Ninety Second Entry

It's very late at night. FINALLY getting some prgress into the novel, so someday soon I'll have it done (yeah right) and I'll havde many more posts for you. Until then here's something I wrote today. Gina-I'm finding the poem I wrote after your panel for next time!

Here's my poem:

POUCH

Tomorrow rests in the realm of snakes.
When did the river lose itself, bashful
and glad? Proud, as young salmon always
are, taking the late night flight to Fort
Lauderdale with their girlfriends, where
did they buy their glasses? I really like
them, thin and inadequate, expressing my
generation's wanderlust and basic inability
to carry themselves past the glass boat
of puberty. You see, these salmon
are actually men. Men who root for the team
nobody likes, but there are so many of us
clinging to the chain link that now
everybody likes that team. If we weren't
so timid, we might create a parade for them,
but I spend my time walking around barefoot
without the assistance of carpets, feet
against winter floor, pretending
I understand a world without central heating.

Ninety First Entry

Ran into my old friend Steve Caratzas on the street and was inspired to post another poem. I am writing, sporadically, a few poems (finally had a good idea for the manuscript) and a novel. You'll likely see a lot more of me because I just got a new laptop! I'm excited.

Here's my poem:

MACARONI

Thank you for coming to this,
the last time I will ever puke.

Afterwards I gurgle and wipe my lip
and kiss everybody.

I’m being born in the metal observatory.
Don’t worry. I’m quiet.

There’s a whisper and a squeak.
I’m rubbing all the erasers down also.

The poem is taking place in a suitcase.
It’s time for a game:

I’m being born in a coal mine and I make my own luck,
made my first dollar.

I broke my hand like china,
like brittle wood, terra cotta,

china the plate not china the country
the country is swell.

Happy birthday,
here’s what I got you:

today is remembered by my documentarian
a dandy yellow fuck.

The poem is placed in the separate suitcase.
Part of the trick is distracting the audience

Nintieth Entry

I'm gonna start using bigger type, so's people can read. I was using tiny type before and it was fucking with my line breaks, but not all of my writing should suffer in tiny fonts, such as this one today. For those of you in the know, I never left New York. I got a job teaching college freshmen the finer points of grammar, and I have a girlfriend, for now. I'm writing less and less. But starting to do this site again will hopefully push me onward! EXCELSIOR!

Here's my poem:

MICROWAVE

I’m taking classes. Being born in between heat coils, wrapped like bacon, freaked out of the lights. I liberate my nation through quiet grassroots means, through timid committee meetings, my Bastille lives on in the silent peace, untouched like museums. Taught how to speak by friendly monks. I was born against bricks, and came out running. I wasn’t good at tennis nor at model-making, so I began my life in the theater. I am actually Legion. I bent wild cobra on my knee, spanked him, corrected him. After my kabuki studies, I enjoyed steaming plates for the passengers. For the finale, I emerged in the cluster of noodles, pressing my face from the wet wiggly surface. I looked south. While fishing, the hook entered my chest and wrapped around the essence, the lion’s share of my organ. This is considered to be the traditional way.

Eighty-Ninth Entry

Wow, I must have fallen asleep there for awhile.........

Oh, well. No excuses. Right back on the horse.

Here's my poem:

OPENING CEREMONY

The sans-culottes were muttering in their graves that night, rolling in pseudo-fury. Their ideas and a confiscated printing press sat blandly in the museum. Conflicts between night watchmen over when to take breaks were never mediated. The night watchmen have withdrawn to the forest, and the public have been freely admitted. We were obliged to listen to several speeches, orators spitting, spraying and drooling on all. As if to say a last goodbye, the exhibits trotted in a circle through the crowd before marching out the exits and leaving us holding their coats. We were forced to admit how dark it was. On the horizon, campfires appeared to light themselves. Towards the end of the month someone suggested leaving the museum but this was voted down. Jumping from the windows, a deputy stood among us and spoke. “We must find relief from the pain and irritation of the skin disease which is slowly putrefying our flesh.” I responded that I liked the way I was, just one voice in the growing stir. Stags and rabbits were then slaughtered wholesale. I began to wonder why I got involved in this poem in the first place. I saw some very young boys playing with human heads. Rather than interfere, I became the ad hoc referee to their sport, which eventually became our great nation’s pasttime.

Eighty-Eighth Entry

CHECK ME OUT WITH ME NEW SITE! Kseniya is a tricycle. Anyways, going to Texas for a week where I may or may not update, but just saw the Dada exhibit at the MoMa and was inspired to write Dada poetry. So hopefully this will resemble that. ALSO: I hereby pledge that my long-running threat of publishing a poetry journal will come to pass before the clock strikes 2007. Wham.

Here's my poem:

MOSQUE

The hero despises his adrenaline;
O! The ax melteth within grandpa's withered hand,
O!
O! forgotten amongst innocent commitees,
O! WHY!
WHY!

The idol knows not to worship the idol, the mirror,
dypropoline glycol, glide product on,
glide product on rememberences of dales in summer hill country,
glide product on great sucker for a cheerful day
glide product on a great sucker equals tipsy hairdresser



equals spotlight glare. O! O! has not man a hard service on earth?

Cocks and hens deemed not true friends to the reich
glide product on steamy sports display case
on cows stopped short of forty yard line
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine-thirty-thirty-one-thirty-two-thrity-three-thrity-four-thirty-five-thirty-six-thirty-seven-thirty-eight-thirty-nine

He said "Father S said "I have heard Nancy quote him saying he had heard it pronounced "paper"" he chuckled."

Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that thou settest a guard over me?
Am I the sea, likelihood of the removal of lighthouse by city planners?
Am I the sea, for a few moments I leaned forward and rested my elbows?
Am I the sea, little baby soviet flask empty hey buddy I'm warning you?
Am I the sea?

Eighty-Seventh Entry

My mom thought it would be a good idea if I mentioned on my blog that I was unemployed, and that if anyone out there has a job for this young man they should let me know. I can be trusted with all manner of work.

Going home to Texas in a week or so, can't wait.

Played KICKBALL this weekend!

Here's my poem:

WORDS TRAPPED IN A SKULL

I made a deck-chair out of you.
Every Monday, I hear you squeak
as you begin your breakfast routine,
bacon, sausage, steak, chicken, squid,
vulture, tuna, duck, turkey, buffalo,
camel, as I trot to work I can hear
the grate close on the sewer
and I know you have arrived safely
and I begin to worry about myself.

Then again, at night, when the children
chase me around, I light a fire under
myself and I do that little dance.

I sit in you. You are my solid
accomplishment, and I can see you
from here, inside my bedroom.
Who is in my bedroom?
You mean, besides me? It's
about time you leave me alone now,
in case someone you don't know
is coming by. Someone you don't
recognize at the door, with some
present for you, and when you sign
your name, it looks back at you
as a signifier of who you are,
which is how you know who you are,
by what's written on the slip, and then,
by what's inside the box.

Eighty-Sixth Entry

So, happy birthday to OH SWEET DEATH! My blog's one-year anniversary came and went without me saying anything! Because I didn't have a poem. Which is one of the rules of the blog. I didn't start it to talk about myself, but I've been doing some of that lately anyway.

What do I have to show for my one year? Eighty-six poems. And not much else. But that, again, was the point. I've been published a lot since I started, and I have a Master's in Creative Writing now. And, for the moment, a girlfriend. We'll see if THAT one is around next year. Oddly enough, I'm not worried.

Anyway, I was recently published in Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo chapbook and in classmate Mark Lamoreaux's My Spaceship. You can find out how to order those duders by clicking the corresponding links on my list. Also, Silliman reviews Spaceship and MENTIONS MY NAME!!!! though not anything about my poem, since I assume it speaks for itself. Badly.

Here's my poem:

THE HUMAN LAMB

Finally I tore the lambs apart.
I laid down in the field
and breathed in my bones
and expelled movement.
The smoke was my first sign
something was coming
across the plains
where I had been born
and had rolled in the mud
fearing this day.

I ripped one of my own limbs off
so I would empathize; and here
we are, in this courtroom,
about to convict an innocent man.
I warned you about the wallet-black voice,
the scythe swinging on a moonlit night.
I warned you about the troubles.

The meat had been gamey
and we threw it in the brook.
In the sweltering morning,
mosquitoes, tan from the heat
would slap us all day
out of our dreaming
and help us concentrate on the work:
separating skin from bone.
Keeping bone. We were always
more interested in survival
than in surviving.