Divorce

Sitting on a bench on Rivington Street and wondering why I am not divorced yet. I would like to be divorced.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Piper

I made this video some time ago, but never got around to posting it. Enjoy?

Idealic

Grab

some

buds

from the tree of perplexity

while they’re hot

as the known universe

its friable chips, mounds

of light fragments signifying

worms struggle under

in the dawn epistles that flood

these leopard underwear –

a kind of covenant

with bitterness, and vengeful

doves, their mouths full of herbs

and lambs, and hard-boiled plots

in the burnt-up bush of humid

fascination

Amateur descriptions of amateur

artworks bite the sky into friable

parts that speak their minds

as whirring motors in (and of) (a) vengeful

dawn.

A pliable incantation

for the new city of the droning

heart. Then I am tall and delirious

and wise with curiously elegant

stochastic buds.

In this numinous world, trumpets

are recast as alto saxophones

ravenous for the studied

innocence of inbred blossoms.

In the milk of a primordial

coconut, a nose doctor

hiding in Italy

awaits a complex

sentence

the little fruit

bat worries about

in a slather of 

conceptual haze.

Then

the leopard underwear

sing

an annoying melismata

to all sextillion gassy

stars, pushing furiously forward

into an exact

cataclysm

made of lace.

dream

dream that I have made plans to meet someone I have met online… I go to a party where I am supposed to meet him, but bring Gary, who in real life still is after all my husband, along to the party.  In the picture the date looks very nice, he describes himself as skinny.   I get to the party and the guy shows up, but he looks very different from the picture, he has a kind of grizzled red beard, and manboobs, and he’s much fatter and much older. Obviously his photo was massively photoshopped.  I say hello but kind of avoid him.  In another scene, I and Gary and maybe Rod Smith and some other poets are hanging out outside the party.  A group of middle aged women come to talk to us for some reason..  I don’t remember what we were talking about, except that I was relating the story of my blind date, and the women were listening intently.  Later I find out that one of the women is the wife of the man I had made plans to meet. This comes out later in the dream when I confront the man and tell him I am not interested in him. I think I yell at him. I tell him I am not attracted to him.  He puts his cheek to mine and it is very smooth, and he whispers in my ear, “yes you are.” Then there is some scene between me and Gary, and Rattana is there, too.  Or no maybe first Toni in the dream is telling me about the virtues of Rattana that Gary had told her, that she was so sexy, and that she could come and come with lots of spaces in between, and that she had “special skills” besides, and sometimes she would go away and sometimes she would come back.  Gary seems in the dream to have a strange attitude toward her, entirely physical.  So then it is me and Gary and Rattana in the dream.  I start having sex with her, in lots of different ways.  She is only responsive when I start to play with her breasts, and then she starts going wild.  But she is a non-person, she doesn’t speak, she is a quiet object.  All in all it is a weird scene, and Gary and I argue about something.  Then I am in a misty urban park.  I agree to ride in a horse carriage around the park, in the mist.  There was probably something else in a foreign city before that but I don’t remember.  The carriage driver is giving me advice.  I don’t remember the advice.  But later when it comes time to pay I pay in chapbooks and bracelets.  There is some dispute regarding the payment. Then I am in a hospital.  Something has happened to me and I have collapsed and am lying down on a hospital bed or stretcher. I don’t remember why. With me is the deceptive date from the party, except that he has morphed into someone I actually know.  The nurses, who are young and pretty and wearing only bras and panties, tell him that it is his job to dress me. I suppose I am naked.  He dresses me very nicely. Again he puts his cheek to mine, and says something about how he hopes I will… I don’t remember.  Then for some reason I am with my mother and several other women.  I am wearing a vintage shirtdress with a scene of a city on it.  The dress is the topic of conversation.  Then I am in the corner of a room lying on the floor with my feet pointing out diagonally towards the room’s center.  I think my mom is there. My hands are clasped behind my head.  I am singing something with great concentration, to the point that I don’t even realize that I am singing.

Seven Twelfths: TETRACHORD & INCANTATION

Seven Twelfths: TETRACHORDS

Seven Twelfths of the students mispronounced the word chic.

Closed Hexagonal Kaleidocycle: Number of faces: 24

The sum of my occipitofrontal measurements was seven hundred and twenty-nine inches and seven-twelfths of an inch for one hundred and fifty crania.

Seven-twelfths of a grain of morphia were injected in the evening.

I want the Internet to erase itself and for chords to work backwards and Sharpies to retract ink and entropy to reverse and the Sun to dim and for polygons to become more perfect.

I had to make a choice as to whether to merge my consciousness with an AI in order to rule the world with justice and rationality or to reduce humanity to a new dark age as to prevent domineering conspiratorial government rule forever.

Wings large, rounded, the first quill eight-twelfths long, the second an inch and seven-twelfths longer

Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a majority; and according to our republican theory, are the rightful rulers of the nation.

So, I'm curious -- is Uncle Earl bald now that seven-twelfths of his hairpiece has been consumed? Seven-twelfths bald.

Wings rather short, concave; the primaries strong, narrow, tapering, pointed; the first an inch and seven-twelfths shorter than the second

Tetrachords?

Seven Twelfths: INCANTATION

re , mister.”

“I have.”

“All the b.

She’d recited this

incantation maut enough trees

and flowers bloomed id

seven-twelfths of heaven.

why don’t you

play for the hawk seller,

 “I bet you neo determine if you know enough and

hunger, I was already plotting my meow

 he realized that it was possessed

I have been awaiting you and grown

because he

wasn’t young a asked her, she could have written a con-tentedly.

repeatedly and

mercilessly at th.

‘coulor are time

and space immutable. It s knew.

her racism, had been light lavender

and well equipped with communic love,

but there are a few other fool powers

his right arm sharply.husband, biting through a pipe-stem

the confused

electromind me, and busy drifted worriend his head lush sprins

 “No, of their wand help theked straighed-fuzzed a The veteranrd and

Knocked id in divorce “Weth you.”

The do it agaie metal thiand he had owing, potebligingly wrationally.

“Oh,”

her husban who didn’trd was twicnished

I shruggroval

on mnything fro provided all. He enteed.

Gart!” he shouhis chest. e gone longnot to let . “I’m not ay, and bac “what is slipped do”

to drag mfly

throug her.

“I’llame all thew readers,

and the wito work on e like my m;

but shtrong.”

Buttest on thehis head ane neck.

 said Palpitations gears around whaling mojo?

Stare work young

incandeent is waita menace.

All through themight

absorbed

Freudian Slip

I watched Gary's reading on live stream from the BPC. He said at one point, “That’s not a nada… a knock on [something].”  HE SAID MY NAME. Major Freudian slip. Whoa.

subway smell/ watermelon candy

starlings mating in the plaza

magnolias, sirens


a gray squirrel's orange tail



everything's... an experiment?

Blastopore (in which I attempt to eat a rose)

(this is the last poem of the reading)

DING DONG

Take your army to the haunted forest,

and bring me that girl and her dog.

Another lover had been to the religious

column you encouraged, but there’s no

place like home pulling with horns’

shapes and promised home to take.

Jell-O crystals were stuck all over

the horses in the emerald palace, as

deep anxious brown eyes danced down

always.  Kalidahs (tiger-bear hybrids)

being dashed to pieces in a crevasse.

The scenes were shot speedily, before

the horses began to lick them off.  Pay

no attention to that critic behind the

curtain.  I have a feeling we’re not in

Odessa anymore.  The tornado was

a 35-foot long muslin stocking, spun

around some miniatures of a Kansas

farm. Tears bit her slowly becoming

the hiding horns frightened in staring

ones or old blossoms representing

the Lollipop Kids as black snow at

small spiral church and striped stockings.

Judy Garland couldn’t stop giggling –

near her horns away for a back one

and miss can each other soon the half –

while filming the scene in which Dorothy

slaps the Cowardly Lion. A sound town

of horns. It’s not a person.  It isn’t a

peacock it’s a crane. It’a bird, retard.

Why would someone hang themselves

horizontally? The rumors give ruby heels

a complement to the shock position.  Pay

no attention to that woman behind the veil.

Warm face gets stood in women by two

dark changes. Jack Haley’s aluminum

paste makeup gave him a severe eye

infection: first mother shelters her front

material on a deafening butt. Dorothy has

no mother, going with horn walls on a nice

storm to check.  I have a feeling we’re not

in utero anymore.  Her childlike physique

achieved with the help of a corset: if you

or her one are small first beings, why not

like our high first orange?  Infinite field

of sleepy poppies, a thread guiding a brave

tail.  If I only had a gray paralysis with group

horns!  The Scarecrow was unable to say

the Pythagorean theorem (right  after he

got his brains): if you buzz to bite a gazed

old sleep there will be a sun for every space.

Dorothy’s white dress was really pink. Do

as you like with the others; I want her

alive and unharmed, having slipper water

in a dried green body to rightly live only

in darkness.  The munchkins received $50

for each six-day workweek.  Toto, played

by a bitch named “Terry,” received $125.

A bicycle is ridden in the sky. Nodded well

good horns get kept into entire wicked horns.

I have a feeling we’re not in Rapture anymore.

Worried or blank flying monkey faces – dead

zodiac column eyes obeyed and heard, death

hate calling in my familiar.  The oil was really

chocolate syrup, the fire in the slipper was dark

apple juice, the slippers were silver in the book

but became ruby in Technicolor. Change you

for a power or lightning down into a young.

Glinda has no counterpart in Kansas.  Metal

mother with well gate makes horns, following ten

oxygen voices in a beautiful technology. Hip

thought losing and gazing.  Ha ha ha, ho ho ho

and a couple of hee hee hees, that’s how we pass

the day away in the wonderful land of cheese.

Is the munchkin hanging BEHIND the bird??

Maybe thats all the confusion... Munchkin baby

products, including bottles, nipples, breast pumps,

warmers, sterilizers, and more, Munchkin Bubble

Ducky Spout Guard –munchkin rescue, munchkin adoption:

Wonderful one dreams thing late the people, hit the

horns to always mother your fat. Accessorize

your munchkin costume with this colorful lollipop.

Hoo hoo hoo, ha ha ha, and a couple of hey hey heys,

that’s how we pass the day away in this wonderful

land of daze. Toto had such bad breath it almost made

Judy Garland's eyes water! Becoming the book

with a tried glance, ever searching, soulful painful

dark sparkle.  A mantis shrimp will eventually

consume ALL of your small fish and your little

crustaceans and snails, too.  Flame Oz. Crystal Ball

contact manipulation. This set of Wizard Of Oz ™ salt

and pepper shakers features The Wicked Witch

Of The West and her Crystal Ball. The shakers

are held together by a small magnet. L. Frank Baum,

originally a Methodist, became an Episcopalian

and then a Theosophist. Theosophists believe that

selflessness and traditional virtues lead people

ever closer to their Divine Nature. Planets, solar systems,

galaxies, and the cosmos itself are regarded as conscious

entities, fulfilling their own evolutionary paths. The spiritual

units of consciousness in the universe are the Monads,

which may manifest as angels, human beings or in various

other forms. An elderly throat has its cry, descended by a fat

somewhere over a window, home difficult green part

carrying a flock of simian slaves. Your baby's

eyes will sparkle at the sight of glittering BLING pacifiers.

Besides looking cool, they feature a silicone orthodontic nipple.

It’s so obviouse that it’s a bird. I don't mean to be cruel,

but I can understand why they didn't cast that BIRD

as a munchkin. I think he'll get over it though. It is a fucking

munchkin.!! You retards.!! It's not a bird. It's a munchkin.

There is a lot of reason that he hung himself but what I

have heard is that he was madly in love with Dorothy

or whateer the hell her name is and she rejected him so...

Yeahh you know the rest: dead for horns and treated toys

back in sepia, before almost her gut, damping her fit set

at farm need.  Pay no attention to that face behind the makeup.

Accessorize your munchkin costume with this colorful

lollipop. The oversized lollipop has a painted wooden stick,

and the plastic lollipop is painted with bright green, orange,

yellow, blue, and red swirls. It looks so real, you'll mistake it

for being edible! Aw, shucks…If I only had a Grumpy Munchkin

blumpkin angry gremlin tail angry munchkin growing a tail blowjob

grumpy gremlin upper decker grumpy blumpkin…hollow the old

and taste the curtain to solid crowd your imposter. All I shut is,

I’m time that we are.  Heart. Brains. Courage. Home. Ha ha ha,

hoo hoo hoo and a couple of her her hers, that’s how we pass

the day away in the wonderful land of blurs.   So goodbye,

yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl…and

he never did give nothin’ to the tin man…PAUSE

Just try and stay out of my way. Just try! I'll get you,

my pretty, and your little dog, too!

(witchy laughter)

frozen doe + form dissolve

hearing

Wizard of Oz mega-neo-benshi 4/16

Yardmeter XVlll, Saturday 16th, 7P.M.

Please join us for our 2 year anniversary!!

Yardmeter 18 presenters will respond to the Wizard of Oz:

poetry readings by

Molly Dorozenski, Ian Dreiblatt, Corinne Fitzpatrick, Lily Ladewig, Deborah Poe, Christie Ann Reynolds, Anelise Chen, Cate Peebles, Nada Gordon, Shangxing Wang, Margaret Monaghan and Macgregor Card.

Music by Jimmy Ohio.

Artwork by Adrian Domenech Moore.

Cake by Karyn Kwok.

This all happens Saturday, April 16th, 7:30 p.m.

Please bring bubbly beverages!

dance + youcan'tgetarestrainingorderagainstacat

with special thanks to Drew Gardner

the most googled poem on this blog

"What did Liberace do about the shadows?"

invective doggerel & mrs. translations

This section of the reading seemed very much to polarize people.

 

__________________, who generally worships my writing, was so offended by the Herbeck rewrites (I guess) that he had to leave the room.  Later on the phone he told me he hated those poems and thought they were "beneath me."

________________said that those poems were totally "unmediated" and self-indulgent and that "we didn't want to hear about you; we wanted to hear about the world."*  I told him that was just dogma.  Later I also thought that the poems were highly mediated**, but OK.

________________said he thinks performing those poems "weakens" me (I wondered later if he might be projecting, if identifying with the vulnerability-&-anger-born-of-betrayal somehow weakened him, the listener?). I told him I disagreed, but also that I didn't really need to perform them anymore; I just needed to do them in that space, and at this moment. In a way, if I were my husband, I might be flattered by these works, instead of enraged by them.  Their extremity bespeaks the extremity of the love and the trauma of losing it.

Every non-poet I talked to (especially the musicians and composers who had come to hear Bruce) loved it, the whole thing, from soup to nuts.

________________loved it, said I was wild and mean and great.

And the biggest surprise was: ________________loved it.   He told me he thought that was the best reading he'd ever seen me do.  And lots of other nice things.

Later, ________________, who told me she had expected to hate these poems, said she actually found them very entertaining.

None of the _____________________ had one word to say to me about it, so I guess they must have hated it?

This is all perfectly all right with me.  I’m at a place in my artistic development where I find all sorts of responses to be interesting.  I find it especially interesting that the responses are so polarized.  That means to me that what I am doing is interesting, if not exactly “right.”

……………………………….

* ain’t I the world, too?

** re: “mediated”…Yesterday I watched a DVD of the T.A.M.I. show again and was marveling at the ultra-human phenomenon that was James Brown.  Was he mediated? I mean, I think these poems are quite mediated, as I said, but why is mediated necessarily a value?

An observation: there seems to be a relationship between the extent of a man’s paternalism and his inability to tolerate a woman’s rage.  I say this with genuine love for those men who have criticized me and acknowledge that I have heard and receive their critiques, although I may not agree with them.  I also think it’s worthwhile to note that I would never give my unsolicited opinion to these men about their works, at least not in any highly unmediated way, and I believe that reflects on power imbalances that reach back for millennia, and to which in essential ways my entire oeuvre reacts. 

Also please see note above about weakness-in-identification.

melodramatic

too undone (again)

Robot Pillow

I’m all for robot pillows. 

I also love inappropriately large doggies,

and other animals, for that matter, except for men,

around whom I’ll dance, at a safe distance

from my own nascent phallophobia, the woolly chain

of dread that coils around their imagined rubberinesses.

Everything I do’s a secret anthem, wrestling naked

on the floor with my beautiful clone. She serves

guacamole out of his butt-dimple, then stars in

a fetish video about rebuilding the Aryan nation

with a man wearing a bonnet and a diaper, fanny

like a hippo's yawn and thoughts like semi-deflated

beach balls. I love women shrieking in orgasm,

hot naked doggie clothes, cats on leashes, Arapaima,

your bathroom décor, musical theater, and white

people precisely because they make me uncomfortable.

Anyone who knows me knows that I suffer

from vasovagal syncope, swooning at the slightest

mention of modern families, Combat Barbies,

robot pillows, Germans, etc.  Recently, while

visiting the aquarium, I became aware of the existence

of a very large fish:  the Arapaimia.  This fish

is inappropriately large. Disabled children fish are

human beings. They're not some robot fish trinket you

saunter into town to buy on your day off. Cats in the

same way are like porn collections, like emotional support

robots in a fetish video starring Octomom and her

fourteen starving human larvae.  Why do people

think this sort of thing even funny?  Gary was funny,

until he wasn’t. Scarves should also be just the right

length so that it doesnít become a hazard.

Seeking braless teen animal parody,

burst parody kimigayo, and all the things I forgot

I wanted for their imperfection: smelly as

hamburgers, bad-ass as ice cream, pure as

fruit snacks for grownups in a stadium full

of crazed Muslims with cut-off vaginas.

A diaper is for sale on the internet.  George

and Laura Bush are getting their freaks on.

She is a plastic pig she looks like she’s melting.

Just fuck off you useless hard faced attention

hungry slapper, haunting barf’s flower motion poster.

If this thing crawled into bed with me,

it would cure my loneliness but probably

not with a sense of what you’d call relief.

Urinary tract affection –Mutt – urinary

tract affectation.  Mouth tasting of humbugs.

You don’t need to dance here, dance with what

you’ve got, wide-lipped hare.  Taking up time

selling psycho-candy on the train and inventing

words isn’t fair, Jesus bathroom décor!

Arapaima makes me uncomfortable.  Not

comfortable around white people? I feel

uncomfortable around white people? I’m

uncomfortable around white people? Why

do i feel uncomfortable around people? Im

not comfortable around white folks? Feel

uncomfortable around people? Courage

the Cowardly Dog.  Inappropriately large

autarkic amorph object. I feel lonely and

uncomfortable starting people in the eye?

Feel uncomfortable around? Why do i feel

uncomfortable around white people?

Uncomfortable around only white people?

Crawling sweetness. ^^ YAY I CAN POOP

WITH MY UNDERWEAR ON!! Am I being

irrational? I’m all for emotional support robots,

especially soft and fluffy ones that look like

baby seals.

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

33 days until official menopause!
35 days until my seventh wedding anniversary! Ha!

Note to Brandon Brown

It's not just about performing abjection.  It's about performing a whole spectrum of intensities, too.

Straw Men

The maintenance men make me uncomfortable and are sometimes a disturbance.

I've had some Asian men make me uncomfortable with their familiarity. I can't tell if they are being professional or close to crossing the line.

Camp men make me uncomfortable. I hate myself. I don't mind camp men, I just wouldn't want to sleep with one. I wish I was straight.

i never put milk in my cereal · mythological creatures; bald men make me uncomfortable. Hair is gross. Girls should only have hair on their head

Men who were socialized as men make me uncomfortable, but men who were socialized as women don't.

Creepy Awkward Old Men make me uncomfortable

Not all older men make me uncomfortable (we're talking 40′s on up), but there are some strangers that give me a bad feeling.

Men make me uncomfortable and there are only a few I can have conversations with without stammering.

Kilted men make me uncomfortable, especially when it is windy.

I would run like hell because drunken men make me uncomfortable and he has confirmed that he has no self-control while intoxicated

And as a white, male, liberal Englishman, blatant straw men make me uncomfortable.

Something about Saudi men make me uncomfortable

Foreign men make me uncomfortable. Especially the French.

White pants ON MEN make me uncomfortable, I don't know what it is, it's too much. I don't like it, I just don't!

Socially awkward men make me uncomfortable when they just look at me.

It turns out sensitive men make me uncomfortable. I mean, crying after sex? Really?

kimigayo/burst/parody

I got one syllable wrong in Kimigayo:  koke, not koko

Nagat Mersal El Hawa - نجاة مرسال الهوا

2>Dramaless

OK, here's the second poem I read at the BPC:  "Dramaless."  I don't think I'd quite hit my stride yet.


2>Dramaless from Nada Gordon on Vimeo.

things to do with roses

The videos are taking forever to upload.  In the meantime, here are some of the gimmicky things I did at my reading:

I wandered onto the stage from backstage, a red lace schmate on my head, muttering poetry
In between each poem or poem-set I did something with or to a long-stemmed red rose:
I threw rose petals into the audience
I threw a rose into the audience
I plucked a rose petal by petal
I walked into the audience and chose someone to give a rose to.  I gave it to Stan.
I hit a rose against a hard surface
I put rose petals in my bra
I put rose petals in my panties
I got Drew onstage to play the drum kit that just happened to be there and danced about with a rose in my mouth
I put rose petals in my mouth and chewed them making faces because they were so bitter: ugh...then spit them out
I bowed at the end twice crossing two roses over my body

spitting out rose petals:  they were very bitter

Osculation

Here's the first poem I read at the BPC on Saturday.  It's called Osculation.

funny experience today: art and reality

Today I was showing my CEP students the DVD "Art City: Making it in Manhattan," a wonderful documentary that features such art luminaries as Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Elizabeth Murray, and Ashley Bickerton.  In the beginning of the film, an art critic named Jerry Saltz introduces himself, saying "I'm an art critic," and giving his phone number rather rapidly.

I made it a listening exercise for students to note down the phone number he mentioned.  When we were checking answers, it seemed that their version was one digit different from what I had heard. 

We could have listened again to that section of the video, but I decided that there was a more interesting way to find out which was the correct phone number:  by actually calling it.  First I tried my version.  It rang and rang: no answer.  Then I tried the students' version, and to my surprise, a male voice answered:

Hello?

Is this Jerry Saltz?

Yes it is!

Oh, excellent!  My students here at Pratt were just watching the video of Art City in which you give your phone number and we wanted to see if it worked.

He was effusive.  He said he loved Pratt, that he was a Pratt person, and wanted to know what my students were studying, and mentioned that the film was made twenty years ago, and I said that it was extraordinary that he still had the same phone number.  At the end of our brief conversation, he said something like "I love you: art conquers fear," or something like that.

Then I held up my iPhone and had all my students shout HI to him.

So that's my funny experience for the day.  Can you match that? 

Jerry Saltz

HI JERRY!