Fifty-Third Entry

YAY it's happy NaPoWriMO day! for more info please see Maureen's blog on my links.

I'm writing a poem a day all month. This one's title is again supplied by Shanna Compton.

Here's my poem:

SNACKS FOR THE PARTY

I tell you my intestines are full.
The parasites within them are bloated,
and are relaxing on couches
and are unloosening their belt-buckles.

They are watching the Dallas Cowboys lose.
I am telling you about diseases I could get
that I might enjoy, you are telling me to eat
chex mix because the salt compliments my beer,

and how long have you been a witch? I noticed
the cauldron but of course said nothing
until you threw chicken dumplings in
the hot tub. I was using that,

and you were using me. Our friends
will be along soon, I wonder what
I will do when you’re gone, when
the spell I cast is finally broken.

I like candy, too, but my real
passion is chips, so before
the party starts let’s put a few things out
on the table, and hope no one suspects.

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.

Forty-Eighth Entry

Well, it's a been a little while. I thought I was starting to dry up.

I hit 'the wall' at work today and found that I wasn't able to do my job for one more second without losing my mind. But I stayed on for several more hours and did not lose my mind. Then I had a very awkward encounter with someone on the street.

Here's the info about my reading this Friday. It should be a good one.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 at 8:00 PM
An all-Texans reading featuring
Shanna Compton, Shafer Hall, Susanne Reece & Steve Roberts
Earshot SeriesHosted by Nicole Steinberg
The Lucky Cat*245 Grand Street(btw Driggs and Roebling)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$5 includes one free drink(beer, wine or well drinks only)!
L to Bedford, G to Lorimer, or J/M/Z to Marcy
directions

* Please note the change of venue for the Earshot series!


Here's my poem:

BRUCE BAILIE POEM

There’s a man in a suit lying on the sidewalk
and there is a puddle forming. The man
is be-suited and we’re standing here
watching the puddle grow. And the man is dead.
It is night time, but when I ride my motorcycle
it is daytime, a few seconds later. And there’s
a man on the sidewalk face down, in a suit.
Is he dead? I keep thinking about Levittown.
When I ride my motorcycle I keep looking forward
while thinking about what’s behind me, the tunnel,
the people who stood in a rough circle around
the man who was lying there.

I stand at a great distance from Levittown,
just built, and I’m frightened by how repetitive
and vast and never-ending it is. And I can’t stop
thinking about the man, and what I might say to him,
and at what rhythm our conversation would tremble,
and if he stood up from that sidewalk,
would he have eyes and would they open? And would
they turn in my direction? And would I have to answer
for something? And I think about who is behind
my motorcycle, and who is watching my motorcycle
and what that means to them.

I’ll tell you what it means to me.
It means I can defy myself, for the briefest
of moments, I can fly right past a problem
as if it were a parked car, shiny black chrome
panicking against the horizon, and it means
every second I twist the throttle
that I am not that man lying on the sidewalk.
I never want to be on a sidewalk again.
I never want to lie down again.
I never want to be a man again.

Forty-Seventh Entry

SO, The Dick Pigs have updated since their killer launch party. They will also be squealing at the Frequency Series on March 4th, I'll repost that when it gets a lil closer.

It is well known that I hate all forms of life, hu-mans in particular. But I will be braving you horrible scum to do next week's EARSHOT reading. I'll give you more info about that later as well.

I'm in a foul and curmudgeonly mood. It seems as if I am a grump.

Here's my poem:

1998, YEAR ONE:

"Call me Joseph, dad," was my favorite
nonsense phrase that year, I would slide those fingers
through my longish hair and look down with forgiveness
on my chemistry book, or sit alone, fiddling
amicably with my empty teacup. Wind would fly
through my face when I walked outside, faces
looking at me in the abstract, clinging to myself in wrapped flannel.

From all this I was able to create an interesting lie:
February was the month I said my parents died, among the yellow
flowers, I would look at the stranger across the table humorlessly,
falsely accusing him with my eyes. When I wasn't lying,
Fridays I would walk or run White Rock Lake, 12 miles
flinging my hands loosely in the air, like a dead man
follows the light, out of obligation, out of a practiced fear.

Fast and amorous and deceitful was how I felt.
For no reason I would kiss a girl, and for no reason I would fight,
fists pumping the air, yanking drastically at my friend,
fraying his collar because he wouldn't talk to me that fall.
Forgetting why I started this experiment, in my hand I found
fractured pieces of my teacup, and looked around for my father,
frantically trying to think of things that I have now forgotten.