Happy HALLOWE'EN

POEMS ON / ABOUT

• alone

• america

• angel

• anger

• april

• baby

• ballad

• beach

• beautiful

• beauty

• believe

• birth

• brother

• butterfly

• car

• carpe diem

• change

• chicago

• childhood

• children

• cinderella

• city

• courage

• crazy

• dance

• dark

• daughter

• death

• depression

• despair

• dream

• family

• fate

• father

• fear

• fire

• food

• football

• freedom

• friend

• frog

• funeral

• funny

• future

• girl

• god

• graduation

• greed 

• grief

• haiku

• hair

• happiness

• happy

• hate

• heart

• heaven

• hero

• home

• hope

• house

• husband

• identity

• innocence

• january

• joy

• june

• justice

• kiss

• laughter

• life

• lonely

• loss

• lost

• love

• lust

• marriage

• memory

• mirror

• money

• moon

• mother

• murder

• music

• nature

• night

• ocean

• ode

• paris

• passion

• peace

• people

• pink

• poem

• poetry

• poverty

• power

• pride

• racism

• rain

• rainbow

• red

• remember

• respect

• river

• romance

• romantic

• rose

• running

• school

• sea

• sick

• silver

• sister

• sky

• sleep

• snake

• soldier

• sometimes

• song

• sonnet

• sorrow

• spring

• star

• success

• suicide

• summer

• sun

• swimming

• sympathy

• teacher

• thanks

• time

• together

• travel

• trust

• truth

• war

• warning

• water

• wedding

• winter

• woman

• work

• world

HALLOWEEN POET PARADE

this is your life

 

Your job is your life, and your mom

is your life, just as I am (or was)

your life.  Your money or your lack
of it is your life. The food prepared
and ladled onto plates is your life,
the beds, the pets, the clothes – your life,
your secret huddling your life, it is all
your life, you can’t cross out your life, you

can’t conduct erasures on your life,

you can’t be drunk every day

of your life, you can’t put a cloud

of smoke around your life, this is

it, this is your life, the past bleeding

pathetically into the present that blossoms

out in turn into inky (petulant) shapes of futurity (grief).

This is a poem. The cool thing about poems
is that they are ambiguous. They may seem
to refer to a specific person or situation, but in fact
they are generalizable.  That is why we are able
to press the language of others into the service of our
own expression.  This is your life, this expression,
and what, exactly, is life? Some kind of sticky
protoplasm. Life is short and squat,
or vaguely meandering. It is also fierce.
Life mutates, loops and rewinds and feeds
back. It is on infinite repeat. It forms patterns.
It jerks. It jolts. It sneaks. It shudders.
I am both afraid of it and not afraid of it.
Sometimes it makes the shape of explosions.
Sometimes it is rags. Sometimes it is verdant.
It's all...life. Sometimes it takes the form of
someone who is almost brainless. Life
has too many sisters. Life wiggles in
confusion. You know what I mean
about life. All language is the language
of others: saints, adulterers, children,
liars, mothers, thieves, wives, inner beasts.
Life without language would be
unimaginable. Life isn't language
but it constitutes itself in language.
Reflects back to itself in language.
What if a life took the form of a text?
Would it look something like this?

untenable in a way that is tenable

That’s what I love about comedy, the way you navigate yourself through a horrible situation. You paint an exit tunnel and walk out of it. You reconceive the facts you find unpleasant and untenable in a way that is tenable and makes you laugh. I think it is the greatest invention of mankind. 

  ~Merrill Markoe

FLARF ORCHESTRA CD NOW AVAILABLE

THE FLARF ORCHESTRA CD IS NOW AVAILABLE.

Buy it or be...oblong?

Flarf Orchestra
Drew Gardner
ISBN 978-1-890311-35-3

Audio CD , Cover by the author

Genres: rock, jazz, avant garde, poetry, alternative, flarf
2011

$14.99
$11.00 direct from Aerial/Edge

Track Listing:

1. Rodney Koeneke (D)

2. K. Silem Mohammad (A)

3. Sharon Mesmer (D)

4. Nada Gordon (B)

5. Katie Degentesh (A)

6. Michael Magee (D)

7. Mel Nichols (C)

8. Eiríkur Örn Nor∂dahl (D)

9. Rod Smith (A)

10. Outro (A)

(A) Ty Cumbie (guitar), Avram Fefer (clarinet), Adam Lane (bass), John McClellan (drums),

Gregory Wildes (alto sax), 4.20.06, The Medicine Show, NYC

(B) Michael Clayville (trombone), John Orfe (piano), John Pickford Richards (viola), Kate

Sheeran (french horn), Elisabeth Stimpert (clarinet), 9.30.06, Dickinson College, PA

(C) Buck Downs (ac. guitar), Jamie Gaughran-Perez (el. guitar), Adam Good (el. bass), Paras

Kaul (brainwave music), Rodney Koeneke (percussion), Rod Smith (kazoo), Gary Sullivan (keyboard),

Lesley Poirier (percussion), Ryan Walker (ac. guitar), 2.18.07, DCAC, WDC

(D) Frankin Bruno (el. guitar), Katie Degentesh (el. bass), Ehran Elisha (drums), Eiríkur Örn

Nor∂dahl (el. guitar), Dave Ross (el. guitar) 4.26.08, Bowery Poetry Club, NYC

2011 Elklag Music (ASCAP)

New York City-based multi-instrumentalist and poet Drew
Gardner creates wild, spontaneous conductions of improvised
music played by indie rock, jazz and classical players and fuses it
with the outrageous poetry known as Flarf. Gardner has
painstakingly edited this compilation from several live recordings
into a suite of music and poetry that goes from post-rock to free
jazz to minimalism and back again, with an atmosphere that is
mesmerizing and riotous by turns.

Flarf Orchestra is one of several configurations from Gardner's
Poetics Orchestra project, dedicated to combining the arts of
music and poetry. Gardner's unique card and hand-signal
conduction system expands on those used by John Zorn and
Butch Morris.

Gardner often combines different types of musicians in his
groups: rock, jazz, classical and folk. The players on Flarf Orchestra
include indie rock guitar player Franklin Bruno (from the
Mountain Goats) classical piano player John Orfe (from Alarm Will
Sound), and jazz players Adam Lane, and Avram Fefer.
The nine Flarf poets include writers from all around the US as well as
Icelandic writer Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl. The Flarf poets use collaged

texts gathered from Google search results to create poetry.

Born in 1968, Drew Gardner is a pioneer of the Flarf poetry
movement and a multi-instrumentalist. He spent his early years as
a punk rock and avant-garde jazz drummer. He has written three
books of poetry, the lastest of which is Chomp Away (Combo) .
This is his debut CD.

HEAVY

Sooner or later, most people need to move

something too heavy to lift or too awkward

to handle.. We’re not floating around in a gaseous

haze. We hear it all the time “lighten up!” Almost

all of it comes from stars. We call it socially

transformative television. Is it possible

to damage your womb while moving

something with your leg? Picked a box

and bleeded pregnancy: Alien Swarm

Parasite. Heavy drinker (someone who

drinks too much). Almost all of it comes

from stars.  These heavy elements float

around in the Universe for a while and

eventually collect together around new

stars, forming planets, credit cards, malls,

and mail order catalogs. Books, artifacts
 

made of stone. He sold my books. Nuptial

spoils. We’re not floating around in a

gaseous haze. A heavy burden. A person in

space. A planet. A pile of blankets on top

of you. Gold bars. The earth. Ocarina

of time.  What do you call someone

who carries heavy things in Spanish?

As a child, enter the Lost Woods and go

right, left, right, straight , left. Dizzy,

unsteady feeling and heaviness in head?

I have a somewhat rubbery feeling beneath

my breasts. It’s like all my thoughts

are clustered up in a ball in my head.

This unbearable heaviness of pomo

individualism.  Nipple itching.  Chest

heaviness means feeling heavy in

chest, most people describe it as if

someone is holding their hearts,

feeling of wringing of heart and pain

in chest. A feeling of heaviness in the

pelvis or vagina. Do I have a gift of

discernment? I can just be by myself

and all of a sudden it is as though

something is place on me heavy.

I can barely lift. Ocarina of time.

Gold bars. The Earth. “Swigging.”

“Parbuckling.” Where did all that

heavy stuff cluttering up your bedroom

come from.  She lay for a week, neither

feeding nor excreting, on the floor,

among the straying frogs and starving

voles. Ununoctium. In this hidden

meadow, walk around in the grass

where the butterflies are hanging out

and you’ll find a hole.  In this secret area,

wear a mask (usually the Mask of Truth).

What is this heaviness I am feeling? My

ears will feel like they are filled with water

and my head feels really heavy-like with

fluid. Feeling Sad/Stiff Neck/ Heaviness in

Head/Slepplessness.  What happends if you

life too much when pregnant? Books, artifacts

made of stone. Just don’t burst your poo

valve. I’ve been in the garbage again: wading

around, searching for discarded bank statements

and soiled swimwear catalogues to set me straight

financially and corporeally.  Remember me as a

Unicorn:  pure chemicals, hard shapes, acute

angles, helium, enclosed combustion.

hyrax

IMG_9725, originally uploaded by Ululate.

I finally went to OWS today

IMG_9595, originally uploaded by Ululate.

I liked the meditators. They looked very chic.

I stare at the screen

sometimes i just can't move waiting for the dragon to stop breathing

Sometimes I just can't move In a blue dream

once I finish sticky jumping I have little health left or sometimes I just can't move in midair

I look like a dummy sometimes on over the faces of struggles

I hate being dirty especially if I start to smell, but sometimes I just can't move.

sometimes I just stutter

grief

did he come in to get his bike "stealthily."
why must he always behave in stealth.
who let him in the building.
shudder.

and she, she is making big plans.
we had a story once, I was to play a part.
as she did for me.

I thought these people "loved" me.

people. are __________.

grief
grief
grief
grief
grief

grief

now back to grading papers
and working on the confusing future.



reading about anxious attachment

Ersatz helium veal enduring, no, besplendoring, the aching sense of raw philosophy. Mother cleans the harmonium, brother slaps dingbat fascists. Cousins while away the basic needs in a humdrum rush of pathos. I don't know, how to reason with cheese, do the elves like me, etc. I had a "man." I "had" a man: am I part of history? The slime, the reasons, the elves, the contours, the crumpets are parts of history. He got...his cells in me. I'm in his cells as "history," and to mark time, I write...on the...walls.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Grappling

This thought: the aim of a revolution should be not simply a redistribution of power and resources but also a practical application of caritas-love. Grappling with the disappointment of eros-love, the eros-love that was supposed to "solve everything," to be the magic balm on the open wounds of the past, makes me suspicious of the ability of human beings to structure the best possible world for the greatest possible advantage to all. Is this just a terrible flaw in my thinking. Is it not even really thinking at all.

Depression really is just an awful bugbear of a thing.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

here's Drew, though, helping to incite the masses

Toe (in which I am confused about the "personal" and the "political")

I feel bad that I am not demonstrating. My toe hurts and I am disconnected, wrapped up in anxieties I am endeavoring to unravel.  I feel that people might be taking attendance, and somehow judge me. This feeling makes me not want to take part as a kind of resistance to pressure. I want a revolution? But since I think that “human nature is basically bad/flawed, etc.,” I am not convinced… Zizek said in his speech that the problem is not greed or corruption, but the system. I wrote in a youtube comment to that speech that if that is true, why is that that all systems - religious, political, economic, interpersonal - are infected by greed and corruption? The personal betrayals that have been visited on me infect my “politics” to the extent that I can say I have “politics.”  Of course I feel moral outrage (over many many things, not just the political and economic crises of our times) (and all times).  But when poets post things like “if you don’t follow Occupy Wall Street there is something wrong with you,” I feel a resistance to a kind of bullying groupthink.  It disturbs me.And then there is my toe, and a kind of exacerbated sensitivity at the moment to noise, public places, and so on.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I may participate, later.  If they (we) get their (our) revolution, I will happily embark with ecstatic others on a dérive to end all dérives, I will revel in the vibrations of the freed/ transformed city and share what I notice with others.  It's weird, I guess I see the end result of a revolution as a kind of "radical transformation of consciousness" or a sublime "rave" rather than the more pragmatic "better social policies" for which it makes more sense to struggle. That's a kind of surrealist thing, I suppose: revolution in the service of ecstasy. I have in the past struggled for worker’s parity, I don’t know why I am trying to legitimate myself, I don’t need to do so to please them.  They are judgmental, and I am feeling weary (and wary)  both in life and of their potential judgment. Indeed, the political, even moral ambivalence  (no, not ambivalence…can we call it confusion?) is one of my distinguishing characteristics

It is a great pity I am not more “political.” For one thing, from a selfish viewpoint, if I were more political I would be a more popular poet and my books would be studied in classes, etc., because people want to be “fired up.” Still I think I am better at “humor” and “melancholy” and “decoration” than “firing up.” Recently though I re-bought Diane diPrima’s Revolutionary Letters.  Just in case. In the same way that I have the cat carriers in a hall closet rather than in the basement.  Just in case one needs to flee or fight, or in case there is some kind of disaster.

I have nightmares.  Last night  a nightmare that Gary was going to take a younger wife. In fact he had already claimed the younger wife of another friend, a past and estranged acquaintance of his. She seemed like a bit of a zombie.  So did he. I believe she had some elaborate  headgear – a wig? a hat? She and he were both unflapabble.  They were, I think, staying with me.  Nice, right? They were staying with me! Or in any case in some semi-public space sharing meals with me (it took place, as do so many of my dreams, in a kind of “Japan” at a mall I have visited before in my dreams but not in fact in real life; my dreams are rife with these sorts of places, parts of cities that seem very familiar but not in the waking world). At one point I stole a paper bag (or was it plastic?) from him that was supposed to have contained his balls.  In fact it had hard boiled eggs, and a grapefruit. I remember eating the grapefruit, which was something I generally do not eat. There were other parts of the dream that I am censoring. 

This is all very uncomfortable. I saw this weekend in a used bookstore a book that had belonged to me, a signed book, with a hefty price tag, one that Gary had sold to finance his move out.  I was overcome by the injustice of this. I left a note for the proprietor asking for it back, although I feel bad that the bookseller should have to take the financial fall for something that was not really his fault.  I do want the book back, but of course it is “not about the book.” The book is a stand-in for everything else, for all those years of bad communication and neglect and sorrow. If I could somehow transform the rage I feel about the injustice of this to a public rage against social injustice and take it to the streets, that might be a good thing.  I just don’t think that a systemic shift is going to prevent people from doing things that are traumatizing, hurtful, illegal, and immoral, and that sort of makes me wonder about the extent to which “a change in material conditions” is going to (might) (would) lessen the misery of being a human being. A little. Some. Maybe a lot. Perhaps the problem really is me and my bad attitude, especially my bad civic attitude, and if this is so perhaps I deserve all the chaos that has been visited upon me. I don’t know exactly what to do about that, however.

How much more angst would amuse you this morning? I hope that by writing this I can transform my mood a little, get some of the poison out of my system.

I have been thinking some of the first wife… of how I hardly thought of her… or only as a cardboard figure… and wondering what she must have felt, what she must have gone through. I wonder how she felt seeing the public affirmation of what initially was and what must have seemed like such an ideal partnership? All these real people, with their real lives, just struggling through. I am sympathetic to The Struggle.  What else can we do?  More power to them; I mean, more power to us.

Would the end of, or at least the transformation of, capitalism, contribute to the healing of our emotional lives?  Would the end of workplace hierarchies and long alienating hours in jobs that don’t fulfill us and bills that mount every higher and the ranklings of resentments about Differences racial, sexual, and economic trickle down into our emotional lives? I suppose they would. It would be so lovely if that would happen.  I’m not convinced, though, that my going out to Zucotti square on my compromised toe that makes me unable to dance is going to help that process along. We will see.

May our lives and hearts be healed.

quinoa thingies

I made some quinoa thingies.  They are pretty good.

I guess I used about a cup and a half of quinoa flour.  I added about a cup of chopped moroccan oil-cured olives, a little salt and pepper, and sort of a lot of olive oil.  I'm sorry my measurements aren't more precise.  Then maybe three tablespoons or so of water?  Not much, because the water makes them chewy, whereas the oil makes them flaky.  A sprinkle of fines herbes. I made flattish shapes in my palm, patting them flatter.  Those went on oiled baking sheets for ten minutes at 375 degrees, then flipped them and let them bake for another five minutes.

They are good. Careful of the salt: not too much, since the olives are salty.  The thingies ("crackers"?) have the texture of pie crust.  If you are a real baker you might want to consider rolling them out or something.  Anyway I like them, they are addictive: the bitterness of the quinoa flour against the nutty bitterness of the olives.

They are good with just salt, too.  Fleurs de sel if you got it. Yum.

very small pink clump

few things are sadder than the sight

of a thin gold anklet trapped beneath

a suntan-colored nylon. the people

in the morning clutch their warm cups.

they have water bottles and sensible

shoes, earbuds, catalogs, and weary

faces.  the world pulses with violence.

maws are gateways to realms as mysterious

as they are frightening. a garbage car

slithers into it, the particularly

frightening vagina embroidered

on soiled vintage linen. how are they

not beset constantly with anxiety?

the activists take to the streets, maws

gaping. a man’s calf nearly as big as my

waist, which also makes me worry.

a garbage car slithers into it.

the absorption rate for the Soul

Eater’s melée attacks is increased

by 5%.  I wanted to put the lobster

into a comic, because he’s been

distressingly absent… on soiled

vintage linen.  gaping maw. many

of these links to my poetry are broken.

why are women so angry?

I also clutch a paper cup. the world

pulses with violence. illness waits

as ninja. Nearly half a century old,

I pop a pill. I’ve been a busy little

bandit lately.  young gulls.  you are

here: foul grin. yes, it swam up his

penis and into his bladder. it is human

nature to have fears and phobias:

mutant wooly worm alpaca.

why are women so angry?

they always throw things like

an angry gorilla when they get mad.

whazzat? critique zombie sex

feels good duh.  why are women

so angry?  life is harder for chicks,

their all pissed off cause they feel

feelings.  how to use slither in a

sentence.  example sentences

with the word slither.  I wanted

to put the lobster in a comic. why

are women so angry? anyone already

say “sand in Va-J-J?”     they cannot

even cook a decent meal anymore so

why bother. venomous email young gulls

foul grin.  I tried to hold it and take it out

but the eel was too slippery to be held

and it disappeared up my penis. Sar

Chasm is a massive socially progressive

nation.  do they feel nothing? with their

tote bags and lack of parity. is he going to

“marry” her, too? will his mother “welcome

her into the bosom of the family”? you’d

be angry too if you bled 1 week a month besides

you should never trust anything that bleeds

that much and doesn’t die. young gulls. trashy

sisters. horrible shiny dresses. abandoned

me. the main goals of feminism were destruction

of the nuclear family unit and emaciation

of the males. paper-cup clutchers: “mama.”

my students’ fresh faces. women rely on

emotion and not so much analytical

rationalization, in short they don’t think

as much. a very small pink clump.  catalogs.

you just want some female to feel sorry

for you and take care of you and wash

your stinky underwear and your dirty

dishes and cook for you. hello!  I am

the virgin mary magdalene! I am carrying

miraculous triplets similar to the virgin

mary. all things astronomy. you are here:

foul grin.  why are women so angry? you

want to sit on your lazy asses all day,

and watch tv, and drinkin beer and smoke

dope. I tried to hold it and take it out. sex

feels good duh. sometimes it amazes me.

the sensible work shoes. gateways.

a particularly frightening-looking vagina. 

the throat, gullet, or jaws especially of

a voracious animal. many of these links

to my poetry are broken. he’s been

distressingly absent: the insatiable lobster

at the end of the course. The insatiable clown

prepared to go shopping, but realized

that he actually forgot his wallet. he actually

forgot his gullet.  he actually forgot his

particulaly frightening vagina-Cicada;

Clouded Leopard; Clown Anemonefish;

Coelacanth; Common Earthworm;

Common Loon. unicorns for

socialism. the insatiable clown

at the end of the course, many

of these links to my poetry

are broken

 

I now have made $4.56 from this blog.

James Wagner reviews Scented Rushes!

I just feel anxious.