November 2012
2 posts
7 tags
“Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate...”
– Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
14 tags
Time
I’ve heard scientists whisper crazy things about time always happening – that every moment in time always exists, as if geographically. That I am always reaching for this ashtray, and have already held it. That she and I are always breathless and running for the Q18. That the cat always chews on the cardboard corners of the record sleeves, and all of the flowers ever at Annie’s Fruits are in...
October 2012
4 posts
Inside there was a small and angry dog. Our night’s intent was not to break an entry – mistake of an address, the door unlocked to deer-eyed barker. Then our welcome bent as welcomes often do, the arms the way a sunflower might grope a different sun. O Xenos dear, both stranger-friend the same, don’t call my loving is less when off I run. Though nights must equal miles, I dream to make my...
“Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts...”
– Proverbios del Infierno. William Blake. (via lukkio)
1 tag
With guilt sweat palms I sowed myself a safety net of mistakes but it couldn’t catch me when I fell from phrases about the over-worn moon and the undressed you – your high tide swollen in my chest, low of your leaving, the remaining debris a crossword in the sand: lonely left shoes, basement cigar store Indians, bottle caps, regurgitated booze. Even in Greek or hieroglyphs, 2 Across...
August 2012
2 posts
5 tags
The Bartells
Your heavily tattooed twin works days at the wire mill, brushing the teeth of American industry. I work there, too, scrubbing six and eighteen bay bunchers alongside him, Senator Hayes (son of Jovial), and a beautiful blond nearly lobotomized boy, all of us hunched over the long Swiss’d bullets of the Bartells that cocoon their swinging cradles of iron gears and eyelets. In the...
“Melancholy, the pondering of existing sorrows, has nothing to do with a death...”
– W. G. Sebald, Die Beschreibung des Unglücks, 1985
via A Poet Reflects
July 2012
8 posts
12 tags
12 tags
Infestation
Insects pattern the walls of the room as if they wish to be wallpaper: oblong bugs, small and dark, with wings built for jumping; timid ladybirds, nestled where the wall joins the ceiling; multitudinous, disparately colored moths, furry bodied, floating towards the glass lighted bulbs. Only silent insects dwell here - unlike the swarm that plagued my home the October the Indian Summer haunted...
“We’re all tourists from nothingness.”
– Sean LeVan
8 tags
4 tags
5 tags
2 tags
Anesthetized amnesiacs,
you too long lonely libertines of city streets, that gravel heat effused to bruise a psyche and husk out train face love affairs, from Grand Concourse to 42nd Street spent the meager hopes to sad fruition: another ironed collar and fresh mown crown lost to the sea of rearranging souls. But come one, come all to the country cloistered thoroughfare of stars and reticence, not even on...
2 tags
“Poetry atrophies when it strays too far from the human pang.”
– Dean Young
June 2012
7 posts
16 tags
Dear Magic Eight Ball,
I was once more naturally Venus-bodied like the Dutchman’s blonde and Swedish first. He held me naked before a mirror as if ankle deep in tongue of clam but now I have coughed and wasted thin. My mother meets the ribs: what, do you have a tapeworm? She cooks a giant vat of chili I can’t eat (as my mouth is covered in sores) but at least it’s spring, and 7 a.m. when the schoolchildren...
“As for measure and other [poetic] technical apparatus, that’s just common sense:...”
– Frank O’Hara (via kaylakrut)
4 tags
2 tags
“I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a...”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
6 tags
A Letter
Dear philosophers, I get sad when I think. Is it the same with you? Just as I’m about to sink my teeth into the noumenon, Some old girlfriend comes to distract me. “She’s not even alive!” I yell to the skies. The wintry light made me go that way. I saw beds covered with identical gray blankets. I saw grim-looking men holding a naked woman While they hosed her with cold water. Was that to...
2 tags
9 tags
May 2012
10 posts
13 tags
Comes Knocking
All you need to cheat death is a broken clock except when time cheats brokenness which it always does, manages to be measured in ripened ashtrays of twice-kissed roaches and the inexhaustible faceless clamor pressed pig nosed into the dark windows of the mind’s closed storefront. Even the passing of nothing is passing, the “Did you spring from Zeus’s forehead?” still stuck to your...
“Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set...”
– Etty Hillesum, via A Poet Reflects
“I sometimes feel poets do themselves a disservice when they speak of...”
– Bob Hicok (via nomoreundead)
8 tags
5 tags
11 tags
“Someone brought Janis Joplin to a party at the house on Franklin Avenue: she...”
– Joan Didion, The White Album
7 tags
8 tags
“God! Tom, I hope something happens. I’m restless as the devil and have a...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
4 tags
April 2012
8 posts
6 tags
“Metaphor is the dreamwork of language and, like all dreamwork, its...”
– Donald Davidson, What Metaphors Mean (1978)
10 tags
“If one can accept that poetry is the apprehension of Being through the beauty of...”
– Paul Roche
March 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Watch
I The latin root for jejune is without food but don’t you think it ought to be a flower? I think it already grows in early Spring when your breath blooms in the already too warm air. II Frege says every idea has only one bearer; no two men have the same...
February 2012
2 posts
4 tags
“Set your alarm for 3 A.M. Get up in the middle of the night. Go to the...”
– Mark Strand’s Advice for Writer’s Block
5 tags
How many cigs in a bag of rolling tobacco, you... →
“There are two reasons people smoke cigarettes. The first reason is to support their federal, state and local governments with vast amounts of tax revenue. The second reason is so they can look cool & start conversations with beautiful strangers. Because taxes on packs of cigarettes are so high in California, Libertarians and do-it-yourselfers sometimes turn to the tax-free...
January 2012
1 post
1 tag
A Guide to Exes: The Art of Leaving, and Being...
Relax. Think of sunlight deprivation or a songbird with Tourette’s. Think of a raw pause with an ex and a mutual grab for the gin. Ignore the crown of his head stare back as he inspects the cracks in his hardwood floor. You walked over those, once – barefoot, contemplating the blues. The arch of your foot suggested the abandoned shape of an unfolded towel you hadn’t even met yet. Oh,...
December 2011
5 posts
“If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
For such as I...”
– Twelfth Night
