you need satan more than he needs you



william klein, Candy Store, Amsterdam Avenue, New York, 1954-55

Yellow Tulips
-- by eileen myles

I was walking along the sidewalk
in all the daily pain
& miserable faces & awful air.
Up above in a flower box
were yellow tulips, too real
to be real, so big
and sexual looking in
that funny way flowers
always are. I guess
they were like heads
poking in from another
world. How do you
like Wednesday, you
beautiful things?

A Raspberry Sweater
-- by Frank O'Hara

to George Mongomery

It is next to my flesh,
that's why. I do what I want.
And in the pale New Hampshire
twilight a black bug sits in the blue,
strumming its legs together. Mournful
glass, and daises closing. Hay
swells in the nostrils. We shall go
to the motorcycle races in Laconia
and come back all calm and warm.

Song
-- by Frank O'Hara

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life

mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you

how I hate disease, it's like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen

in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

The Fine Rain
-- by James Tate

the poker game went on into the wee hours
of the morning. I lost everything I had and
then some. Don offered me a ride home but I
wanted to walk. there was a very fine rain
coming down, warm. it woke me up and rinsed
the sense of loss off me. I had lived my
whole life in this neighborhood. I knew every-
one. everyone dreams, but none escape, darting
glances, the lucky day to come.

make a new cult every day to suit your affairs


Fiona Rae, Purple Haze, 2004

Quickly:

* Mike Watt gives a must-see tour of his van for Kelly Blue Book.

* "The only thing new is you finding out about something. Like nothing's really new, but you reinvent it for yourself and find your inner voice. " -- Mike Watt

The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand


Llyn Foulkes, The Lost Frontier, 1997–2005

Instead
-- by Frank Stanford

Death is a good word.
It often returns
When it is very
Dark outside and hot,
Like a fisherman
Over the limit,
Without pain, sex,
Or melancholy.
Young as I am, I
Hold light for this boat.
When the rest of you
Were being children
I became a monk
To my own listing
Imagination.
Nights and days floated
Over the whorehouse
Like webs on the lake,
A monastery
Full of noise and girls.
The moon throws the knives.
The poets echo goodbye,
Towing silence too.
Near my house was an
Island, where a horse
Lathered up alone.
Oh, Abednego
He was called, dusky,
Cruel as a poem
To a black gypsy.
Sadness and whiskey
Cost more than friends.
I visit prisons,
Orphanages, joints,
Hoping I'll see them
Again. Willows, ice,
Minnows, no money.
You'll have to say it
Soon, you know. To your
Wife, your child, yourself.


Note to self
-- by Bob Hicok

Here: settled. This I am doing amends
rend, wholes. Who finds that: the boat,
the oars, can say to flood: I rise above.
The best of? Don't know, but by word,
am making of bad and good some third, a world
of minded chance, of whorled suppose:
of ouch and is, deposed. Dear rest
of me: so there. The desk of me
is happy, well, is geared, turns
from fact to future, tongues the tocks
alive. Lordy lordy: I am of this
and nothing else. What the second feels
I say, what bless, what thrive, and mostly
wrong but close, closer: I hold on
and out, less for now than every next arrive.


1999
-- by Kevin A. Gonzales

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.


-- back Tuesday

irony
what are you doing to me?
why you always give me
irony what are you giving to me
how can i be free?


Reuben Wu, Bed, 2008

Quick Links:

* Human Tetris.

* Two songs recently downloaded from Detailed Twang.

-- Cuckoo Clock, by Rachel Sweet, 1978

-- Pillbox, by The Joneses, 1983.

* I'll Never Smoke Weed With Willie Again.

* "My doctor tells me I should start slowing it down - but there are more old drunks than there are old doctors so let's all have another round." -- Willie Nelson

And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride


Alex Goldschmidt, Man and His Paper, 2009


* New York Times. excerpt:

"Had she refused John McCain, Palin would still be a popular female governor in a Republican Party starved for future stars. Her scandals would be the stuff of local politics, her daughter’s pregnancy a minor story in the Lower 48, her son Trig’s parentage a nonissue even for conspiracy theorists. There would still be plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight, to bone up on the issues, and to craft a persona more appealing than the Mrs. Spiro Agnew role the McCain campaign assigned to her.

"Most important, nobody would have realized yet how much she looks like Tina Fey.

"But she said yes. It wasn’t the right thing to do, in hindsight, but it was certainly the human thing. She was coming off a charmed rise through statewide politics. John McCain was offering her a spot on a national ticket. It was the chance of a lifetime.

"And now, seemingly, it’s over. Oh, maybe not forever: she’s only 45, young enough (and, yes, talented enough) to have a second act. But last Friday’s bizarre, rambling resignation speech should take her off the political map for the duration of the Obama era.

"One hopes that was intentional. A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans who despise her. A Sarah Palin who resigned in the delusional belief that it would give her a better shot at the presidency in 2012 warrants no such kindness.

"Either way, though, her 10 months on the national stage have been a dispiriting period for American democracy.

"If Palin were exactly what her critics believe she is — the distillation of every right-wing pathology, from anti-intellectualism to apocalyptic Christianity — then she wouldn’t be a terribly interesting figure. But this caricature has always missed the point of the Alaska governor’s appeal — one that extends well outside the Republican Party’s shrinking base.

"In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

"That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

"This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman."
...
"Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

"But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it."

* Rubik's Cube used to recreate the Abbey Road and London's Calling record covers.

* "I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch." -- Gilda Radner

The body really is a temple
and it makes a lot of noise when it moves


Sofya Mirvis, Where Am I, 2008


This World Is Not My Home
-- by Klipschutz

The newest thing in movie adaptations,
the commentator commentated
one room away, is Borges!
I had the water running.
He commentated on:
Monopoly & Risk
are in the works.

Does anyone
remember
Clue?

Released
back in
’06.

I always have the water running
and hear everything wrong.

The Parker Brothers never miss a trick.

*

Back to the news: A South Carolina politician
has been crying in Argentina for
five days.

Deep South enough for you?
His wife has had it.

*

Monopoly, Risk & Borges, my attorneys.
They eat what they kill, though
at times they eat it first.

Borges, like injustice, is blind.

The other two? Their marks of Cain?
Less overt, but far, far more
pronounced.


Before She Was Born
-- by Deborah Ager

Not yet a silver sin — all lanugo, vernix sheen, sheer skin slough.
Not yet called forth to map a vague path home.
She was a green cloud fomenting, roads filled with boiling blood.
She was enough to spook houses that woke to apples and a spark of sun —
Enough to tap the whirring, purring feline from a nap
on the glowering abdomen. I rattled. She roused to water,
that slurry, that grey pool. Raised a dot of fist to suck a thumb.
What held sway beyond that beyond.


Sterile
-- by Ash Bowen

Your sister can’t stop hurting when she sees children
laughing. They coil in her dreams, knees raised
to their stomachs, feet stamping their rhythms.

She’s reminded of high school, how she pulled up
her dress in loneliness and a man laughed at her.
But never mind that. Her husband has his gun

collection out. He can’t stop pointing and clicking
the trigger at the open window. But the birds
won’t die. They flutter away, startled by the pitch

of his voice. They land on the fence
of the city swimming pool. There the children run
off the diving board, ducking invisible bullets.


-- back Monday

upper or downers
either way blood flows


Emily Greene Liddle, Hooked, 2008

* Interview of Joel Gion, tambourine man for Brian Jonestown Massacre, longtime Ameoba employee, and now front man for The Dilettantes. excerpt:

Q: What song do you wish that you wrote every time you hear it?

JG: "My Little Green Bag" by The George Baker Selection. The absolute coolest cruisin' down the sidewalk with the headphones on tune ever. Then it stops and goes into this pizzaria jig and you're like, this is nutty cool!

Q: Aside from Dig, what is your favorite musician/band documentary?

JG: I just can't aside when it comes to Dig!

Q: What have you been listening to lately?

JG: The Eva soundtrack by Michel LeGrand and Elevator To The Gallows by Miles Davis. Frenchy cool 60's soundtrack jazz, baby.

Q: I know you are quite the cinema buff. What's your favorite movie from the 70s? From the 60s?

JG: That is really hard, but it's probably either Good, the Bad and The Ugly or Once Upon A Time In the West. Or maybe Duck, You Sucker or For A Few Dollars More. It's hard to say.

Q: Is there an older movie that has finally come out on DVD that you would recommend?

JG: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein Criterion Box set. It's from their Eclipse Series, so that means you get 3 films for 40 bucks on Criterion -- that's cool, baby. William Klein was an American in France during the 60's/70's who made some incredibly great lefty stick-it-to-the-man gone high art comedy flicks.

Q: What has been your best find at Amoeba?

JG: My girlfriend.

Q: Adorable answer. What are your tour plans for the summer?

JG: The Brian Jonestown Massacre 4-week festival tour all over Europe, with 2 weeks in Australia/New Zealand. Plus David Letterman if we don't scare em too much at the pre-show rehearsals!

* Some excellent photos from the Glastonbury Festival.

* "You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." -- Sacha Guitry

Monday, monday, cant trust that day
Monday, monday, sometimes it just turns out that way


Stephen Shore, 'Andy Warhol, Sam Green, Marcel Duchamp, Cordier Ekstrom Gallery', 1965

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

5. "Joe The Plumber is apparently still hanging around book stores and GOP meetings looking for work. Wasn't he supposed to be buying his boss's plumbing business? I guess he's having too much fun pretending to be a celebrity. Maybe we should start calling him Joe "Hollywood" The Plumber.

Anyway, Joe spoke to a group of conservatives in Wassau, WI last week and wowed them with his knowledge of history and politics. According to the Wassau Daily Herald:

Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work."

Well done Joe! Just one problem...

The Constitution predates the origins of socialism by nearly 100 years.

At the same meeting, The Plumber complained that tea-baggers are unfairly labeled as "extremists."

"I'm here for one reason and one reason only: It's 'I love America,'" Wurzelbacher told the crowd. "Mainstream media wants to paint us as a bunch of extremists, right? We're in search of liberty and our freedoms. What's so extreme about that?" (...)

"Let me give you another extremist view, 'In God We Trust,'" he said to wild applause. "Say that too loud in some parts of America and you will be shot. It's terrible."

I know, right? Won't somebody think of all those poor Americans who live under the constant threat of physical violence just because they go to a Christian church. You know they can't go out on a Sunday morning without their body armor.

Joe capped off his performance by demonstrating why he and his conservative buddies aren't a bunch of extremists.

Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"

* Worst possible 33 1/3 books.

* "To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

I dropped by to pick up a reason


Cecily Brown, Maid's Day Off, 2005

Ruined Histories
-- by August Kleinzahler

You so love these photographs, too well perhaps,
and rush to frame the moment, press the shutter,
and get along with this dollhouse saga
you had rehearsed before it ever came to be.
Ah, Little Girl Destiny, it's sprung a leak
and the margins are bleeding themselves away.
You and I and the vase and stars won't stay still.
Wild, wild, wild--kudzu's choked the topiary.

Looks like your history is about to turn
random and brutal, much as an inch of soil or duchy.
Not at all that curious hybrid you had in mind:
Jane Austen, high-tech and a measure of Mom.

You're lost, desolate as Savannah after Sherman.
The lavender sachet, marbled storybooks,
the ring Grandma left you, poor Damien's love letters . . .
It's just your eyes, ass, me and a broken Nikon.

Holes and Stars
-- by Emma Lew

I just got my memory back.
Few loons and I would live
in a corner at the airport,
not for the sequence
but the agony we had to be in,
running off with the money
and faking our own deaths.
Will technology make me remote?
1 don't know where I am,
I never know what's going to happen.

Everything is quiet,
stunned yet animated,
evolving yet wilting.
If I want to read a newspaper,
I reach out for it with my hand.
Funny how you've taken my theory
and decided to call it your own.
They will be making snow tonight;
it will be beautiful and we can afford it.
Come quickly,
by yourself,
bring the negatives.

As Planned
-- by Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweeden
for they are words you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
of what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

Joseph Cornell
-- by Frank O'Hara

Into a sweeping meticulously-
detailed disaster the violet
light pours. It's not a sky,
it's a room. And in the open
field a glass of absinthe is
fluttering its song of India.
Prarie winds circle mosques.

You are always a little too
young to understand. He is
bored with his sense of the
past, the artist. Out of the
prescient rock in his heart
he has spread a land without
flowers of near distances.

People be careful not to crest too soon


Karl Lindvedt, Wes, 2009

Poem Addressing Why I Choose To Write Poems When I Know
It Is A Highly Unlikely Way To Receive The Approval That I Crave
-- by Peter Davis

My need for approval is such that even normal approval is not good enough. I only feel good about approval if I have earned it in the hardest way I can imagine. If you, by some amazing stroke of luck, find this poem and it impresses you so much that you feel very positive about me, and if you communicate that positive feeling to me, I will feel very good for a very short period of time (especially if you are well-respected and prestigious). I wait for this rare and fleeting event because I can’t think of anything else worth waiting on. It’s sad.


The Hand
-- by Mary Ruefle

The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.


Storm Catechism
-- by Kim Addonizio

The gods are rinsing their just-boiled pasta
in a colander, which is why
it is humid and fitfully raining
down here in the steel sink of mortal life.
Sometimes you can smell the truffle oil
and hear the ambrosia being knocked back,
sometimes you catch a drift
of laughter in that thunder crack: Zeus
knocking over his glass, spilling lightning
into a tree. The tree shears away from itself
and falls on a car, killing a high school girl.
Or maybe it just crashes down
on a few trash cans, and the next day
gets cut up and hauled away by the city.
Either way, hilarity. The gods are infinitely perfect
as is their divine mac and cheese.
Where does macaroni come from? Where does matter?
Why does the cat act autistic when you call her,
then bat a moth around for an hour, watching intently
as it drags its wings over the area rug?
The gods were here first, and they're bigger.
They always were, and always will be
living it up in their father's mansion.
You only crawled from the drain
a few millennia ago,
after inventing legs for yourself
so you could stand, inventing fists
in order to raise them and curse the heavens.
Do the gods see us?
Will the waters be rising soon?
The waters will be rising soon.
Find someone or something to cling to.