Leon

I realized that I haven't thought much about going back to Marlboro. Perhaps because it doesn't feel terribly real. I don't know if it will feel real, even when I'm there. I was in Brattleboro for a very long time; when I left, I did not look back. Did not remain in contact with my close friends there, did not even think about the place much after I had gone. I rarely write about Brattleboro now, a few odd poems in 29 Cheeseburgers but that's about it. It is strange, though, to look back and think about how alive I felt there. The place was full of its own pain, as any place is, but that place felt inhabited, like I was inhabiting it and inhabiting myself when I was there. I had an identity. People touched me. I was human. I don't feel particularly alive or human here. I don't so much inhabit Boston as I haunt it. The ghosts were there in Vermont, but they were all around me. Here, now, I'm one of them. I don't feel especially like "I" am going back "there" because bit by bit "I" ceases to exist, or at least the I that existed when I lived there, and the "there" has ceased to exist as well. It is not the same place I left, the place I left has ceased to exist in the same way that the self that existed there has ceased to exist. It will be like dreaming of that place. It's curious how we rarely see ourselves in dreams, but when we do, there's always a reason. In a dream one has no body, because in that space bodies are irrelevant. We are made corporeal for moments, when it is important, sometimes it is just the body remembering itself. Or the mind remembering the body. Sometimes I look at this thing my mind inhabits and I wonder just what it is. A vessel of some kind, or some sort of vestigial organ. It still acts like it always has, perhaps a little slower, but I know that it will react in the expected way to the usual stimuli. I don't know what it will do returning to that place. Will I suddenly begin to be the person I was when I left? I have no particular emotions as regards that person. A stranger. Would I talk to him at a bar? Probably not. I'm not interested in my own stories anymore. After so many years in bars, you hear alot of stories. I'm not sure I'm interested in stories of any kind anymore. Endings are mostly predictable.

I like to take photographs of running water because I like to prove to myself that something random is still capable of happening. But I suppose even the water has a pattern.

By the rules of narrative, I'm supposed to feel something going back to this place. But I don't. Or rather, intellectually I think it's an interesting idea, and I like the idea of bringing my words back to the place where probably many things started. But the nature of the place has no meaning. I lived with a woman. I was a photographer. I had long hair. I was a vegetarian. I had rings in my ears and in my nose. I worked in a record store. I taught photography to kids from an insane asylum. None of these things has any meaning to me anymore. I might have been someone else. They may have happened to someone else.

It's late and I'm not altogether certain what my point here is. Ultimately, I suppose I don't have one. I have no point, no body. I'm a white word painted on a white surface. I rarely recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

I'm excited to stay in the hotel I once lived across from. Now I am one of those strangers in that hotel. My own ghost will watch me from across the street. We won't recognize each other. I have no time for you, ghost, and no love either.

I am curious, though, but I'm not sure about what. You look at your own hand in the dim light and wonder what it's for. You kick the wall and wonder if it will hurt. Perhaps something there will have some kind of meaning, a message I wrote to myself for the future, when I've forgotten everything. But I'm not sure I speak the language anymore.

Areola mux murk

Cataloging the inventory for the 108 Yart Sale Indie Bookfair I feel like a kid in a candy store. Except with spreadsheets.

Lots and lots of great stuff, if you are in Boston May 1 & 2, you owe it to yourself to come and take a look at these books and give your money to your friends and heroes.

And bring me some coffee. And maybe flirt with me. But more importantly, COME BUY BOOKS!

On its way.

AUBERGINE

Raw meat

or unrusted blood

the furor of 

a hollow     copse

of darks blushed

sanguine; selenium

shadow-tone night

seen thru eyes beet-

veined by purple pinot's

vinestains or an 

angel's mouth, handjob

in the vineyard

     crystal streak of

blood's brother     the deeper

plants the heavy

ichor-filled

eggplant-skinned     no sepia

no nectarine     surly phantom

who yanks  O Aubergine

Aubergine

Aubergine

The comments field keeps disappearing. I haven't removed it, I think there's just something wrong with the Haloscan servers.

Hey, FACTIVA has some literary magazines. [Evil Laugh] BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

As if I didn't abuse this job enough...

Blogger is irksome today.

I'm thrilled to be a part of Runaway Spoon Press's anthology of pwoermds Ampersand Sqaured. I'm a big fan of pwoermds, and this is a fantastic anthology. The size itself is satisfying, approximately the size of a book of postcards, with the pwoermds in a pleasing bold font. Reminds me also of flashcards from kindergarten (learning English) or high school (learning French); I suppose this constitutes "learning English" as well.

I'm a big fan of pwoermds. I like that they are elemental, reducing the dynamics of the word to one of the smallest possible units, they draw our attention to the true pawns, the true building blocks of this act of poetry: the words themselves. These works become our occidental ideographs, working sometimes visually, sometimes upon the context of the mark in relation to other marks, or echoing other marks; they are to our language what those mythic "Chinese" characters described (inaccurately) by Fenollosa are. The dynamics of the works function in a similar fashion:

In this Chinese shows its advantage. Its etymology is constantly visible. It retains the creative impulse and process, visible and at work. After thousands of years the lines of metaphoric advance are still shown, and in many cases actually retained in the meaning. Thus a word, instead of growing gradually poorer and poorer as with us, becomes richer and still more rich from age to age, almost consciously luminous. Its uses in national philosophy and history, in biography and in poetry, throw about it a nimbus of meanings. These centre about the graphic symbol. The memory can hold them and use them. The very soil of Chinese life seems entangled in the roots of its speech. The manifold illustrations which crowd its annals of personal experience, the lines of tendency which converge upon a tragic climax, moral character as the very core of the principle--all these are flashed at once on the mind as reinforcing values with an accumulation of meaning which a phonetic language can hardly hope to attain. Their ideographs are like blood-stained battle flags to an old campaigner. With us, the poet is the only one for whom the accumulated treasures of the race-words are real and active. Poetic language is always vibrant with fold on fold of overtones, and with natural affinities, but in Chinese the visibility of the metaphor tends to raise this quality to its intensest power. -From The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.

In the pwoermds, we can see that evolution of English words, as they copulate with each other and with graphical, concrete elements to form mutated signs.

An informative essay by Geof Huth traces the history of the pwoermd and comments on the works in the anthology. He speaks about the demonization of pwoermds, and minimalist art in general by those who fail to see that any work of art is an organism or a compound, made up of a system of cells or molecules. The minimalist is more of a chemist than a sculptor, engaging the materials at their most base level. Indeed, in the case of the pwoermds, the minimalist is an alchemist, fusing sometimes unrelated, sometimes related units into new forms, creating chimeras, mules and tangelos.

I have deliberately not mentioned any of the pwoermds here in the hopes that the reader will go to the anthology itself to see them. For locals, I'll have a few copies at the Indie Bookfair at the Yart Sale in Somerville this weekend, otherwise, you can contact Geof Huth by way of his blog in order to order a copy...

I wait for a voice like rain
on an umbrella, the silver april weather
rushing like molten glass to
the speaking fissure where harp
strings stretch as sutures, solemn
& the white darts fall
where they may--a dark face
backlit, harboring the terror
of words: burns eyes when read
this necronomicon my heart holds
burnished secrets, my poison
idols: a little ghost
collects in the damp lamplight the green
hairs on my barren arms make a banyan
tree. Some wasted thing, a letter
in a bottle in the hull of
the Flying Dutchman: tiny metal balls
in the bloodstream are all that's
left of that adventurer, no dry
season, a shadow tells a story
to the votive candle: I might've forgot
myself in you, remember my arms
as if they were alive, a cage wrought
with jade holds a canary face-
up, I named this constellation
for you before all
those suns went out.

Have been noticing an inordinate number of things that smell like wet dog lately.

Geof Huth speaks to the visual in Hayden Carruth, Shin Yu Pai's "De Stijl" and "Equivalence" and my "City/Temple" on the Visualizing Poetics blog.

This is a favorite topic of mine, so it is very nice to have someone addressing it in my work, and the work of colleagues. Shin Yu's "De Stijl" broadside by anchorite press is beautiful, in case you haven't seen it.

Hopefully Anchorite will have some copies of it at the Yart Sale. If not, you may be able to contact Shin Yu Pai herself for copies.

My boss has cancer. Can there please be some good news sometime for once. Seriously. This is just getting crazy.

Sona Books happily presents four chapbooks for spring 2004.

___


Shirley Shirley by Alicia Askenase

Analfabeto/An Alphabet by Ellen Baxt

snapshot by Jennifer Firestone

The Fit by Joanna Sondheim

___


Available by subscription.
2 chapbooks in May, 2 in June.
Visit www.sonaweb.net to read excerpts.

Send $20 to Jill Magi/Sona Books at
7825 Fourth Avenue, F10
Brooklyn, NY 11209

___


Questions? Email Jill at jillmagi@earthlink.net.

The Thomas of "Leon Thomas Live in Berlin" track #3 "Umbo Weti," 1970, at the height of his power, his voice like a clear bell: the spirits warbling there like a human foghorn, an ibex outrunning panthers and singing!

I also got a haircut. I'm not sure how I feel about the haircut. I opted to go for my usual $10 job at La Flamme Barbershop because I spent $30 on the Thomas recrods instead of getting a haircut at a sa-lohn like I promised myself. Oh well, I suppose ultimately it doesn't matter anyway given that the only person who spends any significant amount of time staring at my head is me and I'm a pretty tough customer.

OK, so I didn't make it to the Lamont Room today, but I did find two Leon Thomas records at, of all places, Tower. So now it's me & Leon tonight. Could be worse.

Listened to the Cash/Strummer "Redemption Song" this morning and have had it stuck in my head all day. Again, could be worse.

Time to drown my sorrows in coffee. Unfortunately, sorrows seem to be fairly adept swimmers in anything but booze. I feel like Bill Murray in Caddyshack, except instead of gophers they are sorrows. How's that for an allegory?

Very quiet in blogland today. I'm quiet myself. Perhaps the exhaustion of the week. The quest I've assigned myself for the weekend is to go to the Lamont Poetry Room in Harvard University's Widener Library, since I have access to those hallowed halls by way of my HBS staff id card (although I'm not allowed to bring visitors, only "officers" can do that...). Am curious to see the extent of the collection. Depending on the hospitableness of the environs, it could be an interesting place to hang out, since I'm assuming the whole place has got to be a WiFi hotspot...

Yo, kudos to Da Ass Grabba for this dope link .

Now I'd just like to take a moment to give a shout-out to all my posse. Much love and respect to: Sweet African, Old Bull Dodga, Head Fish, Tree Trunk Jamaican, Sweet Chimpanzee, Phat Indian, Supa-Hard Guatemalan, Crouching Baller, Loose Shrinky Nutz, White Mofo Tree Hugga, Good-ass Killa, Supa Crab Whacka, Green Egg Crab Whacka, Da Lumpynutz, White Mofo Cop Killa, and anyone I forgot.

Peace out, from Old Pee Hands!

Midnight: Ian & Leon

Hi, Mom

What do you think, should I use this one for my internet personals ad?

Spam Studies

I know the spam thing is getting old, but this one is just too good:


From: "Medallion R. Basting" Add to Address Book
To: "Mark"
Subject: Mark, medication for you
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 08:31:20 -0700

Ave! :)
Live as you wish your kids would.
Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker the machine is fast, accurate and stupid.

Mark, cheapest medications around.
http://socialized.sder4f.com/g73/index.php?id=g73 ecotypes
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms -- will it return to my body when they scatter?
Nothing is so soothing to our self esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.

Each day split in two, the day and its penumbra. This is the part where I'm alone. Living diurnally, give me two names: the one that is called & the one that is never, ever spoken. The basin fills with glowing blue water. I'm no match for the tusks of the world. I cower mostly before literature. Before literature & the face in the mirror. The feet of those crows, an ocean of hair. My room fills with toenail clippings. They look like the moon tonight. I don't give a damn. When even the sacred wine is my enemy. Can't buy a Jag with all the dead poets in the world, or get no satisfaction. Even that's not sexy here. A monk who loses his god becomes a medium. I move the table with my feet because you'd never believe me what the spirits are really doing.

Google doesn't seem to translate what is evidently the spanish word for "bloggers" but instead leaves it as "blogueros." Which to my mind is much better.

Rock on, blogueros!

Am having a fine time reading Rodrigo's blog by way of the Google Spanish-to-English translation engine. It seems to do a halfway decent job. It is very interesting to read passages by Olson, Creeley, etc. having been translated into Spanish and then back to English by the Google daemons. Not to slight the content originally in Spanish, but being a near-monoglot I can only note the effect of the translation engine on texts I am somewhat familiar with in English.

Glad We Cleared that One Up

Study: Poets Die Younger than Other Writers

"For the report, published in the Journal of Death Studies, Kaufman studied 1,987 dead writers from various centuries from the United States, China, Turkey and Eastern Europe. He classified the writers as fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and nonfiction writers. He did not study the causes of death."

Will someone please hurry up and make the porno version of "The Passion?"

They can call it "The Action of the Christ."

I bet "Oh yeah, harder!" sounds good in Aramaic.

Thanks.

You trolls want fresh, orginal content? You want something non-nepotistic, non-anti-intellectual, non-elitist, non personal, non-depressing, non-political, non-name-calling, non-partisan, non-gendered that follows the beat of its own drum, free of quizzes, polls and solipsis?

I give you this. Courtesy of Nick Piombino...

The culture war reaches the archives. I suspect we'll be hearing from AT about this.

Maudite Productions

This summer and beyond, I am going to be curating poetry events for Gallery 108. In order to keep the poetry event entity separate from the gallery entity, I have given it the name "Maudite Productions," I'll be listing the events on the Maudite Productions blog, the first of which is the Indie Bookfair at the Gallery 108 1st Annual Yart sale. See the blog for details.

There will be more events in May, June, July and August, which I will post the details to as they solidify.

Girlwithpen reports that [[[[[[-[[[[0{:}0]]]]-]]]]]] comes up as the number one entry for a google search for "my heart breaks and and blood dripps [sic] through my eyes."

I did note said search in the sitemeter.

I don't even want to know what the prize is.

Apparently someone in Central Europe used the Google translation engine to translate this blog into German.

This makes me very, very happy.

NO EXORCIST 'TILL ARBOR DAY


Sister Goldenhair & Steamboat Annie
ain't your friends no more-- Bad Sneakers
in the Toyota Celica, your lips all around
that codeine, you came when
the ghost hit the windshield, spun out
beside Kowloon, bombastic in the fuck
motels, a mouthful of SPF 15 & to hell
with your parochial ivy & your Derrida &
the historic first block of Marlborough Street
where the dawn dragged me nonplussed
as that equinox & I was never your
dead God nor your ballgagged IT
professional, following a snake outside
the Church of Christian Science, not your Iceland
nor your Munch-tongue, the soft white sand
could never guess why the front broke
the sky & the creep jerking off in
the bombed-out dancehall, they moan
for your sinister devices, Zombi
Mardi-gras, elephantine All Souls' fresco
cascading Gin-blight, Blood Sugar
Baby I cried for you all winterlong,
your spectre, your dirty Heathcliff, no
fire on the mountain, no cigarettes: fodder
for your analyst, take your phantom thighs
& let me be, the fire ants climb the chakras &
I had to leave the brown light & the
bar murk where I borrowed my own name
to pay the boatman, prodigal footsoldiers
of that flatlined rapture, the coy
waitresses remember me & how
dismally you disappeared your
alligator sweat into those hallowed
halls of better men & the flaccid canon:
I beg you Coney Island, I beg
you Vineyard Haven I beg you
Virginia get your soft disasters
out of my sun.

SUN IN THE HOUSE OF CANCER

Now with the haughty imps going
commando in the saltmarshes, recall

how a walking pattern held the polychromatic
map of glass shards. Don't touch me, I'm

the Prince of Ghosts; the unconsoled hovered
between those breasts, a couple

drops on the white tip of black Chucks,
tongues darting behind the frog-

green miniature houses; she gave away
those baubles, the rocket

pauses in ether just before
it starts to tumble, a pinwheel

for the horny gulf & the thin clouds
will not avenge me. A cherry tomato

bursts, the wheat fries
in the fields. Rihaku:

gonna get me a shotgun & go down
to the river to practice my smile.

GETTING THERE FASTER

Remember, all the stardust ladders must be in place to reach the top.
It's a good idea not to leave too many undone below. On the first
mountain you'll be safe from the dream demons on the top of the ropes.
Try to catch as many love kisses as possible.

6. CONCLUSION -- back to the graveyard.

As dawn breaks you will be returned to the graveyard. If victorious a merry
melody plays and you rejoice with your friend. If you lost, both of you are
doomed to descend into the ground with the tombstones!

It's too bad that the heat is going to bollocks up the runners. Despite my general disdain for spectator sports, I harbor a certain soft spot for runners and marathons. Maybe it's beacuse at various points in my life I have done a little running. And doctors and physical therapists always tell me I am built like a runner. If I ever quit smoking, I suppose I may take it up again. My body's in OK shape for it, but it's my lungs that are sort of the problem.

Or maybe because it's not really a "team" sport, but rather an individual thing. I don't really like the idea of "teams" (which is why I'm a lousy Socialist). It also seems to be a pretty gender-neutral sport, there seem to be just as many female runners as there are males...

87 degrees? It's supposed to be 87 degrees?

This whole spring is like when you ask your grandparents for a Snoopy doll for your birthday and then an ex-con in a Snoopy costume shows up at your birthday party...

Have not been able to stay awake for more than a couple hours at a stretch today, and my head is full of gunk; ergo, I must hypothesize that I'm sick. Had ambitious plans for getting any number of things done today, but have not had much energy to do anything. It's difficult to discern if the lack of energy is due to some kind of physical illness or due to depression exacerbated by physical illness. I cannot remember feeling this tired for a long, long time. Maybe it is the immanent Spring which is making me tired; I've been sick of the lousy weather, but somehow the sudden warmth and sunnyness seems like an affront. For some reason the passage of last spring to this spring seems like a clean unit somehow. And it was a rough year. One of the roughest, I've had in fact; perhaps that's why I'm so tired. I feel very conscious of having aged somehow since last year, perhaps its just taking some time away from various escapist activities has induced me to finally take a damage report, and I realize that the damage is extensive. And there is no port in sight.

His Name Is Alive / "Last Night"

This is just really sad. Can't he be a superhero or something?

As befits the abomination that is humanity, the Yahoo! message board in connection with the story is of course full of dick jokes...

I tried playing this game in the hopes that if I booted it up and didn't do anything, something horrible would happen to Bush. Apparently, the makers of the game seem to have anticipated this, and there seems to be no way to lose the game. Condi figures into the game also, but I can't pay attention to it long enough to get to that point.

Current Terrror Alert Level:

If I had any sense at all, I'd wait until I got home. (From Stephanie's blog):

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From Managers and the Legal Environment: Strategies for the 21st Century:

"Trustworthiness and dependability are essential to lasting relationships."

People please send good thoughts to Cat and Tom.

I have a feeling today's blogging is going to be the equivalent of the moronic stuff they show on the screen before the trailers and the movie starts. I don't have much to say or report today. So in the spirit of mindless prattle, here's a list of no particular significance or order.

8.) "Rough Boy" by ZZ Top
4.) Little Debbite Peanut Butter Bars
9.) André Breton
10.) Louise Brooks
3.) Leon Thomas's "Um, um, um"
2.) Lefty
7.) "Subterranea" --Atari 2600 Game
4.) "Private Eye" --Atari 2600 Game
1.) Coffee
6.) The films of Stan Brakhage

Because all the cool kids are doing it. Also, whoever it is did a decent job with the graphics. For the record, I've only ever been a stalkee.

Though whoever wrote it bollocksed up the HTML and I don't know how to fix it. The caption should say:

"To you, love is desperate and hateful. You're wildly passionate and wildly inventive. You're also likely to start stalking people. "

Which poem are you? The Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath To you, love is desperate and hateful. You're wildly passionate and wildly inventive. You're also likely to start stalking people.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Is Yahoo! News actually asserting an opinion? In the "Oddly Enough" Section (where you usually find the "Two-headed Dog Learns to Moonwalk" variety ads) today there is this article:

Bush Remembers No Specific Mistakes Since 9/11

Seems almost too good to be true...

(From the Onion):

Room Scanned For Something To Sell On eBay

ALBANY, CA--Applying tape to the last package in a 12-item round of eBay sales, Brandon Vye scanned his bedroom for anything else he could auction off online. "I sold the Grand Ole Opry floaty pen... the UNO cards... the Santa socks--so now what?" Vye asked as he spun around in his swivel chair. "Maybe I could sell these science textbooks, or my tapes of old SNL episodes? God, I've got to have something I can mail off."After listing a misshapen clay bowl he made in a high-school ceramics class, Vye decided to head out to the yard to search for "eBay-able stuff" there.

HARD TIMES AT THE CARNIVAL

& do you son accept this rain
as your personal savior, to have
& to hold its head under
the water, do you take this
rain metonymically for 4 reasons &
behind each a tiger or a sawtooth, the lady
plays the saw & ought to know
better, says one night Lumpy
fuckeda volkswagen &
he bent her like a yew switch into
next week, close to breaking &
stretched from here to there that catgut
where arrows hung, where darts were
cast at apples & oranges that hung heavy
from the trees, "I'm tired
of the night," he said,
she said "the sun is not
your friend"--fuggetabboudit there's
no way in hell
to throw the hoop around the
clown, Lumpy's shooting
ducks from the ferris wheel, a tumbler
of bourbon & some hard-
luck type laid down in
the funhouse: aluminum garters &
a Darth Vader helmet:
the foam rubber skeletons
are not so different from you
& me.

'The yodelling trademark first materialised in the late 1960s and came as a result of somebody owing [Leon] money. "I'd been trying to reach this cat for ages with no luck. I was at home and thought 'I'm gonna make this cat pick up the phone'--mentally. I began my yoga exercises and got to the head stand. With one intake of breath, I planned to walk to the phone upside down, dial his number, and make him answer with this mental projection.

"As I crossed the threshhold of the bedroom, I transcended. I was one place and my body was another. I dropped to the floor, right on my face and my teeth went into my bottom lip. There was blood everywhere....

"So I couldn't do my own show with Pharoah. I had eight stitches in my mouth. I couldn't do anything. Pharoah came by to see me [and he said] you can't pull out."

Leon decided to play the gig, a church benefit for a group of anti-police activists in New York. "I couldn't smile. I could hardly open my mouth...but I went along anyhow. I got up on the stage and when it came time for me to scat, this sound just came out. It shocked me. I didn't know where it was coming from.

"I realised it was me and I realised that the ancestors had arrived. Pharoah, standing beside me on stage just raised his eyebrows at me. The ancestors had given me what we call throat articulation and they said to me 'You will sing like this with your mouth CLOSED.' And that was the first time it presented itself to me, in a church. My God! Thank you....It surprises me, it does everything of its own volition. I call it Soularfone. The pygmies call it Umbo Weti....This voice is not me, my voice is ancient. This person you see before you is controlled by ego but my voice is egoless."

Weeping willow tree/ Weep in sympathy/ Hang your branches down along the ground and cover me / When the shadows fall/ Bend a willow and weep for me...

LEON FREAKIN' THOMAS! / Spirits Known and Unknown

Few things make me happier than Leon Thomas!...

"I call what I do 'egoless'," Leon explains, "because it goes into the unconscious. It can be a moan or a cry or a tear. It can be a great big sigh--but under control. The thing is, however, not to be limited by what you consciously think or feel - you have to let it all well up. I have no label for what I'm doing; I guess there isn't any name yet for what it is."

"So far the horns have been in the forefront in terms of exploring the new dimensions of sound and expression. But no one has been nearly adventurous enough-for this time-with the possibilities of the voice. I feel I'm into that, and I feel that it can be unusually theraputic, for the listener as well as the singer. All I need is a chance to get to the ears of the people."

Attention Small Presses & Magazines:

On May 1 and 2, Gallery 108 in Somerville, MA will be sponsoring the 1st Annual Yart Sale at the Gallery. Lots of local artists will be selling affordable pieces and I will be manning a table of local (an not neccesarily so local) small press books and magazines.

If you have any interest in having your journal for sale at the Yart Sale, please contact me at mark_lamoureux@yahoo.com. The sale will run from morning until evening both days on the 1st and 2nd. Essentially, I'll be selling stuff on a consignment basis. You give me your wares and I will sell them and put aside any money that you make and return the money and unsold stock to you. There are no fees involved, as this event is largely just to stir up interest in the Gallery, and by way of local presses, etc. interest in upcoming literary events at the Gallery.

The deadline for submissions for the sale will be Wednesday, April 28th. This is a good opportunity to try and get your books/magazine to an audience outside of the exclusively literary scene.

Sometime in 2015 Silliman will realize that Heavy Metal is all about sex.

Also I found a copy of Art Garfunkel's book of prose poems Still Water that I was given for my 18th birthday. I noted that it was blurbed by none other than JIM HARRISON...

My young cousin has become a tall, gawky and sullen pre-teen. Who did not look up from her book, something called Burning Up with a picture of a pair of charred marshmallows on it, which I could only glean is some sort of contemporary V.C. Andrews adolescent girl-lit analog, for more than 5 minutes during the pre and post Easter brunch niceties. Who, according to my mom and my aunt is "dealing just fine with the divorce, she doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone about it so it must be OK." I was sort of at a loss at how to get the kid to open up. But I so desperately want to protect her from the isolation I felt having no brothers and sisters and growing up in the same circumstances. She doesn't seem to be at that point where she can really interact with adults besides her parents. Though I've been told she voraciously consumes the nice harcover editions of Wuthering Heights and the like I give her every year for Christmas.

Oh well, kiddo, when you're ready Crazy Cousin Mark will be there for you...

From the Annals of 52 Old Farm Road

All I have to say about the quest to exhume salable merchandise from the chaos of my old room which, due to my mom's...err...fragile relationship to change has remained untouched since 1989 is DRAFTS, DRAFTS, DRAFTS. So many friggin' drafts. Some day the trees will come for me...

On the subject of pornography, I WROTE THE FOLLOWING POEM IN 1988.

I suppose the answer to the question I get asked the most, "Have you always been this fucked up?" Is...um..."yes"...

(I didn't use caps then...)

THE SPEAKING SCAR

down into the scarring crag
towards the motion of the sea
this place exists with the passion of any nexus
and the same pulsing addictive fear
into the place where the bleached forms
still caught in last ecstasy,
the nonangular fluid stasis
of the white unmoving
the white of peace
the white bones of beasts and men
somewhere on a shore an ancient
yew must have divined the beauty of
the death of flesh
and the white purity of shortly after
and gave itself
to the beckoning of the storm
and sculpted organic beauty
for the trees choose their own skeletons
how everything and the unmoving
gives itself to the always moving
the fluid arm scars the land
and shapes the stone
and the seaweed hangs
like the hair of expired mermaids
who knew the taking of the sea
and speaks with the spasm voice
of the knowings of the long lost
the spirits of the taken
crash against the rocks
that copulate with seaweed forms
remember me to my love
this moves in through the
scar and among the green
always-voice
the always-willing
intoning of the lost with
open arms
we would take you when you
long finally to know
the white peace first
in nonmotion
and ever among the rocks and voice
the coming and leaving of
the half sorrowed lost
the skeletal voice the charmed tears
sculpting among the stones

I really don't remember where I was or what I was doing. I don't remember much about 1988 at all, in fact.

While You Were Away...

While I was gone this weekend, the following google searches brought those lonely searchers to the hallowed halls of this Ghost City:

"mark lamoureux"
"barbie doll flexible porno"
"narcissistic personality disorder"
"online mash"
"huya the new planet"

I anticipate all were satisfied except for the porno seeker. I'm working on it, guy, OK?

I am off to CT tomorrow morning, so no blogging until Sunday night.

Happy Easter and don't forget to put cheeseburgers on your lawn so the bunny will have something to eat.

What the hell kind of office is this where nobody brings in little dishes of Easter candy.

I suppose the majority of the Easter candy will come Monday.

But that doesn't do me any good right NOW, does it?

I hope to god, though, that I don't have to eat any Cadbury Cream eggs this year. But those Peanut-Butter filled Reese's eggs, bring 'em on.

Is it possible to abuse coffee? If so, I think I'm doing it.

Aaron riffs off of my short "Spring" poem from yesterday (or rather riffs off of me and Chu Shu Chen).

"The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward"

"Your sky all hung with jewels"

"Up in your arms, too late to beg you"

How Awesome is This?

It's SO bad, but SO, SO good...

"They clutched the ribs of the plant, churning a hand about the pistil of the flower. Next minute, they too were spiraling into the air. Yattmur was not horribly afraid. She fell face forward among polleny stamens, almost unable to breathe for the scent of the flower, but incapable of moving. Dizziness filled her.

A timid hand touched her shoulder.

"If you have a making hungry by the fear, do not eat of the nasty Stalker flower but taste good fish without walking legs we clever menchaps catch in the pool!"

She looked at the tummy-belly, his mouth moving nervously, his eyes large and soft, a dust of polen making his hair ludicrously fair. He had no dignity.

Yattmur burst into tears."

I keep getting outbid on eBay for the gorgeous maroon leather racing jacket that I really, really want by someone named "giantslob."

Would someone named "giantslob" fit into a jacket that would fit me? I don't think so.

A pox on you, giantslob.

White             sun

thru cirrostratus feeds

grey             flowers;



where have all those

black        butterflies 

gone?



The ravens & the bees     punks

I'ma scare    crows

I'ma still winter 



     inside me.

PWOERMD about good sex:

simlutaneous

Sudden intense craving for Cap'n Crunch.

FYI

It's 50 degrees in Moscow right now.

It's 32 in Allston.

In case you were wondering.

This article seems like something from The Onion. But it's not.

At least I know that if I ever have to go to jail, I can make $3 to $10 writing light verse for greeting cards for gang members.

I'm not the Only One

This was written by Harry Crosby (thanks to aaron for linking to the Harry Crosby text in toto.

Before you fellow Bostonians start going to town on me, I say this: haven't you ever been angry at someone you love?

That is all.

Incidentally, I find the frequent appearance of Lauren's mom on her blog to be heartwarming and charming. (I'm sure Lauren's feelings on the subject could possibly be a little different.)

I don't know if the ghost city here is the place for parents, though. Not that there would be any chance of that, er, happening.

For the record I *don't*, in fact, kiss my mother with this mouth...

Silliman removing the comments field from his blog as the old asian guy taking the Mogwai away at the end of Gremlins.

"You are not yet ready..."

The thing about severe mind-numbing depression is that it throws your sleeping schedule all out of whack. I was finally able to rouse myself from bed to take a shower at around 9 PM. An hour or so later I realized that I was going to have to eat something, largely to placate the seething animal which seems to have taken up residence in my stomach. So in an hour or so I will eat dinner. I'm not exactly certain how I'm going to work the going to sleep at 4 AM schedule into my work routinue. Perhaps I will stay up all night tonight in order to try and set myself back on some kind of vaguely normal schedule.

Daylight savings time is nice, as it means it stays light out longer after I get out of work. Now all I need is for the climate outside to become at least slightly habitable and I can begin my usual summer program of wandering aimlessly and anonymously through the streets of Boston, being careful to stay away from bridges (occupational hazard)...

Not much to report, ghosties. Am starting a new hobby which is staying out of trouble.

After all, when I gave my father a copy of my book he said, "I think you need a new hobby."

I guess he was right.

Throw a bucket of water at Yuri, he's on fire!

File Under Hairbrained

Trying to fund a trip to Budapest by selling my old toys on eBay. The only problem is that the only toys that would be worth any money (vintage Japanese diecast robot toys) I don't relly want to sell.

Who wants to buy my Adventure People for $700?

I haven't exhumed the FIST OF DEATH in quite some time, but the creators of this and this would certainly be on the receiving end if I had my way...

Not the first time I've been called Heathcliff. I took the 45-question version, so I guess it should be pretty accurate...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

You may be asking yourself, "What can I do to celebrate National Poetry Month?" This woman has some good ideas.

Righteous article on Boston's Pressed Wafer in today's Boston Phoenix.

For you out-of-towners, the link is here.

Sleeping with the ashes and the laptop.

SPEECH OF PARTS

Those ghosts don't sweat it, the way the apples turn to wax because of the curve of the moon. Don't disappear she said because she wanted to disappear first, the same cold ground where the foxes run, ran across the graveyard. Too cold to photograph the river, the ghost cursive on the dark water. Dark water = dark wine = the 4th of July when I threw up my name & my arms. Fundamental zeugma. Everything & nothing. A zeugma is not a tautology: I still can't think about the waves or the miniature houses or the gunmental sky when the front crept in, these skies are frozen, the blood in our sandals long gone. The diagonal rain the same the sinister karaoke: who's going to drive you home, tonight? An echo's not the same sound, it is a different sound but it looks the same but they have different mothers. Eating her mother's xanax & gluing the plastic roses to the ceiling. Xanax is a pallindrome, so is forget:

The spectre walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps & walks back to the silver house & walks to the beach & wades in the water & weeps.