Finally installed the Alice Denison painting in my living room. Drilling into brick is a pain in the neck. But now that it is up, it looks good.

Thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural Maudite Productions reading last night. It was a great success, and extrordinarily well attended for the first event. Thanks to Guillermo and Yelimar for an interesting presentation of past and present Venezuelan poety and for reading their own work.

The funniest thing about the *other* Mark Lamoureux, conservative and countertop salesman, is that he apparently lives in the Metro Boston area as well. Wonder if he gets my mail... Maybe he's Mark Lamoureux from Bizarro-world. I should be careful, if I meet the man on the street, it will likely cause some kind of cosmic explosion...

When did love of innovation become fear of success?

Am trying not to take it personally that the HBS cafeteria goes from bombastic to barely functional immediately after the students leave. Nary a duck turnover nor a blackened catfish kebob to by found. Bastards.

In other news the HUCTW Union did manage to negotiate a 4.5% raise, as well as an extension of the Tuition Reimbursement policy to include any tuition and not just for courses related to one's job. Which is good thing because, while I myself can argue that literature classes hone my copyediting skills, the folks who work in the cafeterias and the janitors and others would have trouble making the same case, but now they don't have to.

Was listening to Ui's "Sidelong" and "Unlike" the other day, which I hadn't in 4 or 5 years or so. Then I stumbled upon Sasha Frere-Jones' blog today. Weird.

BLACK SUN OVER CONEY ISLAND

Slapstick or egregious, there's something
in this blurred patch that doesn't quite
jibe with the totem animals, like say
there was something alive in the breakbeats
& that ghost has no particular

destination: a by-the-wind-sailor destined
to kick ass or take names & Trismegistos
is kissing up, furiously, that breeze. Decreed.
The black sun must be eclipsed by
something drastic, like say the fake
eyes of the devilray or the abandoned Tilt-A-Whirl.

Ultimately the black sun is a manowar;
monofilament halo of thin
stinging rhizomes, angelhair. Some say
paralytic, some say ecstatic--the cartographer
makes the same mark anyway. All aboard
that creaking bireme: the dark magician,

the kindly nymph & the shiny adorable
robot who can never die. The flag above:
a sail & the hold's full of gibbering
skeletons. You sure took your time
getting here, well where she wrote "dolphin"
in this light looks like "jellyfish" &
those cats don't haul ass for no-

body, no Our Lady of the Wounded
Eyes or ambivalent philosophers.
Look out kid, there's a mouth on the other
side of that thing & our hero's buried in the sand:

what once was all Wagner is now
all Duran Duran.

Saturday, May 29, 8PM
Gallery 108, Somerville, MA

Maudite Productions at 108 Presents:

A bilingual reading by Guillermo Juan Parra and Yelimar Becerra

Guillermo and Yelimar will read classic and contemporary poems from Venezuela in Spanish and English, as well as selections from their own work.

***

Yelimar Becerra was born in Caracas Venezuela. She grew up in the neighborhood of El Valle, where days start very early with salsa, boleros, merengue, bad news and a lot of obstacles to overcome.

Her first book, "Desórdenes que no he cometido" (Disorders I didn't commit), was published in 1994 in Caracas by the Circulo de Escritores Venezolanos. Her second book "Cuentas de agua" (Water Beads, 1996, unpublished) was awarded a Literary Prize at the School of Sociology of the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

In 2000 she graduated from UCV, with a degree in Sociology. She currently lives in Boston, where she is working on two different writing projects.

Guillermo Juan Parra was born in Cambridge, MA in 1970. He grew up in Venezuela, Mexico and Florida and now works as a teacher in Boston.

His poems can be found in the spring 2004 issue of 6x6 magazine. He is currently editing and translating an anthology of Venezuelan poetry in English. Excerpts from this anthology can occasionally be found at his blog "venepoetics" (http://venepoetics.blogspot.com).

Event is free and open to the public.

108 is located at 108 Beacon Street in Somerville, a block or so from Dali. For more information please contact Mark Lamoureux (617.460.0118 or mark_lamoureux@yahoo.com).

Say My Name Thrice & I Will Appear

I prefer "Undead" to "Post-Avant."

In case you were wondering.

Thanks.

The nice thing about Netflix is that they seem to have a fair number of silent films from the 20's on DVD. I love to watch these things, there's something about the snippets of text instead of dialog, the exaggerated body language of the actors and actresses to account for the fact that they can't express anything through sound, and the general climate of the 20's which interests me. It's curious to see some of the relaxed social mores in those films, not what one would expect of films from so long ago. It makes me wonder how much the baby boom and World War II and its aftermath changed the world. There's definitely something present in flapper culture and the jazz culture of the 20's which seems analogous to subcultures since the 60's. The signifiers were more subtle in the 20's, though, more reserved (and thus, in my opinion, more interesting). It is strange to watch these people who appear to be my own age (who are now ghosts) and some strange, real exuberance there. These were the days before the media-image of the movie star (though the country was obsessed enough with movie stars), thus Clara Bow, Louise Brooks and others, while they were certainly movie stars, exhibit a kind of realness that seems to have been lost as we got more used to the idea and technique of manipulating identity by way of the photographic or film image.

It's nice, also, somehow, to have no sound but a musical score; you interact with the text of the title cards like you would a piece of writing or a poem. It's been said that watching a silent film requires more attention than a talkie, and I think it's true, I also think that due to this fact there was more meticulous attention paid to certain details of movement and expression, not cinematography per se, but something that seems more like dance (e.g. the physical comedy of Chaplin, etc.) Since I signed up for Netflix, I've watched "Modern Times," "City Lights," "It", and a documentary about Louise Brooks. They don't seem to have "Pandora's Box" (the film that gave birth to Brooks' nickname "Lulu," and the role that made her famous), or "Flaming Youth" (attributed to be the film that first defined the concept of the "flapper," though "It" is well known in this capacity)...which kind of bums be out. I don't know why they don't have "Pandora's Box" because it is one of the more famous silent films.

Incidentally, Clara Bow was a redhead (or so it is said)! Though obviously one can't know this from the films themselves...

Lightning strikes so near, a symphony of car alarms go off. Are the cars frightened? The rain starts pouring harder. Lightning through the skylight makes a shimmering square on the floor. A portal, but to what?

The ghosts disperse in the glow of the lightning like daylight. Get some sleep at last, sung to sleep by thunder.

Naemuch to blog today. Like the rest of us Bostonians, woke up to the sound of thunder. The first storm of the season like visiting an old lover. But what in life isn't. Went promptly back to sleep after the storm and slept through my alarm, as usual.

Am not terribly concerned with the lollygagging of the climate and the erstwhile progression into summer. The leather jacket I bought in April seems to maintain the optimum temperature for the current clime, and I didn't even think I was going to have a use for it until the fall.

Am swamped with work, as per usual. Difficult to get any of my own writing done except for the Harold Brainerd Hersey remixes. I have to admit that even I lost patience with ol' Harold yesterday--must he use the word "breasts" in every goddamn poem? I'm running out of (vaguely) non-smarmy ways to use the word. I may have to start tweaking them a little more. The poems, that is. Doing a little research on Hersey turns up that he was actually a staunch ally of Margaret Sanger, the early birth control pioneer and at one point had something to do with a proposed biography of her. (Not sure if this was an ideological or merely a practical alliance, given Hersey's apparent enthusiasm for...activities resulting in birth). He also seems to have written a book of cowboy ballads and edited a book on Pulp Novels. I'd sort of like to get my hands on the cowboy ballads, actually...

SLEIGHT OF HAND



Now she plays among conscious lilies,

White abandon; ivory

& falls again slim songs of 

pale blood among

The moon-muted She remembered 

sings her......fingers her strings 



moon-pale its breasts 

Upon youth carelessly bathing

the painted is Caressing

As though it were some strange instrument

Of the arms of the feet,

the hidden body The heart sings at

her fingers She bathes, Lifting her

white lilies, Caressing Yet returns,

to her clutches drips

Tearing out its place; 

She the body.

she the heart drips

She The place her Then her.

...its she Without her;

I updated the Gate of Horn template to include a comments field, but then I decided that since it's an archive, maybe there shouldn't be comments. So I will leave them off unless any of the rest of you want comments on the blog. On the plus side it would allow people who aren't signed up for the blog to post dreams. On the minus side it would allow people to post idiotic things like "that sure was a strange dream you had," or "you need therapy."

What say you, dreamers?

Went to see Jim Harrison with AT last night in Newtonville. It was a little bizarre, but a good reading. And a good cheeseburger. Harrison read from his new novel True North. Do I lose avant-garde points for talking about Jim Harrison? I can't keep track anymore.

On the way home, Aaron and I hypothesized that perhaps I'd be more emotionally stable if I didn't permanently have my iPod set on "shuffle."

My brain's a TV and the devil's got the clicker...

AD INFINITUM



Relighting dawn

	& the dim sockets, like

rose......her wax petals



Until a candle meets suddenly

That spirit of The 

melted waters womb;



as her moon is Cleansing



the new acolytes 

	Before the old world



go Noiselessly into her eyes;

Bringing Her downward......even as her smooth bells

tinkle in shadow



She bows a Little 

is inserting, like the voiced 

Under a hill, Or



She is through Dropping 

loins

into the ever-still flame

When we were driving to Vermont a couple weeks ago I found, in the back of aaron's car a book called Night by Harold Brainerd Hersey, a book of poems with sinister looking, vaguely erotic art-nouveau illustrations by one Elliot Dold. Really the most interesting thing about the book is the illustrations, but reading the poems one realizes that, while dated and somewhat banal, they are not altogether terrible. They succeed in conveying a vague mood moreso than anything else. I've become a little obsessed with the text (have since procured my own copy), and I've decided to rework Hersey's poems (retaining the original titles), by rearranging the words. I am going to try to do one per day until I've gone through the whole text. I wish I could scan in the images, because the poems really interact with them; however, this would probably violate some sort of copyright (even though the book was published in the 40's). Perhaps I will incorporate the images into some sort of print rendering of the reworked poems when I am done. Anyway, the first:

CYCLE



Broken Of broken 

face like trembling a dove's



wing 	a wrinkled wing

Thy hands secrets 

hands of The



dawn forgotten body 	comes

The dove with Flies



stars disappear

stars are Discovering



Thy shadows are.



The 

light.



thy

moon



Where are thee

When falls the 



Listen?



I found

the away

& the I

& the have 



I & my mind is the

Our man in motion. Bill C. as an animated GIF. Also a poem and a link to the "For Love of Poetry" essay from the Phoenix.

Thanks Jimmy for the link.

For Mr. Jones (although he did not actually play on the record this song comes from)...

NOTES ON JOHN COLTRANE'S "MARS"

Old trees make a million movements
below a monochrome sky:
palm of God
a green television static,
fury of neurons in panic.

Clouds billow in opposition,
chlorophyll trickles, branches twitch;
a beetle realights,
wings trill a minute, staccato.
Miles away another beetle does the same
& another.

Sleep well, Elvin Jones.

I've also added a handy moon-phase indicator in the sidebar, which will hopefully give you all an idea of how *CRAZY* I'm going to be on a given day.

Lifted the link from Jean V.'s Okir. Thanks, Jean.

I know it's difficult to believe, but I finally updated my links!!!

If anybody out there happens to have specifications for building a podium, let me know.

Congratulations to everyone getting married today!

As much as I complain about Boston, I'm proud to be a resident of Massachusetts today.

Downloaded a bunch of Motels songs from Limewire. The danger of peer-to-peer filesharing lies not in potentially depriving artists of royalties, but rather in encouraging things like this. Musical Whip-its.

Only the lonely can play...

I got a message from Allah in my email, but I couldn't read it...

Tree

For those of you doubting the veracity of the statement: "There's a palm tree in my living room," I give you the evidence. (Though the palm tree has since migrated to the space beside the stairs).

I don't even want to know where it came from.

The problem with the inevitable switch to iced coffee is the increased amount of effort and preparation involved in its production.

Would that there were something like a microwave that went in the opposite direction with the same expediency. I suppose this would likely involve unhealthy amounts of freon or something. And the ability to flash-freeze things is probably not an ability one wants to have available to children.

I got in trouble once when I was a kid for freezing all of my Star Wars figures in glass jars in the freezer. Quoth my father, "I want to be able to get something from the freezer without having to move all of the goddamn frozen Wookies."

I don't recall, specifically, what possessed me to freeze the Star Wars figures. I used to bury my homework under a rock in the back yard, also. Why exactly I did not spend my early years in intensive therapy, I'll never know...

Brown Bread in a Can

The Northeast's version of cornbread? Though I would not call it a staple, it did appear with alarming regularity in the cuisine of my childhood. Always in the company of frankfurters and beans. This was the meal that Dad made when Mom was not home to make dinner, which, come to think of it, did not happen that often. But I believe at times the entire family would partake of the trinity of earth-toned cylindrical foods. I have to admit that I will still, on occasion, whip up this combination for myself. Though generally speaking, it is mainly just in order to break out the bread in the can. I've had roommates, other New Englanders, who have found this concept of canned bread to be utterly alien and revolting. Perhaps it is a socioeconomic or hyper-regional (CT and MA exclusively) thing. Or maybe it's not regional at all. I'm interested if any of you out in blogland are familiar with the BBIaC, and if so what your specific recollections of it are.

The non-raisin'ed version of it seems to have all but disappeared, but one still seems to be able to get the B&M can o' bread with raisins. Generally speaking, I find the concept of the raisin (in this context, specifically) to be abhorrent. However, BBIaC with raisins is better than no BBIaC at all.

In an unholy union that would most likely cause distress to eaters of either of the discrete foodstuffs, I've found that BBIaC goes very well with goat cheese...

Someone once called my enthusiasm for BBIaC (and also for foods that are the wrong color (blood oranges, white peaches, white chocolate, yellow tomatoes, purple peppers, etc., etc.)) "perverted."

Have been turning the other cheek so much these days, I'm like Linda Blair in The Exorcist...

If this ever makes it into English translation I think I will choose it as my selection for the HBS after hours book club book. Thanks to dumbfoundry for the reference.

I can't stop watching them. Who wants to come to Mexico with me to hold up signs that say "PLEASE INVADE BEFORE NOVEMBER"?

The heat is her &
it hurts me.

Pull-top
travelogue,

caught in this
black jade loop:

polar memory,
the shoals' air
lifting

off her sandal-blood &
the machete-
colored unsheathed
beach:

months made
of mealy apples,
mothman

helmets, dangling
pendulums
arraigning arcs for
self-prestidigitation.

I hid it in
my sleeve, scatter
ashes or salt

behind the hydraulic
equipment, the swollen
clownface
a plastic tongue

pulls you down
to the weak earth,
the weaker sky,
the weakest of
all my darling you
are paper-pulp,
you are a stickbug's

leg that breaks
in the goddamn
breeze.

There's a palm tree in my living room!...

Heat, lack of sleep making me sluggish. I feel about 7 years old in my brain. Too much stuff to do this week. People, please put your clothes back on, I've got stuff on my mind...

Gah!!!

All of a sudden Blogger is different!

I simply cannot describe how exhausted I've been today. I managed to get a few things done (housework, some Fulcrum stuff, etc.), but really in the past 3 days I haven't been 20% as productive as I'd like to have been. Admittedly, I guess one has to rest at some point, but I have so much to do. Insomnia is kicking my ass, though. It seems I spend half the night freaking out and trying to sleep.

Also today mostly on the verge of screaming or crying. Naked, tortured prisoners on the news, my own nonsense piling up in my head. The tiredness, and a sense of my own aging. I've felt so out of synch with myself lately, even though I've been getting a fair amount accomplished. It's depressing, though, how the majority of my leisure time is spent "working" in one capacity or another, it's the price of trying to balance a day job and an entire second "career" as a writer. I can't remember the last time I had "fun," exclusively. Yes, I go to plenty of poetry events, etc. which are "fun," the Yartsale was also "fun," but it was also work in a certain capacity. I need to go to the beach or hiking or SOMETHING that is completely removed from my life as a worker drone and my life as a struggling writer. I don't even know what that would be at this point. I don't really have any "hobbies" (I suppose you have to count writing as a "hobby" of a sort, as it does not tend to make much money), I have been too exhausted to go to the gym, which is something I should really do since that would most likely help with the insomnia.

Thinking of some old Lemonheads lyrics "I'm too much with myself, I wanna be someone else." From "Drug Buddy," I believe. I'm becoming a strange recluse, if I had pets, I'd be turning into one of those weird "cat people" or "dog people" (no offense to those of you with cats or dogs, I'm talking about a very specific phenomenon here, which doesn't actually apply to any of you). Too exhausted today, even, to write. I need to catch up on about 3 weeks of sleep. There are lots of things I need. I need to go to the beach, I need a yellow pony, blah blah blah. Blogging as a form of talking to oneself. I suppose that, at least, is a good thing otherwise I'd probably be walking around muttering to myself, which is probably not too far away. Perhaps I need to start building model ships in bottles or becoming obsessed with geneology. When did I suddenly become 32 going on 60?

I've still got aubergine on the brain. Among other things.

THE DRESSMAKER



In the window under the beak of 

the singing machine said

beautiful creature begets particolored

unnamed histories, stitching

strips cerulean & aubergine, the cleft

of night's erasure in the eyes of

the gasmask, the machine's fallen

F where fingers orbit the pneumatic

needle's thrum, crooked lines or

zigzag strokes knit contrapuntal

possibilities; coy, bespectacled before

the mannequin's glass pallor, pulls

off her arms gently, sings behind

a stilletoed emblem.



You've the right to remain 

aghast, now I want to believe 

in simple things: the window's glow,

shoulderblades, Arachne's last stand

given way to webbed silence, this

last gasp of something unreckoned, 

grasping at quick silk, the present's

unspeakable cuneiform, a silver thread

for these nights, this high

lonesome, unconsoled.             Be clad,

my armies of the dead, in tender

coats: each (of them), each word is naked,

a figment, no costume & no costume

jewelry or mute fabric, combustible;

these no pyre, sentences: no glib

innueundo, no story for the sky.

Polyurethane, too, my countenance:

I want you to pull & reattach 

my limbs in that same

way: you spider, chimera,

        cipher for the actual:

before you I'm also a dummy, no mouth,

                                           no brain.

Tell Julie to hurry the hell up...

Subject: Teahouseblossom hows it going? julie said you wanted this info

Date: Sun, 09 May 04 06:30:47 GMT

Teahouseblossom

CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP

BUY

XANAXx

VAL1UM

VICOD1N

Have become obsessed with a series of lines from a Kruder & Dorfmeister song that Aaron gave me on a mix. (To get the full effect you have to hear it in the deep basso-profundo Jamaican voice of the song):

"And all the raindrops keep on landin' on my face like spectre.
Each one brandin' me, showing me who I am.

Don' give a damn..."

I want to use it as an epigram at the beginning of my "Spectre" manuscript, but I feel like the nonironic use of pop music is somewhat suspect...

Hooky!

No Shit, Sherlock

1970s FBI File Pegs Kerry As Moderate .

For the record, I hate GWB and I will vote for Kerry. However, I think the man (Kerry), is a chump.

What's the name of your iPod?

Mine: (Old one): Dr. Theopolis, (New one): Nadja.

Info for the June UDP/Loudmouth event at 108 is up on the Maudite Productions blog. Those of you who missed them at the Green Street event this past weekend can check them out in full effect in June. Free for the people. Hope to see you there!...

Of all the Norweigan Black Metal I downloaded last night, I think my favorite is Gorgoroth's "Litani til Satan," in which, King av Hell seems to be reciting a poem. It's in Norweigan, but he sounds very *sensitive.* It's not easy being the King av Hell, don'tchaknow...

I joined a gym...

[Insert "Sports Training Montage" to the tune of Rob Zombie's "Dragula"]

Man, how bourgeoise is that? But I need to be in shape for the revolution...

ODE TO O-REN IISHI

Dawn comes 

                        on tiny feet &



cuts off your fucking head.

Haloscan isn't working too well today.

Me at the Marlboro College reading.

Where does the chin come from, and what does it want?

Aaron at the Marlboro College reading.

Art

I bought a painting over the weekend. It is a work by Kate's sister that I've always loved; when it was on sale at the Yart Sale I knew that I had to be the one to buy it. It wasn't that expensive, but not cheap either.

I did realize that the amount of money I spent on the painting would be unthinkable to my parents, even though I'm sure they spend that on gas or other expensive and useless garbage on a weekly basis. To my father, the idea of someone who would spend money on something as "useless" as art is completely execrable. To my mom, the concept would merely be alien, as she would not be able to reckon the kind of time and energy that went into the painting and thus determines its value.

The strange thing is that, from a materialist perspective, my economic standing is considerably less than theirs was at my age. There are class issues, and there are culture issues. I wonder how much of what we attribute to "class" has also to do with culutre. Buying art is something that the bourgeoise does, yet I'm not bourgeoise. My impetus for purchasing the art differs signigificantly from the bourgeoise in context. The act of putting oneself *at risk* in the purchase of a work of art. Thus it is no longer about decoration or artifice, but rather a kind of truth. I felt that it was important to my life to obtain the painting, a certain intimacy at stake, I suppose, as opposed to "knowing" the painting, in memory, in a museum or in a photograph, I needed to "be with the painting," in its corporeality.

It is an alien concept to much of our society, buying art. This is in part what drives artist to charge exhorbitant amounts of money for their works, they have to. As it is perceived culturally that only the rich buy art, then only the rich will buy art; thus the artist adapts to this. Without this cultural appellation, the demand for art would be much greater and the artist would be able to charge less for an individual painting.

It's astonishing, really, given the number of Artists and their relative freedom and comfortability in the United States that the idea of art as a commodity or service, or as something that has a place in an average person's life is not more prevalent. We deify uniqueness, e.g. we must confirm that the beanie baby is 1 of 500, that they are real adidas sneakers, there's nothing wackier than Sprite Remix, etc. etc., yet we undervalue one of the most vital sources of uniqueness in our culture.

If you want to have something that Chet in Marketing doesn't , go buy a fucking painting...

Speaking of Black Metal, this is pretty interesting. Black Metal is like professional wrestling for goths...

Quote of the weekend: "Hello, Officer, I WANT YOU TO LOOK IN MY ASS..."

I used to make fun of Aaron for loving this song, but I think I finally understand...

Crimson And Clover

(T. James/P. Lucia)

Ah, now I don't hardly know her
But I think I could love her
Crimson and clover

Ah when she comes walking over
Now I've been waitin' to show her
Crimson and clover over and over

Yeah, my, my such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover over and over

Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over

Would You Give Your Money to this Man?

3 Amigos

I seem to be able to grab a WiFi signal in the hotel. In Brattleboro, Vermont is where I write this from. The lonliness of hotel rooms. From my window I can look out on the apartment where I used to live, where I used to watch people staring across from this very room, staring or otherwise engaged. The thing about a mirror is both sides are the same. It'll be good to leave this place tomorrow. *That* is what this experience reminds me of. That leaving Boston will be not unlike leaving Brattleboro. You leave and you leave and you leave. Until there's nothing left to leave. And that leaving is the thing that none of us understand. That leaving is the thing that defines our time in this place...