redacts

everybody r e d a c t s
   them; selves; anyway--
that is not as it / how it / as it would be
awe     shucks     her own corn
   a big     ger
   basket hangs
[in the west song
of her encyclopedia.]

Intertopz ridiculous "stake-back" offer

Preamble: 
"With all due respect to the Niners and the Cardinals, this is the sort of game we want to see on Monday night! The Jets and the Patriots get it on at Gillette Stadium in what is arguably the biggest game of the season so far and Intertops.com celebrates this battle of the 9-2 teams with a stake-back offer for all its customers."


Stake-back (!!!):
"We will refund all losing wagers on our “Exact Number of Points scored in the 1st Quarter” bet offer if a field goal attempt is unsuccessful in the first quarter!"

That's right, folks. If you guess the wrong amount of points scored AND a field goal is missed, you get your money back! Who wouldn't hop on a this train to tinsel-town? One would think a stake-back offer would at least TRY to lure in bettors, but then again they are all about this bad. 

A post entitled "Norway" but should be called "China"

One time I went to Norway. I could tell you this. This is something that's possible. Like moroseness is an emotion, or people have lunch.

One time I went to Norway. I could honestly tell you this, but I'd be lying. Deep in my heart I am a terrible coward, and nobody will ever really love me. I've been to Norway. I have went there, okay? I didn't.

I am an unrecognizable sea-species dying in a Chinatown fish store. Why do Chinese people (They exist, O.K.?) like slimy flotsam from the insipid sea? Living living livid, I tell you. Dirt would be too clean a smell. FISHY is too poor a way to describe a putrid potpie of fish innards grossing.

[NOW I SHIFT GEARS]
Oil from the fires of yesteryear paintings of the everglade. Beneath the mention is

the lynchpin to freedom--free doom. Doom for one and all;
after glade and the misery up cometh
down the grotto to the blade
with her mystery, & so forth.

Yes, I believe in Red and Blue (&white)
stripes the halls the decks of glory.
Why can't I write like I want to? Like
A canvas is white at first I hate when people say they're blank.
They're only blank if white canvas surface a surface is not white white
not a surface not white not a surface.

Can you see what I'm saying? Words
written into a machine appearing
on a screen--Meaning Can you see
what I'm saying? Pent valves of
spry cigarettes these Chinese smoke
every goddam alleyway, every shopcorner
every moment is a cigarette waiting to be drawled
dolled about longing children fawning talking
don't know what they are saying.

They cannot spell like me.

isn't

can't
say whom

can't
say when

i can swim in the light
though
float in the darkwater
everywhere

how isn't it?
you think we're really breathing?

how isn't it.
that is not a question.

he never wanted to be,
for example.
we.
that's a noun.
this a statement:
it's something i make when
i'm not making something else.

Bathless anything; Breakfast everything (PS I don't take the word "slut" lightly)

never  anything
less than the rain west
([the train north, Mest?])
more  never   anything
(...w/less rules than)
the less   always   everything
([we are our town's best]).

f r i e n d s

Benefit: (-less?)
less than that which the rain than wet; &, It's 
still what I grab that makes me a man.
(Niet!)

the
Anways
article, eh?:
 even a slut
  has got to wake up. 

It's Physics

we are prolific
we read heiros--Terrific
got a radio in my ear--Quiet down
The Navy's telling me they're gonna dive, clown,
I have whale ears; sonic testing; ow!!!
(no joke)
Yeah that's how your ears feel
(I poke)
painful under pressure
(Facebook pose)
at least it's real
the pressure of water
(but I can't even feel). 

v i c o d i n f i s h (Klonopinish)

Prologue:

Do we ever know     how a smile appears

 --maybe in distant cold, somewhere lonely, like deers--

i've erected battles before, left, right & here. 

Inaudible:

extend beyond

 rappers have seized on our short

attention             span;

i mean;                                 man;

who in-gods-name do we

tell ourselves anything other than

this is what i do: I DO WELL

me strong, more potent, more GREEDY

I’ll wipe out the police, reclaim the NEEDY

i’m here! motherfuckers! shout for joy

i look out the window like i’m opening a toy

fuck what they say I am the greatest Paloi  

put next to the Fawkes I'm next most Guy-oi

don’t gotta much sense ever glib time like Kanye

I just chill with my AP stylebook and light up

snakes on my shoulders, bitches thighs up,

fire in the corner, this shit is going down,

man is on fire like Jason has Argonauts

(amazing invisible spiders! giant yellow pots!)

I can’t see where I’m going, the future is my past

Can’t see where I going the future licks my bass

Caught fresh just like you like it hon

Caught fresh like a vicodin fish

Not even trying anymore, Good post T

insect
rosewood
melodrama
snood
lynchpin
siamese kittens
the lame pup McGonagall
snow rabbit's slippers
a little milk lost, maybe
something part electric
all the snow
rainbows beyond rainbows
grass
stone
a man named Erotic
blazing deals

Conversation (in French)

"Do I make too much social commentary?"
I asked her, fully expecting a "no".
In fact, she leaned across the table and unleashed:
"Well, on our first date you said you weren't going to ask me any questions, because you thought that q&a was the lowest form of conversation. And then on our second date, you walked across the street when the light was red, because you 'don't need baby pictures to tell you when to cross'. And how you always say that people just conform to norms without a second thought to what's best for them. So in that sense, yes, you do make too much social commentary."
"What kind of questions should I ask you?" I replied, with a wan smile.
"Not that one" she deadpanned. "And you're too sarcastic, while I'm at it. How about you ask me: how was your day?"
"Can't you just tell me how your day is? Why do I need to ask you about it? I figure, if there's something interesting, you'll tell me. If you didn't that would be weird."
"You've never asked about my family."
"Sure, I have. Your brother, whatshisname, he's in school. And your dad's a culinary artist, your mom is retired, and your cat Fredo has been dying for the last 2 years"
"None of that is right!"
"Oh. Ok, Well, I'll ask you more questions. Here's one: when's our anniversary?"
"You can't be serious. I thought you planned this dinner for a reason? Tonight is our 10-year anniversary!"
"Yes of course, I was just kidding. I'll stop being sarcastic as of now."

Caper

"If I wrote my life story on a piece of toilet paper, it wouldn't amount to shit," Antonio said, staring off into space.

"No shit, Burqaman." That was Felipe, always hanging around to throw the cauldron on. Like a witch with a hot temper but less restraint. More hate.

Felipe with his felts hats on, always asking, blunt ashing on. Burnt ham to my Burnham charm.

EXTRA STOVEPIPE !!!

All I really need
are extra pipestoves.
And gloss for the girl,
her lips that is.
Also some striped bass
for the stream yonder,
come spring. While
we're on this topic,
though, nails would be nice,
for the saplings
I intend on fashioning
into a new hamper.

Professors love having middle age students!!!

If you ask most college professors about middle age college students, they can tell you a lot of reasons why they love having them in their class!

Such as:
--They take shits!!!
--They may have had babies!
--They might know how to bake!!!
--Some of them are French spies (exclusively female)!
--Some of them are huge opinionated bitches thanks to hours in a menial position all day, with passive-aggressive tendencies to boot!!! (Not you, Cheryl!!!)
--They are hard-working!
--They take Lipitor but Pfizer doesn't see that money because their patent protection ran out!!!
--Their favorite Shakespeare might be Taming of the Shrew!!!
--Professors love a great debate with their students--it keeps them from getting bored!!!
--I'm getting bored!!! You're so meta!
--They actually show up to class!!!!!!!

Tidal or Laundry

twitter is illiterati
twice as naughty
as pants on laundry
neoNazi
James Cameron started a parade
to the Titanic facade
always receding like Ahmad
Bradshaw his dad saw
how fly he be (aw)
staring at the stars (draws)
looking at they tree (s drawls)
smoking mad cigars
smoking mad beers

I smoke so much laundry
ima take a shower
a showa
i'm my plowers
big naked muscles bitches!
i came to rhyme, snitches!
i cook you like a crab
i found in dey tidal flatz
smoking mad crab weed
smoking mad buds
then i put in my pot and cook you
bitches

Skinema

Whoa, says somebody
(as somebody wears)
a grin thin a homebody

a white horse
in the field of daisies
whiter still (Kofalk)

or more moroseness
white, the whiteness
of being, white politeness
and blackness in my
morning joe, this mud pit
of staunch white cinema
staunch bright grinema
(the grinning of a can
dleabra)

What a blanket looks like (notepad, glanced)

A.
the tomb of the dinosaur codes
like magic filaments of paper dentists
imaginary salamanders folding their chairs
and clamoring off to work.

B.
"options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry"

C.
really neat idea (subtle and ingenious) that definitely merits further study. It's anybody's guess whether it'll prove to be feasible in practice, but well worth exploring. And the paper is really well written and well-balanced too (David is one of the most sensible and knowledgeable people in the world on these issues)

1.
"I believe in baths,"
she said. "Mostly for birds,
but also cameras. You know,
to put things in." She relaxed,
just barely, and managed to shrug
her shoulders. "What I'm saying
is there must be a way, to end
it all, without an ending."
Inhaled. "I'm really quite insane,
aren't I?"

2.
I believe in second chances
holidays in Branson (Richard, not Missouri)
and staunch NO CANDY APPLES rules
for those without teeth.

3.
October was for black flags,
flying them,
anointing them like altars,
one by one by one
or take a second look, a good
look and a shudder and a meat pie
just eat it up, hey? look into
my eyes and see that i'm just spiriting
about the room about to peruse some
fatal elemental crabshack wondering
"Are we there yet? No." But a taco
stand, halfway to the moondrake.

Freestyle part I

What's the etymology of entomology?
Willy Wallaby.
Wannabe
like a Spice Girl.
Spice World nice girl, nice
pearl necklace.
Sexist mexicans and blacks,
attack all of em,
black olive em,
I track Taliban - Osama, Obama
Tally me banana
smoothies, strawberry
Harry Belafonte - Stephon Marbury
I'm a star so bury me
Marry me, I the wed
Day of the Dead
De los Muertos
Los Puertos
The Doors are closing- Jim Morrison
mind the gap not the chorus, son
Freestyle like a Ford Taurus: done

I'm not going anywhere!

My Letter to Posterity (Though I Still Live)

Something: is fundamentally wrong with the world.
I have always felt this.
There are things that still belong.
Love, family, friends, nature,
music, love the least among these
and at once the greatest. Our
mothers and fathers are our sweetest
reminders of where we are from
a place where elkhorns weren't put
on the wall for show, or as some
capitulation to excess, they weren't
worn as a trophy of "what-i-killed,"
they were there because
they didn't need to be, because we are
all alive, after all, just across the field
is a bighorn sheep
and in the attic
is our imagination,
bordering on the riparian.

What I see in visions is electric
like God's face being shaved or
a minstrel microwaving popcorn
for the first time. Please just us,

just this once, she urged us,
legs up on the shore, toiling
as only a mermaid can: at once
sad and happy, part of the earth,
a piece of a chapel, say: not
earthly but swimmingly, you
know, marine... that's the word,

flash!...straight out of the sunbelt
some love like the sun melts,
and all around, everything's extraordinary
in its ability to be profoundly powerless
or at once it's bright opposite: a revision.
A big apple with (too many) seeds of excess.

In Love, of the River

Have I
been through
the fire
enough times
that still
it rings
my ears
hints of a bell
chords of mountains
chiming their death away
mountains unto mountains into
a bleaker beginning, itself fried
these down-low curmudgeons
can't help retreating
looking in the mirror
reacting, saying, "More, should
have done,
more!" Or something similar
slices of throats and lozenges
culls of enamored bridesmaids aloft
"Look mother! An Owl!" & so on
the kid cameras clacking on, chirping,
chiming, clicking. Everybody's alive now,
after all, half of time's ancestors,
piled about, spitting in boxes
careening down alleyways disaster on the dial
motives unscented like a scene from a movie
on breakaway, in love, of the river.

Monsieur Fryynta

Lunch and freckles

Lunch and freckles
neckless munchkin heckles
punch you for a shekel
reckless.

Sheffield-colored maize
and bleu cheese (solid)
all the buffalo on the ranch
say moo.

Cows so emo
short on emotions, but big
on emoticons.

For once

1.
Failed, pale, carved-out canvas of a man that relents, and in so relenting, does not suppress what he ought to--

...& the intellectuals said--Hey son, look down, look up, look around--but they never spoke. They weren't close. That isn't love!

Love by what I mean by words I mean
love, a thing like a lantern in the dark, drake
that mourns the moonlight fading, an arc
of being discovered once discovered again
something you'll call a cliche
a niche a mismatch a clan a calm breeze
a canal, a mode of mysticism
a way of matching like with like
a way of being
a way of living.
You already know.

2.
That isn't what I meant. I know the answer I know
how to live. Sometimes. I know
the way of the arrow, how it flies
and in so flying does. It hasn't been
sent by anybody. Which is the same as saying
it has been. Shot thus, landing here. What
a way of putting words together, you'll
say. What a way of siphoning sand. I had
hands and I lost them, by way of the sleeve,
by way of the bands of color that stripe
my dusty dark forehead my
time for lingering my time
for hungering the minute
is now.

Come closer. He isn't here yet.
You are listening to yourself.

Wasted sweetness

I am surrounded by nothing on all sides.
I am running toward the fire.
The fire runs from me.
Mountains beyond mountains.

Please cut the lights.
Somebody's god is untamed.
Please somebody... explain yourself.
Why you are here, for example,
or maybe something like: Why am
I here? But that becomes trite, becomes a hold full of water,
and all the good and the bad that entails.
On the one hand: water something like fresh.
On the other: possible disease.
Between my hands there is air
between my hands there is sweat
between my hands there is sweet.

NOLY (Like holy but with an N)

If there's one thing I want to say to the Microsoft Corp., it's definitely this:
Side-by-side windows
are chill to the point of whiskerless.
(That is, as chill as being whiskerless
is in the cat community.)

Feels like I have to get out
all my weird shit now, not
"before it's too late," but more like
"before I quit being so afraid to
get down to the stolid business
of living responsibly and applying
myself."

Then again, I can still write really weird
(newly adverbed) things once I get
used to really being serious about my
present life. The point is
maybe this unloading kind of helps
somebody. I guess it's okay if it
only helps me. But I hope it (or
some of it) can one day help somebody
else. That's my gay little goal. 

Blowhard foolish prose

It's kind of sad to say, I think, but everything you have ever done has become allergic. Becoming your own reflection. It's called, for example, "having to take down the mirror on the vanity you are using as a desk," or whatever. What I'm saying is that I'm into symbolism. Yesterday I met this guy at the cinema. Somebody is looking at somebody else. What I'm reading might as well be Latin. My mind is a soupcon of coy meaning. There we go again. Somebody goofing. Somebody Googling the goofster next door. You know I really hate this new internet thing. Everybody has to fucking go on there every day. So many sites. So little time. So many pilgrims. Too much wine.

]] Whati'msayingisthatWhati'msayingisthatWhati'msayingisthatWhat
i'msayingisthatWhati'msayingisthatWhati'msayingisthat [[

[inscribed prose] ::::that space driveway
:::::the most kooked out uncanniness

;;;;;uncanned bliss like pumpernickle
sandwiches, Jews and glances;;;;;

:::::give way::::::

to the ethnic spellathon
over here over here we can't
even use these words anymore we
are assumed to be weird here we
are just so cautious (rear)
we just came so close (spear)
it just came, this snow!
it just came, this year!

Where's the lectern? (Hipster Ed.)

High at night; high as a flashlight
on the top shelf in the closet.

Voluminous as the quantity a whale breathes
let's say a Wright one. This is how much high.

Big as the Lenscrafters' tab for The Eyes of
Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.

As amazing as, per se, something worth
mentioning.

intelligence

I open the door for three--now four!--men
and Maybe I stay for a while.

Open the door for the strays
and Maybe I stray that way...
unsick beggars in the backalley
await your reconnaissance. It is not
as romantic as you believed. But you
never really could, not with a heart,
mind you? Not with a heart, that says,
(IF YOU ARE LISTENING) the life lived
in secret clay meadows from one
burned ionized distance to the past
the gray isotopes of sweet longing
fading and fading and fading...
[You know what I mean!]
Is  clearly not worth living.

Your mother could have told you that.

FlavoursOLove (Green Energy Re-Bridge)

FlavoursOLove

c a m e r a
word -- art
flash; crave;
brilliance--;
electric DerS
piegel canvas.

Electric dimo
rphous giant;
clock ditto ho
meless man-of
-war causless
bromicide alert;
tastelesswidows
& elacstatic ra
inlikeblatterbla
cameracoldflashha
rdcoldlikeplastic

illuminedsuddenlyby
F i L a M e N t
O u s algal oil ablaze
in_the_new_age_
l-a-n-tern.

Faces etc

why are faces always beautiful? they can be
tanned creased dark graced bulbous Sino
Indoeuropean Asian greasy flanked by brown language
arranged like strange lids or Chinese
vegetables the Orient sinking in sinking
in sometimes a sink like a stink
under my skin sometimes through my nose like ahhh
choooo says the train says the whistle
says the bundle
says the white Chinatown noise the hunger
the thirst of danger this thirst for power
this hunger gradient this grand switch
these bald Lebanese women grabbing for things
(Is this something you've seen? Perhaps.)
Complete honesty. Gets inbetween the layers
of sediment in the memories of the clam bake
or the minutes spent waiting in line for fresh
vegetables on Eldridge Street, when there are other
in-every-visible-way identical vegetable stands
ones seemingly exactly the same, same
cucumbers, same mashed / un-mashed melons, same
brown skin fanning flies off the plums, same muted
rebellion or pride or something like being haunted
something like just living selling the ordinary
selling the handbag, or the curtain, the
hidden-behind-glass items for retail
in the nearby shops ... shops like people
offering
slim silver cropped doorhandles, for example.

Thoughts walking around (30 Aug 2010)

Walking through Chinatown today I had some thoughts. First of all I am a minority here. It's good to feel this way. (Of course... the goddam ubiquitous qualifier) You can take everything I say with a pinch of salt but Westerners (and those Easterners who duly dwell here (there, yonder, south, fuck these labels)) get too much sodium to begin with. The point: I'm a minority at least in Chinatown, Manhattan. Since I'm a white American of European heritage I'm usually the majority. It's good to have a break from that... identity. I really don't want to be linked to what so many people like myself have done. What do I have in common with those Europeans-of-old? Does the connection mean anything at all? Walking around here it usually doesn't feel like it. More generally in NYC people don't stare at you longer than an instant (unless they have one of the usual reasons for looking longer, like you might remind them of somebody they know, they like your looks, etc... wrestling with the unknown here). So I'm basically anonymous. And I have to be honest: I can't get enough of it, at least for now. I don't really want to be known most of the time, now. Obviously I aspire to do great things and forge great relationships with amazing people, which will make me not always anonymous. But by and large there are so many people here from such different backgrounds, they have seen a lot. And one of the only "rules" that seems to be a rule here, really just a convention is what I mean, is that it is not chill to stare or single people out. The mass is just the mass, like a river, not pointing to itself, just flowing.

One exception: at least two of the cashiers at the convenience/deli/ballsack across the street call me "Boss." I don't like it. They are of some Mid East heritage (what do I know?) and it feels like they are singling me out for being "those boss," "the man," whatever. Both times so far I have been wearing my (new) glasses, so maybe that makes me look more "professional." So really I don't think it's very much racial, but is maybe economic. Whatever. More observation is obviously needed. 

During my walk I made it halfway across the Manhattan bridge. The very cement and filaments of the living bridge shudder every time the train goes by. I believe it was built in 1901 but I could be wrong. It's old. Could not help but think what would happen if the bridge broke and fell. If I was over the water, would I be okay? Assuming nothing landed on top of me, of course. My guess is that I'd be pretty hurt, almost certainly broken bones and absurd bruising, etc... but if I landed on my feet, I'd live... once again assuming I'd be intact enough to float... or swim... to shore. Chill. 

I got a filling

tonight's not gonna be good
searching for cavities
in my cavities, my skivvies
starboard skiff
spaceman spliff

"Pliff" said the onomotapoeia
"pliff, ploff"
feeble sheep, sheepish people
keebler elves ship steeples
subtly sipping beetles

Juice of the sun
ruby red greatfruit
tropical americana

Elegant as Chinatown Garbage, maybe

1.
I have already discovered
the meltwater at edge of cave

already entered
the cave I am to call home
like lost money ringing her bank
to say, "Coming home soon!"

or a man named Nickel phoning to
get his liquor license renewed
at half past midnight
in the East teens.

2.
A.
The chaos ferry
churns on empty
she has already stuggled enough
she has already
done what matters.

B.
Welcome, they say,
to the place that matters.
You have found the spoon
inside of the baby.
Found the runt
in halls of prized gerbils.
You have already... have already...
done so many things. Have concocted
potions to tantalize the masses.

Has discovered circular pathways
in abundance
that wind downward with elegant
and symbiotic ease.
What I mean is: you've arrived.

2nd Blog In The City (Crumb)

Preamble

I have already discovered
the meltwater at edge of cave
(. . .)

1st Constitution Ave.

I have already entered
the cave I am to call home
like lost money ringing her bank
saying: Herro, I emm home! Beijing
means Northern Capitol. Jing.
Not Zhing.

& Deer ([Ampersand, misunderstood])

-- it seems overwhelming to me,
MY HAVING NO
conceptualization of schema

 -- Ultimately we need to gather
our friends and settle in a glen
near our families
a shady grove
not sketchy but well-wooded
or were it sketched, well-wrought

well-wooded, populated by extremophiles who
hide, who inhabit inscrutable depths
of wood, stone and earth;

 -- with woodpeckers friendly a-thump, snakes not vicious
but yes, dangerous (we are men, after all);
wild, out-there, your kids need to know;
& deer, the great misunderstood deer, Kissinger's
useless eaters, but not useless, even if animals
could be. (Set aside
humanity, for now). Right here in the U.S.A,
God's own city,
these deer are our own natives,
Polacks of the Great American Ruminants,
drinking firewater of polluted landscapes,
but still alive. Eating tree & bush
& grass beneath the frost. [Bison with huge necks
massively heave snow aside. Who said snow
was just white and pretty; We reside.]

(Nothing more natural than electricity,
fatigue, the quest
to not be extinguished. In some ways,
we are that fragile.)

 -- The
snakes not man, you know, men unserpentine:
surreptitious but uncoiled. blasphemy without heat.
salamanders and saddled feet.
our children must know,
forest.

 -- &
tribesmen stone creeks in the evening, gathering
piles along the banks, relieving. reliving ghost
fires, the weird swift waters. something like time
gathering, fathering. uncomfortableness sure as
mother's milk, even now developing. our greatest
mistake: not knowing how this debacle nourishes
us, forces necessity upon us like a dagger and
a dangerous but absolute mission. Failure never
was an option. That's not just an idiom, but a 
truth. It's just something that happens.
We do not try
not to love, nor
would we claim to

(intentionally)

adorn hearths with rubbish or something
unwholesome   after all   love
 is more the trumpets
than the harp; more than trumpets
and less than harp-song. Lesser and more ordinary,
simpler, but less crafty. It is here &
there; it is right here. 

 -- (intentionally)

Right beneath your wings. Call it poetic
but true-- ... ... and now, becomes 
(is) the truth redacted. Nothing less perfect,
I say, then pigeons taking wing
and defecating without awareness.
These kind of accidents
are not accidents. Ashberry was right:
these accents seem their own defense.

Aboriginal Sin

This is the first original thought I've had in years
A wholly National House of Pancakes
no syrupy foreigners allowed

I'm as French as french toast
but I know my people
and come Bastille Day,
they'll huff and they'll puff
and they'll blow NHOP down.

Pancakes are flimsy
much like my business plan
potentially a chocolate chippy enterprise
but ultimately, a big mess.

Enterprisin' ain't easy.
Mo' butter mo' problems.

If this doesn't work, I'll donate my brain to charity

"Je suis Chinois"

I told her, to prove that I could speak French.
"Je m'appelle Tal et je suis Chinois"
"Oh vraiment?" she replied, frenchly, "c'est magnifique!"
"Yeah, that was a joke," I blandly conceded, "I figured you could tell I'm not Chinese."
"Ce n'est pas sympathique." She was crying.

French people are idiots, arrogant cockatoos.
All for none and none for all.
Strippers and benzene users. Chlorophyll.
Why does she want me to be Asian?

I pressed on: "Je veux un croque-monsieur, s'il vous plait"
"What, just because I am from France you think I will cook you up a fucking croque-monsieur? Get real, Chinaman." She was angry.
You could fry an egg on her forehead, and I wanted to.
It had been hours since I last ate.

Cereal is for morning people.
Eggs, however, are for men of Jesus.
Disjointed conversations are for losers

Noble savage on boardwalk

The place I choose to slumber
is a bed of weathered boards
who awaits like heaven
my sleeping form tonight.

There aren't shadows (Riverside picnic)

There aren't shadows, oh, SNOWMASTER...
would that I could... ...FITZGIBBON ( - - - - )
a snatch a pearl a hand a grab agent
Oreano, Carlotto, there are [ you? ]
(how can I say this? you're pregnant)
oregano
i have nutmeg
i have nutmint
we will understand someday
the ways of our ancestors
in time for us to burn


there are hands
big white black brown white hands
big black white huge smallstrong
the same hands
hands of tomorrow, hands of
some distant future. hands of
the ruminant; hands of the
small, belabored, the small, the chapped,
the skin overcoming the wilt; the ham
being simmered in the kitchen. We are
all just lovers here. This is our stream.

Alert the admin (Fuck you, webmaster)

Gosh if you're
listening I hope it's
morning. My terms
are always better felt
in the succulent
a.m. At Purdue News
Service, they make babies
like news stories:
the old-fashioned way,
they snake and fuck and
crook, snakes in the grass,
woodlands in piles,
I have no business saying anything.

Yeah, baby: Designed.

I have been desired
desired in a theatre.

I have been designed,
designed in a Plexiglas
mold you snagged from that
aeronautical engineering
student you slept with.

Yeah, baby: Designed.
I've slept with less necklaces,
believe me honey.
I've slept with the less-than-freckleless.
I've tangled with barbers and felons
and all kinds of strange men.
Most importantly, I know a unicorn
when I see one.

Onward, friends. A warm bright tomorrow
beckons and everything
is bound to be just
excellent.

Bound.

Love in France (oooh! fantastique!! ahhhhh!!!! merde) [a morality play]

There is no love in France
There is no love in the Highlands
There is no love in the Lowlands
There is no love in Canberra
There is no love in Tibet
There is a prophet named Yeshua,
There is no love anymore.

Every bed you've ever / Bonfire

Every bed you have ever seen
from the eyes of the back of the door to the beginning of the sheen
on her lips the quips the quickness to her kiss the quickness shaped like this
the quickness of every hip
the tender heart attack of eternal bliss
earth like shattered furniture
on the lawn, the enemy's lawn
and the bible is on the furniture
and the bible is on the furniture

glowing like rainbow lightning HUNG
a pedestal a pinch of mesacline a hunting tin

a box of chocolates a box of shockpits
humming like lecticorn bumblebees
made up cool running ram
bumble bumble where?
bumble bumble doo,
how are yooooouuuuuuuu?
Dirty Danny, Where are
yoooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuu?

Bigfin reef squid

(Sepioteuthis lessoniana)

New to Mahler

It is written. Thus noted, so told.
Believe in the less ordinary
is probably good advice.
But what do I know? I'm just a novice,
listening to Mahler for the first time.
Was a Jew, than a Fish. Opposite of me.

I swear to God I'm going to play a trumpet
louder than any man ever has.

Just as I know a man more Pegasus than me
shall one day inherit the wondrous paths to truth.
So it is written, / So I am told.

Make no mistake then, that I will burn down the gates
strip the ivy puppets to their limbs and rend asunder
all vertical, horizontal, cylindrical elements that hereby hold
me from getting to the other side

(I won't say... the promised land...)
this: the land of our fathers.

So They inherit the path. I take the plans: burned.
I make the path. I find the roots. I sow the seed.
I plow the land. It is the land of my fathers. Grandfathers.
Great grandfathers. & so forth.

Thislandismyland
thislandisyourland

said the great fountain
the lips of the teachers ordinary
praised by position extraordinary
what I mean is they were adults
and we were children.
Even the 8th graders seemed full-grown.

We aren't cephalopods, e.g.

I think it’s easy to believe
that mice kill men; it’s easier,
still, to find the converse true.

True like the wintermints, your
girlfriend, or the sly octopus,
judging the southern African lineup
(here from the the whole world coming)
to choose eight straight winners.
Incredible, really.
And to whose grave establishment,
has the party created,
a vague sense of irony,
or a corpuscle of raw iron turnip
coasting out like the murky pump of
buttresses, lunches.
That’s right world, cephalopoda
have heads too. Hearts, also, and
tentacles from here to Tuesday to tomorrow
to Monday. Again—the day of the sun.

If I had to believe in some type of man
to set the bar for others, it would be a lectitorn
a goldfinch in a Petrarchan sonnet, the kind
that fill your eyes with tears. Or used to,
at least: we haven’t all been to Bunker Hill,
but I have. I’d seen the casino there, tasted
the Indians yams and medium-cooked stripsteak.
It was all much better than Squanto could have
imagined: which is a heartless, spineless way of
admitting the unfathomable horror of the old way
of life, upon knowing ours; of the old guard hearing
our new petulant girls, pornstars faking orgiastic
sentiment, just gross poor women sluts like slots like
poker tables dirty, depressed, naked with skulls with
iron pots with dirty hayseed mannequins with liquor
cigarette potty stains,
dirty red pretty lipstick fucking until they’re sick, five minutes
at a time, time for 5, time for lunch, time for the threesome,
time for the breathmint, time for the aftershave, time for
the shower, time to eat breakfast, time to commute home,
time to review the mortgage, time to gauge the amount of
resin in the tires, resin in the pipe the only flute to tomorrow,
the only tulip for the brain the only way to stay same the only
curse fucking curse like a furnace like a cat like a kitten like a cat
revisited: a fucked up cat a golf course a wizard a dead wizard a
new man a new plan a canal Panama

a desert a whelp a kid a soccer tourney
a mother driving a mother
wiving a mother bringing her son a sandwich
when there’s already fruit rollups
it’s the dusty then the clean
the cloudy then the sheen I mean the clear
the dirty the milky the rainy the feared
men, the clasping dirty re-trained brains
the minds of many, the clans, the kooks,
the verily verb missing the man with his lantern
keeps returning being so meta being too thin
getting into drugs getting into Vogue getting into
the club getting into kids things getting pregnant getting fucked
getting new shoes getting chewed out getting cheated on getting
killed getting new getting knowledge getting dome getting head
getting gravy at the gravy store (who has heard of this?
who has heard of that? who has planted this?)

another parenthetical needed—nobody plants anything, anymore!
the real sweet moments overlooked
or turned into something “sweetheart” or “downhome” or “authentic”
the real parts turned out the real parts turned in the man in the mannequin
posing as a mannequin
the man named Quinn
the Black Man loving to rhyme again
just listen to rap and hear me grin
hear me run hear me bunch hear me yipes hear me yanks year me yet
hear me left

Hall & Song

1. Hall

There is a hall of mysteries
in the brain
more changed than main
more grain than grain
more blood / more guns / more fame.

In the blood is the sugar gone
from the flesh apparatus to the stone.

The herenow wish of tomorrow
is to never feel the same.
Look at my fetish puppets!
Look at their halls of whey!


2. (To Be Sung)

Empty the river kitchen
her halls made full of foam! (Oh!)

Empty the river kitchen
everywhere I roam. (Ho!)

Somebody Delete This (3)

1.
halfdraked corner of my life
the i's always wanting

frience blue blood inheritance
waiting on the wings

a side of beef,
a porridge for example,
that slut Virginia's gonna git stuffed.

I'm sorry to break this to you, mister, but
your daughter Kaley, the Bulldog--
she's already become an ingratiating slut;
her pussy will be well regarded in the halls
at Bowling Green. In fact I've heard

she enjoys interacting with a guy
and a girl at the same time. Says
it "gets her fucking clit off so hard,"
in other words.

2.
popular mechanics
popular antics
popular dryboard
popular screed
popular meta-animation stint
popular feet cruise

Go-Parts

<>
Go-Parts Dairy-Creme Convertibles.
I suck, at the small nibbly nub on the coin
of my opinion.

<> [THIS BULLET HAS NO TITLE]
You can be wrong when you're high. When you're blessed as such, it seems impossible. Lo -- It is not. Your comrades might set you at ease with their cannabis-as-lambent smiles, but they do not point out that you are wrong. Mistakes happen, after all.

<>
"Excuse Me, Mister Main."
"Yes."
It would appear that you have been posting on a site called "Absurdists Inc." Is that right?
Yes.
[Pause.] Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?
Yes.
[Long pause as sheriff-type slowly realizes you aren't talking.] You don't say. You know, a man of your age and complexion ought to be assshamed of hisself for writing that gollllddamn slander on that thurr website.

<> BRASS!!!
Today I put all of my money into brass. Simultaneously launching "Brass is f-cking awesome" ad-campaign.

Somebody Delete This (2)

Somebody delete this,
that is, whoever has a heart.

If you cannot read this then turn it
upside down and believe in it. This is the special
day of forest luncheons and speakeasy
hideaways. I have to tell you -- I think you are
amazing; you're almost special; you always
have been--

I squeeze together my ass at the thought of
you'm him we'm them she'm

whoom
whoom
w-hoom
who-om
men
men
danger

men
men in danger
men

men
menin
Lenin
menin
meninges
meninges
meal
meningitis

home-flog
home-flot

repetition
repetition
college
repetition
repetition
college

Somebody Delete This (1)

Every movie has a prison. Just like
every slough has a heart. In its weedy
rye innards are the calves whom slough
off their toil; they are frozen; we are here;
I am talking about a winter's marsh.

Oh look, potheads absconding with ideas
hiding them in trainplanes
cars with galactic signatures
sometimes i don't know if i'm funny or just
really funny. Erotic sinecures
aren't erotic anymore, and the word
is overused. The refreshing thing about being
off: you are going to blink on at some point
(first I said "turn" but opted out).

Eat nutmeg in small amounts, as with
turnip & parsley.

ROMBUS

"ARIGHT" -- DEFINITION -- BULLETIN
MALE PARTS
SMILES

    4. Right, on the square: cf. A-WRY. Obs.

1571 DIGGES Pantom. I. Biijb, If all the sides be equall, and no angle aright, then is it called Rombus.

 

Rombus, I tell you. 

Rombus and the busline kids. 

Green sparrow and the green adventure. 

Mellow side of 

the opium pipe 

(in a) Peshawar province. 

CNN kills every day.

Pasta?

Everybody hates my music. But who could blame me? I just ate pasta, with a heaping of bright mushrooms and zucchinis in a darkrick tomato sauce. My Nana used to grow tomatoes back in Italy. Vine-ripened. One of my neighbors always went on & on about the merits of the vine-ripened variety. "None of that store ripened crap," he'd say. This was a guy who liked to visit volcanoes around the world. A vulcanologist.

I just played basketball. Ended up 2-3. Pretty frat. Once I start saying something meaningful, it's already erased. Motley daily strikes are like rum; but they don't taste good. I swear if I ever pitch in the majors I'm only going to throw balls.

Most day are like this. Morning with the mothballs. Screwy fountains of powdery fungus balls and snakebites.

Blasted newt scorched wings; I saw two beetles die today.

Go-Bear.

1.
I want
to go there.
Go where?
Go-bear.

2.
hey, stencil.
how are we?
doing, in God
we trust.

3.
maroon

Thereby the Zeta bandloom

Bedbars and a whole tub full of Kentucky swill. I want this to hurt so much you'll never want to read again, Missy. She looked at me like I was crazy, like I had come from Paducah with a gun in my shirt and a camera up my sleeve. Listen here, I ain't no jack-rabbit! I'm a trooper

and with those words left the hotel, took a cab to the aerospace museum. I was feeling a little woozy from one too many smokeless cigarettes.

joined the bandwagon, then. all the circuitous paths had erupted like flames or men and the fix was in. they stole the gold and hid it in the pyramids.

that's what happens anyway when the mind wanders
you say you want a sandwich? well, how's about a
leaflet about a sonnet about a television show
about somebody's diamond problem
showering like leafy lopsided dublooms
cowering in a corner of melonhusk misery
the intentional cow eyes
like silence ignored.

(Just another sandwich movie.)

jungle meds

guard the medicine
goes the jungle dream
gates ours to climb

guard the jungle medicine
goes the mothwing song

keepsafe her vinous sleep,
oh medicine man,
goes a third, topless.

none of this was written down.

hardly worth posting

I believe in whole cloth legacy
a rhyme | a dish | a seder

So Winnetka now, private beach
sand sprung lovers or heroes or bodies
a complete fest of divers retraining instinct
instead fusing it with old downhome responsehood
false funeral of something flat, something legendary

there didn't used to be school-shootings
except pick-em-up hot swift kick the library Danny

he's out to lunch

The Makeshift Machines

Maybe I can make this myself.

Nice torch, man. You light

the guy and lantern spray

the most sandstone parts

of our lives, which is to say

we are becoming, & shale

& shake and the first heard/\

Tigers have alumni; originally,

seeds were mammals. Of course

camel fur, camphor frenetic

sheikhs laugh like treats. Hey,

come to my cave. It's cool, don't

worry about it, I have a permit,

my crab's named Hermit, we'll

relax a bit, join me, I'll jangle it.

figurative cloudass

I've never looked at clouds;
they only rainlight me.

Never played the cray-pa, though
I have been rained on.

Why all this talk of slurry?
No. Get warmer, friend.

What reason for our discourse?
"Languid cracked games
spell out our disaster
in the trumpet cabinet,"
is something I would say.

"What part?"

"All of it.
All of it."

But this is just the start.
Then there are chirrupings
I know that's not a word
I DON'T CARE

chirruppings red, green &
yellow shale, every color
of the pickering dickering dock,
the glory-man craveboy in the
cement stacks of the fucking moon,
the moon, boy. The goddam moonman.

we are no less ordinary

it seems that never does the world issue word
like a forest full of cats mid-rebellion
the felines taking revenge on the antihistamine
contingent. ((I am the full great scorpion of old!))

-constant-hordes-and-clouds-of-white-aggression
[meaning whitehot] slag like luncheons visit upon us

) not an occasion
) without somebody’s mention
) forest to the fire
) toes for a burglar

one time I had sex on the kitchen floor of some family in Loveland, Ohio. My girlfriend was house-sitting for them. As I recall I still wasn’t very experienced sexually so it wasn’t as glorious as it could have been.

steamy white rows of
rice (it was rice, it was rice)
like white fluffy life
grain; in silence; some recognition
lighting up the goddam people and taking them
down to the ground to the hermit to the hound
the white-hot red-hot green&sunbeam maniac
wherein we wail at each other like lecticorns
true lambents of the unctuous funeral
hopped up on coals of white-hot peppermint Bluth
canes and wiles and wilds and broken spermicidal
infants in a black soup of majestic mystery
misery

it’s raining please;
we are no less ordinary

nude words

every nude word you ever said
were a drag-done-lady selling veggies
or riding
somebody's spaniel
down the road toward the brick bunting
pigeons retrieving treats amongst the trees
hills, witches, wrens, cat-treats
all these things and more
are dripping like anemones into the sea
you cannot imagine what this really means
to smote the small guy while wading
balls-out in the smooth tan reminder
of a legacy, of a legalization protocol
look onto doom as a sign of doom
or murder as a sign of some murder
like FEMA made into a disaster and ruined
the frail crab bayed-out orchestra of intense fever
consorting our worst intentions at every turn of the wheel
and somebody's cinnamon stick is sticking into their ass
loose, luridly, hooking around a pomegranate piece of pussy
like a meal tattoo gone wild.

"Secretly obsessed with fish..."

she whispered,
like a great white buffalo.
Mark Ruffalo.
Divine is all the time

Raw fishermen
rayfish in their craws
dollards of sand
ocean blue craypas
plantains on the plains

phantom flames
acid-induced trips are lame.
I never claimed to have gone anywhere
though I may have walked at times
I didn't go all that far.

I saw things, but who doesn't?
People blind to what's around them
don't know a red pepper from a green one
or think cabbage and lettuce are the same.
I would recommend not looking at clouds.

This is why I have a lawyer on retainder!!! (LOL)

After playing bongos until I collapsed nude onto my free-trade organic bamboo flooring, and slowly crawling to my computer to check my email, I got an angry epistle from my lawyer Ron regarding a recent Absurdists' post. He ordered me to write this on the blog or face stiff penalties (Absurdists' board of regents is getting very irritated with the lack of production and certainly he knows I don't want to upset them anymore. Normally I'd tell the ginkgo-pooping toolbag to calm down with a nice warm tea of white willow bark and ballsack... but now I've got to play nice). Here goes:

TO: MY BLOGREADING PUBLIC
REGARDING: MY LAST POST
WHEREIN MY WORDS WANT CLARIFICATION
REGARDING SUGGESTIONS OF NEFARIOUS
ACTIVITIES BY TED HAMPTON, Jr., OF
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, ILLINOIS, SPECIFICALLY
SEEMING TO SUGGEST THAT TED
HAMPTON, Jr., MURDERED BILLY-RAY,
or ANY PERSON, FOR THAT MATTER.

Dear Reader,
How are you? Hope things are excellent. Say, let's cut the crap, okay? I'd like to firmly disavow any suggestion that there is any barber by the name of Ted Hampton. Really, there isn't any man in the world, let alone in Champaign County, named Ted Hampton, Jr., who makes a living cutting hair and hawking grooming products (subtly, on the side). And even if there were, this no-doubt upstanding, patriotic man would never have killed Billy-Ray, or killed anybody, for that matter. 

Why I never cared for Ad Libs

FILL IN THE BLANK

You met your

(a) wife
(b) bank teller
(c) poker partner
(d) dad

after a nice stroll and a lunch of

(a) burgers

from the local firemen union's summer picnic.
Met Paul, married with two kids, and Somerset,
who seemed like kind of an asshole. After that we
jetted and bought some jewelry from a few pirates
on the streetside. We later realize they were just
kids dressed up and that the jewelry was really
old receipts.

Next we met up with our friends Ned and Eileen at
Paramount Filters (where they only serve the finest
filter-feeders!). Turns out Billy-Ray had been murdered.

How did it happen, you ask? It was most certainly
1. The Barber

(a) in the steam room
with the jelly fish

(b) in the bone home
with the pepper-fish

(c) on top the dromedary
meaning it's a camel with one hump

or

(d) Ted Hampton.

You decide.

for better or worse (crayfish version)

I don't get you
she said, livid
with a crayon in her grasp
and an army of mercurial guttersnipes
slashing like land-coves at the bay.

how has it been, imaginary?
i complained, aloud, to the gruff man
eyeing me like starburst by the bay.

listen, crawdaddies, i said,
these aren't your parts. we have
claimed them.

back then

porch by the wetslide grasses,
she purrs, a nude princess
in need of linens or, at least,
some grasses or rush with which
to fashion some clothing.
this came to me in a dream
the night after a barber stole my wife
years later
when i finally realized
we were just kids
back then.

detailed notes on psychic interaction between two consenting adults at the civic center

Is this good or bad? I have a newsie
hovering around the building asking me stupid questions like
do i want to live? would i rather stay in the boardroom? how many people have never pooped? is this possible? where are my shoes?

I don't, I answer. And, yes, probably, how dare you ask that question, no, on your feet.

From Jungle to Businesswoman Shakedown

On the peninsula is where I got the degree. In the vegetative, dank, smelly jungle is where I was born. I come from deep dark earth like shit and I make it to the mainland and I take a job at a smelly laundry store and I work work work the peninsular, mainland way of life. This how I live, okay. So you come here to discuss some business. What can I do to you that you cannot do to me? Easy, give me a blowjob. No, seriously. Right now. Do it.

Insane Tommy

be-wed were the eyes of Mary Todd
be-wed were her pearly gates
be-wed on Wednesday and tell Tommy kimbo;
tell Tommy his Mommy is tall. 

Oh, tell Tommy his Mommy is tall.
Tell Mommy his Tommy is tall.
Tell Mommy on Tommy;
Tell Tommy on Mommy;
Embroider his name in your quilt.

Quotes on the Bloody Danube

"There is a vision greater than my own
(an eye in no way limited like mine)
which puts me in my place."
--Augustus Finch IV, Esq.

"Sparrows have attacked.
Bring the reinforcements."
--Crow

"Specimens. I need Specimens, dammit!
Gregg--get back here with those specimens,
you little fairy! Specimens, Jim, get him!
Get the specimen fairy boy!"
--Steven Crabe

Garlic notes

1. In the cavern of the blog,
things looked untidy.

2. I've skewered shrimp
with less peppers than that, Jesus.

3. The brooding "big cat" biologist thought
How many leopard prints
have my jubilant masters unearthed?

4. Sometimes my dad gets mad at me
for writing bizarre rusticons like this
here -- just look at me, making up
a word again -- Rusty cones, dogs,
wherein the witching is welled
cold hard dark un

5.
man
holding
a lantern
   (already won)
Withholding a
pattern (since begun)!

6.
The piece emerges:
Am I Alive?

Angles in the Arctic (Pilot)

"It's always Christmastime in these parts, Johnny," said the old man, who had the skittishness of a ruminant nursing young.

"Which way's East?" I asked.

"Depends on who's asking, in'-it?"

"Beg pardon, old man?" Hiss in my voice.

"It's that way," he said, gesturing.

That was the problem with these washed out North Pole exurbs, I thought. All the ex-elf foreman were bitter, brittle, but they had no heart when you really got down to it. Sure, they'd go through the motions like they wanted to fight, to show their smiling starving beautiful children of light that their daddy was worth something, worth a helluva lot come to think, and no way, NO WAY was ol' Daddy going to put up with any old traveler such as myself asking him for directions. Hence the yuletide prodding from the get-go. Yes, I'd bested the geezer. But why leave it there? I pulled out my Luger and shot him in the dick.

All Aboard To Piperburg

Aye, said the cloying pirate
who smelled like cinders or
christmas mints.

Cylinder.
Cylinder.
Cold-tab.

There are our favorite flavors.
(Sand-Snipe!)
(Imagined nutmeg!)

Sand-towel.
Head-garb.

Aliza with a bright shawl
Midnight Rose in the garden
brandishing a duckhammer
and swearing in Polish

Snitches running the alleys
these days with pipers and
strollers and boobs
spilling out their pockets.
Christmas.

Bermy Foss o' Duckwood Green

bermy foss o'er duckwood green
original pancake houses
you & my original twin
ate lettuce in the garden.
a tin box of convents at noon.

this is how i explained myself
to the doorman.
he didn’t like this one bit.

<>
I am one day
going to lead
our band to stardom.

Passes in the wind
some scent of freedom:
a dead skunk.

First pipe of the mission Ordinary,
because less common now,
diversify your entry,
and waylay your tomorrows.
Welcome, to Piperburg.

Snowshells are better than no shells

Shel Snowverstein
on the beach
scouring for cowries
Snowsock on his toes
"suck my Snow Cock, bros"

it takes a keen eye, and a keen eye.
what's left is right, get into it
you can't spell intuition without it
"it" is in tuition, too: two issuances

The market for seashells is virtually nonexistent (emphasis added)
but there's seashells galore, a neverending free supply
as mollusks are left for dead, among the floating plankton
hermit crabs are fickle - the nomads of the sea

I search for the Evershell
the Purple Conch
Seashellbiscuit
Mishell Obama
Snailmobile 5000

The one thing I know is
I'll never snowshell again.
At least not on shrooms

Incantation (Adagio)

Never the tomorrow snowshell,
Never the tomorrow snowshell,
Never the tomorrow snowshell.

To-Never, ...
To-Morrow...
... (To-No-Shell.)

Exhibition A

I hope you realize
every exhibition you have missed.
Amy at the frieze, Amy
between the thumbs of the statue
David. It had been -- it was --
more than enough to say: drab.

Thanks us slowly. That's what
she said, any way. Her hand
was on the table, her mind was
on the radio, her dress was
nice-it-was-white
; WHOMEVER GOES HERE,
BEWARE!!! ; said her eyes
when she wasn't thinking about
what she looked like.

This was often. If I say
I cried on the doorstop, will you
free me? Is that what honesty
costs these days?

javascript:void(0)

Blind spiderweb

The spider's web
is blind.
Was blind, had been culled,
just before the dawn
or after the skipper sunk.
Beneath the gunk at the bottom
of the harbor. Oil &
/ or
s o i l e r o s i o n.

Problems mounting becoming one:
---the need to change our ways---

An often eluding urgency. Felt
but not committed. Recycled but
not co-mingled. Intermittent
is only constant
on the constant fading white of noise.
That's an intelligence term. Like
the box in all our houses:
television. Transport your vision
not to the fake future, the wrangled
misunderstood past (there is no other
way), or to the present world being
filmed: IT IS NOT YOURS.

Make it. Make it / love us / take it
at your own leisure. There is no time;
there is little time.

As they say, the spider web is ulimately
blind. Said differently: every man has
limitations. Spiders hunt closer
the truth. Even then it's a battle
and no small one: death,
(then a breath) ... life.

Excellent Beginnings

Burn down the bowling alley until nothing's left.
Except a scar of black question marks on the hillside.
That's right, I looked toward the Drink-&-Bowl (or
so I named it) every time I drove past. Northbound
Indiana state highway 41. Those were
in the days when I would regularly smoke marijuana
on forays through the Hoosier state.
Some fields, a picnic there. Grass, clouds,
boys, mainly not, barns, just space.

Space and more space. Grist. Earth. Trees
and threaded fencerows. Burn the braying
shapes of ancestors with the county building.
Take the universities while you're at it. The places
of knowledge. Dredge the rivers. Disrupt the hydrology.
Call it a case of
excellent beginnings.

loaded mountain man

burn the buried building while we can
decline to erect stadiums in old quarries
think of the lumberjacks shining, swimming.
they had banquets then with real mountainmen
wild boys of the land trading funky specimens
of beaver pelts, axes, grindcorn, mexican
medicinal rubs, gunpowder
and the one they call wilt-a-weed.
that one made you curl up in the sun
like a kitty-kat.

in any case they had no beverage sponsor.
there were sherlock wizards counting their purchases
spying on them through magic boxes in the televisions,
computers, smart phones, lecticorns, spy-boxes,
federally mandated spy-cells and mini cams
they put in all those pills
that we swallow.

Dog Fists

Even the Dog Fists were half-alien
at some time. But like all good
tribesman, they became spirits
at the broom of dusk
but
what have we here a cock-a-roach,
a cocca-doodle-doo, some shithead
research laboratorist stashing lobotomies
on sideway mirrors lecturing through the
unicorn lenses of ever-sideways tomorrows

I'm giving you a compliment

no exceptance, no expectance.
Accept it.
April rains bring May grass

The bloomers are flowing
lowering
blowing

We're gonna go bowling
eat banana splits
listen to a record

We're gonna fucking bowl
We're gonna get there soon, son
we're gonna burn it down

Douse it - that's it boy. More fire. Gasoline.

"Arson" is a gerund.

Burn the bowling alley til it's gone.

rocks, glass

i am everything (i have)
ever made. we are more than
their rocks and glass. we are
our own kind of support. we
are water after all, water
(shining through) the fish glass,
or the glass fish. the eel-grass
as it was in May, for example.
how the crane tiptoes through
the swamp, after all. doesn’t it
feel great to be alive? doesn’t it
just fit, right in there, when you
burn down every place you have
ever been?

Illegal Blog Moment

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

The Tattletale's Postcard

I got this postcard from an old friend who had been going through some troubles with addiction.

“Stumbling upon
a choir of work-a-day nuns shoveling coal

was watching lethargy
burn in effigy.

Effortlessly,
Eric.”

I wish I knew what he meant.

A Terrible Thing To Overhear

[LOUD GASP]

DONNIE DARKIE: SOMEBODY TESTED MY SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DONNIE DONNIE: Not your SPACESHIP???????

DONNIE DARKIE: YES, YOU IDIOT, MY SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Poison Promise

poison make you happy
heppy and ssssssad.

Verrrry heppppy end veryyyyyyyy ssssssssad.
No pueblo, senioritas, I said,
biting into a cordita. Thing is,
it was a sandwiche.

::::::BITE SPONGE::::::::

The wheels at midnight turn
on every capered owl, hour
turn the sly snow glass sly
turn the bye-bye jug of Noke away.

Snay bye' Numero Dos

Sssssssnay-bye' make you say bye bye
she say
ssssnay bye' make you feel guuuuhd
poison make you happy,
happy and ssssssad

Goodbye snakebite
good day spider
spinster god
original splinter
my eyes are clouds

SODA, red rum
el capitain morgan
private stock
such a backwards label
MURDER, a dos

Es espanol for murder of two
somebody get snay-bye tonight
someone get snay-bye reeeal guuuhd
somebody gonna get dead
bit in the neck tonight

Snay bye etc

Sna’ bi hurt, he said, lisping an insane voice into the jungle darkness.

(Pronounced Snay-Bye).

Sna’ bye make you say guuhd-bye, she said again, sinister as the snake she was

rapidly becoming.

Lessons of nature: there is no sin in abundance. Just ask the trees and rivers and frogs.

The softly murmuring shepherd to his neighbor to join

in some humble ceremony.

Nature's Lesson

There is no sin in abundance.

Dessert Shore

1. Time for tea at the airport

If I haven’t fully growled
(may hap I haven’t growed up)
it’s because I’m an animus
an omnibus of Beth’s truck
d r i v i n g  i n  t h e d i s t a n c e
…scattered lines of light…

2. My stances

My stances may not be pretty, Amy,
but they sure are great. They have never been greater. I think about them like little sisters and clothing and chocolates. My problem at this very moment is that I don’t have enough to write about, and it’s really a problem.

3. Okay

Possible feelings:
--the man has got me
--the man does not
--I am free now
--I always will be
(freedom, as a tree frog)
--I am my own dog
--God is my savior.

Certainly, though:
Love never fails.

4. Love never fails;

else the sidebar.
the intractable highcar
phrased over thattaway
from the frames by the grain caveway
(((…don’t go cave away,
cave-way…)))

on me like Ponzi
schemes … I mean … to dream
faster that masseuses massage my large
knuckled bulges of triceps
is to really begin to gleam. 

5. Shhh, Massachusetts

Or then Massachusetts looms large like broom sets
put out for passage at the loyal, Polish bell.
(They sell these things like telephones!
… tell-a-phone; …telly-fones… )

6. So

When I hear fire I break skates to the wind,
so their skate pieces may whirl;

7. Prints

my how my presence leaves clues that
i was here! ? ! (They’re just finger pads!)
becoming whorls on specimen 100420 A
I’m down the hall, #B, in the morgue:
a man with a specimen (((a man w/ a lantern)))
illumining my fingertip ridges:

behold no whorls but thumbs with double-doops
and all loops ulnar save one
which is indeed radial.

I know this because as Boy Scouts
we studied fingerprints & heard
from a police detective. He was an
articulate man. That was before I
became an Eagle… 

((( we studied comic books
in grade school; said the man
who sold elementary dross)))

8. You will

find me
underneath a tree
besides a rug / a drug / a bear
or left laying stolidly in the silver lining
like something coming out of the woods and combining
with another shape like ramrod
geez, my stakes are large now,
I can’t let them talk me out of what
I deeply wanted. 

9. Lizard

I want a lizard for Christmas
or somebody’s habit to plead for ankles;
in the old West, the staircase banisters
weren’t see-through (for reasons of
chasteness). They were
shored up. And yet so far
--in the dessert--
from the coast.

Failed firebombing

I went into the bank with the package. Determined to show these bastards who was in the wrong for once. Woman waiting in front of me in line. Gray hair. What is that I detect? She smells. Foul like New York City garbage or an arrest warrant stored up some cop's ass. Dunno why he'd do that. Goddam cops.

Focus: firebomb the Kinkos--Bank, I mean. Blow this bank all to heck. I'm gonna do it. Oh Brother!

Next thing: talk to attendant. Damn she's a hot young piece of ass. Guess I'll withdraw some money and go to Kinkos. NO! It must be done here. I'm sweating. Don't know what to say. This girl is milking me with her eyes, her sweet slutty sultry slutty eyes. She wants it. Right here. Right now.

I take down my pants and shortly get tackled by a dirty security guard who smells of aftershave. Never did get to detonate the blast. Guess I'm going to prison.

Final Draft

I'm sitting here on my couch at 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning listening to Congratulations. And it's not because I just overdosed on Ambien and snakebite meds, though God knows it's a realistic scenario given my predilection for uppers and serpents. No, I tell you, it's because I am engrossed in newly listening to Congratulations, and I think we should all give it another chance. In other words, you've been punked: it's actually a mad chill album. Literally it’s cool and uncool at the same time. It’s the embodiment of strange opposites: dark, bright, serious, carnival-like in its absurdity… at once tawdry, at the next exquisite…

Yes, I've lost it, you'll say, but after a few listens, expecting to dismiss it (like I did Metric's "Fantasies," which is in NO WAY worth purchasing) it made its peace with me, and I couldn't help but return to enjoy and inspect it, bizarre and darkly jaunty though it may be. Ironic wino pothead donkeys rule the desert at one moment, while at the next a parade of pipework queers takes control of the nearby bellshop. Somewhere in the midst surfing and tantra are involved, but every rock stars have strange ascents.

Exhibit A:
"It's Working" -- This song is about ecstasy (http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:TzaVhpzGYDwJ:www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/32862565/review/32906679/congratulations+MGMT+%22it%27s+working%22+rolling+stone+ecstasy&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) Saying that simply makes things easier. Before, one might think, "Wow, this song, being bald-facedly about ecstasy, has an earnest "raison d'etre" and explanatory, inclusive feel ... hmmm, that's what all the drughead hipsters out there would say… guess I better hedge my bets and now say that my possibly positive judgment of the song in no way makes profligate drug use acceptable behavior for us respectable young men of conduct.”  Now, one is confident to say: these dudes are weird. I'm going to examine them.

This was Rolling Stone's take:

'With Congratulations, the knowing smartasses of Oracular Spectacular seem confused about what's next. The result is a hazy, hit-and-miss album that will likely alienate some fans of the debut, but one that also testifies to MGMT's restlessness as songwriters and human beings. "It's Working," a song VanWyngarden describes as about the drug Ecstasy, mixes surf guitars, harpsichord glitter and bong patters with some less-than-ecstatic lyrics: "I see the signs of aging/But if I try to feel at all, I am deceived," VanWyngarden sings.'

A pretty good assessment, I think. Anyway, in this penultimate paragraph, I’d like to sum up my point: Congratulations is at least weird enough to listen to again in full (preferably when baked as ciabatta), IF NOT TO REVISIT COMPLETELY BEFORE PRAYING FOR BETTER JUDGMENT.

Thanks for your time and brave lifestyles.

Your Father,
Douglas

P.S. It feels like someone’s listening…
It feels like someone’s missing…