Jack and Anne

what I mean is

his name was Jack

his wife is still Anne

what I mean is

Jack wore khaki pants and white undershirts, with a belt

he would bring us fruit from the trees in his backyard

what I mean is

he had an immaculate sqaure lawn

he shot himself in the head

what I mean is

we would play in the street or fight

and he would ask us to get along and we would

what I mean is

he installed a pyramid clothesline in our backyard

my mother would call to see how he was

what I mean is

Jack was happy

he had the most ample garden in the neighborhood

what I mean is

Anne wore a gown

she is alone

what I mean is,

my hand is here,

your hand is here,

what I mean is-

hello,

thank you,-

what I mean is

we are alone

we are alone

what I mean is

here are our hands

we are alone

what I mean is

thank you,

thank you.

still

glued to

pas possible

in beds my heads are musics

in French it comes, except I don't speak it

j'étais fille, mais

somewhere I still am that is

somewhere I still am.

pas possible

still skin persists

glued to

gluey mind melts

bonding words to

words, words

wither except they never were

never were

pas possible, jamais

jamais

j'aimais

j'ai, mais
pas possible

in the morning

how daylight contorts the forms unbearable

how time is the enemy

how silence slashes into shadow

to make a yawning door

through which the bleeding inks

seep

and press slow horror

deep

into me immobile

between sleeps and wakes

dream mind body awake

they'll ask

process? method?

they may invoke Ginsberg

first thought, best thought

they may invoke Potok

who, dead, still revises

this is a parallel universe moving more quickly through time

this is an hallucination

this is salvation

this is

god

the answer is

no

no, the process, the method,

you have it, you impoverished

the papers Pablo stole-

parables of Pablo

palabras of Pablo-

no, blessed are the poor

blessed is Pablo (a priori, a papyrus) and blessed are you

for yours (notre) is the Kingdom,

no, the process, the method-

the process is kneeding dough

the method is baking bread

the approach is with butter

the tool is a knife

-haolo io,

epucra mae-

the eyes are eternally

the ears are eternally

the nose is eternally

the mouth is eternally

the flesh is eternally

there

folded- gently!- in his fields

which are mine, which are not mine

gently so as not to puncture the blueberries

as he makes bread with me

because I am the bread

and the wine is me

so that when I come to altar white

it is stained by me spare

the scientist- haolo- spare him

the iodine

and let him more easily observe the leaf

making glucose and being a leaf

and being a leaf and
being a leaf
and

Chapbook Preview!

What have I been doing to stay sane lately? WELL...

Front cover. I've been hand drawing those flowers since the Lisa Frank years.

Back cover. Old poem.

Alternate front cover.

Binding with minimal glue/staples/ribbons/etc and maximum folding/linking

Yay! Hopefully I'll have something worthwhile to fill them with.

A Personal Touch

It is not my intention to distort this space with all kinds of personal noise, but today I am going to share a little tool I developed as a part of my new job hunt strategy.


A little background--


I moved to Portland, Oregon at the end of May 2010. No, just up and moved, no job lined up, no concrete aspirations, just a lot of regret on my heels and the kind of generalized hope about any place unknown. And don't get me wrong, it has all been wonderfully exciting, but there is this tiny little practical problem of, you know, paying rent. I've been sending out and handing in countless cover letters, retouched résumés,  and an army of apps, and I have been ferociously following up on all these things. I've had three interviews, with much positive feedback, but, still, no job.


So it's time to take things into my own hands (not to mention escape, with whatever degree of triviality, the miserably boring cycle of endlessly answering the same behavioral and attitudinal interview questions), and unleash an entirely different plan of attack. For fear of being thought silly, or crazy, or, worse, stupid, I won't go into many details here. But I WILL show you all (all... al... a.... anybody out there?) a little piece of the new strategy.

bedeep bedeep bedeedeep That's all, folks! I promise to get away from my ego-gushing and onto more relevant things (poetry) tomorrow.

25 June 2010

dangerous

I wrote to the man, but I did not send the letter, I wrote to the man:

"when I focus on the thing, it abandons me."

dangerous

I went to the water, but I did not swim, I went to the water

and put my gift in, and the present disintegrated in the sea.

danger

I chewed the apple, and I swallowed it, I chewed the apple

and it became my body, so it's carried wherever I go.

four out of five poets agree

a terrible thing is happening

  or has happened oh god is time out?

except it is a lovely thing

it rotates in blue roses

  ah, yes, those,

outside my bedroom window while I seek sleep

what tragedy to be lulled by it

for we must always

  except once

wake

perhaps the predicament itself contains the answer

  four out of five poets agree-

that fifth poet

he has led the revolution

  by keeping his eyes open

of thorny things

Times Two

times ten

one two three four

five

One Two THRee FOUR FIVE SIX

SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN!!!

times ten

the teeth

touch down

times two

ONE.

TWO.

times two

does mire

coil round

times one-

one-

times one

times two

is two

times two

one, left

two, right

times two

felled footsteps

flee or form

times ten

one two THREE four five

one two THREE four five

times ten

times one

is not eleven

The Sort of Thing

where the garbled tongue salad of street Martha

is the god-river coherence between soda buildings

when finally you look up, look up

like a purified foreshadowing except etched in the present

and reaching not beyond the present

so that when you read it it is an obvious surprise

which is also movie endings

in which the isolated chants of sandbox children

are found to have been the integral truth

so that when he appears

barefoot man on stairs

it is that he plays guitar

so that when I say my body is a pool of electric violet

it is that I saturate the earth with my tars

and absolutely nothing else is the case

Vocab Day- Chincherinchee!

The original plan was to go through the alphabet hunting down cool verbs, because verbs are pretty important connections to have if you want to write. But then I came across this word...




Chincherinchee (n.)


Which, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary, is a


"white flowered South African lily."




Now, as a suppoet (supposed poet [with an unfortunate wit deficiency]), "Chincherinchee" caught my ear and attention for a couple of reasons.


First, Ch Ch Ch! And especially the pinging first syllable "chin" followed by a swooping "cherin" leaping gleefully into sky with an infinite "chee!" The word is all colors of sparkling periwinkles and blue steel springs.


Second, there's this kind of silly old tradition of flower symbolism and nature fixation in poetry's history ("I should have thought/ in a dream you would have bought/ some lovely, perilous thing/ orchids piled in a great sheath"? or Those woods on That evening? And who could deny the eternal poetry of Roses?), so, that "chincherinchee" is a flower, and a white flower, and a lily, makes it a prime candidate for all kinds of sloppy sappery about virgins and maidens and that whole lot.


I hope to see several prize winning poems in the near future comparing dear loves to chimpanzees and chincherinchees.


Figure 3a- chincherinchee in its natural habitat

Sun Water Cake Head

or are you a stranger?

The sheets are green.

sisters? cities?

Ojos, not Os, bespeckeled-

what's printed into your bones?

He breathes.

flouted anemic dreams.

Bodies

Your neck is a neck.

Your arms are arms.

Your body is only a body.

My body has secret meanings

     which you're supposed to guess at, I suppose,

curves haunting curves it is.

My neck is Temptation.

My arms is Trap.

My body is a treasure map.

Dumb digits fumble

over an architecture of archetypes,

misunderstanding the mystery.

Yet,

     in ignorance,

treated as a body, it

into I live,

and inhabit

the kingdom of felt.

Frosty Woods in Summer

into them prematurely

his and mine these woods

not

for you.

we can make stones and put God in them

and we can make a pile of them

a pile, a pile, a pile of them

and we can make a pile of them, we can

only

make a pile of them.

we have made stones and we say

yous have made stones too and

that is all we know [of and to] each other we are ghosts

still

these woods are haunted by us

the haunting is a thing felt

my ghost, I cannot kiss you

but [or] for

I love you

in the only way love can be

piled in the river

being tender stones.

I hold otherwise the phantom hand of a flesh-man

who skips my stone heart down river

where it meets the heap

the heap, the heap, the heap of stones there

it is the heap which is the hearth of loving

the phantom heap who's lost by counting

whose reality is only

whose constituents are lonelies.

Fap

fap.

drek tist djorgt paetz.

mah lundilae ahm udra

almi phan ih

tzioq vhicht.

dart ist.

faoalo, vi, vi ih ahm dae shudro-

phaschi'im da oliea svahnaolo

d'ih rundala muloa, si,

si halsm io... mi, loalo...

qrecht mierk tz'erp drao.

paat krid fapt uul.

mi, loalo...

fap.

impressionist sketches

[1] 


lives in 
I see her felt
in that


gone when he's gone


skin his
too is


gone when he's gone


fills night
fills it
out 




[2]


wanted only that. 
waited, wondering
all the 
while


wishes
scattered in
words


words
words


wandering into
wildernesses


perfectly domestic


waved
and
welcomed

Vocab Day- Bandy

In case you ever need a word to rhyme with "candy," Je vous présente...




Bandy (v. trans.)




New Oxford American Dictionary says...


1. pass on or discuss an idea or rumor in a casual way
2. exchange; pass back and forth


phrases: bandy words with- argue pointlessly or rudely




Wiktionary says...


1. to give and receive reciprocally; to exchange
2. to use or pass about casually




Merriam-Webster says...


1. to bat (as a tennis ball) to and fro

2. a) to toss from side to side or pass about from one to another often in a careless or                   

        inappropriate manner

    b) exchange; esp. to exchange (words) argumentatively

    c) to discuss lightly or banteringly

    d) to use in a glib or offhand manner- often used with about

3. archaic : to band together

Cambridge Dictionary of American English says...

1. to talk about (something) without careful consideration

["Bandy" also has an adjectival meaning, which I have omitted because I'm narrowing the focus of Vocab-Day to verbs until I get through "z." Oh no! I've just revealed my evil plan! Eh, whatever.]

Some examples:

From this Los Angeles Times article:

"Tea is said to stimulate more of the human palate than nearly any other food, except the grape. And although the French may bandy about the term terroir to denote the unique environmental character of wine, tea—without the snooty terminology—is a truer terroir product."

From this NPR story on recession slang:

"Not much good has come out of the recession from which we seem to be slowly emerging. But at least it's left us with some new slang to bandy about, the most popular probably being 'staycation' — that trip you didn't take last summer."

And finally, an example from E.E. Cummings' "the Cambridge ladies who lived in furnished souls"

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things-
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps.   While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
....the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

(See? SEE? It rhymes with "candy.")

Diagram 2-a

A child bandies candies with his grandpa.