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

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

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

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

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

I'm not happy to see anyone.

WHERE IS MARK GETTING DRUNK THESE DAYS?

I know you are all dying to know.

*The Sheraton Commander Lounge

*The bowels of Schoenhoff's Foreign Books

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

*My room

Not necessarily in order of frequency.

What a fulfilling and full life I lead. Yep.

Everybody go to this reading. Thanks.

Monday, October 27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buzz.

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

I got the following:

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


Poor old pilgrim misery

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

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

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803 - 1849)"

Sleep well, Elliot Smith .

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

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

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

-Ahem-

Who woulda thunk?

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

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

SMALL ROOMS



Spark in the black globe

of a rabbit's eye.  The walls

bleed black ooze.



Huge hedge dwarfs a raised

ranch, a world chloroformed &



pinned on a wax background,

piles of exotic magazines

collect dust in the basements

of a dumb age.



The horseheaded man

is afraid to pay the paperboy:



The hairs on my arms are alive

with blips of bioluminescence,



I'm a glowing blob in the

crushing dark of the very deep sea.



I feel the lawn eddy away underfoot,

I hear the thrum of the drums,



A blighted confidant in a cathedral

of moss.  Silence invoice.



Equity of compressed bone,

some pact of gravity anchors



my shoes to these grim floors.

Come to this bonfire

that illumines a Braille of grunts,



solder soldier hats & goggles

to see the gems that grow from 



eyes, salt crystals up a banal

string.



I am of no people.



Dark, fragrant: the nerve-netted

flower that forms

the night's singing mouth.  

FEEDBACK MIRROR



A series of closed

emitters, in proximity

causing feedback:

I remain, unfed,



unwholesome all along

the axis 

	of a mirror:

	shut down

	the left side

	seizure horse my

	Grand Mal mare

	ma grand-mere

	ma cherie

	ma main droite

	the long night

of cobbled groans, miscues



	all the long night

	I burnout

	& then sweep

	the ashes

	myself.

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

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

Cleave the dead

                   thing



Make head        way

         

         headspace

  

fills with broken birds

 

            *

the moth an asterisk

                       

                      hits the windshield

Congrats to Shin Yu on her book!

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

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

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

Today's Harvard Business School International food station offering:

"America's Heartland."

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

OK, OK.

Go Red Sox.

Can I have my soul back now, Boston?

Waxing Amish on quietude, Boston, aesthetics, schools in general. Watching this one from the sidelines watching myself disappear.

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

"It's only poetry."

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

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

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

Oudeis.

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

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

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

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

10.) "Your dedication makes me proud,

        yeah you move me like a mushroom cloud." 



             Versus, "White Power Porch"



9.)  "I have seven faces,

       thought I knew which one to wear,

       and I'm sick of spending these lonely nights

       training myself not to care." 



              Interpol, "NYC"



8.)  "Bottle on the nightstand,

       I count disasters on my free hands now."



              Jawbreaker, "Ashtray Monument"



7.)  "I rode down to the tracks,

       thinking that they might sing to me,

       but they just stared back,

       naked, trainless and black as night."



               Jawbreaker, "Condition Oakland"



6.)  "Theres a dream in my brain that just won't go away,

        it's been stuck there since it came a few nights ago.

        And I'm standing on a bridge, in the town where I lived

        as a kid with my Mom and my brothers,

        and then the bridge disappears, and I'm standing on air

        with nothing holding me, 

        and I hang like a star, fucking glowing in the dark

        for all those starving eyes to see."



               Bright Eyes, "Something Vague"



5.)   "The summer's gone, 

         but alot goes on forever."



                Leonard Cohen, "I Can't Forget"



4.)   "Well she said she'd stick around

        until the bandages came off

        but these mamas boys just didn't know when to quit

        and Matilda asks the sailors are those dreams

        or are those prayers

        so just close your eyes, son

        and this won't hurt a bit."



              Tom Waits, "Time, time, time."



3.)    "Ain't it amazing how quickly amazing things can die

         You know that you bring me down

         You know that you wear me out

         You know that you ring me like a dinner bell going south

         You know that you wring me dry"



                Silkworm, "Swings"



2.)   "Maybe there's a God above

        but all I ever learned from love

        was how to shoot at someone 

        who outdrew you."



                 Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah" 

                (as rendered by John Cale)





1.)   "All I ask of you

        is one last kiss.

        Here's my heart, here's a knife,

        and darling please don't miss."



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

                  for Me"

                                                          

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

"No, I don't want your sympathy."

As I consider it, I realize what a completely amazing piece of work said song is.

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

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

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

Vacillating between bilious pomp and whiny vernacular, I know.

Great, it's October 1.

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

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

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