Fifty-Second Entry

Oni's piano thingy is tonight! Please come and get some culture you heathens!

Nothing much going on with me. Same old hassles. Scott and I played catch the other day. The weather is getting wonderful. I'm REALLY tired. But thesis work continues.

Here's my poem:

WEREWOLF

they put these random images together
for me to ignore, sinking in the couch,
plates drowning in the sink,
waking in static, what is wrong,
the television acting as sunset,
you are blind within my woods.

they put these random images together;
the doctor placing hands over my skull.
You can run and you can hide
if my hands clasp the hour.
hearing the mist slap against
the window, you are so great,
those woods I feel like hair
brushing against my face
encircling, scarring me
with their leaves, why now
do you scream at sight, the blood
drenching your lips, why not
another victim crying out, empty
in the street for you to savor?

Fifty-First Entry

Hey! You!

Poet Oni Buchanan is playing a bunch of piano pieces to fund-raise for Alice James Books, which published a book by my friend and really great poet Jon Woodward recently, check this out and go! It is mandatory:

Wednesday March 29, 8 pm Christ & St. Stephen's Church, 120 W. 69th St. Manhattan (obviously?) It's a benefit recital for Alice James Books, the small independent poetry press with impeccable taste in publishing the finest contemporary poetry Earth's crust has to offer. On the program: Rzewski, Four Pieces, no. 4 Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C# major, WTC Bk 1 Nancarrow, Blues Beethoven, Sonata no. 7 in D major, Op. 10 no. 3 Chopin, Sonata no. 3 in B minor, Op. 58 We'll take donations at the door; we're suggesting$15, but whatever is whatever whatever.


SO GO DAMN YOUR EYES. For more info, write to Jon Woodward at woodwardmail@yahoo.com

Still writing poems from Shanna's titles, and gearing up for Maureen's National Poetry Writing Month. If you're not aware, Maureen made that up and will this month be writing TWO poems a day! So, I'll be attempting to tag along with one a day. If you're reading this, you're also required to do so. This poem was written today with NaPoWriMo in mind:

Here's my poem:

NOW WITH MORE TOBACCO FLAVOR

A man is a kettle of fire,
a man’s mouth is volcanic, a man who likes to sit at home after work is a forest fire cooling, a man who smokes is a fire with a fire coming out of it, a man who sleeps with another man is really asking for trouble because that’s two fires going and also a woman is a kettle of fire, too, but a different shaped kettle and when the fire is done, we sometimes take it out and spread it on the plate and then eat it. When we eat the fire it pleases us and we sit back down and watch football which is a bunch of fires running into each other, a football is a fire, no, a football isn’t a fire, I’m not sure why I said that, a BASEBALL is a fire and sometimes when a man(kettle of fire) hits a baseball(fire) and it goes out into the stands filled with men and women(kettles of fire) and one of them catches the ball(fire) there’s a whole bunch of fires going on out there, more than I can really grasp. I guess by definition I am also a kettle of fire but that doesn’t mean I have any great understanding of the world of men just because I am one of them and I know even less about fire. I probably couldn’t make one. I’ve seen many of them. I have a lighter.

Fiftieth Entry

Hello everybody.

Quite a lot has happened in between posts as always. Some highlights:

I rode a bike for the first time! Well, the first time with no training wheels. Jackson and I were going to a show at Northsix and he made me ride one there, and I was scared crapless. But I did it. And the show kind of sucked.

Played probably my best games of ping-pong on Sunday EVER.

Uh, I thought there was a bunch more stuff. I didn't go to AWP, I'm broke and I don't exist in the poetry world in any definable way. I got my copy of the Tiny and am enjoying it. It's even better than the last. Also, Dan Majers gave me some new stuff of his and I'm really enjoying that.

Here's my poem:

A SOGGIER DAY HAS NEVER SQUISHED

Wet wet shoes shake off on the mat
up the stairs
hold my hands because I feel very young
hear the rain
pummeling the little window in the hall
turn to face me
I doubt I have ever met you before
it is gray
snow on my feet, I look up at groggy clouds
don't wake up
keep shuddering under the blanket like a fish
I fell down
the back stairs while you knocked on my door.

We opened it when no one answered. It turned out to be a garage, with dim lights dripping on our faces and turning us into melting snowmen. Our faces became bright and colorful after that, we became American burger advertisements. We left the garage back into the dreary afternoon, it was really beautiful inside your great big meaty heart, which I lived in before I ate. Then we lived in Cincinnati, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with two lesbian step-sisters who left weed scattered all over the coffee table. I found a hole in the wall. I drove my green Volvo out of the garage into the mist and past that into the shadowy woods.

These woods had biology professors and evil wizards. I slipped in a ditch and buried myself in mulch, filling my mouth with slick damp leaves. But I couldn't sleep, and I developed a thin sheet of hypothermia. This is what has kept me alive through my many travels, once I forgot how to hear your ghostly voice. I often sit at the coffee table, flicking bits of stuff off of my clothes, waiting for you to return. When it rains, the man who lives across the hall screams. New books come in the mail. I mail them all back. The envelopes get soaked and look like whale fins.

Forty-Ninth Entry

Hey there. Washed up poet guy here.

Things have changed in my life. But the Earshot reading went well. Everybody go to the Dick Pig Review reading at Frequency this weekend.

This poem's title was made by Shanna Compton. We are now collaborators. Officially. She's neat.

Here's my poem:

HE FLUNG ME LIKE AN OLYMPIC SKATING PARTNER

Muscles touch in confused abrupt moments,
red uniforms stir, I cannot leave my homeland
by slipping into the air, I cannot blush
like my mother did, rubbing the snow on her cheeks.

We aren't the ones afraid of being evil.
Let's all pretend to be American,
sliding icily on hands and knees,
this time I am spinning in mid-flip,
cold in the still air, trying to think like a cloud
over South Dakota, knowing
I can never land without the weight of love,
I float like a lithe ghost in outline,
Yuri's sweat cools his palm,
I can smell it while still upside-down
and waiting for him with arms tucked towards prayer.