Ninety-Seventh Entry

Friday is a busy day for me, but here goes nothing:

Saw quite a few poets the other night at Cafe Loup, some I see a lot, some I hardly ever see. It was nice to see all of them. Now that I'm writing more frequently I feel like I fit in there more.

I'm currently working on a manuscript (these new poems you're seeing will be in it) and I'm researching book prizes, etc. So if you know of any good ones, give me a holler.

The Dick Pig Review will be having our event at Galapagos Art Space on Sunday, April 8th at 8:00. Should be a lot of fun.

Also, I have two poems up in the beautiful Sink Review. Here's my poem:

FORT

Humorous childhood analogy. I’ve been there.
My body was small. Now I dominate hallways,
grasping at fluorescents like a monkey at vines.
The demure orange of horizon’s line is nothing,
a function we devised, like TVs in movies,
always with the plot-specific information,
never with tasty static. My organization
is prepared to sell you a tee-pee. Resisting
the choice of raincoats and dwelling outside,
rose-colored berries, the hue of a choir-boy’s
cheek. The empty pail of my bank book. Long
gone are the banquet days, the seemingly forthright
simplicity of the coin being flipped, then resting
on the top of the hand, then revealed.

Ninety-Sixth Entry

Kseniya and I are going to the Boston Zine Fest or Zine Fair or some such. I've produced a whopping three zines for publication, which I hope to turn into one decent new chapbook which I will sell at my readings and on this site for a less-than-princely sum. Kseniya's desire to make me a self-started is beginning to pay off.

Here's my poem:

PENCIL

Resentment of sweatshirt
for wearer of sweatshirt: A symposium discussing
a circle drawn in this dirt. My horse gave up the chase,
the fox has learned to live outside my sight. I promise
your finery will guard the vanity mirror, actual pearls
on a pink night of stormy wrong-headedness. Weakly
I shake my face in the truck-stop pisser. Here goes
nothing. The racetrack emptied of cars is a Stonehenge
lined with beer cans, the purpose equally vague.
The delights surround me like dolls in my sleep,
blue cheeks from a strong gale in the alcove
in front of my door, where I usually keep the light on.

It is my policy to smell your feet after the day
you walk towards the pencil sharpener, alone
in the parochial school, in the hallway sweating
with its smallness. I put my uniform in the mailbox
and it came back the next day. I save mpegs
of myself seemingly working hard and leave them
open on other’s computers. Clarity,
while once the terrain of medicine men,
has recently opened up shop on cable access.
My cucumber-colored sweater is all that’s left
of my happy times. Your skin has withered,
blown away by the vacuum. I seem rutted
in a lottery run by the local police. This promontory
seems easy to jump from, skidding through the brambles
like a turbulent plane. The difference is the calm
when your body is picked up by yourself
and walked back towards your car.

Ninety-Fifth Entry

Approaching the hundred poem mark, and this blog is circling the drain. You know what's gonna fix it? NAPOWRIMO! National Poetry Writing Month is very near at hand, and I for one and taking it as a clarion call to get some new work done. And I've already made some major progress, having finally started a manuscript project in earnest. Also, two readings are coming up. One is the Dick Pig Review reading on April 8th at Galapagos Art Space, with the estimable David Lehman, some Dick Pig regulars, and the cabaret magnificence of none other than Miss Harvest Moon. The second is a reading at the 440 Gallery in Park Slope. I'm forgetting the date, and the last time I went to a readinf there, I looked for the place for an hour and couldn't find it. Hopefully I will find it the night of the reading.

Here's my poem:

SKELETON

Worried about New Wave?
I can remember so many chilled white mornings,
the warm red of my sweatpants, the shine of green
glinting off of the wrapping paper. That convenience,
like that convenience store, disappeared and was replaced.
I go by the hair salon everyday and wail on the rubbery
glass and then run away. The hot air mixing
the tobacco cuts through the lung. Tiger
in display case, passive lips, a night
at the county jail, immobile like a fossil
with a grin on its face.

This imagination is more pleasing than flannel sheets,
in which I tangle. I’m not uncomfortable while sleeping.
I have a crush on the girl who hands out tickets
at the outdoor theater. The night is always brown
with geraniums bouncing out of the creek while she sheds her skin,
like peeling a chicken, slow and noisy, and sliding in.
I like when she glows in the water, like I imagine a radio wave.
Unhealthy. Something alien about seeing her bones in motion.
Once a fish has curled in her swimming ribs,
They shrink it into a crumble of scales. I’ve been trying
to talk to my mom, sagging and growing more pink and skinny.
I’m great at sulking. I break every matchstick
and put it back in the box. Someday
I’ll tell her when I hand in my money for the ticket.
You see, everybody I know is a widow.
Even my best friend smiles with a skinny widow’s grin.

Ninety-Fourth Entry

In the office, preparing for the new semester. Boy oh boy do I have a lot of work set out for me.



Here's my poem:

IRAQ

Homeless. It's time to pick up that bag
and make a winner. Every day
I read in the paper about how great I am.
I've developed computer hardware
to process this manly slaughterhouse
of journalistic data, and it's small enough
to fit in my esophagus. There's a new kind
of fishing hook in my esophagus, and it tears
the red tenderness of my muscles. Here I am,
writhing, wet, disenchanted. Just in time
for my meeting.

My mule senses the potential in me, emotions
bursting from my surfaces. He goes back inside.
He's the best editorial journalist I've got,
and even he can't explain his own inner workings,
dented as they are like a cheapo clock, to his wife
in the blue twilight of their cold bedroom.
When someone takes more than two minutes
to buy lotto tickets in front of me at the store,
I get so hot I need popsicle shoes.
Don't involve me in conversations about economics.
Lest you see my claws.

It all comes from those virulent decades
walking my beat in pizza delivery.
Sometimes you meet a wreck. Sometimes you catch
a tip. And sometimes the white cold air bends
your neck back when you stick your head out the window.
If you want a cure for senile dementia
just take a geezer and put him in my step-mother's
basement for one winter and make him drive my car.
Soon enough the old so-and-so will be eating solids,
making 8.50 an hour, after taxes, and if I'm lucky
he remembers he's my grampy. That way I get
my deposit back.

Ninety Third Entry

I'm not a "lifestyle blogger," but I'm currently writing weekly music and architecture reviews for LVHRD.org, under a clever pseudonym. I'm not gonna come right out and tell you who, but it'll be pretty obvious.

Also, I'm not a lifestyle blogger, but I've been reading a lot of lifestyle blogs, and I've decided I love Zarf. Wow, it feels good to let it out.

This is a poem I wrote after seeing Gina at the Poetry Project. It's sort of dedicated to Gina, and it sort of has her name in it a couple of times.

Here's my poem:

STEVE AND GINA ARE DYING

Distressed to say the least. Folkloric design mit colors media pressed conference against white of hospital wall, the doctors keep their lunch-pails in the room off the hall. At lunch we transgress our mortal states, video-camera mit kit undetectable extensions. I’m new at this. This is my first film.

The models in government magazines dressed black, time she shakes her long-haired head. A porch, bottles of beer, nice of them to accommodate by skipping the cover charge. Pre-3 o’clock New Mexico prairie, chilled like a champagne glass, all yellow and clean. We, or at least you, are obsessed with the japanese. One mound clean, seems like popcorn went a little bad, must have left it out. Cut to slutty night, falling flat as if from the bed. Now a balloon manufacturer’s no-good son, tomorrow a pencil sharpener.

Let’s focus on the thing’s insides. Out bright window-shades, Marcel my ghost follow bright and placid. Not like a shadow and not like a skeleton. Forced, as you might say, to parade in the traditional manner but for all unexpected reasons. Flat like the flag they let touch the ground. That flag gets burned, Gina. An apology for the smell. I took all my tear-streaked bodices upstairs, combined them with a cuisinart and some rusty watch-springs, and made a stomach pump. Up goes the feather and down comes the brick.

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