, VT. His work has appeared or is fothcoming in
Jubilat, Lungfull!, Fulcrum, Art New England, Can We Have Our
Ball Back? and other publications. His chapbook, "City/Temple"
was released by Ugly Duckling Presse in November 2003. Another
chapbook to be published by Boston's Pressed Wafer is forthcoming
in the winter of 2003/2004."

Nov 20, 2003

Do I even need to tell anyone what the results of the "Which Winnie the Pooh Character are You?" were?

I didn't think so.

I think my minions are looking for me...

More interesting google search hits:

"one hand clapping"
"'moor'+photos+desolate+alone"

This Blog Swallows Its Own Tail



To the "oroborous serpent" searcher, you've come to the right place...

Nov 19, 2003

On an unrelated note. To answer the late-night tapping at the door and window? But there's no-one there...
As much as I ordinarily complain, I am proud to be a resident of Massachusetts today. Am no longer a resident of Cambridge, but at least in spirit.

Nov 18, 2003

"Let me begin by explaining my position. I have written of evil, as Mickiewicz, Byron, Milton, Southey, A. Musset, Baudelaire, etc., have all done. Naturally I have exaggerated the pitch along the lines of that sublime literature which sings of despair only to cast down the reader and make him desire the good as remedy. Thus one is always, after all, writing about the good, only by a more philosophical and less naive method than the old school, of which Victor Hugo and some others are the only representatives who are still alive..."

Comte de Lautremont, in defense of Maldoror.
"May it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and having for the time become as fierce as what he is reading, should, without being led astray, find his rugged and treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled pages; for unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic, and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar. It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetarating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands."

From "Book 1" of Comte de Lautremont's Maldoror.

That's a joke by the way.

I crack myself up sometimes.



Ads sighted above this blog: "Warrior Lacrosse Supplies," and "Eundurium Razor Blades."

Yup, Blogger is trying to sell me razor blades.

Thanks, Blogger.
Some people carry around pictures of their kids or pets:



Available at the reading on the 21st!

Ain't she purty?

Nov 17, 2003

Thanks to Nick Piombino for the shoutout.

I saw Nick read for the first time in October. He is a fabulous reader. You should all come back early from Thanksgiving to see him and Mike County read on the 29th. So much cooler than Uncle Rob's photos of his new mechanical bride at Dollywood.
OK so maybe not taking the medication for sleeping was a bad idea.

Bier
pyre
revenant
barrow
castigate
oracle
stamen
piston
oxen
yoke
moon
moor
yolk
cavern
column
vice
tapir
venom
callow
tallow
wight
basin
salt
sardonyx
basalt
wendigoo
pendulum
fog
furrow
aureola
geiser
junebug
juniper
sanctum
sacrosanct
leprous
covenant
clarion
fusion
imbecile
fortune
embryo
canticle
corduroy
mammoth
serpentine
infernal
jackalope
siren
wanton
haven
yodel
brazier
falcon
daemon
pistil
dumuvoi
cargo
ladle
ingot
facile
neighbor
horror
undine
tavern
solipsis
solar
bandage
caviar
modem
votive
uber
nether
pillow
bastion
beggar
hamster
forklift
golem
burrow
navel
portion
damage
bellhop
western
icicle
membrane
dandelion
grace
bulbous
tenticle
recipe
stratus
fork
unicycle
cyclops
barren
cousin
baleful
aqueous
vitreous
bitmous
cardigan
hoisin
fellate
chimaera
sodium
valor
printemps
forlorn
hover
hollow
marigold
carton
bison
chemical
wastrel
colloid
camera
bakery
night
seven
hollow
troubador
efficacious
carrion


See the moon set into the window ledge.

If you watch the film closely, nobody falls from the tree.

It's when the ghosts are quiet I feel the most alone. Give me an opal where all the ghosts go. The opal goes there, at the top of the spine, the mouth of the snake, where the head hangs low. In another life I let the hair grow over my eyes.

When I was young I woke and thought the hair was blood.

You spectres, listen to the music the blood makes. It's my sound in your ears. The moon's the opal and the opal sings in the blood. A tiny bell ringing. An insect who never rests. At night the flowers close like fists. A moth on the stone petals. A heap of moth wings, a libation. A glass bowl of moth wings and water from Mnemosyne's eyes.

But the spirit did not appear.

Nov 16, 2003

It's Sunday night. 10 O'clock. The ghosts love this hour, they do they do they do.

There, put your hand on my hand. Watch the little wedge move around the board. Will you lie to me now? Or is it the spirit who's lying? Feel my hand it's shaking. What to ask them, the ghosts?

I used to turn the volume of the computer all the way up when I went to sleep. Sometime around two or three in the morning the chime would wake me up. A ghost would write to me, "I'm thinking of you. Sunday night is the worst night."

That ghost walked right through the wall. No chime now I just hear all of them scuttle in the walls.

Where do you go when you drift off like that? Where do you go, where do you go?

I want to walk on the back of the ghosts, walk to somewhere. Somewhere. The ghosts' backs are like horses made of molten ice. My bare feet on their backs the ice climbs my spine. My mouth frozen in the shape of a shoulder blade. A body's blade. I can see where it should stretch into wings, I put my mouth there, in the air.

I put my hand on the ghosts' faces. Always, always trying to remember. The white fire makes those lines on my palms. Trying to remember the shape of a face. I remember I remember.

This ghost has sixteen arms: pull me apart and put me back together. The ghosts get into your veins. I can't remember their faces with my palms. The lines make shapes in the air. Where do the voices come from? Where am I going, blades in my mouth? When the ghosts walk through the walls they make doors. I walk through the doors and into new rooms. There are more ghosts in the rooms. The ghosts and doors and rooms unfolding into frothy ether, like a spinal column.

This makes the body of a bigger ghost, a million palms all pressing the faces of all the other ghosts in the world. I try to fall into the ghost mass but I fall into the frothy ether instead.

I remember I remember do you remember? Listen to what the wedge says on the board. What are the names written on the bones of my shoulder blades? A litany of ghosts, a list of ships. I ride the ships into the wine dark sea.

Remember. Where do you go? There are ghosts in the mirrors in the restaraunts. And chiming, chiming. I don't hear the chiming anymore. It's chiming somewhere else.

The ice in my hands and it disappears. My hand alone on the wedge with the little window in it. It just skitters to 'No.'

No.

No.

Ask again later.



Nov 13, 2003

I'm tired of being at work so I think I'll go home now. Five o'clock, shmive o'clock.
Ah, there we go.

Will this work?

And this

Aaron said to try this

SENSELESS POLL (I wish I could do titles on this thing, or polls for that matter).

What is responsible for today's queasy nausea?:

1.) Flu Shot
2.) Duck Turnover
3.) Pesky Psychopharmaceuticals
4.) Years 1972-2003
5.) Too many American Spirit Ultralights before breakfast
A MAN OF MANY TALENTS

How, exactly, is it possible to be simultaneously self-loathing and self-pitying?

Nov 12, 2003

In said poem County shows us the formal elegance which is possible in, and perhaps exclusive to free verse.

There is nothing so succumbing as a wound.
When placed with skill the words fall harmless,

Speak the expectancy of a toddler
Unaware a shot has been fired. Rifle

The two first couplets contrast "wound" and "harmless," forming a sort of reverse rhyme, which is echoed by the second stanza's "toddler" and "Rifle." At which point is the fulcrum of the poem whereby the lovely enjambment of "Rifle" interacts with its own line "Unaware a shot has been fired," but is masterfully disarmed with the "Through the past for bullets." Thus the meaning of "Rifle" flickers between noun and verb, so charged by its object, "bullets."

Through the past for bullets that graze the
Hair on your arms, then speak softly into a radio

Words that sooth people you have not met, climaxes
To lesser scenes in your happy drama.

A similar pattern of an enjambed end word which is acted upon be the preceding line occurs in the penultimate stanza where we have "climaxes," sexualized by "Words that sooth people you have not met," but subsequently neutered by the "To lesser scenes in your happy drama."

My head, your heart, knocked together to
Create bulletproof stars.

The head and the heart (both presumably hard objects) are struck together in the last couplet, producing "bulletproof stars." An absolutely stunning ending following the bullets loosed in the previous lines. The stars are impervious to the wounding elements described prior, but still are the locus of a hurtful act, the collision of the head and the heart, whereby one sees stars. The last word of the first line "wounds" and the last word of the last line "stars" form a neat and charged parenthesis for the poem, the wounds become stars and the stars wounds through a sort of mirroring process, echoed by the largely symmetrical nature of the poem which is arranged around the central axis of "bullets that graze/ The hair of your arm."

Hats off to Mr. County for a "keeper." (No hat pun intended, Mike).

Utterly stunning poem on Mike County's "Yoo Doo Right." Mike County who seems like he should rock, and does rock, forever and ever amen.
Watch those "pumpkin fucking" hits come rolling in.

Overheard in the breakfast line at the Harvard Business School Cafeteria, "Do you do Chai Lattes?"

I find the use of the verb "do" with food in this context to be irksome. It should be reserved for those who are, literally, doing food ("If I had known it was going to be that kind of party...")

I had a roommate once who fucked a pumpkin. After putting it in the microwave, of course. I didn't actually witness the event, but I did note the mysterious disappearance of the pumpkin. I always wanted to ask him if he drew a jack-o-lantern face on it first.

Which is what I would have done. But before or after the microwave?
I need to have a tooth removed. This also makes me somewhat excited, because I am hoping they will give me the tooth when they're done. What a prize that would be. Much cooler than the stupid toothbrushes and toothpaste they normally give you.


I saw a badly mauled copy of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone down on the tracks at Park Street. It looked like it had gotten run over by trains repeatedly for several days.

This gave me a profound sense of satisfaction and well being.

Nov 10, 2003

I need a haircut in a serious way. Like a good haircut, not my usual $10 Great Cuts buzzjob. Anybody know where's a good place to get a haircut around here?

snip

Nov 9, 2003

Let me tell you about ghosts, ghosts.

So I wrote on the book, "May you find your way..." So I sealed the envelope, and heard something crack in space, somewhere else. The clink of gates in my head, the sound of chains scraping rough walls.

Six months caught fire behind me. The spring and summer shooting into the ocean like something falling from the sky. Why the same huge orange moon tonight? Why do the dead flowers all explode at once?

Was it me who named it the ghost city? I won't look back to the archives and watch all of the words in flames. All this moving under so much silence.

I named it the ghost city and thought of the ghosts in her apartment. Some of them glowed in the dark. There was spider in a glass box on the wall. But mostly there were ghosts, ones you could see and ones you couldn't. A severed holographic eye dangled from the keys to her apartment. I don't remember where her apartment was.

All of these words moving under the silence. Give the ghosts names and they will fly away. Some destructive act of speaking, the words catch fire as they leave the mind.

On the bracelet there were scenes from Coney Island in the fifties. I paid too much money for it. When I left the little store I knew I was doomed but I did it anyway. Later in the bathroom I put the bracelet on my own wrist to see how it would look. Her wrists were exactly like mine. I forget the phrases that were on each of the little discs. There was "Elevated Train" and "I [Heart] Coney Island," most of the signs on the disks are gone now, I think. I took a picture of a blue manta ray on one of the stone walls. On the beach she told me there were plastic manta rays in her bathtub. I never saw them, I but I believe that they are there.

Listen up ghosties, this is poetry.

There was a stone rabbit caught in the cement that formed the base of the lighthouse. We were walking from Vineyard Haven. There was an ice cream cone melting on the street and she said that was like death and I didn't ask her what she meant. In front of the wall on the beach I kissed her and the lights went out in New York City. Standing in line for the ferry the mobile phone rang. "I miss you." On the ferry other mobile phones were ringing, little blasts of Beethoven's whatever, chiming bells. People were talking about the lights going out. There were seagulls hovering above the ferry, matching its speed. "The lights are still on in Boston," somebody said, and "What the fuck am I going to do?"

So I found the address on the computer and wrote the name on the envelope. A ghost name that appears everywhere. The way you think you see somebody out of the corner of your eye but they're not there. Were they ever there in the first place, even when they're there in front of you? They're there. Their there. There there.

She was wearing a black dress and we were on the esplanade. She had Coney Island on her wrist then. She said she was afraid and I kissed her. I can't remember what it was like. There were lights on the water and stale Chinese food in a box. She didn't look away when I turned and went out the door she needed sleep and I can never sleep. I turned back and saw her still watching. I saw the ghosts and the monsters behind her. The air conditioner hummed.

"Gethsemane" she said in the email later that week. She saw the word Gethsemane. There was no need to meet her at the airport.

I could see my breath when I went to the mailbox and it swallowed the envelope. "May you find your way."

The ghosts in the confessional box rapping on that funny lattice. I wasn't raised Catholic. I only know this from the movies. Speaking the words the author is dead and the actors turn to specters on the page. The ghosts speak what is verboten. Will someone read this and be angry? I will never know, I can already see the keyboard through my hands.

We punched five holes in the cover and put on the yellow stripe. It was Halloween. The pink dress in the trunk of her car in August was for Halloween she said she said she was going to put blood on it.

I signed my name and didn't recognize it. The mailbox swallowed the envelope, what will happen now? Speaking to ghosts and to silences, the little yellow book went out into the silence.

On the last day there was orange paint on her foot, the same color as the walls of my room. I touched the paint. She was talking about a man playing piano. Coney Island was replaced by pearly shells, she showed me it on her wrist and laughed. She did not look back when the phone rang and she went out the door. I bought a bottle of wine and walked home, it was still hot but August was dying.

I put the photograph of the hot dog stand in the mist in a drawer I don't go in, I put the photo of the manta ray and the severed hand there too. She said the severed hand was the best part of the movie.

An egg came out of the machine with the mechanical parrot. The parrot had an English accent. In the egg was a little top. Another egg produced the same top. I put the top in the drawer with the red checker I found on the beach and the bobble-headed rabbit, too.

"Certainty is always elusive."

Four months ago on the phone message she said "Look at the sky right now it doesn't get any darker than this." It was already dark out when I listened to the message, I tried to remember what the sky looked like at 8:45 but couldn't.

The story itself becomes a myth, a fable. The presocratics, I think, were concerned that the written word would make people forget. They were concerned that the story would get written down on paper and the person writing it would forget.

Nov 7, 2003

Fulcrum Annual Presents:

Friday, November 21, 2003, 7:00

@ Wordsworth Books, Cambridge MA

Joe Green, Jeet Thayil and Mark Lamoureux

"Later in life JOE GREEN decided that he would write about
the big subjects. Sadly, he has forgotten what these are.
Thank God he has discovered a trove of manuscripts left
behind by various personages who have passed over to the
Other Side. Saved just as Yeats was --- however, no woman
named George was involved.

He currently lives in the American Midwest and received the
best sort of literary education at the University of
Minnesota where professors would point to where Berryman
jumped and remark, always, that "he didn't hit the water."

"JEET THAYIL was born in Kerala, India, and educated in
Hongkong, New York and Bombay. In 1998, he returned to New
York, where he received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
His two earlier collections of poetry, Gemini and Apocalypso,
appeared, respectively, in Bombay and London. Jeet Thayil is
married and lives in New York City, where he works as an
editor and writer."

"MARK LAMOUREUX was born in Tolland, Massachusetts, where he
was raised by appliances, mere miles away from the University
of Connecticut where Charles Olson spent his final days. He
received his Bachelor's Degree from Marlboro College in
Marlboro, VT. His work has appeared or is fothcoming in
Jubilat, Lungfull!, Fulcrum, Art New England, Can We Have Our
Ball Back? and other publications. His chapbook, "City/Temple"
was released by Ugly Duckling Presse in November 2003. Another
chapbook to be published by Boston's Pressed Wafer is forthcoming
in the winter of 2003/2004."

Nov 6, 2003

Also whoever made the quiz doesn't seem to grok "you're" vs. "your."

They are the "poor command of the English language happy bunny."
Thanks alot, Tieger.

you suck, and that's sad
you are the "you suck, and that's sad"
happy bunny. your truthful, but can be a bit
brutal.


which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oct 29, 2003

Trying to figure out if "abysmal" or "infernal" best describes my mood.

The rain is pulling the leaves off of the trees. I'm tired and groggy. Last night somebody was fighting, literally physically fighting, at 1AM, it made the whole apartment shake. They must have been bouncing off the walls. Some guy was yelling, "You two stop it now." This went on for like 30 minutes.

I must admit I prefer the fighting to the previous neighbors who would wake me up having loud sex. Make war not love. I mean on a personal level, that is. I'm still a pacifist.

Oct 28, 2003

When stealing cookies from the faculty meeting by putting them in your pants, remember to later remove the cookies from your pants and eat them.

That is, in fact, a Pepperidge Farm Distinctive Mint Milano in my pocket.

I'm not happy to see anyone.
WHERE IS MARK GETTING DRUNK THESE DAYS?

I know you are all dying to know.

*The Sheraton Commander Lounge

*The bowels of Schoenhoff's Foreign Books

*Fulcrum Annual editorial headquarters (e.g. P & K's house)

*My room

Not necessarily in order of frequency.

What a fulfilling and full life I lead. Yep.

Oct 27, 2003

Everybody go to this reading. Thanks.

Monday, October 27

Glyn Maxwell and Katia Kapovich
Blacksmith House Reading Series
56 Brattle in Harvard Square
8:00 PM
$3 Donation.

Copies of Katia's chapbook "Stanzas to the Stairwell" will be available.

Oct 26, 2003

Generally speaking, I refrain from abusing the power of the Site Meter. But please pardon this little digression. I'm not myself these days.

To whoever it was out there searching for "Mark Lamoureux + bees":

What? Bees? Huh? One can only assume that there is another Mark Lamoureux somewhere with some sort of connection to bees. I suppose it must have been somewhat disappointing for the searcher to wind up at this blog which is totally devoid of any bee-related content. Until now, that is.

Or maybe one of you wants to cover me in bees. You know, I might be OK with that. Or maybe its some kind of Sylvia Plath conflation. We all know I don't need any encouragement in that department...

Apologies to the "Mark Lamoureux + bees" searcher if this has caused you any embarassment or duress.

I probably oughta ditch the Site Meter anyway. Though it is interesting to see where folks are getting here from.

Buzz.

Oct 23, 2003

I hereby dub Aaron Tieger "linkmaster" for this link to a quiz that selects poems based on one's mood.

I got the following:

"Oh dear, you're really down in the dumps ... But we understand; we won't tell you to look on the bright side of life, we'll offer you a poem with which to wallow in the depths of depression.


Poor old pilgrim misery

POOR old pilgrim Misery,
Beneath the silent moon he sate,
A-listening to the screech owl's cry,
And the cold wind's goblin prate;
Beside him lay his staff of yew
With withered willow twined,
His scant gray hair all wet with dew,
His cheeks with grief ybrined;
And his cry it was ever, alack!
Alack, and woe is me!

Anon a wanton imp astray
His piteous moaning hears,
And from his bosom steals away
His rosary of tears:
With his plunder fled that urchin elf,
And hid it in your eyes,
Then tell me back the stolen pelf,
Give up the lawless prize;
Or your cry shall be ever, alack!
Alack, and woe is me!

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803 - 1849)"


Oct 22, 2003

Sleep well, Elliot Smith .

Alot I'd like to say, but won't. Or perhaps shouldn't.

I seem to have acquired some sort of spiritual leprosy, I guess.

Oct 16, 2003

Thanks to aaron for the nifty link that you can use to see what happened and who was born on one's birthday. Though I'm not sure I wanted to know. Astrologically I guess I'm in some way similar to Kurt Cobain and Patty Hearst!

-Ahem-

Who woulda thunk?

108's next exhibit, BEAST, will run from October 16 to November 1. OPENING RECEPTION this Friday
October 17 from 6-8pm. See Melissa Davenport's freaky cats, Mary Kenny's faux-taxidermy and Carly
Weaver's unstoppable lovebirds. Visit gallery108.com for a sample.

BEAST
Melissa Davenport, Mary Kenny and
Carly Weaver
October 16 - November 1, 2003
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday October 17, 6-8pm
Contact: Kate at 617-230-4284 or kateledogar@yahoo.com


Oct 12, 2003



SMALL ROOMS

Spark in the black globe
of a rabbit's eye. The walls
bleed black ooze.

Huge hedge dwarfs a raised
ranch, a world chloroformed &

pinned on a wax background,
piles of exotic magazines
collect dust in the basements
of a dumb age.

The horseheaded man
is afraid to pay the paperboy:

The hairs on my arms are alive
with blips of bioluminescence,

I'm a glowing blob in the
crushing dark of the very deep sea.

I feel the lawn eddy away underfoot,
I hear the thrum of the drums,

A blighted confidant in a cathedral
of moss. Silence invoice.

Equity of compressed bone,
some pact of gravity anchors

my shoes to these grim floors.
Come to this bonfire
that illumines a Braille of grunts,

solder soldier hats & goggles
to see the gems that grow from

eyes, salt crystals up a banal
string.

I am of no people.

Dark, fragrant: the nerve-netted
flower that forms
the night's singing mouth.



FEEDBACK MIRROR

A series of closed
emitters, in proximity
causing feedback:
I remain, unfed,

unwholesome all along
the axis
of a mirror:
shut down
the left side
seizure horse my
Grand Mal mare
ma grand-mere
ma cherie
ma main droite
the long night
of cobbled groans, miscues

all the long night
I burnout
& then sweep
the ashes
myself.

Have not been posting much. All for the best really, folks. Those laptop DJs like the sound of a broken record, but we're all analog aren't we?

Will post a couple poems from circa June or so. June, October, it's all the same...


Oct 9, 2003


Cleave the dead
thing

Make head way

headspace

fills with broken birds

*
the moth an asterisk

hits the windshield
Congrats to Shin Yu on her book!

Oct 7, 2003

Pardon my asking, but why, exactly, are you guys reading this stuff? Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate it. But I find it inexplicable. I don't know how to program those quiz thingees, but here you go, punk rock style:

I read <[[[[[[-[[[[0{:}0]]]]-]]]]]]> because of:

A.) Voyeurism.
B.) Catharsis.
C.) Morbid fascination.
D.) It's my job, and I have a few questions for you regarding your whereabouts on...
E.) Ever since my AOL search for "Masonite Siding" turned up your blog, you've been lending new meaning to my otherwise pathetic and empty life.
Today's Harvard Business School International food station offering:

"America's Heartland."

Keep it up, you guys are KILLING me...

Oct 6, 2003

OK, OK.

Go Red Sox.

Can I have my soul back now, Boston?
Waxing Amish on quietude, Boston, aesthetics, schools in general. Watching this one from the sidelines watching myself disappear.

Stephen Owen said something that, although it is in the context of a defense of translation, I'd like to put forth here.

"It's only poetry."

We all have to pay the bills, we all have to stay sane and stay alive, we all have to mend our broken hearts. Why squabble?

When tricking the cyclops in The Odyssey, there's a pun where Odysseus is asked his name and he says "I'm nobody." Which in greek is "Oudeis," thus it forms a pun on Odysseus. The lesson for poets, I think, from one of our seminal western texts:

I'm nodody. I am from nowhere. No home no school no love no body and I'm just like you.

Oudeis.

Oct 3, 2003

You know it's bad when the lunchlady asks you "Are you OK?"


You searchers, what are you searching for? I've been here all along...

Oct 2, 2003

OK, lately I'm feeling like I'm 16 again. On that note, here's the first (and most probably the last) "Top Ten" list to be seen on this blog.

Top 10 song lyrics with which I've been morbidly obsessed in the past 3 weeks. (Excluding "Waltzing Matilda," which has already been discussed.)


10.) "Your dedication makes me proud,
yeah you move me like a mushroom cloud."

Versus, "White Power Porch"

9.) "I have seven faces,
thought I knew which one to wear,
and I'm sick of spending these lonely nights
training myself not to care."

Interpol, "NYC"

8.) "Bottle on the nightstand,
I count disasters on my free hands now."

Jawbreaker, "Ashtray Monument"

7.) "I rode down to the tracks,
thinking that they might sing to me,
but they just stared back,
naked, trainless and black as night."

Jawbreaker, "Condition Oakland"

6.) "Theres a dream in my brain that just won't go away,
it's been stuck there since it came a few nights ago.
And I'm standing on a bridge, in the town where I lived
as a kid with my Mom and my brothers,
and then the bridge disappears, and I'm standing on air
with nothing holding me,
and I hang like a star, fucking glowing in the dark
for all those starving eyes to see."

Bright Eyes, "Something Vague"

5.) "The summer's gone,
but alot goes on forever."

Leonard Cohen, "I Can't Forget"

4.) "Well she said she'd stick around
until the bandages came off
but these mamas boys just didn't know when to quit
and Matilda asks the sailors are those dreams
or are those prayers
so just close your eyes, son
and this won't hurt a bit."

Tom Waits, "Time, time, time."

3.) "Ain't it amazing how quickly amazing things can die
You know that you bring me down
You know that you wear me out
You know that you ring me like a dinner bell going south
You know that you wring me dry"

Silkworm, "Swings"

2.) "Maybe there's a God above
but all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone
who outdrew you."

Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"
(as rendered by John Cale)


1.) "All I ask of you
is one last kiss.
Here's my heart, here's a knife,
and darling please don't miss."

Karl Hendricks Trio, "The Last Thing You'll Ever Do
for Me"


Oct 1, 2003

I can connect most of the song with places and events from my own soft city. (I really did lose my St. Christopher). Well, except for the stabbing part. These days people think you're kidding. Ah, we're all so fucking ironic.

"No, I don't want your sympathy."
As I consider it, I realize what a completely amazing piece of work said song is.

It's all wounded soft city, elegant and pathological:

"Now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinaman and the cold-blooded signs
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows
Go, waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me"

Attempting to avoid bad thoughs (I must not think..., etc. etc.) by trying to imagine a cinematic version of Tom Waits' "Tom Traubert's Blues," with myself as the protagonist, of course.

Vacillating between bilious pomp and whiny vernacular, I know.

Great, it's October 1.

Smoking in bars now joins the everexpanding list of what is not happening in my life.

Got in to work this morning, looked at the screen and realized that I got up and left last night in the middle of typing a word. 'Protecting' actually. On the screen was "prote."

Mind you, it's not like the clock hit 5:00 and I jumped out of my chair and out the door. I usually lollygag around pretending that I'm not really waiting until 5:30 when I can get dinner in the cafeteria (I eat 3 meals a day in that cafeteria!) Which is what I did last night. Nope. At some point circa 5:20 or whenever it was I decided that NOW was the time to go, and the latent "cting" had to wait until this morning.

Sep 30, 2003

THE END OF THE WORLD

Y'all realize that this is the last night one can smoke and drink concurrently in Cambridge, don't you. Seems a shame to waste it. Who's up for nailing the nail into the coffin of the public consumption of coffin nails?

Sep 29, 2003

Long time no see, spectres.

Overwhelming urge to travel. Like a membrane, the soft city can become diseased, riddled with sores and small cuts. It whines and shudders like the featherless, vulnerable thing that it is. The calendar is superimposed upon it like those wax pencil lines the surgeon draws to plan his incisions. At certain points there seems to be nothing left to do but walk away. No panacea for the ill soft city. Nothing to do but kill it to end its suffering, or to turn away from it and wait until it becomes healthy again, in a changed state. In the meantime its pathetic groans keep one up at night.

Am remembering a line from the execrable David Lynch version of "Dune." Basso profundo voice speaking the words "Travelling without moving." Folding space, as they say. I remember the Guild Navigator character, something like a cross between a fetus and an anklosaurus. I don't like to think about monsters these days. A dark time, when somebody sets the ghosts against you. The ghosts my hearties. Pitcher-plant spit in my eyes and sand in my mouth. I need to go somewhere with scaly trees and darkeyed women.

Instead I'll go get lunch at the goddamned cafeteria and smoke a cigarette. Travelling without moving. Somebody give me a pill for that.

Sep 28, 2003

Like the weather, poetry readings at WORDSWORTH
BOOKS are prone to sudden manifestations.
Manifesting TODAY, Sunday 9/28 at 5PM are:

Sarah Mangold {in a special ENCORE reading from
9/27, clapclapclapclapclap}

Mark Lamoureux

and Dorothea Lasky

C'mon peeps, it's Sunday, it's raining. We'll be
more fun than "The Simpsons."

Sep 24, 2003

GONE FISHING

Sep 18, 2003

Today's "International" offering at the Harvard Business School cafeteria:

"Hudson Valley"
For some reason, my work phone display reads:

"END OF ANSWERED CALLS."

What else does my phone know about me?
108 GALLERY HOSTS NEDIM KUFI'S FIRST EXHIBIT IN THE UNITED STATES

September 24 - October 12, 2003

View the artist creating the exhibit on site at 108: September 24 and 25

Opening Reception: Friday September 26, 6-9pm

Contact: Kate at 617-441-3833 or kateledogar@yahoo.com


Iraqi born artist Nedim Kufi (www.nkufi.com, www.daftar.nl) grew up and studied sculpture and etching in Baghdad and went on to study ceramics and graphic design in the Netherlands, where he has lived since the mid-90's. Kufi has won numerous awards and participated in exhibits in Beirut, the Netherlands, Jordan, Qater, Morocco, Paris, Damascus, South Korea, Germany and Yugoslavia.

108 is honored to host his first solo exhibition in the United States.

Kufi will be exhibiting his 2-D stretched paper and ink works as well as his flash video series BMK, the politically themed Bad Man Kind project. Please visit Kufi's websites or www.gallery108.com for images and more information.
"My one star is dead; the black sun of sadness
Eclipses the constellation of my guitar."

-Gerard de Nerval

Sep 15, 2003

CARVE, Boston's newest poetry magazine, celebrates the release of our first
issue with a hugeass reading!

Saturday, September 20
7 pm.
Wordsworth Books
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA

Featured: Gregory Ford, Joseph Torra, Dorothea Lasky, Mark Lamoureux, Anna
Moschovakis, Aaron Tieger, Christina Strong, Noah Eli Gordon/Nick Moudry/Travis
Nichols/Eric Baus, and Sara Veglahn.

Sep 12, 2003


September fire
ring: taffied
lungs &
dolor blurred eyes.
Refulgent keening
turns on
a dime.

Cut the lock with my own bone.

She don't love me &
Johnny Cash is dead.

Sleep well, Mr. Cash.
Love Is A Burning Thing
And It Makes A Fiery Ring
Bound By Wild Desire
I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

CHORUS:
I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

The Taste Of Love Is Sweet
When Hearts Like Ours Meet
I Fell For You Like A Child
Oh, But The Fire Went Wild

CHORUS
I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

Sep 11, 2003

Thanks everyone, it has really helped.

My thoughts are with all of you today.

Sep 10, 2003

OK, my ghosties. I know you are all out there, floating around in the ether. This ghost has been smacked hard by the material world. Drop me a line and say hello if you're out there. Real quick-like. This ghost would be eternally grateful (use link below)...

Boo

Sep 9, 2003

I'm actually looking forward to going to the dentist today, in some bizarre way. There's definitely something wrong with me these days...

Sep 8, 2003


Bug whir subsiding
into ravaged sunfucked

pallor ghouled
by some winsome somnambula:
petit mal coma
bungaloes
aglint with
tricked grandeur.

Snap a pinion,
nerves flash,

apex cowbody ride on
Rider 31

"by the way, you were
the sun

scratched in the errata
close the tome
this chapter's written
on smoke.

Sep 6, 2003

Pardon me, everybody else (who's results I've seen posted) got "Lustful" except Rizzo, who's in limbo.

Ah yes, limbo, like a day at the beach it was...

Say hello to the Dire Wraiths. (Do any of you remember "ROM the Spaceknight"? He had a device which would banish his foes, the Dire Wraiths (who looked like little Cthulhus), to limbo...)
Bear is starting to smell a little bit less like garbage. Maybe I won't have to sleep alone tonight!
Great, everybody else gets "Lust," but I'm just a heretic.

"You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell."



The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Very High
Level 7 (Violent)Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Moderate

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Sep 5, 2003

Wow, never though *I'd* be the one who gets to say that...
Bear will have to sleep on the floor until he gets cleaned up.
Marshaling Teddy Bear Resources, A Guide for Managers
I was going to go throw him in the wash, but there are some B-school students in the laundry room.

They might try to steal him.

Or sell him real estate.
Bear smells like garbage.
I think it's a him.

Fuck, of COURSE it's a him.

I will refer to him as Bear for the sake of convenience.
I've given him a name, but it's a secret.
I found a teddy bear in the trash!
I first encounted Alan Dugan's work in what was Marlboro College's excuse for a "Contemporary American Poetry" class (this was 1992). I remember liking his work at the time, but mostly because it had so much drinking in it. Can't say that I have thought about it (Dugan's work) for many years.

I suppose it's an accomplishment of a sort, for a poet to die of something besides a heartattack induced by hard living, an overdose, or suicide.

Goodbye, Mr. Dugan. Sleep well.

Sep 4, 2003


Four miles
over the basilica

note how she
traverses
the isthmuses

A longing
to be smudged

Distance pills
& bloodless
resolution

Since there are monsters
you should prolly
give the monsters
names



Empiricism
loaded falsehood
of dusty skies

& founderling
basso profundo
reckoning
not wraith spasms
nor travesties of skin

Bottlenecked
auroras

Facile temporary
shelter a dropout
facility

A pointed rumor, forked
trellis where
coaxed tendrils

approximate scars

Hammer air
diluted placid
forget-me-not
lure

Tepid blaspheme
forgetting how
to spell
better fiends
burrow
into largesse

Hop the train
entrails
entreatied
to far off
black spark

wrestling with encryption
there's never any
end to
the night

Sep 1, 2003

What did I do this weekend? Well, Christopher Rizzo and I wrote this exquisite corpse together at Charlie's kitchen on Friday night. The rest of the weekend more or less follows suit.


GRIM LITTLE

I.

Xylophone networks
for bruised cacophony, digits,
pick-up--say Humbuckers cannot
sate the hunchback now peerless
I's for dignities, mercies, violas
in gravel diaphragms, sickly blues
in this city of Dis, disasters Cambridge-styled
can drag a corpse to water but
can't make it Wallace Stevens's
Pilsner Urquell, a career in safety-nets
brandishing bouquets of wax zeroes,
trauma stipend & distressed
hambone ergonomics in C flat
sea changes, wanton muddy eddies,
feces river sly Styx night
wears a black hat, a blank harangued
basque in a leper brothel,
sediment broth to sup and ring a bell
to let them know you're coming:
city of dreadful daylight & dim
hours read full,
dead poets ghosting loam, ready
for sutures, a burning rhizome
in a vacuum.
O city, he'll crank this zeitgeist through the ringer,
dwell outside the music box
with the faux leopards & dreadful trees.

II.

Grimmy asks who put
nettles in the Cheerios? Ratchet-up
a requiem for Macintoshes
or perhaps eyes without apples,
her eyes of potatoes agog with
grog, fog thickened. "Somebody
get this guy some Prozac,"
Grimmy gets sugar pills, fustigated,
one lump or three?
For good measure six and dosed with sex
indeed, a "sexed up" resume, arm chair
despot lousy with sloth & ambition--
two roads diverge and Grim Little
equivocates a lot
and there's a noose in the median &
karyatid floozies. G:
is that a hand grenade or are you just
ambivalent?
Pull the pin and swallow your wallow-pill
and go dancing with the
will o'wisps: there's a
door in the swamp dontchaknow,
leeches led by suckers, saps,
sanguine guardians of destination,
so that:
the lobby shall be emblazoned:
"GRIM LITTLE SLEPT HERE"


III.

Sun-flare equinox armies
advance on his cubicle, cuticles
chewed away:
Here come the suits and a vague narrativity,
a nativity scene for
the infant brigand:
"ONCE IN a SYCAMORE
GRIM LITTLE was
framed"
Pinned gold-leaf, a little mug
shadow-boxed beneath museum glass,
a gloss of latency, prodigal
stutterer & wire-framed
by infamy, Grim inked in headlines,--
the more expensive lawyer aptly argues well.
But what
did Grim do?
What with the brobdignagian head rush &
the irksome police skirting
the perimeter of
meter swiftly, shouting Breaker of iambs!
Imperative aperitifs, motifs, blank
motives, evocative votives and a wish for
some dynamo lachrymary:
it was called dead, but it moves!
Cry cry there is no story
worth the telling.

Aug 29, 2003

Today's offering at the Harvard Business School cafeteria's "International Station":

Regional American.



I love Harvard.
Updated the links. In order to keep the links manageable, I'm linking to sites that appear in my site meter referals section, which I figure is a good way to link to people who link to me. If you don't appear on the list, it just means that nobody's clicked the link to get to this site (can't say I blame 'em) and I am generally clueless. Apologies to anyone who may feel left out or overlooked. Booze, food, poems and sex are generally good ways to get my attention. FYI.

Aug 28, 2003

I now hold in my hands the new issue of Carve, edited by Aaron Tieger and lemmetellya, this baby is the shit, as the kids say. Not an off moment from cover to cover. Contact Aaron, give him money, get a copy. Get 2 copies and save one to sell on eBay in 10 years for the money for the drugs we'll all undoubtedly need by then.
Sign me up for this:


In New Operation, Heart Removed, Repaired and Returned

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2003; 3:45 PM


Ugh.

Aug 27, 2003

I guess it falls upon me to give the details of the Mars-viewing party, since I was the only Bostonian/Cantabridgian who showed (besides expatriated ones). A fine time were had by J. Dunn, S. Dunn, M. County, The Fabulous Lucy, A. Cook, J. Cook, G. Cook, Zack who's last name I don't know, P. Dowd and A. Dowd. S. Dunn made the, in my opinion, correct observation that the White Stripes have, in fact, only one song: "Seven Nation Army." The pasta salad and gazpacho were, according to theme, out of this world. J. Cook showed me how to pull off Voltron's legs.

Amanda conducted a taste test in which is was determined that there is no discernable difference between the Mars bar and the Milky Way. Even to my discerning palette. Milky Way Midnight, however, is another story entirely. It being the most relevant bar in question as the sky itself was obscured by clouds, thus Mars missing from the sky much in the way that almonds appear now to be missing from the Mars bar. In their classic "I Need a Mars Bar," the Undertones specifically mention "googles" (slang for almonds, apaprently) in the list of ingredients which appear in the Mars bar. However, there were no almonds to be found.

I threw some chestnuts for J.B, which he returned. I threw some slimy wood pieces for J.B., which he returned. I did not throw what appeared to be a bug in some advanced state of decay.

P. Dowd beat everyone at pool. We agreed that "Steeltown" is Big Country's crown jewel. Mars came out for a few minutes around midnight. People wondered why we are so afraid (not of Mars, mind you, but life in general). This made me tired, so then I went to bed.

Aug 25, 2003

Orgiastic sparrow pinions
tearing at a bagel parcel

yards away
in the pit the punk kids
are in love

red star gone out over
the smoothest
morning in weeks

no word from you for days
the world advances
in a determined way
VENEZUELA NAMES TINY NEW PLANET AFTER RAIN GOD

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Huya, the rain god in Venezuelan Wayuu Indian culture, has been granted a place beside his counterparts Jupiter, Mars and Venus.

Venezuelan astronomers led by physicist Ignacio Ferrin have named the frozen planet 2000 EB173 -- which they discovered in March 2000 -- after the deity.

The planet, which is beyond Pluto and takes 256 years to orbit the Sun, must be named after a mythological god under guidelines set by the International Astronomical Union, Ferrin told Reuters late on Wednesday.

In March, after determining its orbit, the Venezuelan scientists baptized the light-red planet Juya but later changed the name to Huya to avoid phonetic confusion in the English pronunciation of the name.

"We wanted to make sure it had the connotations of a Venezuelan indigenous god," Ferrin said.

The scientist said that there likely was no life on Huya's surface, where temperatures reach 292 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The planet has a diameter of around 435 to 466 miles.

Ferrin, a professor at the University of the Andes, said he felt like explorer Christopher Columbus discovering uncharted lands when his team at the Center of Astronomical Investigations came across the planet.

"I don't think we can see it, but science indicates that we cannot be alone in the universe. It's like thinking there is only one elephant in the jungle," he said.