no, maybe...

p[r]ique

should I

call my next book Prick?

Adeena Karasick's rallying cry to all Lingual Ladies

Flarf is Dead: Long Live Drew

 

Flarf, in case you haven’t heard, is dead. Dead as stone.  Dead as a herring. Dead as the proverbial doornail or dodo. 

Or maybe… it might be more accurate to say… as dead as Lazarus.  Or as a zombie. Or better yet… as dead as…Jesus Christ?

Flarf, dead as it is, lives on more intensely, more exquisitely, really, in its resurrected mode: post-flarf.  In post-flarf (not to be confused with the listserv of the same name), the writings of the original flarfists perform the miracle of becoming more intensely what they already were. In the case of Drew and others, this often means becoming more and more “lyric,” whatever, indeed, (and I won’t try to parse it here) that actually means.  Sina Queyras, on her Lemon Hound blog, recently asked me to expound on the connection of flarf to lyric, and here is an abridged version of my response to her:

Well, if I think of the pre-Flarf or non-Flarf poetry of several in the group, I notice immediately a tenacious (almost nostalgic) attachment to the lyric mode (against what was a predominantly anti-lyric mood in inventive poetry at the time the Flarflist started). I’m thinking here especially of Drew, Jordan, Sharon, Rodney, Ben, Edwin, myself, and someone else who shall remain unnamed here although I once collaborated with him on an almost hyperbolically lyrical book. It’s almost as if Flarf emerged partly as an explosion of repressed lyricism that was avant-garde-ishly self-justifying in that it used the mask of appropriation to say what the murkiest parts of our selves wanted to say.

Drew’s extraordinary new book, CHOMP AWAY, is a paradigm of virtuoso post-Flarf.  Years of chop-honing have paid off:  next stop:  Carnegie Hall. Let’s take a look at the cover for a moment.  It seems abstract, does it not?  And yet it echoes his brilliant compositional method, which he kindly outlines in an afterword to the book:

[sorry I need to type this in later]

His method makes explicit and elegant what any poetic composition always already is:  a collaboration between authorial subjectivity and the collectivity of language.  One of the many things that makes Drew’s poetry especially rich, though, is the breadth of his interests and fields of inquiry: psychology, video games, astronomy, global politics, animal behavior, film, visual art, conspiracy theories, and all musics, from the most obscure experimental stuff to Fleetwood Mac.  The meshing together and enjambments of all of these subjects dizzy and excite the mind. 

Drew has mentioned to me in conversation his desire to write a poetry that is entertaining and accessible rather than rarefied and obfuscatory, and indeed the delectable maraschino of the poems is his colloquialism and signature absurd deadpan humor in plain statements like, “My eyes feel more Episcopalian than ever,” and  “I believe in being awake and asleep, in being around people who are also awake and asleep.”

Please welcome my dear friend, the popmeister of the apocalypse:  Drew Gardner.

THE LAW IS MY SUPEREGO

The Law is my superego,

I shall not stalk;

It makes me lie down and take insults.

It leads me beside men like mosquitoes;

It restores my solipsism.

It leads me from paths of raucousness

for my good name's sake.

Even though I walk through the lobby

of the Family Court,

I fear no evil;

for you are gone from me;

your rod and your staff,

they disappointed me.

Hopefully, regret and indignation

shall not follow me

all the days of my life;

and I shall not dwell

on this abuse of the Law

forever.

Please

Please think good thoughts for me today.

Thank you.

clever

I've said to a couple of friends recently that I feel as if I am living in the second half of Mulholland Drive.
I think that's very clever, really.

COURT

When it does grieve,

her beauty blasts

an area open to the sky;

it doesn’t pop and

harbor unfounded

resentment

or burst open

to seek the affections of,

or woo what is

mostly or entirely

surrounded

by buildings, walls, etc.

(of animals) attempting

to attract

but splitting suddenly

and turning partly

inside-out.

It may build up

for an unreasonable

length of time.

He takes another

girl on his knee:

a game where a black robe

and some people in suits

and ties dance around

this inside structure

by engaging (a mate)

in certain

species-specific

behaviors

Poor girl, she'll come

like me at last: we

is fairly fragile, and

“mushes.” They will

not confide in people,

and pretend to

establish justice

between your fingers

quite readily.

Manatees have a

courting ceremony

that causes, leads to,

or provokes

seismic signals

in a courting male

jumping spider.

Do? I do.

The courting male

perches on the back

of a terrorized victim

to court the disaster

of the female,

rocking backwards

on behalf of society

and forwards ­–

exploited or

betrayed ­–

in fear of

being.

isolation

HEARING

Something’s wrong

with my hearing. Hearing

Hearing (or audition;

adjectival form: "auditory"

or "aural") is the ability

to perceive sound

by detecting vibrations

through an organ

such as the ear. It is one

of the traditional five

senses. It just feels like

there's liquid cement

in my ears. “Ponzi scheme?”
“Fonzi’s team?” I gave both

ears a good poke and a slap

to shake out any ear wax.

“YOU need to speak up

when you talk!”
The inability to hear

is called deafness.

Lyric is designed

to take advantage of

your ear’s anatomy.

I asked if I could have

the last donut at work

and my coworker

called me a "goathead"

for no reason at all.

Being able to hear

24 hours a day,

7 days a week,

for months at a

time* is another unique aspect

of Lyric. What Makes Lyric

Different? How does Lyric

Work? What does Lyric

feel like? Yes there were

the “books”  that sounded like

“crooks” The “pears”

who sounded like “stairs”.

To understand how your ears

hear sound, you first need

to understand just what sound is.

In humans and other vertebrates,

hearing is performed primarily

by the auditory system: Is Lyric

Safe? Will Lyric set off a metal

detector? Because Lyric is placed

deep inside, it is 100% invisible. 

People cannot see Lyric

in your ear. Vibrations

are detected by the ear and

transduced into nerve impulses

that are perceived by the brain.

You sleep, shower, and exercise

with Lyric in your ear. Oranges &

Lemons Soramimi Cake (Cake of

Mishearing). You misheard me.

I said I was feeling anxious, not

angry. Mishearing definition :

mishap, accident, adversity,

bad luck, calamity, contretemps,

disaster, evil chance, evil fortune,

hard luck, ill fortune, ill luck,

Oranges & Lemons Soramimi Cake,

People used to whisper all the time.

You know you mumble. It just feels

like there's liquid    cement

in      my      ears.

Lemon Hound + Nada

Today Lemon Hound focuses on your humble ululator.

plot

Trying on "conservative" outfits.

I want to tell you more, I want to go on & on, I want to hear more & more
from you. Yes, that sounded very "dramatic," what you did. Those things
never work how we want or imagine. Which is not to say they necessarily
backfire. But we so often sniff out others' intent, subvert it. It's odd
because we love plot. I mean, who doesn't?

~Gary Sullivan, Swoon, p. 34

I've also been writing poetry introductions: APPS/BERGVALL/CHILD

 STAN APPS

Stan Apps is the author of many wonderful books, including

Grover Fuel

Info Ration

God’s Livestock Policy

Princess of the World in Love

Handbook of Poetic Language

Oracular Vagina Takes Her Place Among World leaders

and most recently, a book of political/philosophical/poetic essays, The World as Phone Bill, a brilliant excerpt of which is available online as an e-book, Universal Stories with Unknown Particulars

On his Blogger profile, Stan lists, tellingly, his interests as

* mistakes     * faux-certainties     * temporary realizations     * ignoring the consequences of my own thoughts

this last strikes me as a boldfaced lie, since the (prolific) consequences of his (prolific) thoughts take the form of writing, writing, and more writing that invariably situates itself in inquiry and critique. As to the other three interests in his list, mistakes, faux-certainties, and temporary realizations, I should like to point out that Stan has fairly recently become a scholar of the law, the very purpose of which, of course, is to punish mistakes, affirm certainties as truth, and inscribe realizations into precedents that create at least an illusion of permanence.  Stan, I am guessing, enjoys being in the middle of the contradiction between his interests and his future profession. 

Stan loves the forms of logic and bends them to his advantage.  At the same time, he knows, as every aspiring lawyer (and poet, and human being) should, that logic is fallible, and that is one of the many reasons we require poetry. Thus, he stretches the boundaries of each:  his rigorously thought-through essays strain towards poetry, and his poetry strains toward logic, and all this strain is pleasantly maddening. 

As the title, “Universal Stories with Unknown Particulars” suggests, he is obsessed with the polarities of the particular and the general, oneness and manyness, boundaries and boundarilessness. He addresses this obsession in his “Handbook of Poetic Language,” in which he characterizes poetic language as “unsuccessful”:

“Language becomes unsuccessful when it fails to articulate difference effectively.  Successful language is primarily focused on depicting degrees of similarity....Unsuccessful language admits the possibility that people are not separate.  When we begin to communicate poetically, the question of similarity disappears and is replaced by the question of boundary, and the answer to the question of boundary is ‘no.”  ….Language is… the fact” of others.  Thinking makes into organelles of a long-lived monster with its feet in a sing-songy poem…. We are follicles of this long lived monster, whose name is not even English.  Poetic language deals with our shared experience of being multiple and indistinct.”

His work is luscious with thinking: bawdy, silly, ironic, compassionate and feminist (in God’s Livestock Policy he describes someone who I guess is himself as “ a womanish man who sheds plump homemade tears as nourishing as chicken soup when faced with news of new atrocities”). I don’t exactly know what the word genius means (do you?) but I really love this pronouncement of Stan’s from his chapbook, “Soft Hands”:

“All it takes to be a genius is to not be embarrassed by the wiggleiciousness of thoughts.”

Please welcome the unembarrassed wiggleiciousness that is Stan Apps’ genius.

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

CAROLINE BERGVALL

 (photo by Kaplan Harris)

 

Charles Bernstein has written that "Caroline Bergvall has emerged over the past decade as one of the most brilliantly inventive poets of our time." Marjorie Perloff has lauded her as an example of what she calls “unoriginal genius” for her uses of reframed and appropriated language.

Born in Germany, and raised in Geneva, Paris, New York, and Oslo, she has been based in England since 1989. Her work has been commissioned and presented internationally. Her most recent projects can be found at the Hammer Museum in LA (w Rodney McMillian); our very own MOMA, NY; the Dia Arts Foundation; the Tate Modern, London; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Antwerp.

Her many books include Eclat (Sound & Language, 1997), Goan Atom, 1 (Krupskaya, 2001), and Fig (Salt, 2005), and most recently Meddle English (Nightboat Books).

Vanessa Place writes in a recent review of Meddle English that

The collection works as an argument for language as such—not for the incommunicability of language, but rather its hypostatic features. In other words (and we are lousy with words), its fundamentally fundamental nature, its capacity for scaffolding, its ability to wear a mask that masks nothing.

Multivocal, multilingual, multimedia, multistrategic, multiepochal, multivalent, Bergvall truly dives into the wreck of Babel and recovers from it mysterious and intriguing objects and experiences that find places on walls, on pages, and in ears.

Please welcome the estimable Caroline Bergvall.

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

ABIGAIL CHILD

Abigail Child is a media artist and writer whose original montage pushes the envelope of sound-image relations to make, in the words of LA Weekly “brilliant exciting work…a vibrant political filmmaking that’s attentive to form.” Winner of the Rome Prize, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, both Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as participating in two Whitney Biennials, 1989 and 1997, Child has had numerous retrospectives including the Buena Vista Center in San Francisco, Anthology Film Archive, Harvard Cinematheque, Reservoir-Switzerland and most recently at the Cinoteca in Rome. She is author of THIS IS CALLED MOVING: A Critical Poetics of Film (2005) as well as A Motive for Mayhem (1989), Mob (1996) and Scatter Matrix (1999) among others. She is currently completing two poetry manuscripts and editing a feature shot in Italy of the life of Percy and Mary Shelley, in the form of imaginary home movies. A book with interview and articles on her work, in both French and English, accompanied with a DVD, will be appearing in early 2011 out of MetisPresse, Geneva, Switzerland.

And now, with apologies to Dziga Vertov…

Along with her kino-eye, Abigail is keen of ear, She is a bi-sensual prestidigitator. She, a focusing device, shows you the language as only she can hear it. Now and forever, she frees herself of immobility, her words are in constant motion, she draws near, then away from them, she crawls under, she climbs onto them. With them, she moves apace with the muzzle of a galloping thought, she plunges full speed into a phrase, she outstrips running stanzas, she falls on her back, she ascends with an idea, she plunges and soars together with plunging and soaring bodies. Now she, a room of flickering sound, flings herself along the alphabet, maneuvering in the chaos of meaning, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combinations... Within the chaos of meanings, running past, away, running into and colliding - the words, all by themselves, pulse with life.

Listeners and viewers, please welcome the labile, plangent, friable, nacreous, lambent, sinewy, vibraphonic, syncopated, fricative, super-supraliminal Abigail Child.


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

other things I've been doing besides being depressed

I get lax about cleaning things.  I come home and think, wow, looks like some derelict who likes to play dress-up lives here.  And then I think, looks like the cleaning lady hasn't been here for a while.  Then I remember, wait a minute, I'M the cleaning lady.

so tired. petting Nemo, petting Nemo, petting Nemo...

I was so very much in love. I can't. believe. this.

"unmanly"

vomitophobic

I sincerely believe all these drugs are having a deleterious effect on me - the Ativan in particular. Something clouds my memory, my faculties. Since they are anti-anxiety drugs, they seem to impede my judgment as well. I say things that I ought not to say; my filters do not operate as they should. Nothing else, though, helps me to sleep. Without them, especially at times like now of very great worry and trepidation, I am up every two hours. Sometimes I am anyway, but the pills keep me just groggy enough to get me back to some disturbed half-sleep.

Today, they made me think that I was a week ahead and that I had to read at the poetry project tonight instead of next Friday night. So after returning home, feeding the cats, taking half an Ativan, and lying on the floor with my legs up trying to settle my sacrum and my worried mind I got myself up and dressed and made my way through this weirdly balmy full moon night to the east village. Oh what a horrible place it is on weekend nights the women (girls) teetering about on fuck me shoes and looking stupid all the boozhee revelers drunk and seeming aimless. Of course I am aimless too, and on pills, but not drunk, and I'm wandering through these hordes of people feeling so rootless and disconnected I wonder if I should die. I wonder if he would be happy if I were to die, since that would solve all of our immediate (i.e. temporary) and grossly exaggerated problems. But I think killing oneself is both rude and difficult. I guess. If I were to take all the pills I have accrued at once, what would happen? I have ambien, Valium, klonopin, remeron, I don't know, what else, all kinds of pharma... but probably they would just make me barf and I am vomitophobic and besides too smart, pretty, and considerate to wipe myself out. You know, this isn't ideation, exactly, but it sort of is one step away from it. I would never forgive myself if I killed myself. That is dark humor: get it?

.........

Next morning. No hot water. It's torture. I'm doing the prairie thing and heating up big pots of water to put in the bath. This is actually life-affirming, so if you were worried by the previous paragraph, please don't be, unless you feel moved to go out and do something fun with me to remind me how various and delightful this world is. I am trying to write a clever intro for Abby while not watching the pots in order that they will boil. The wind blusters outside. Everything is temporary! I wanted to go to a yoga class this morning but needed hot water, so no yoga, just dance later and then poetry later. I love what someone told me recently, that people will let you down but writing will not. There is always this. I am such a little social molecule, I need to bounce off other molecules, I should have married someone else, although I'm not sure who, when I was much younger, and had many children, only in order to have that unit, that connectedness... but that was neither my desire nor my destiny it seems. I plunge my face into Dante's white belly, wrap my arms around him, his purr is the most exquisite succor. I like people, too, but they seem so damaged, and guarded, and complex... and so... cruel.

heavy

heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy heart.

it's the world

It's the world, not me, that's been unfaithful.

~Gary Sullivan, Swoon, p. 216

can you live with that

I think only one thought conclusively, I love
you, I totally want you Nada Gordon, it's kinda unconscionable, don't you
think, like where's my real life, don't I have other things to do but write
you, where otherwise might my energy go, I could be working on a new
cartoon, getting a better job, I could be picking out my new wardrobe, I
could be making new friends, I could be doing anything, but no, no, here I
am, Friday night, do you know how late it is? it's 3:16 a.m., I write you
because it's the only way I know how to prove my devotion, & it's more than
that, I'd rather write you than do anything else, even though I know I'll
die someday and you'll die someday, we'll both die, and then where will we
be, it doesn't matter, the truth is if we fuck this up we're gonna haunt
each other endlessly, do you want that, can you live with that, I can't...

Gary Sullivan, Swoon, p. 222

It is cruelly, bitterly ironic that in order to read the powerful, feminist volume that is A Megaphone, I must touch its cover drawing, done by my husband who has told unto power unimaginably horrific lies about me.

I Want to Stretch My Vagina

Am I insane because people
don't want to understand me?

this quiz will tell you wether
or not your insane. and please

be onest in this quiz. well actualy
i dont care so whatever. i love

the smell of mathboys farts theyre
so fuckin juicy...am i insane? I like

pain - am I insane? I feel happy
when I am in physical pain. I feel

alive and not just numb. I like
getting really ill with colds

or broken ribs etc. Am I insane
or did it take me too long to realize

that " waiting for the sunset "
is the exact same song as " me

and jesus dont talk anymore "
I want to stretch my vagina –

am I insane? Am I insane
for wanting to fall asleep,

never wake up? (And no,
this is not a suicide question)

I don't think you're insane.
I think sleep is awesome

MELODRAMATIC POEM

If I were O’HARA, you’d be my DUNE BUGGY

If I were POUND, you’d be my MEGALOMANIA

If I were DANTE, you’d be my EXILE

If I were PLATH, you’d be my OVEN

If I were APPOLLINAIRE, you’d be my WWI

If I were BRAINARD, you’d be my PNEUMONIA

If I were WILDE, you’d be my GAOL

If I were WELCH, you’d be my SOUTHWEST

If I were KEATS, you’d be my CONSUMPTION

If I were SHELLEY, you’d be my BOAT

If I were SPICER you’d be my VOCABULARY

People Suck

Why do people suck balls?

People suck balls because they

enjoy it and they tast good!

Unauthorized duplication is a sin.

Mean People Suck Tablatures, Chords,

Tabs. Theologically, people suck at being

human the way God intends humans to be.

Beer and Drugs Make People Suck Creative

Writing. Unique people suck skins.

People Suck as interpreted by a scar in the sky.

At this point in my life, thumbsucking

is to me what valium is to others.  

So when I say that white people suck, I

only mean that they suck to paint because

of their difficulty. I am 39.  I am an avid

thumb sucker.  I have thought about

how life would be if I lost my thumb.  

I would be miserable.  I find great comfort

in my thumb.   Many people suck designs

on Pet Bowls for Dogs & Cats. People suck...

or maybe im just being overly sensitive…

go directly to jail

I was making tuna fish sandwiches for my kids one afternoon when two undercover cops came to my door saying I will put you in jail if what you bought from me is played on a gizmo I don't approve of and I will put you in jail If you write another wack ass poem.

[I thought to myself, keep under control]  

Send an 'indecent' text, go to jail

[keep in check] 

Understand climate, go to jail.

[Keep your temper keep your cool] 

We all have to go to jail now.

[keep from exhaling or expelling; "hold your breath"]

It's like being thrown in jail for life simply for being born. A crocodile was thrown in jail over an obscene fashion statement. A South African was thrown in Jail for trying to breed with an Albino Clownfish. Last night I was thrown in jail just for murdering a mosquito!

Still… there’s Glamour in the Slammer

and plenty of time to consider such questions as

Why does the Passive-Aggressive play a victim role?

Why are passive-aggressives relationship obstructionists?

Why do passive aggressive men withhold sex to punish their wives?

and

Isn’t passive aggressive behavior a form of abuse?

The idea of babies living the first months of their lives behind bars is sad to contemplate, not to mention Puppies Behind Bars, or the hiccup girl sentenced to life with hiccups.

One reason I started this blog was to practice restraint. It is noble to practice restraint, but my tongue is nearly bleeding. After all, if those animal cops came to my door I could only be arrested for giving her too many cat toys and treats.

I'll leave The Cake Of Finality with you to allow you practice restraint. Don't eat it. 

He walked out, largely. 

ooh eee ooh, oooh eee ooooh

heinous and laughable

Someone said to me tonight, "It's simultaneously the most heinous and the most laughable thing he could have done."

Only Love

Only love

 has the fury

 to make peace

 in all the layers of the onion

Happy Valentine's Day to all.

sorrow

stronger than rage

HOW DOES HE SLEEP?

three enthusiasms

Drew Gardner's Chomp Away
Julian Brolaski's gowanus atropolis
Abraham Lincoln No. 6

TRAIPSE TO MAULE

She sweptwing a candle—

which, with matches,

stood frontward the sad

break up poems table—

and powderise unlade

the interpenetrate and sad

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and the really sad break up poems

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above, gruesomely her sad break up

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ununderstandably.

But the excessive sad break up

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and the brahminical sad break up

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moongarr, and seared the anaerobiotic of congenialitys

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Her mitsvah toehold modern and tragicomic enslavements

for bittern the due of the dedicate mightiness

Vestiges

Today I saw many things and thought almost reflectively, oh Gary would like that, (a t-shirt, a comic book of dreams, a book about drawing journals) I should get it for him, and then I remembered he's my mortal enemy.

These are the vestiges of the wife-instinct. Damn it! Jerk!


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my friends

have been saying (quite unsolicited) the wisest (but entirely unplatitudinous) and most loving, supportive things lately.

I love you, friends.

I don't care what you people say

I'm going to Paris in March.

oh I would so much rather

be writing love poems

who wants to be
my next muse?


I mean OK, I am a little formidable. But just a little.
And ever so charming.

The poems will be so good they will make you dizzy, I swear.

(I have so much practice!)

Tinny Writhing

The dearth, the solitude & the hum-
ming of the head.
Pitiable words.
The vibration of the past.

Sluts

Sluts make one very comfortable.
When it's a slut, so pleased he is.
The slut.
When the slut is short, so pleased he is.
When the slut is short, so awakes a sausage.

My Heart

My heart was pounding along today
really savagely. The writing was
grotesque. The act was very low the egress was red.
Sore rage. The bitterness lay near me.
The heart beat ruefully. The blood fumed in the veins.

The Slutlet.

The slutlet follows the lying
groom,
off into the bright light.
The lying groom spouts slimy goo
And wiggles his spike to and FRO.
It disgorges on the little fish, on her
belly.
And the slutlet gorges on lies.

The Orphan.

The wife’s a noisy orphan.
They just wanted to be having fun.
They have gone now into the bright light,
and will leave a trail of slime behind them.

you can't

make an honest man/woman out of someone who isn't one to begin with.

friends are not friends
lovers are not lovers
people are hardly even people

lapdog

It's nice that they let his lapdog into the building. Every middle-aged man needs a lapdog...to amuse him, to shore himself up against mortality, etc.

I apparently married my worst nightmare. How did that happen

acrobat/green bra/lacerated tongue

Dream I am a little girl and I’m a gymnast/ acrobat. My father is my trainer or we have a father/daughter act. The father in the dream is not like my actual father, nor is the mother like my actual mother. I am being prepared for some kind of competition. Also I think my mother is a dentist. She is referring people to an oral surgeon. I think the oral surgeon is also my dream father. She brings him a beer, and he has a fit, because it’s the kind from a can and not from a bottle. So she refers a patient to another oral surgeon. For some reason I am talking to that surgeon. The patient has had a hard time eating food and enjoying it. I said, is it because he bit his tongue and he has lacerations? And the surgeon says, yes, exactly, how do you know? And I say, oh, because I have experienced that, and I show him my lacerated tongue. Showtime is approaching and I need a costume. I guess I am old enough to need a bra because I am trying on bras. One was emerald green satin with ribbons… but I need a whole ensemble… and there is a bit of an issue because I invert, so I need something that will not be too revealing when I do so… I suggest black lace shorts…. I must have figured out something because showtime comes… it’s in a playground…. I was so worried about the routine, we’d gone over it so many times… and I think I accomplish it but to be honest I had a very troubled sleep last night and I am not really sure, my jaw so clenched, and up between 3:30 and 4:30, drugs notwithstanding.

love with a fresh eye

There is something wonderful in the student-teacher relationship — the rediscovery, the chance to have a relationship with a younger woman. It permits you to see the things you love with a fresh eye, makes them exciting again. And I don’t think there’s any question that surrounding yourself with youth keeps you younger.

Hugh Hefner, in today's NY Times

Should I just give up? I'm not sure what "giving up" would entail, but is that what I should do?


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all the time

when I first started to think about

writing this thing  this morning, I was

wearing my Basquiat nightgown, the one

I got from Uniqlo; it was Gary’s favorite

and he always commented “famous

sausages” when he saw it, because that was

the subject of the painting on the nightgown

and then I wonder, does she wear Basquiat

nightgowns?  no she’s not the type, I’m

trying to think, what kind of nightgowns

would she wear?  something polyester,

from Victoria’s Secret, maybe, OK.  and

some kind of citrusy perfume that mixes

oddly with her vagina smells.  Well and

then I started thinking about Basquiat,

the wildness of his strokes and of his

person, how he “acted out”, how he

(like someone else I can think of) was

both formalist and expressionist, and

how Courtney Love, who played his

girlfriend in the movie, acted out, too,

to the extent that no one likes her, she

gives interviews in the nude, she’s violent,

she’s a ridiculous character, and yet she

is tolerated, wondered at, even, for the

extent to which she plays herself: to the

hilt.  So I was thinking about the extremity

of these two, and my own extremity, which

seems to embarrass everyone – are we really

artists? –  this “madness” ­– people are so

prim and so impatient, just brush the dust

off your shoulder, pretend nothing happened,

let’s talk about more important concerns

than your human pain, because once again,

how many times do we have to tell you

this, only generalized human pain is

interesting. The house is a mess, there are

so many other things I should be doing

than sitting here typing this.  All these

drugs in my system give me a weird

humming dizzy feeling, last night

I wept and wept and cursed.  That

stage he and I shared, starting that again,

I felt a bitter déjà vu.  Fuck.

I should make everything completely

different like in the dream, see previous

post, but that would be too shocking too

so I’m forced to battle it out here in

the nest that was ours, letting things

pile up in corners because they overwhelm

me in their thingness, they are wedding

gifts, or they are things he had opinions

about, for example he liked the nightgown,

and he liked those black glasses I don’t so

much like anymore, he liked the Shimokitazawa

mugs and the cats and he liked the corner

of the leather sofa where wearing the yukata

(he bought it on our trip to Japan in May, in

a little town in Gunma, I realize now that

was our anti-honeymoon…) unshowered, sort

of slumping or shapeless,  he would stare

at his iPhone, reading messages from her. I don’t

know what things in the apartment he didn’t like

because he didn’t really tell me, but he said

disgusted at the end, “look around this place,

it’s all you,” as if he hadn’t all those years had

a voice, and as if I had not been something also

he ostensibly liked.  well and he hated the mosquito

net thing over the bed: “I always hated this,” he

said, that last week, and I pulled it down in one tug,

but I’ve since bought another, because, you know,

fuck him, and that tainted bed I’ve written about

before where Wanda spread her evil legs and he

so eagerly like a horny little schoolboy stuck it

in her with naughtiness and most vile deceit.

Did he then move rapidly like a skittish rodent,

I wonder, and did she make her poseur noises

and how much long after that did I come home

completely innocent of all their filth and say

hello sweetie, how are you, and what did you

do today? so yeah, no one likes this sort of

thing, it makes them flinch, it doesn’t have

anything to do with art history, it’s not coded,

it’s only prosodic by chance the way any language is

it’s just this endless swoop of, can’t you change

the record? can’t you be a different person?

because we don’t like this part of you, it’s

unseemly, it’s too furious and too abject and

it’s not good for you, yeah yeah yeah, well

you know what, that is YOU, and I am what

I am and this is how I am.  I had this absurd

belief, see, in the happy union of two creative beings.

And now it seems that lovers are not really

lovers, just co-illusionists at best, more likely

just routine frottage.  And then there’s this

authoritarian monster getting on my case about

PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE as if it mattered in the

slightest, as if anyone were going to care about

these little cries and revelations; I mean they do

care, but only in a kind of impatient way, with

a kind of tough love shrug, because come on,

it’s like Gary said, PEOPLE DO THIS (abandon

other people) ALL THE TIME.  People do this

all the time!  They kill each other in wars all the time!

People write pretentious art manifestos all the time!

People knock little bunnies on the heads and then skin

them all the time! People huddle in doorways in

urine-stained clothing with nothing to eat all the time!

People get horrible diseases and die of them all the time!

So who cares! Get over it! So right, yeah, I’m cool,

it’s cool, people do this all the time, and in between

sitting down and typing this I’m bustling about cleaning

things, and getting the laundry done, because these are things

that people do all the time.  I make the bed and displace the

cats, OUR cats, Dante wails in the foyer again, he does this

all the time, and now I have to go put the clothes in the

dryer.  Note here how DAILINESS enters the writing.

I am so absolutely nauseatedly SICK of the precious ways

people talk about writing:  they do it ALL THE TIME.

Now I have been five months alone, some people say that

is a long time, and other people say that is a short time. I

don’t know what kind of time it is, only that it is terribly

distorted and my dreams are too strange and I am too skinny

and full of the most piercing sadnesses and furies they are like

stalactites or something, and I have all these “coping strategies”

and I function and I go to my job and I teach and I interact

and I go to poetry readings and I go on dates and I put the

clothes in the dryer and I go to the hair salon and I go buy

cat food all those things, I can do all those things, as if I were

some sort of normal person, all those things that people do

all the time.  And then things sort of build up and on the train

coming home last night I just wept and wept, and I “cried myself

to sleep” as if “sleep” can be defined as this state where one’s dreams

go on way too long and are just as tumultuous as the daily state of

trying to cope with rupture and betrayal and then I got up and now am

writing this in between doing all of those little things one needs to do

to maintain one’s life because for some reason that is what we are

“given” to do.

flood

I visit some place deep in rural Japan and decide to live there… Alli Warren too is there… I move from my apartment here in Brookyn to  there because one day  I take a walk in that village and there is snow but there are also jonquils… and in a tree.. something I think is first a snake and then a tiger but ir turns out to be som kind of giant SKINK

but with markings like a tiger or spotted horse… it is all so unbelievably magical, the beauty of the nature around me, that I feel I have to live there

anyway… it seems that I and Alli have married farmers… we have married these simple and crude farmer guys of the countryside  I have sold my apartment and moved into this other apartment.  I have gone through my clothes and moved from Tokyo or New York or wherever I was.   many of the clothes I have to sell and get rid of because they no longer fit me, I’ve become so thin and anyway I don’t need them in the coutryside

and… I go back to my classrooms in Tokyo or New York or wherever I teach… I have these huge classes there… and I tell them I am moving to the countryside… I talk to Nancy about it she says yeah I almost moved there at one point….

I say it is so beautiful there… and I have come to the place in my life where I need a change

and I hitch a ride back to the country side with some people I don’t know… and it’s weird… I ask if we’re going north… but I can feel we are driving south… and they say yes… but it must have been another road, one I don’t recognize, because we go through a kind of neon Chinatown las vegas kind of place  and I say, oh this isn’t right… and somehow I get back to the village… where there is a little pub… something about a little pub… anyway I am in this new apartment… I guess with my farmer husband?  at parts of the ream I am single other times not… anyway… I notice that when I look out the window… which is oddly shaped… that I see these sort of snowy muddy dots… not the sky… and I hear a rushing sound… and it seems that there is a giant flood… pulling me along… rushing… and I notice… that I am not in my apartment any longer but in a boat…. and I am there with my husband… and I we have never had sex before but we have sex for the first time, I guess because I am so grateful to him for saving my life.... he must have carried me up from the apartment to the boat...

and also it seems we have two kids

and Alli in a parallel situation has two kids, or maybe three… and it turns out we are in this flood, this flood, see, and  when we are saved we are in someplace urban.  It is a combination of NY and SF… but the thing is that now we have these bumpkin husbands and all these children to support… there are these giant documents on brown cardboard paper bound with huge magenta staples… listing all of our duties as rural wives… and there are scenes of me with I guess my mother or grandmother in laws going over the rules… there are piles of vegetables in plastic colanders… traditional ways to prepare things… and they are teaching me

and there are manuals about how to behave… rules… like, even though in extremem poverty do not steal the soap from public restrooms (I remember thinking about the varieties of scented soaps available here in the urban US)… OK so but then I realize that I had fallen asleep in the apartment and not the boat, and my bumpkin husband had saved me… I weep and weep

For some reason I am also supposed to start graduate school  and I am preparing to do that…Maybe Alli too.  We are town.. now we are out of the countryside and about to go to school, what do we do with the husbands?  the children?  The feelings are riotously mixed.   I am so grateful at having been saved.  But I want to be free. There is a huge public hearing in a kind of basement space.  All the local citizens are brought in…I guess this is back in the countryside.. and the huge books with magenta staples are brought in…

and it was about at this time I became fully aware that this dilemma was not a real one but only one I was so overwhelmingly dreaming.

HaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate

franklin, michigan

my house is messy

it is messy

my house is messy

chicken vanishes, heartbreak ensues

Darling is a term of endearment of Anglo-Saxon origin.
a person very dear to another; one dearly loved.
We live for music. We melt faces

Oh Darling Glitter Text Maker
Oh Darling, Let's be Adventurers.
"Oh darling, I luv u tooo

much.. very much .. as Shahjahan loved Mumtaz."
So where's the Taj Mahal?
I stare at a wall.

Something unfinished is gnawing at me.
we are always multitasking
Ach Ach Liebling

My Darling is a Pig With The Face Of A Boy
Loom my darling sun. Bear the scarlet letter!
Filthy harlot - the lowest grape!

my darling cockapoo, Raquel
my darling :D. my darling :D. piggy (: piggy (: earthings
Hope you get thrown at a nice party.

With lore ornamented entreating; Hollow headed,
heart-snorted. A red stain en masse, a feeler in grass,
I'm a blood-spattered wreck of a starling.

dream: "escape"

I was in "Paris" although
it didn't look like Paris
I had to take a train
to get to the cineplex
which was one of the only things
to do there
so it really wasn't Paris
and it was actually a kind of
exploratorium
or museum of the moving image
and there was one "exhibit"
that would put you in the movie
in some marvelous computer-generated way
and I couldn't at first see what the results were
but I did it again and then I could
there were war films, and science fiction,
and fantasy
and art movies and porn, and walking
in golden gate park
or some park that looked like it
but the amazing thing about this
technology was that the resulting film moved
in several "strips" from right to left
and also vertically
SIMULTANEOUSLY
and sometimes it would replace all of
a person or object with me
and sometimes just a part
so sometimes I'd be
flying through the air
and sometimes it would be another woman's
breast in place of my breast

and at one point I was back here in NY and
Bradley showed the film
and now suddenly I remember Gary was there too
I guess we were still together? but in the film
I had had an "affair" that was not just computer-
generated but real? I don't know it was one of those
dreams that kept repeating elements
I think.

I think also there was another exhibit of a similarly
non linear and disorienting film
although I can't remember how it worked exactly
it was a little like those "choose your narrative" stories,
I guess video games are like that but I don't know
since I've never played a video game.

the exhibit/movie was in a circular room and there were white wires with buttons
and I would push buttons to make another scene happen in the movie
or was it in experience? I don't remember if I was in this movie or not
maybe I was? maybe this was the one with the "affair"? there maybe was talk
of this movie having been "directed by one of two famous directors: one
was Cassavettes but I can't remember the other one.

but it is interesting especially because I had just been talking
in real life yesterday to my Thai student Nham, who is a filmmaker,
and super-cool, about how movies maybe started out trying to represent
our perceptions and have ended up reorganizing them. I realize
this is not a very sophisticated observation

but a dream is kind of a movie, right? and that there was a movie inside
the dream, and then that the movie was later "shown" to an audience,
to me extremely intricate.