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

Um...OK...

HASH(0x87da68c)
Idol


The ULTIMATE personality test
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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?
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