2012/09/27

knowing. nothing. into. understand.









NEGATIVE STATEMENT

Steve McCaffery


two divisions.
one)
        knowing. nothing. into. understand.
        two)
                something.
                touched.
                someone.

1)     sequences outside of the categories
         labelled ‘telephones’
         e.g. the milk arrived.

2)    the things all found a personal
        vocabulary. every word insulted
        everyone
        without looking.

1)    knowing nothing into understand.   and
        this almost said solemnly was the one
        that least occurred to me.

          ii) i sent my heart in the upper pocked
               or perhaps we made the bed in two
               seconds after we eliminated the
               third floor.

        and nothing else to risk but
        to hear her drinking.   1)

something solemn touched something in the
              upper pocket.
   
   
2)

knowing something touched nothing without
                           drinking.  1)
(i love onions 2)

i told her so one.
in one second 2.

in two seconds flat
the things that change conceal

a system of ideas
for instance the trains went by to come
back on a roll of film

they were both standing in the courtyard
when i came she was
 
2)    sitting on the steps in a mans
        handwriting shutting my eyes to what
        remains to be said.

1)    an immense silence which had nothing to
        do with silence.
 
 
2)    for a long spell
        a spell of weeping begins to come.


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2012/09/26

Science Is the Same as Poetry Only It Uses the Wrong Words



I must: the universal angst across all normally divided swaths of Americans over the horror and threat to the American way of life that scab referees in the National Helmetball League represent delights me. Listening to Chicago School-trained business professors who advocate crushing teachers unions on motherfucking Hayekian principles of assholic greed bark furiously that "32 rich fucks put personal profit above the integrity of The League just to destroy the union," makes me giggle. Not to worry, I'm sure these pigs will be back on message soon.









SCIENCE

Robert Kelly

Science explains nothing
but holds all together as
many things as it can count

science is a basket
not a religion he said
a cat as big as a cat

the moon the size of the moon
science is the same as poetry
only it uses the wrong words.


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2012/09/25

I Pay Five Cents for a Daily Synopsis of Current History, Two Bits and the Late Lowdown on Hollywood, Twist a Dial for Stardust or Shostakovich, and with Each Bleacher Stub I reserve the Right to Shout “Kill the Bum” at the Umpire—




Dmitri Shostakovich was born 106 years ago today. Have I mentioned I love his music? Today's pieces via requests from three friends, THANKS! I've been asked to tell stories of Blegsylvanian history, NO THANKS! I hear that NFL owners are willing to ruin the integrity of the game to save pennies against billions of dollars of profit to squash a union. Heh, integrity of the game. You're funny. Fine metaph.... o, fuck it.




  • How do you take your poison?
  • The rack of inequality.
  • Bleggalgazing.
  • 25 random things.
  • OK, Blegsylvanian history: Stringtown's been dying for years. The King of Anarchists (who is a good guy, has been Kind to me and this blog, and understands the irony of the gig) in our stringtown hasn't posted in months, hastening the dying by millimeters. His resurrection if it occurs will set off hosannahs, and some not on his blegrells will compete in his comments for his attention to be Vice-King of Anarchists (though not all who comment there are necessarily competing). 
  • The half-life of ephemera.
  • Re: Dylan and Nobel - I apologize to me for letting those two words in the same sentence yoink me though the yoinking felt good. I don't hate Bob Dylan's music, it just bores me, that's on me. Dylan is Hemingway/Ashbery-like, one can agree and disagree of the merit of the original but hate the influence each cast, the many motherfuckingly awful decades of imitators their influence spawned.
  • Stay hungry.
  • Quartets 11, 12, 13.







SELF-PORTRAIT

Frank Marshall Davis

I would be
A painter with words
Creating sharp portraits
On the wide canvas of your mind   
Images of those things
Shaped through my eyes
That interest me;
But being a Tenth American   
In this democracy
I sometimes sketch a miniature   
Though I contract for a mural.

Of course
You understand this democracy;
One man as good as another,
From log cabin to White House,
Poor boy to corporation president,   
Hoover and Browder with one vote each,   
A free country,
Complete equality—
Yeah—
And the rich get tax refunds,
The poor get relief checks.

As for myself
I pay five cents for a daily synopsis of current history,
Two bits and the late lowdown on Hollywood,
Twist a dial for Stardust or Shostakovich,
And with each bleacher stub I reserve the right to shout “kill the bum” at the umpire—
Wherefore am I different
From nine other Americans?

But listen, you
Don’t worry about me
I rate!
I’m Convert 4711 at Beulah Baptist Church,   
I’m Social Security No. 337-16-3458 in Washington,
Thank you Mister God and Mister Roosevelt!
And another thing:—
No matter what happens
I too can always call in a policeman!



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2012/09/24

lets have old fashioned funerals & stand around & forgive & borrow wet handkerchiefs, & sneak out for drinks & help load the guy into the wagon, & feel sad & make a date with the widow & believe we don’t see all of the people sinking into the subways



Missed another United home game last night because I was needed elsewhere because. There is one regular season game left against Columbus the third weekend in October that I'm going to miss to visit Planet in Bamgier, so if United doesn't make the playoffs I won't see another home game until next March/April. I believe United signed a lease through next season for RFK so this nagging thought I might never see United at RFK ever again is just Baal-taunting combined with sleep deprivation and localized aargh. As for the because, we hiked Seneca Greenway yesterday morning, two miles out to that beautifully modest rock over the creek and back and then had a nice lunch with the Oaktons. United was sacrificed for those three hours.












A TERROR IS MORE CERTAIN

Bob Kaufman

A terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs I
know, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walk
around in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & read
great books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books of
the month & have wifeys that are lousy in bed & never realize how
bad my writing is because i am poor & symbolize myself.
A certain desirable is more terror to me than all that’s rare. How
come they don’t give an academic award to all the movie stars that
die? they’re still acting, ain’t they? even if they are dead, it should
not be held against them, after all they still have the public on their
side, how would you like to be a dead movie star & have people sit-
ting on your grave?


A rare me is more certain than desirable, that’s all the terror, there
are too many basketball players in this world & too much progress
in the burial industry, lets have old fashioned funerals & stand
around & forgive & borrow wet handkerchiefs, & sneak out for
drinks & help load the guy into the wagon, & feel sad & make a
date with the widow & believe we don’t see all of the people sink-
ing into the subways going to basketball games & designing baby
sitters at Madison Square Garden.


A certain me is desirable, what is so rare as air in a Poem, why can’t
i write a foreign movie like all the other boys my age, I confess to all
the crimes committed during the month of April, but not to save
my own neck, which is adjustable, & telescopes into any size noose,
I’m doing it to save Gertrude Stein’s reputation, who is secretly
flying model airplanes for the underground railroad stern gang of
oz, & is the favorite in all the bouts . . . not officially opened yet
Holland tunnel is the one who writes untrue phone numbers.


A desirable poem is more rare than rare, & terror is certain, who
wants to be a poet & work a twenty four hour shift, they never ask
you first, who wants to listen to the radiator play string quartets all
night. I want to be allowed not to be, suppose a man wants to
swing on the kiddie swings, should people be allowed to stab him
with queer looks & drag him off to bed & its no fun on top of a
lady when her hair is full of shiny little machines & your ass
reflected in that television screen, who wants to be a poet if you
fuck on t.v. & all those cowboys watching.     


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2012/09/23


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I Am a Pretender to Dog Music




John Coltrane was born eighty-six years ago today. The ear is an organ made for love. anne (gave me - I think - an enormously Kind compliment) in comments asked me (a second time, I apologize, I missed the first time) if I knew of Agnes Martin, and no, I didn't, but thanks to anne I do now.






 











DOG MUSIC
     
Paul Zimmer
 
Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"
"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.


Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.


But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.




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2012/09/22

Beloveds, Our World Is Small and Isolated









  • 300K free art books.
  • He's alive.
  • Writer's block.
  • End of the Bat. Damn. Thanks, Ed.
  • Life-affirming reads.
  • Fuck blooger. Fuck them fuck them fuck them. I don't have the time to reteach myself fuckshit so they can save fucking $.06 on the fucking dollar. I don't have the time to type out long poems because their fucking html won't take code and their fucking non-html won't take code. I don't have fucking time for the fucking html code to eat fucking youtubes. Fuck them. Fuck them fuck them fuck them. Fuck them. Fine metaphors abound.
  • Gone native.
  • A willfully idiotic genius.
  • So I have found a workaround - c/p the poem into a google doc, format there, c/p here. Fuck gaagle, fuck blooger. Fuck me.
  • Juliana Spahr interview.






DECEMBER 2, 2002

Juliana Spahr

As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night
sleeping uneasily the world went on without us.

We live in our own time zone and there are only a small million of
us in this time zone and the world as a result has a tendency to
begin and end without us.

While we turned sleeping uneasily at least ten were injured in a
bomb blast in Bombay and four killed in Palestine.

While we turned sleeping uneasily a warehouse of food aid was
destroyed, stocks on upbeat sales soared, Australia threatened first
strikes, there was heavy gunfire in the city of Man, the Belarus
ambassador to Japan went missing, a cruise ship caught fire, on yet
another cruise ship many got sick, and the pope made a statement
against xenophobia.

While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a
prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.

While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and
irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed.

While we turned sleeping uneasily the Supreme Court agreed to
hear the case of whether university admissions may favor racial
minorities.

While we turned sleeping uneasily poachers caught sturgeon in the
reed-filled Caspian, which shelters boar and wolves, and some of
the residents on the space shuttle planned a return flight to the US.

Beloveds, our world is small and isolated.

We live our lives in six hundred square feet about a quarter mile
from the shore on land that is seven hundred square miles and five
thousand miles from the nearest land mass.

Despite our isolation, there is no escape from the news of how
many days are left in the Iraq inspections.

The news poll for today was should we invade Iraq now or should
we wait until the inspections are complete and we tried to laugh
together at this question but our laughter was uneasy and we just
decided to turn off the television that arrives to us from those
other time zones.

Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency
outside of our bed.

It makes me angry that how we live in our bed—full of connected
loving and full of isolated sleep and dreaming also—has no
relevance to the rest of the world.

How can the power of our combination of intimacy and isolation
have so little power outside the space of our bed?

Beloveds, the shuttle is set to return home and out the window of
the shuttle one can see the earth.

"How massive the earth is; how minute the atmosphere," one of
the astronauts notes.

Beloveds, what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this
minute atmosphere?



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2012/09/21

Outside In, Oh, Inside Out, and Why Did Everybody Shout?




Rebroadcast for four reasons:

  1. Death itself doesn't creep me out but holyfuck, those people and businesses and institutions that thrive and profit and, more than that, define themselves by and delight in death - the ghouls in the burial business, the ghouls in the religion business - these fuckers fucking creep me out almost as much as the necessity of their existence. Humans. Yesterday, the only room at the funeral parlor where I could have a private phone conversation with Planet was the funeral parlor's showroom of products, many of which at the same time the ghouls were trying to sell to Earthgirl. Then met with the priest. Who the fuck is this "God" he keeps talking to? For those of you coming to the service, the church will be offering the flesh and blood of a dead 2000 year old whack but charismatic if schizophrenic dead Jew with messiah complex for your dining pleasure.
  2. Fuck blooger.
  3. Haven't read anything - hey! did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true, they won a road game last night in Chester, I didn't see it! - so links whenever, ok?
  4. Earthgirl laughs at the end of the video.





CESAREAN

Jane Kenyon

The surgeon with his unapologetic
blade parted darkness, revealing
day. Then from her large clay
he drew towards his masked
face my small clay. The clatter,
the white light, the vast freedom
were terrible. Outside in, oh, inside
out, and why did everybody shout?


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2012/09/20

We Never Thought We Would Live Forever (Although We Did)




One of the real life situations I've alluded to but haven't written about here has reached end game. My mother-in-law died last night. We begrudged each other then grew to like and respect each other but there was always the distance of our differences in what each of us thought important between us. Send your good thoughts to Earthgirl.

There is much to think and write about, some of it ghastly and horrifying re: geriatric care, some of it hilarious and ghastly re: the ghouls from the funeral home last night at midnight. I've been trained to think it tasteless to write about the latter at all, much less today, much less here, I've never denied that I'm still mostly leashed and when not leashed still e-collared and dog-fenced everywhere and anywhere. As for geriatric care, if it was more humane the ghouls might not be so ghoulish or turn such an obscene profit.











IN VIEW OF THE FACT

A.R. Ammons

The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to others to
love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .



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2012/09/19


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humans falling over and their faces hitting the pavement or the carpet, or the grass or the side of a coffee table or some dog shit




HEY! New Sea and Cake. Longtimers can vouch I've always love love love. DOUBLE HEY! They're playing Black Cat October 24! I already have my and Earthgirl's tickets, let's eat dinner first then go to the show! Tickets are only $15, they're general admission, so hurry!





A taxonomy of dog-owners and dogshit from my neighborhood's listserv:

No way to phrase this delicately, but this is not a tasteful subject:

MOST Dog Walkers know that DOG POOP does NOT belong in RECYCLING CONTAINERS.
WHOEVER you are who doesn't know OR doesn't care: we're so pleased that you're taking the trouble to "scoop the poop". But would it be that much more trouble to carry your bag of scooped poop back to your own home and trash cans? We don't appreciate your dumping it in our containers full of green recycling -- and the county employees who have to deal with the aftermath won't either.

MOST dog walkers are GOOD NEIGHBORS, with a FEW UNFORTUNATE EXCEPTIONS:

(1) OPPORTUNISTS: TRASH DAY brings out the opportunists who can't resist the attraction of an open container full of brush, standing at the curb, waiting for pickup. Ah, so convenient, and who will ever notice?

(2) BRAZEN OPPORTUNIST: A fortunately RARE SUB-SPECIES of #1.
He/She operates on ANY DAY of the week, and before dawn.
His/Her MODUS OPERANDI - based on our post-discovery, Sherlockian deductions, made in the light of day:
Walks up our driveway, past our parked car; then throws bag of scooped poop in one of our partially-filled green-recycling containers;
Exits our driveway by walking across our property, then across our neighbors' lawn and driveway, back to the sidewalk.

To these FEW UNFORTUNATE EXCEPTIONS in the dog-walking community, whether you are:

(1) A Simply Thoughtless OPPORTUNIST,
OR
(2) An Enterprising AND Trespassing BRAZEN OPPORTUNIST,

Please STOP dumping your dog's poop where it doesn't belong!

The NEIGHBORS you pass on your dog-walking route will thank you for being more considerate;
AND
Your FELLOW DOG WALKERS will thank you for NOT besmirching their reputation!

The person who wrote this lets his kids cut through our yard down the hill through Earthgirl's garden. Haha, boys! gosh I'm sorry, get in the car, over and over. Fine metaphors abound.











gigantic mountains

Brandon Scott Morrell


when aliens come to the earth

they will land on top of gigantic mountains

they will see the people everywhere

each alien will communicate telepathically with another alien

on the opposite side of the sphere

that is its clone and itself at the same time

like an atom in quantum physics

the same alien in two places at once

and this multiplied by millions

on top of gigantic mountains

'the strategy is to destroy humans'

each alien will tell itself and its clone

humans will understand this strategy once

the killing started, immediately happening

in two places on opposite ends of the world at

once, an alien and itself

murdering two humans by looking at their faces

then that happening repeatedly or something

for some amount of time

the humans falling over and their faces hitting the pavement

or the carpet, or the grass

or the side of a coffee table

or some dog shit

*

there will be resistance

soldiers on all parts of the earth will fight with lasers

citizen militias will hold resistance meetings

a resistance against death

a no-death resistance

a movement for death later

a movement for a different, still-uncontrollable death

'humans don't want to die this way'

will be their manifesto, one sheet of paper

or a piece of cardboard or something

*

there will be humans in basements looking at each other

wandering, solitary humans that want more to find another human than to avoid dying

solitary, severely depressed and/or enlightened humans that commit suicide by seeking out alien faces and looking at them; these humans may feel happy inside an insane nervous breakdown

humans that kill other humans because they feel insane

humans that sit in a corner, feeling extremely small, maybe considering intense killing rampages/some indefinable, positive emotion for humanity

humans that watch tv, use the internet to read the newspaper, and drive their cars around; they will be motionless on couches with their eyes open

*

the fish and insects and trees

will have the ocean and the forest

pretty sure they won't care


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2012/09/18


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