the hours without sleep are taking their toll
I can't even think
this is out of control


hackmuth, magic against death (bad photo edition), 2009


* your highness, by the out crowd. heavy rotation right now...



-- because of massive personal chaos dust congress will be dark for a short while.....

sometimes I get so sad
sometimes you just make me mad


Kelly Towles, These Days Are Better, 2004

Advice to Young Poets
-- by Martin Espada

Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head


Lament for Richard Brautigan
-- by Klipschutz

Of a Monday afternoon, on Sutter St.
I made my stand, sitting down
to Rosie’s Nachos, instead, because.

While I was stuffing my face,
cell phone conveyance devices
passed practically nonstop,
on foot and rubber tires,
some with dogs.

One-way streets are rivers too,
it has been said. In the spirit
of the moment, I will
not disagree.


The World War Speaks
--by Sandra Beasley

When I was born, two incisors
had already come through the gum.
They gave me a silver bell to chew on,
brought me home in a wicker basket,
and kept me by the stove's coal heat.
Every morning my mother boiled
a huge vat of mustard greens,
steam drifting over to my crib and
after a few hours, souring into a gas.
I breathed it all in. I began to walk
so they fitted me with braces.
I began to run, so they fitted me
with books: Mars, hydrogen, Mongolia.
I learned to dig a deeper kind of ditch.
I learned to start a fire in three minutes.
I learned to sharpen a pencil into
a bayonet. Sometimes at night
I'd sneak into the house of our neighbors,
into the hall outside their bedroom,
and watch as they moved over each
other like slow, moonlit fish.
Sometimes my mother would comb
my father's hair with her fingertips,
but that was it. They wanted an only
child: the child to end all children.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while


Polly Townsend, Summit, 2009

* Masturbation in the animal kingdom. excerpt:

"Our fellow apes are among the most ardent and industrious masturbators: Female orangutans have been observed to fashion primitive dildos from sticks or pieces of liana, while males stimulate themselves with pieces of fruit, leaves, or other objects. Although it's sometimes said that only mammals masturbate, we have clear examples of autoeroticism among birds, which rub their cloacae on whatever's handy. Turtles have also been observed in the act.

"Despite this bestiary of autoeroticism, scientists have spent relatively little time on the question of why animals might have evolved to masturbate. At first glance, the behavior would seem to be maladaptive. First, there's all the energy that's wasted on the production of spilled seed—macaques, for example, are thought to devote between 1 percent and 6 percent of their daily metabolism to the production of ejaculate. Second, it distracts the animal from the more important work of finding food and evading predators, let alone mating. According to the literature on horses, a masturbating stallion sometimes takes on "a trance-like, glazed-eye appearance." What could be more inviting to a hungry bear?

"The recent finding that masturbation improves the quality of human sperm supports the notion that it's an evolved trait and not merely a byproduct of our physiology. According to a branch of evolutionary theory called "sperm competition" that developed in the late-1960s, natural selection can produce just such a change in reproductive behavior. The theory focuses on polyandrous species—i.e., those in which a single female takes multiple partners and the sperm from several potential fathers might end up competing to fertilize the same egg. Under those conditions, the relative quality of male ejaculate very clearly determines whose genes are passed on to the next generation."

* The Chill Room compares various versions of Visions of Johanna in a very interesting podcast. The site contains numerous other interesting podcasts, including one on R. Stevie Moore, Edie Sedgwick and William Burroughs.

* Salon: Why We Say Yes to Drugs.

* "Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." -- Alan Watts

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