* * * ******** * **

October

2011-10-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

2011-05-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

René Char

2011-05-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

2011-05-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

2011-04-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

Gerhard Richter
Iza Genzken

2011-04-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

2011-04-02T05:14:00.001-07:00

She

I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? --
My lady laughs, delighting in what is.
If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
She makes space lonely with a lovely song.
She lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
She dances, and the ground bears her away.
She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.

I feel her presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

Roethke

2011-03-31T13:46:00.001-07:00

2011-03-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

Come into the den, come into the den
You've got a glow
Climb into my arms with blood on your clothes
You've got a glow
And you're no one's but mine
And nobody knows
the lane where he's lying
No heat in his homes
No heart that was mine
No hand that I'd hold
And you've got a glow, you've got a glow
(And there's no escaping, the thing that is making its home in your radio)
You're light in a lie
You're lithe and you're strong
And you've wanted to do that my love for so long
My live and dead men
Come into the den
You've got a glow

Gerhard Richter

2011-03-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

Clouds (Window)
Wolken (Fenster)

1970
200 cm X 400 cm
Oil on canvas

Funeral
Beerdigung

1988
200 cm X 320 cm
Oil on canvas

Lovers in the Forest
Liebespaar im Wald

1966
170 cm X 200 cm
Oil on canvas

2011-03-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

"In this kind of a world," Peterson said, "absurd if you will, possibilities nevertheless proliferate and escalate all around us and there are opportunities for beginning again. I am a minor artist and my dealer won't even display my work if he can help it but minor is as minor does and lightning may strike even yet. Don't be reconciled. Turn off your television sets," Peterson said, "cash in your life insurance, indulge in a mindless optimism. Visit girls at dusk. Play the guitar. How can you be alienated without having first been connected? Think back and remember how it was."

Donald Barthelme, A Shower of Gold

2011-03-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Truth the Dead Know

Gone, I say and walk from church
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye, and knucklebone.

2011-03-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

The Kiss

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby , you fool!
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.

-Anne Sexton

2011-03-10T11:59:00.001-08:00

The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus of the violent heart. The zeal
of my house doth eat me up.

MARCH FIRST

2011-03-01T06:59:00.000-08:00

+ I have a small poem here

2011-02-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

2011-02-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

My desktop is a weird collage of dystopian/science fiction/apocalyptic images and pretty ladies. Which is pretty much all that I'm interested in writing about right now.

2011-01-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

2011-01-03T13:26:00.001-08:00

CNN Concatenated (partial version) Omer Fast, 2002

sometimes on the street you imagine you've been given a gift of terrible power

2011-01-03T11:23:00.001-08:00

2011-01-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

this is awesome

2010-12-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

Kowloon Walled City

2010-12-16T10:54:00.001-08:00

documentary here

things essential or recently enjoyed

2010-12-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

*this guy's poems

*and this guy's, too.

*real oatmeal, cooking all night on low in the slow-cooker

*Rosebud Salve!!!

*The Age of Virtual Reproduction, Spring Ulmer

*Putting kale and bacon in your lentils (revelation!)

2010-12-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

2010-12-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

Undertow

by Dean Young

People looking at the sea,

makes them feel less terrible about themselves,

the sea's behaving abominably,

seems never satisfied,

what it throws away it dashes down

then wants back, yanks back.

Comparatively, thinks one vice president,

what are my frauds but nudged along

misunderstandings already there?

I can't believe I ever worried

about my betrayals, thinks the analyst

benefitting facially from the sea's raged-up mist.

Obviously I'm not the only one suffering

an identity crisis knows the boy

who wants to be a lawyer no more.

Nothing can stay long, cogitates the dog,

so maybe a life of fetch is not a wasted life.

And the sea heaves and cleaves and seethes,

shoots snot out, goes to bed only to wake

shouting in the mansion of the night, pacing,

pacing, making tea then spilling it,

sudden outloud laughter snort, Oh what the

heck, I probably drove myself crazy,

thinks the sea, kissing all those strangers,

forgiving them no matter what, liars

in confession, vomitters of plastics

and fossil fuels but what a stricken

elixir I've become even to my becalmed depths,

while through its head swim a million

fishes seemingly made of light

eating each other.

help save his heart

2010-11-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

2010-11-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

2010-10-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

2010-10-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

2010-10-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

POLLY GARTER

Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're tinking, you poor little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?
[Single long high chord on strings

someone downloaded my brain

2010-10-06T09:13:00.001-07:00

Heart of Glass, 1976

2010-10-03T07:01:00.001-07:00

2010-09-18T12:48:00.001-07:00

2010-09-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

from Brooklyn Gang, Bruce Davidson, 1959

2010-09-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

on my walk home from class

home

2010-08-20T13:15:00.001-07:00

2010-08-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

2010-08-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

2010-07-24T05:12:00.000-07:00

2010-07-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

2010-07-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

2010-07-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

2010-06-29T14:59:00.001-07:00

Neighborhoods like these are networks of impulses, Rey said, human, electrical, biological, like the forest: in the summer, inexplocable carnivals of flesh; in the winters, blankets in the windows and darkened homes. It was winter that day. "They use candles," Rey said. "Like in the mountains."
If Norma had known the future, she might have said, "Like we all will, when the war comes to the city," but she couldn't know, so she didn't.

Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon

2010-06-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

the longing is to be pure/what you get is to be changed

2010-06-12T19:13:00.001-07:00

rose bush

2010-06-03T15:01:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

God Bless our Dead Marines

Thee silver mt. zion - God bless our dead marines from Nsf on Vimeo.

what does the inside of my brain look like?

2010-05-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna front-it looks like this trailer. Long hair, mists, forests, nice clothes.

Maybe that is why I feel like such a colossal waste of matter and energy (but usually I'm pretty ok with that, obvs).

2010-04-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

Of course there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and...the birds are in misery, I don't think they sing...they just screech in pain.

It is my belief that all these dreams are yours as well...

tell us about yourself

2010-04-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

TELL US about a place you thought was very beautiful and may never get to see again.

2010-04-26T18:06:00.003-07:00

Shoot him again!

What for?

His soul is still dancing!

2010-04-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

driving to Iowa-y

2010-04-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

stink blossoms

2010-03-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

that is how i'd like to be painted

2010-03-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

Today my grandpa emailed this to me:

"Now the war had begun and had gone on. Now the war already had a considerable past. In a little wilderness clearing at Chancellorsville, a living soldier had come upon a dead one sitting with his back to a tree,
looking at first sight almost alive enough to hold a conversation with the living. He had sat there for months, maybe a year, since the fight that gave him his long rest. He seemed to have a story and a philosophy to tell if the correct approach were made and he could be led into a quiet discussion. The living soldier, however, stood frozen in his foot tracks a few moments, gazing at the ashen face and the sockets where the eyes had withered --then he picked up his feet, let out a cry, and ran. He had interrupted a silence where the slants of silver moons and the music of varying rains kept company with the one against the tree who sat so speechless, though having much to say. "

It is from the second volume of Carl Sandburg's Civil War books on the War Years.

2010-03-10T10:12:00.001-08:00

going to miss having this in my backyard

2010-03-06T08:13:00.001-08:00

Accent/Paul Guest

2010-02-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

Accent

Werner Herzog, I'm trying to speak like you,
though outside autumn wildly arcs
and the Alps are only a word I have
loved a long time. Tired is not
what I want my body to be
but a mist above snow. So I'm pretending
this Teutonicism. Jackhammers
through lake ice. Rabid flocks
of woodpeckers immune
to migraine but not so much hunger.
Last week I learned this,
that recycled glass has a name.
That it's cullet. I thought of Faulkner,
his mongrel personae. Which
is to say I thought of
suffering and fire and the south,
to which I am speaking
like a fool. Amused in my flesh,
even by my flesh, though
lovers never laughed. Sighed appropriately,
called out, murmurations
and writhing. In my mouth
I held them as well. All of you,
come back, my nerves seem
to clearly say, though mumbling
I've said the direst things
or stopped one at my door
in muslim dreams, her body specked
with paint. Longer still
won't you stay is what I meant though
what I said I cannot say.

-- Paul Guest, from My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge

2010-02-24T08:22:00.000-08:00

Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. I want to go to there!

morning commute to Indy

2010-02-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

here is what my cell phone has seen this winter

2010-02-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

2010-02-03T13:09:00.001-08:00

2010-01-31T19:16:00.001-08:00

for a dead princess

2010-01-24T18:49:00.000-08:00

I woke up to this song on Sirius radio. I wondered why it sounded familiar, and then I realized that I had a solo in it during Contest my senior year of High School band. I was very nervous that my reed would crack. I always had shitty reeds.
Apparently this was originally written for piano. One of my pianist friends will have to play it at my funeral someday.

2010-01-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

Poem Without Forgiveness

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer’s type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I’ll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you’ve had enough
doesn’t mean you wanted too much.

-Dean Young

Paris Review Winter 2006

2009-12-12T16:10:00.001-08:00

Thing Language

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

-Jack Spicer

2009-11-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

"Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.""

— Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor

2009-10-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

2009-10-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

inside/outside

2009-10-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

Spreading the Word: Poetry and the Survival of Community in America

2009-10-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

By Ross Talarico

Stumbled on it at the library after working a shift. Perfectly and beautifully explains some of the things about which I totally and fundamentally care!

25 some more

2009-10-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

25

2009-10-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

2009-09-14T19:01:00.001-07:00

2009-09-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

Skull

Such a white planet.

And what scars
the eyes are,

what page the lack of face.

Compare this
to flowers

in a house.

-Graham Foust

2009-08-19T18:50:00.001-07:00

summer ephemera

2009-08-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

domesticated

2009-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Amy Stein

2009-08-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

+ Genny Spencer, Diary from 1937, on twitter.

+"Killing Coyote" by Howie Good, elimae

+more blackberries to pick

2009-07-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yayoi Kusama

SATURDAY

2009-07-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

-making ceviche
-eating ceviche while watching Hellboy II and other movies I only half-watch
-dog sleeping in a pool of sunshine

2009-07-23T11:26:00.001-07:00

Mark Mumford
James Harris Gallery

2009-07-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

it is really just a door in the woods:

Private Library from A Space In Time on Vimeo.

via re-nest

2009-07-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

Catherine Campbell

2009-07-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

I have spent an hour looking at this photostream.

2009-07-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

2009-06-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

2009-06-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

Melting

Being a glacier, I remember birth,
The waves of stars falling over the years,
White, six-pointed stars descending to form
My soul. On my birthday, it always snows.
Being the sea, you wait for everything
With motherly love. You eat continents
Of land, continents of ice. Your blue tongue
Catches snow. You taste like salt. You make sand.
I'm inland now, grinding the path that ends
At your door. I'll pause for weeks on the shore
Before I let go. You will let me in
Then begin to melt me down as I float.
Months later you'll ask me, "Do you love me?"
I'll answer you, "Does the sea love the sea?"

-Douglas Woodsum

listen here

Red Room

2009-06-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

2009-06-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Astronomy

2009-06-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

King's Forest, Brussels, Belgium

2009-06-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

Orval, Belgium
and, a building on the very edge of the French/Belgian border

2009-05-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

2009-05-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

2009-04-23T12:54:00.001-07:00

2009-04-21T08:35:00.001-07:00

2009-04-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Water-Burn

We should have been galloping on horses, their hoofprints
Splashes of light, divots kicked out of the darkness,
Or hauling up lobster pots in a wake of sparks. Where
Were the otters and seals? Were the dolphins on fire?
Yes, we should have been doing more with our lives.

-Michael Longley

2009-03-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Juan Gelman, from Unthinkable Tenderness:Selected Poems

I am becoming totally obsessed with latin american poetry. I need to learn Spanish like...five years ago.

2009-03-30T19:21:00.000-07:00