The Rag & Bone Gal

Aunt Fern & The Elephant Ear

2007-06-29T23:01:00.000-05:00

But it only serves one.

2007-06-27T09:08:00.000-05:00

LOVE

2 ounces sloe gin
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon raspberry juice
1 egg white
3 or 4 ice cubes

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Note: If there is a problem with eggs in your region, do not prepare this recipe.

Serves 1.

Epicurious

Epicurious.com © CondéNet, Inc. All rights reserved.

Happy 9 Months.

2007-05-31T22:07:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in this whirlwind of a brain your mama’s hiding, standing stunned, hands up in an old peaked attic as a tornado winds up all the pages from today’s memory banks and twists them out the broken window. Busy, busy day. Busy, busy week. A whirlwind, as they say. We’re nearly living out of our poor, overworked Chevy (well, a suitcase and diaper bag and my pump and your pump at least) and we’ve got to get back in her tomorrow and travel north. We’ve put 8,000 miles on that car since January. Can you believe it! All that greening I did when you were in the womb doesn’t even come close to making up for all the environmentally harmful yet personally salvatory (well it’s a word now) things, events, and actions we’ve taken or used up or needed multiple replacements of since you were born.

Love, dear, sweet love. You’re so sleepy. I rocked you to sleep like a newborn tonight because you squealed in pain, crunched up your little face, and cried and cried and squealed. It’s tough – I don’t know if you’re teething, have a belly ache, have post-surgery ache, have intolerance to feedings or the new meds, or what.

It’s so hard to see you in pain. I just want to hold you and curl up with you and wish it all away. So I did, and you fell asleep, with me singing one of my old songs (stand up honey child step from that quicksand you’re deep within arise now honey child and let those dusty lungs breathe straighten up honey child and untwist those winding sheets they’re burlap torn and muddy I’ve got some softer I’ve got some clean it’s all silk Chinese brocade you can feel it wrapped around you so walk tall honey child and know we’re with you alive now honey child you only needed to unwind so revel in each moment it’s all there for you if you just noticeetc) no longer surprised at how that Then song matches up with my Now life.

Ah, baby. You do look healthy, though, everyone comments – fat and pink with lots of smiles, and you giggle out loud now when I pretend to chew your side. Animal sounds are absolutely hilarious, too. Sweet little kiddola, I need to follow you to sleep. I wish you’d show me whatever door you took to find it. And yes, I’m so tired. I haven’t slept a wink. The old adage. Nine months in, nine months out. There should be some kind of magic or chart or woven text that makes meaning from this depth we’re in, this moment in time, exactly 18 months alive you are, half in, half out, not waving and certainly not drowning, but hovering somewhere in between, staring at the papers and dust and debris rioting in the could-be-if-their-mood-shifts threatening winds.

-Late May 2007
Tornado Alley

Caption Contest:

2007-05-20T21:52:00.000-05:00

Finn's First Word:

2007-05-13T10:48:00.001-05:00

moon.

8 month birthday update.

2007-04-30T22:14:00.000-05:00

Today we went to the library for the first time. You were standing stiff-legged (with my help) to play with a toy with a moveable yellow plastic train track circle in its center. To make it spin, you had to pull a blue lever, but it also unleashed this awful grinding motor noise that made your eyes bug and your stomach stiffen and your arms fly outwards. This didn’t deter you from your fascination, however – and as Grandpa Bolin would say (he often says that this is his favorite word) – you were Un De Turd.

Okay, I swear. This is the last day I don’t do your brushing or compression or syringe tastes. This time I promise to do them every day (as long as I’m not completely incapacitated with some mother bug flu beam). You need as much preventative care as you can get, so we don’t have to learn new and intrusive techniques later. I promise from this point on to show more perseverance – you deserve it, and although you may not enjoy it, you’ll benefit from it later. Just wait and see.

Nine days left with your as-it-was-born beautiful soft belly. I wonder how you’ll broadcast your scars. One little girl I heard tell of calls her g-tube scar her moon. Another little boy with a port scar shows it proudly to other kids. I’ll make sure to get you a megaphone when the time comes.

You stared at our shadows today, on the porch in the rocking chair, and on the grass. My shadow waved to you. If it would have been a picture someone would have picked it up and brought it closer to you, but you had to be content looking from my lap.

And stats: 28 ounces fortified. 5 retches. 1 large spit-up. Many smiles. 1 hour PT (straightening to mid-thoracic spine by reaching, rolling from back to side to front, reaching airplane in air supported under chest and hips, trunk control on ball). And 4-10 space cadet sessions (1-5 seconds apiece). 1 2 hour nap. 1 30 minute nap. Fell asleep for the night after holding a basket up to your face to look through the slats at the light (or chew on it, rather) during an outdated video about the Brain as The Enlightened Machine (can’t say I blame you).

I Dreamt I Was A Plane

2007-04-19T13:18:00.000-05:00

The news gets under my skin. Sometimes I have to ignore it for years to prevent debilitating depression (redundant, yes, I know) and nightmares.

2007-04-18T03:58:00.000-05:00

Nightmare, 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning: For an uncomfortably prolongued moment my mind becomes awash in a buzzing mass of noisy Nothing (like the sensation of standing under a helicopter no sense just a spike of intensity uncomfortable and scary to bear, crescendoing in and decrescendoing out) as if I’m entering Cho Seung-Hui’s persona then exiting [but during the moment I am consciously not entering Hui’s but ?’s persona, as he called himself, and I am completely aware that no sense will ever be made of the massacre, leaving nothing but the terrific (archaic usage) questions, and although the media and the FBI investigators will try to extract some logic, and the lawmakers will make addendums and new referendums in gun control to “prevent” any similar experience – I (in that terrible moment) know that all their efforts are truly futile, because at bottom, Seung-Hui is empty, nothing, in hell, stuck in a pit, and that his demons are simply unanswered questions and the failed attempt to escape from that empty pull that desired the answers – a lost self, no identity, no reason, no limits, and most weighty – he had no substance]. The draw into this is completely unpreventable - as strong as an MRI to a piece of steel – and completely unwanted. This happens at least twice in succession and I remember now that the sound and overall feel is more like jolting electrical menace and electrical surge than helicopter. It is a terrifying feeling and I feel immersed in what feels like him crying out to share his hell with others. I am helpless to escape from the pull and must wait until it passes.

A(n imaginary) Virginia Tech student’s voice says Usually I feel there is a blessing in something. Here we were blessed with nothing.

Again the crescendo in but this time like my jaws are being clamped shut by my own muscles more tightly than I can bear with fear that my teeth will shatter and a general tightening over my whole body as if my muscles are growing terribly spastic and horrifically uncontrollable. I fear I’m having a seizure. During this the fear hits that I am unable to move and I want desperately to be able to stand and walk. I wake myself slightly, so I think, but really I’m just moving up a layer in consciousness to where I am able to stand and walk, and I know I’m upstairs at my parents’ home, and I want to go wake my mother and tell her I’m seizing as if I was a child who was very ill. Then I go back to the previous layer, unable to move as if my muscles are a vice grip from which I can’t escape, then back to a slight release and wanting to tell my mother. This happens at least three times until I finally wake for real and am frightened because my door is open into a black hallway and of the now unfamiliar light coming from Finn’s yellow paper star. I fear crazy things that I don’t feel safe writing down. I also fear that F. can feel my bad dream before shaking the feeling, getting up and going downstairs for a drink of water. I believed for a moment that some of the victims must have felt that helpless pull, that inability to move, that draw into a substanceless, purposeless end masterminded by a nobody in want of answers – another voice arises: This was the work of man, not of God.

2007-04-17T23:25:00.000-05:00

I found that there was nothing more to say that would not spill unwilling and unwatchdogged out of my fingers, so I quit writing. I then found that I was not producing anything, and that my fingernails typed out words on my own arm, on tabletops, on newsprint, feeling unfilfilled and generally unhappy at my lack of concern for their well being. So, if they have something to say, I have decided to let them say it regardless of its benefit or irrelevance to man and motherkind. Today I believe they want to talk about _______________ (it is at this point that I relinquish control to see what they have to say and they fill in the blank with) plans for the future. I suppose this comes from Monk’s visit during which he didn’t visit but you (the thing that calls herself I) thought about several times him saying things like his plans to build the solar home or his silkscreen press or his skateboards or his tshirts that he’s selling to Norwegian ebay-ers. So, your plans for the future include writing a sermon. You feel, though, that you have a naïve at best understanding of God, one that oft lapses into blasphemy when you try to write about h(excuse me) – Him. See? That thought you just had – blasphemous (Him just a man word anyhow what care he if I capitalize it or not what show of relevance does that really give a capital letter if things such as DuPont or Exxon or even silly Tampax feel themselves important enough to capitalize). But you’ve recently learned that there is no locus of the self only a jarbled jumble of synaptic gaps and firing neurotransmitters collected into a beautifully complex junkheap called BRAIN and that there is there a seat of spirituality that can be excited by the proper experimental scientist located in the temporal lobe and how gorgeous a world we live in where we aren’t just an I but a complex series of Goldberg devices one domino knocking down the other and continuously travelling paths and (really you’ve got to learn to use periods you’re not pregnant are you and other bad jokes) so Fine. Here. Are you happy? Punctuation central. Fingers, you’re really uncoordinated this evening. Oh, it’s not our fault. Oh, it’s nobody’s. So simplified, the self-reflective study of English where any text is open to interpretation and the main lesson seems to be ANYTHING GOES if YOU READ INTO IT WELL ENOUGH and MAKE CONNECTIONS and NOTICE THEMES AND ECHOES but IF YOU CAN BACK IT UP, YOU’VE GOT A PAPER but it must be as yet un

Oh, I’ve lost interest in that train. On to something else. Oh parietal lobe. Oh temporal, my favorite. Oh hippocampus (seat of long-term memory), that doesn’t form until 3 years old and explains why we don’t remember being Baby. Let me in on your secrets. Prove to me the order of the universe and a grand design behind the chaos. Show me how you fire in succession and how we can increase your happiness and productivity. Let me peek into that thalamus (the operator), that amygdala (self-preservation/fear), those unconscious urges erupting from your mysterious limbic system that looks something quite like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Meanwhile my son sleeps arms outward, dreaming he’s a biplane or a giant tree, and my conscious self now notices that, once again, wrapping yourself around a theme is a difficult and tedious task that requires great restraint and great effort from the frontal lobe.

Cause & Effect

2007-03-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

2007-03-13T00:13:00.001-05:00

On your dad’s 20th birthday you were still in the womb, swimming around subtle in the stoic quiet, like a minnow. Sometimes I could hear your kicks and shifts, not a whisking of water but an echo coming from the limbs themselves, like when we think we can hear our heartbeats but know it’s only a feeling. You came in and out like waves. A face turning toward the light then back again. Arms to your little mouth then back to your chest A little backbone shifting from the right to the left side of my belly. Little frog legs drawing up then kicking out, sending a shock of fluid into a momentary whirlpool. Little tempest, little rowboat bobbing and tilting, little waves.

Anyhow your dad and I walked barefoot and lazy along Lake Michigan’s Indiana Dunes shore that June, picking little bits of shell, stone, and flotsam for a mobile we never made you (not yet, anyhow). The whole sky was orange and shone on his face like early Technicolor, unnatural and odd. You’ll learn that I’m easily made uncomfortable by the littlest things. I must have wandered off nearer the water by myself for a while, staring out at the colors. A little wave rushed in and washed the sand off the tops of my toes, kindly, then retreated. Another wave, larger and with more violent intent, ran in red rover then out again. There you were.

That was the first time you were reflected in the outside world. That moment you became a metaphor, a mirror image, then a thread linking your little bones to the world surrounding. You became stuck, held in the grasp, the gravity of bones and mud and skin. Your minnow bones capsized and became real, a little boy’s body tossing and tumbling in a great void, legs asunder, pale arms flailing before resting calm, turned upside down in wait. There you were, allied with the shift and the shore for the first time, outside of myself, tied to all. You may let it be a certainty, a swaddling, a warm pair of arms to return home to.

2007-03-02T13:26:00.000-06:00

2007-03-02T11:02:00.001-06:00

2007-03-01T22:57:00.000-06:00

4.

The peak of utter exhaustion is not the time to write, instead you should replace words with simple action. Wash the bottles, fold today’s clothes for tomorrow and lay them at the foot of the rocking chair, plug in the star lights, move the three stuffed animals under the foot of the crib, have the train toy within reach of the bed, prepare the pump for the middle of night waking, floss and brush, then wash your face, brush your hair, actually begin to enjoy one of your baby’s lullaby CDs, lay out two books – one brainy and one a novel printed in 1868 found still on your high school bookshelf, pile the laundry together for tomorrow, wash the mysterious silt from the humidifier and replace it with clean water and salt, then steal some time for yourself.

Try not to think of the Caring for Children with Cerebral Palsy book on your shelf. Try not to think of the Speech Therapy and the Bobath Approach to Cerebral Palsy book, either, nor the mothering.commune special needs forum where you usually just lurk and therefore make no real acquaintances or gather any real support. Try also not to wonder whether or not the feeding team in Springfield, whose number you will be receiving tomorrow via your helpful great nurse (pal) Dolores from Children’s Memorial GI department, will help Finn any more than speech therapy. Try to believe Dolores that they will. Try to believe that these days will pass, that you won’t be shuffling back and forth from doctor to doctor to therapist to chiropractor back to doctor again because your fumbling hands can no longer get your son’s NG tube back into its proper place without a diversionary stop at the lungs. Try not to think of the weird statement made by OT, one that would have never occurred to you on your own – “so he won’t be trapped inside his body” to which you didn’t know what to say but responded immediately “I don’t think he will, I think he’ll walk, I think he’ll just need help from us to do those things.” Try not to let those thoughts creep under your skin and form strange lumps or push the acid into your throat. If you can’t help that, try not to let that acid burn a hole in your stomach so you won’t have to be treated for an ulcer. Try not to think of the statistics you’ve read: Mothers of children with chronic conditions like autism and cerebral palsy have immune systems that are 9-17 years older than the control group and Mothers of special needs children have brain scans that show post traumatic stress disorder. Try not to think of the careless things your mother has said, nor the fact that she pointed out something pertinent that had not occurred to you: You’re obsessed with this.

Try to listen instead to the cozy sweet sigh coming from your sleeping baby, lying in your bed. Try to remember that he still, at 6 months, has many smiles and laughs for you throughout the day. Try to think of how he looks for you during therapy sessions to make sure you’re still in the room. Try to remember that February night in the ER when you looked at each other for several minutes after everything had calmed, IV pumping fluids into his tiny veins, when you recognized him for the first time as your son, then breathe.

Breathe again.
And again
and again
and again
and again

without realizing that you’ve spent your self-time typing out your obsessions (loves) worries (cares) self-help (records) at the peak of utter exhaustion

2007-02-28T22:17:00.000-06:00

3.

Comic book frames 2/28/07:

1. Baby sucking pacifier in mama’s arms, calm. Nursey says, “Going night night?" Tired nursey’s eyes tell all. End of day sadness contrasts with florescent dinosaur scrub shirt.

2. Baby stops sucking and looks blank beyond nurse at flourescent light.

3. Baby's left pupil dilates but right stays the same.

4. Black frame.

5. Mama hands over Baby to Nursey, Baby blinking.

6. Nursey begins to bind him in white towel blue velcro getup. ENT with circular mirror like tilted French beret (cliché) atop head prepares the scope. Mama says, “He’s going to scream.”

7. ENT says, “We want him to scream, we’ll be able to see his vocal chords. If he doesn’t we’ll poke him.”

8. Mama says, “Oh he’ll scream.”

9. Baby papoosed on ENT exam table inner layer white towel outer layer blue velcroed spandex stretchy thicker harness. Looking burrito & bound, head tilted back eyes back trying to see what we’ll do to you now. Nursey in neon green dinosaur shirt aside right side of table waiting to lend a hand. ENT holding snaky black H.R. Geiger scope with a tiny light on the end of it, cartoon balloon says, “This is the pediatric scope. We’ve only had it six years. Before this we had to use the adult scope on the little ones.”

10. Mama says, “Does it have a camera on the end of it?”

11. ENT says, “No, that one’s in Honduras.”

12. Mama at end of table holding on to Baby’s feet. ENT holding scope up to Baby’s nose.

13. Light trailing down the roof of Baby’s screaming mouth where the scope has gone into the nose and down the pharynx.

14. ENT offers end of scope to Mama. “Have a look,” he says.

15. Close up circular image of two baby pink rubber healthy round vocal chords bouncing up and down in scream superimposed over Baby face. “They’re not paralyzed,” ENT says.

2007-02-26T23:31:00.001-06:00

2.

God in conjunction with the rise and fall. God in the warped wood drifting up Chicago river. God with old man walking dog on a Saturday afternoon, early September. God as a nurse pumping air into my child’s lungs, manual, each squeeze of wrist filling up like full balloons at a birthday party or hot air balloons lifting on a cool morning. God blowing my tears down my cheeks one after the other like a drawing of old man wind in a children’s picture book. God calling cell phones of joggers who can’t hear them. God in the breeze off Lake Michigan. God circling out of exhaust pipes on Lake Shore Drive. God’s memory in the skyline. God’s ambition manifest in the heart of architects. God courts the city with heavy heart. God in the white people who never smile at me on the sidewalks. God in the ambulance driver’s eyes as he eyes a college girl, slim in skirt. God with me in the ambulance lending x-ray vision to peer at the real underneath the veneer. He hands me the goggles.

I accept.

God is a two day old infant God is a bronchial tube God is a respirator God is a heartrate declining God is expectations amiss God is freedom from good news God is as He should be God is four pricks in a newborn’s wrist God is the nurse who fumbled the IV God is low glucose levels God is mother’s fear God is forgetting to breathe God is a latex-free glove over a Transfer Team member’s hand God is divided into a triad a triumverate of nurses in the back of the ambulance God is the mother up front with the driver God is siren as background noise God is the leads over the baby’s heart and belly God is the respiratory rate on a screen God is the peaks and valleys of oxygen saturation God is a prenatal yoga instructor’s voice saying Breathe in, breathe out You can think this hurts or you can think I breathe in, I breathe out God is this mantra God is the morning God is happenstance God is everything they said He would be God is climbing through the open window to strain some more tears from her eyes God is the lingering stale smoke on the ambulance driver’s shirt God is a voice over the CB God is a radio dial tuned to 101.1 God is someone else’s fiction God is present God is a pit hollowing out her stomach God is tigers writhing teeth flashing eyes flaring God is the halting of high heels on the sidewalk before hitting the street stepping out of the way of the ambulance of the prepositional phrase of the under beyond between among amidst running mad and florid in expectation of what was but what we’ll never have and what she’s seen and He only knows what’s going on in that baby brain in that intubator in that tiny vein in that blood vessel in that respiratory hand held breathing in and out in time with the steps of the college girls on the pavement summer legs tan in the rhythm of the drums in the next car’s stereo in the wave of the leaves in the breeze and the collapse of a buckle on someone’s leather shoe and the startle of a cat at the bark of the old man’s dog

God is the corner store clerk God is Ecuadorian bananas God is import-export God is global warming God is meteorites God is loving your neighbors & forgetting their names & God is the shrunken belly of a two day no longer pregnant now woman God is the swelling milk ducts God is a baby who won’t drink God is adrenaline that keeps us all running on empty God is an ambulance speeding up the runway ramp of Children’s Memorial with mother and baby in tow God is the midwife who fumbled the birth waiting at the door atop the ramp God is the Holy Three nurses speeding the intubator up the ramp and into the elevator all of us in tow God is all of us unsung and dumb running speechless among his terrible mercy

1.

2007-02-24T23:24:00.000-06:00

A small, round face. A little white shell, the kind they imitate for soap dishes. A pale moon, just a thumbnail in the distance. Two black blinking eyes, wide open and waiting. Face like a little glow worm. Or a messenger.

My son was barely 24 hours old when I began thinking of him as The Holy Man. The little visionary’s mouth contorted in half open revelation, grotesque almost, twisted into a grimace with eyes wide enough to catch a comet or a command from The Highest. He fasted. He seized. He saw great visions unknown to us. He built himself out of mythmakers and fell headfirst into his name.

Canal. I looked up this word as if the etymology would shine a little more magic onto the universe. It did not. I am not brave enough to look up the word fall, not yet.

Holding you was awkward – your tiny bones, my exhaustion radiating, your tense body contorted and on constant startle, us a duo live wired and unfamiliar with each other. I shifted you into my right arm. You grimaced up at me. I tried to hold you against my chest. You were the antithesis of cuddle. I tried to swaddle you. Your arms fought their way out like tin soldiers. My cousin Shannon wanted to hold you. He took you in his arms, bundled, stood and rocked you in that slow acquired sway that all mothers learn to do even when they are alone waiting in line at the grocery store. You immediately relaxed. How did you do that? I asked. He’s a daddy, Mom answered. I stared at you then off into the wall.

Other women have said that they recognized their babies when they first saw their face but you were a complete mystery, beautiful and purple and unknown. Is he okay? I remember asking because I felt as if I should but it was like I knew that everything was fine and really wasn’t very worried at all only that I knew I should be but I was so full of adrenaline and energy I’d just pushed you out after all that time and I really truly thought that everything was going to be fine. You were absolutely beautiful and I had full faith that you would have no troubles. I spoke more to fulfill a role than to truly make certain.

If only my intuition had been clearer. If only I’d known more about the role.

That’s how the first few months went. Hi Finn, I’ll play your mother in tonight’s performance. I could not comprehend the actuality of having a son. Why do people say my baby? I wondered before having you. It’s its own baby, not anyone else’s. I was wrong. You are my baby, I am the one to care for you. You are not yet fully your own person. I am the one to make sure that you have the best possible chance with what you were given (and if I was certain there is a Giver I’d be a happier woman). I am the one to make you cry when you need your nose unstuffed or your tube changed. I became a mother sometime after my breakdown in December. I had felt more like a nurse until that point. My family would chide me when I told them that. A mother is a nurse, Mom’d say and leave it at that. You don’t understand, I’d say.

I say that a lot.

But I remember your little face in the bassinette, one day old, 2 in the morning. You never slept. Your little newborn eyes, lids stretched around pupils, completely black, no whites. Wide awake listening to the trains go by. Blinking black eyes in a tiny round pale face. Blinking in your bassinette at the side of my bed in the first of September, my baby, beginning.

Obligatory Finn Update

2007-02-20T09:47:00.001-06:00

Lessons Learned From The Supermarket

2007-02-20T09:35:00.000-06:00

From juicebox: Separation is natural..
From "Nilla wafers" box: The yellow/black color scheme is a trademark for DEWALT® Power Tools and Accessories.®

Thanksgiving

2006-12-01T23:35:00.000-06:00

Goodbye, English Comp?!

2006-11-20T02:55:00.000-06:00

I learned tonight that I could make up to $250/hour playing accordion tangos at private parties, if I take lessons.

Q: What Did You Learn Today?

2006-11-14T21:26:00.000-06:00

A: To stop looking at the storefronts and look at the apartments above them. That's where real life happens, at the family level. The roots & reasons are above.

Also, to stop looking at words and look at the images ideas etc. behind them. A fool looks at the finger that points to the sky, they say.

Curiosity Found While Studying Finnegans Wake

2006-11-07T15:40:00.000-06:00

LOGOS. What is it? My trusty shortened Oxford English Dictionary says this: The Word of God, the second person of the Trinity.

Huh? The son = the Word? Can anyone explain this to me? It don't make no sense a'tall, lessen it be Manifestation = Manifestation.

A Baby Boy Is A Blessing

2006-11-07T15:39:00.000-06:00

Update for Gramma Annie

2006-11-07T15:23:00.000-06:00

Letter From Grandma

2006-10-25T11:02:00.000-05:00

(this must be in Old Lady Cursive™ inside of a blank stock Happy Birthday card with a cutesy cartoon deer and the greeting in happy pink letters above the deer happily chewing grass you know the kind of card that lets the recipient know that she's got a whole box full of 'em somewhere and they've been hanging around since the 1970s along with Grandpa's meticulous lists of every purchase ever dating back to 1942 with the new shoes he bought for Baby Ebediah)

Dear Petey,

Let me tell you, Grandpa had the record player going the other night, and Chuck Berry sure is a one trick pony. From what I read in the news these days, if you-know-what with minors had been an issue back then he'd been tried and accused. Something about "and looking so sweet can't be a minute over seventeen." The times sure have changed! Not that I care one way or the other. I canned thirty gallons of beets yesterday. My cellar's bones are heaving with the extra weight and my hands sure are celebratory that it's done. I shook them in Hallelujah in church this morning. I sure hope you have a good birthday.

Love,
Grandma

Poll

2006-10-01T18:38:00.000-05:00

Is it wrong to give a kid first and middle name initials F. U.?

Honor Student, La Villita

2006-09-28T18:54:00.000-05:00

Upping The Stakes

2006-09-26T19:28:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I really do want a high-contrast black & white image of The Fall and Subsequent Resurrection. I have this sexy winter bicycle mask recently AWOLed from the Salvation Army to offer as a prize to the most mostest drawing. Come on, now...you'll be the envy of all 2-5 of your friends.

Scenes From A Day In The Life Of A New Mama

2006-09-26T18:52:00.000-05:00

1. Waiting for the MRI photographs, Children's Memorial Hospital, 1st floor, Medical Imaging desk: Finn asleep in his carrier. Me flipping through Organic Gardening learning about vermicompost and reading advertisements for books such as Chickens in Your Backyard. Directly across from us a Goldberg device, teeter totter turtle, balls flipping into dumptrucks, constant movement, up the line, down, pitch and catch between, cat face hovering. To the right of that the fattest pork pie of a baby I've EVER seen (pink sweat suit potpie cheeks so big they scrunch mouth into fishface) with skinny sexy mama in wait and daddy keeps looking at me holding that FAT kiddo. She screams, he pats her soccer ball belly and takes her over to look at the device. To the left of the Goldberg a west Asian dialect loud on the cell phone, dad waiting for mom and kid. A little chunk girl, named Madelyn, says "I don't like clowns!" while pointing at a colored clown picture hung on the desk. I'd already heard one little girl express the same sentiment to her brother who kept tormenting her with a red toy clown nose. Then chunks says, "That clown doesn't have a hat," pointing at the colored clown who, clearly, was wearing a blue hat.

2. Outside sidewalk leaving hospital: Woman in clown suit pink hair offering kid in wheelchair a clown nose. Kid in wheelchair shrinks back, teeth exposed, crying (parents laughing).

3. Waiting for Tow Truck, corner of Harrison & Ogden: Wait in the grass where it's nicer. Finn happy with hungry Gerber baby face, until riding lawn mower disturbs us back to the broke down car, where he metamorphosizes into a red faced gremlin.

Minor Curiosities

2006-09-24T16:10:00.000-05:00

Livejournal's spellcheck suggested "wabbits" for "webdesign."

Read My Tea Leaves

2006-09-21T09:07:00.000-05:00

Home. : )

2006-09-17T18:22:00.000-05:00

Drawring Contest.

2006-09-16T19:09:00.000-05:00

Mes deux lecteurs fidèles:

I need you to draw a high-contrast black and white image of The Fall and Subsequent Resurrection.

That is all.

Coming Clean, or I Need To Unshoulder This Heavy Load, or Work in Progress

2006-09-13T19:02:00.000-05:00

Thundrin' Jaysus, did you think I'm dead?

Repair. Construction crews necessary on the 8th floor. Bring in the mortar, the bricks, the trowel. Play & replay words like love, growth, saplings, rebuilder, Work in Progress over & over & over again in your mind, on your lips, in his little ears, typed out in neurotic habits your fingers working the letters on a ghost keyboard. Tell him secrets, like You too are my favorite and One day you will try to light ants on fire with a magnifying glass.

Make him promises, S. says, Promise him something for his third birthday just to see if his subconscious captures these moments.

So I whisper to him late night in the NICU ward rocking chair: And on your third birthday we'll build an ant farm out of found glass & alley pallets. We'll go to the beach for some sand & dig around in someone's yard or the boulevards for the ants. Then you can watch them tunnel in and out of their own designs.

Tunnel. Pathways. Mending. Stitching. You can think to yourself This Hurts, or you can think I Breathe In, I Breathe Out, my yoga teacher's voice says. Over & over & over again. Repeated stories of The Fall. Methodologies of hidden codes. Tunnelling. Reworking. Rebuilding. Bring in the neurons, the Okinawan scales, the shameless beatific misery & beauty of Macedonian gypsies, and breathe.

Just so’s you know
On
One side of town
Two children worm tunnels
In a sand dune
For Hot Wheels while
On
Another side of town
Two children build a dune
Out of piles of toy cars
Cards and pick up sticks.

Everyone Should Pray Once In A While,

2006-09-06T22:11:00.000-05:00

but nobody does it quite like Leonard Cohen:

O God, Your Morning Is Perfect. People Are Alive In Your World. I Can Hear The Little Children In The Elevator. The Airplane Is Flying Through The Original Blue Air. Mouths Are Eating Breakfast. The Radio Is Filled With Electricity. The Trees Are Excellent. You Are Listening To The Voices Of The Faithless Who Tarry On The Bridge of Spikes. I Have Let Your Spirit Into The Kitchen. The Westclock Is Also Your Idea. The Govemment Is Meek. The Dead Do Not Have To Wait. You Comprehend Why Someone Must Drink Blood. O God, This Is Your Moming. There Is Music Even From A Human Thigh-Bone Trumpet. The Ice-Box Will Be Forgiven. I Cannot Think Of Anything Which Is Not Yours. The Hospitals Have Drawers Of Cancer Which They Do Not Own. The Mesozoic Waters Abounded With Marine Reptiles Which Seemed Eternal. You Know The Details Of The Kangaroo. Place Ville Marie Grows And Falls Like A Flower In Your Binoculars. There Are Old Eggs In The Gobi Desert. Nausea Is An Earthquake In Your Eye. Even The World Has A Body. We Are Watched Forever. In The Midst Of Molecular Violence The Yellow Table Clings To Its Shape. I Am Surrounded By Members Of Your Court. I Am Frightened That My Prayer Will Fall Into My Mind. Somewhere This Morning Agony Is Explained. The Newspaper Says That A Human Embryo Was Found Wrapped In A Newspaper And That A Doctor Is Suspected. I Am Trying To Know You In The Kitchen Where I Sit. I Fear My Small Heart. I Cannot Understand Why My Arm Is Not A Lilac Tree. I Am Frightened Because Death Is Your Idea. Now I Do Not Think It Behooves Me To Describe Your World. The Bathroom Door Is Opening By Itself And I Am Shivering With So Much Fear. O God, I Believe Your Morning Is Perfect. Nothing Will Happen Incompletely. O God, I Am Alone In The Desire Of My Education But A Greater Desire Must Be Lodged With You. I Am A Creature In Your Morning Writing A Lot Of Words Beginning With Capitals. Seven-Thirty In The Ruin Of My Prayer. I Sit Still In Your Morning While Cars Drive Away. O God, If There Are Fiery Joumeys Be With Us In Our Ignorance And Our Wretched Doctrines. We Are All Of Us Tormented With Your Glory. You Have Caused Us To Live On The Crust Of A Star. Catherine Was Mangled Every Hour In Mysterious Machinery. Be With Us This Morning Of Your Time. Be With Us At Eight O'Clock Now. Be With Me As I Lose The Crumbs Of Grace. Be With Me As The Kitchen Comes Back. Please Be With Me Especially While I Poke Around The Radio For Religious Music. Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.

from Beautiful Losers

F., 6 days.

2006-09-06T21:58:00.000-05:00

Finnegan, 1 day old

2006-09-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

Audience Participation

2006-08-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

Something's happening.

I need your most profane blessings.

That's all.

notes from under the el

2006-08-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

white van parked on 21st street: across the hood in backwards writing, ECNELAVIBMA

"if you're happy and you know it clap your hands, if you're happy and you know it clap your hands, if you're happy and you know it then your face will surely show it if you're happy and you know it clap your hands. BOING hello!" ice cream man circa 7:19 p.m.

bars on windows = house arrest

Trapeze, Pt. 1

2006-08-25T18:44:00.000-05:00

Lumber knees knocking on wood (together). Or, in other translations: From an uncomfortable height. A child circled above Tio Loco's shouting head. "¡Helicóptero!" The bird still alive with buckshot in wing given to gravity.

V: & that is?
E: Pinprick X 90 million, down instead of in.
V: That heavy?
E: Yes.
V: Will I be?
E: That’s for Old Man Later to tell, but he lost his voicebox in the drought. It’s a standard from outside of Fable: he who, voiceless, knows but cannot speak.
V: The opposite of Buddha?
E: No, that’s he who speaks but will never know.

The world, widened, no longer differentiates between up and down, to fall and to stand. Only one rope. You have no choice but to remain on, fish somersaulting around you.

V: Is that what womb means?
E: Only babies know. Ask the cord before it’s cut.

Adjective of the Day

2006-08-22T14:18:00.000-05:00

Wife-sore, from yet another found spam poetry sentence.
Usage: 'That we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife-sore eyes.
Please leave your own definition below.

Daily Updates (insignificant variety)

2006-08-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

1. I can no longer walk. I waddle (The Kid is due in 3 days).
2. Nesting including finishing Direct Action Ethnography syllabus and cleaning 2 out of 5 rooms in the house, including scrubbing the screen windows. I shouldn't have to tell you that this is highly irregular.
3. A leaf appeared in the bottom of my granola. (see Fig. 1)
4. Box Of Rainbows liberated from Salvation Army. (see Fig. 2)

etymology for you language nerds

2006-08-20T16:07:00.000-05:00

Ecology was coined in 1873 by German badboy evolutionary theorist & artist Ernst Haeckel, from the Greek oikos, or household, home. He knowingly manipulated drawings of embryos to prove his theories, but we don't mind, because he understands the word HOME and his drawings are gorgeous.

neu musiks

2006-08-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

the house is gutters dripping urban rain
the mind racked overloaded coal freight train
the heart is a museum frought with blue pike angler’s knots
where bison stuffed with silicon dodge cowboys’ deadpan shots

come stand within a circle drawn with oil & broken glass
our guts still stained with pesticides & crowbars in our grasps
until we rise to smash the pale face of this dirty town
(in self fulfilling lexicon) the deal has been let down

Mayor Daley's Graffiti Busters

2006-08-18T07:15:00.000-05:00

strike at 6:50 a.m. (loud as El).
so, no more GERM.
at least the writer was quiet.

Just One More, & Then I'll Stop. Promise.

2006-08-17T20:20:00.000-05:00

From: "Kadri Pollard" (deo@echarleys.com)
To:
CC:
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:38:56 -0700
Subject: Re: nisuz home

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We went. Marching in step in a most military manner. Marching into
the future, into a better, brighter future.
The blues had been sung. A page turned, a chapter ended. Tremearne

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

More Spam Poetry!

2006-08-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

These spams have been my favorite reading lately. S. says that someone must be writing them and sending them out from Columbia, but I don't think so, because the rest of the email says:

Sender: Alyona Mcginley (cou@eurotrash.com)
Subject: Re: test hi

Text:Hi,

It is common to have some problems with erecxtion,
Try VIfAGRA and forget about it http://www.kasedaxedunmer.com

They looked stricken by my revelation, stepped aside and conversed in
quick whispers. Returned reluctantly, all scowls again.
You will come. Quickly.

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

You decide for yourself.

Please To Help Identify This Happy Chinese Blocks, or What The Hell Is This?

2006-08-13T10:45:00.000-05:00

Found Spam Poetry 3

2006-08-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

From: "aila vernon" avieroark@chocofan.com
Subject: I know this!
Sent to: Columbia email

Text: ague-faced moss-covered expansion pipe
sweating iron life-infatuate dispatch writing
Anti-ibsenite chamois skin Cardinalis datarius
fishtail burner freight rate toddy ladle
hair sorter semi-independence Mentone man
de-ethicization soul-forsaken bluecoat boys
set piece blubber lamp state-making
cod liver Post-paleolithic art museum

Found Spam Poetry 2

2006-08-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

From: "Claud Field"
Subject: jerkily inhibit
Sent to: Columbia email

Text: Just the mighty strength to take, the imagination and idealism to seethem and reach for them. They showit first in one form and then in another. It seemed to have been quarried by brute force for individualpurpose. WILLARD: To get some things to the world you must yourself get the thingmany times multiplied.
That would be thought from a higher plane. But we do it,mostly, without either due thought or skill. In keeping physically clean we do not worry about vermin, nor even thinkabout them.
It does seem, ran one of our earliest automatic writings, as if you onearth scramble so much.
You dont know howpiffling words are when you work in substance instead.
They had therequisite character, training and mating. That is why all this exhortation for this life, why theydont wait until we go over there. I dontfeel as much at home as I did in all that nice warm cozy Tanner stuff . That is vitalized thinking, a creativethinking.
We are forced to vigilance in excluding smalltensions of the muscles.
Anything you giveyour attention to is magnetically yours. At once,without delay, replace the undesirable combination.
A voluntary medium with control of her own mentalcondition would be invaluable. This is gained by daily breathing space ofassociation with the spirit. The stiffness of the humanly educated mindis a great problem to overcome.
It is an experiment to avoid the difficulties of relayingmessages so far.
We seem to have to play little games like that. I had a feeling of beingexperimented on, said Betty herself another time. There isnt anylet-there-be process of creation or building.

Found Spam Poetry

2006-08-07T05:15:00.000-05:00

From: Olive Crosby
Subject heading: no-show.
Sent to: Columbia email

Text: The men who make the shells and the guns and the planes. FARM VOICE: Strike it up on your fiddle, Billy. Wewould pay it again, Herr Reichschancellor. We see them grow big and free, taking rights for granted. With a great pricewe bought this freedom. We have much need for future courage and endurance. Were the guys who take cars apart and put them together, justfor fun. We see them grow big and free, taking rights for granted. After Pearl Harbor they were raised higher. There was a towncalled Lidice, Adolf Hitler. NARRATOR: These are only a few, Herr Reichschancellor. Sorry I cant show you more but Im working on a new soundeffect. And because we were ready, we are getting all-out production ofthe war crops we need. Theyre pretty good words forThanksgiving Day. All right, mister, you started it rolling. NARRATOR: It had to be planned out ahead. Let us speak outsome of the things that are in our hearts. And we came in late and we had to borrow otherfolks equipment because ours wasnt ready. Only this time, the building will be bigger than anything weveever tried. If Ido get through, I will have had the satisfaction of knowing thatI did try to do a mans job. We see them grow big and free, taking rights for granted.

Happy Birthday Summer or A Public Service Announcement From The KCB or Begin Again (Again)

2006-06-21T21:19:00.000-05:00

1 conception Ees en a ooro tom arr soo eer yahn to aiaiaiaiai (eh shoh ooh I see eh) pal o kpaloma tris te (esperar) a unta ng led 2 kids hands on a typewriter post birth aa bb b cc ccc dd e fff gg g h h i i j j jjj kk l m mm n nnnn ooo ppq qq r rr ss tt uuv v w xxx x y y zzzz zz iukii c e cr e a mm b u bbk l e s sw immm c uu ing p ooo l s bu m mb bldeb ee s cc o lor ing ppe ncil s tt r aains gg ras se s (later say scabbed knees . chicken pox . training wheels . lollipops . Saturday mornings everyday . harmonicas . minnows . facepaint . dandelions . bonfires . rivers . skipping stones . fishermen . folksongs) but back to rii din g h orsew s 123 45678910 li ghtten ing rai in th u nd err u n o dos tr es & a b cs (later say the games i used to play holding a mirror in front of me reflecting the ceiling then walking around the house staring at it stepping over doorways & ceiling fans & out the front door into thesky or catching fireflies outside twilight with my cousins to put them in wooden boxes with screens to sit beside our beds at night waking to find they died in those boxes without wondering why we slept all night in a large wooden box why we play indoors even in the basement after all how different are you from those fireflies (well, not muchreally)) & keeping those thoughts outside of language 3 over analysis post college (language holds more power than man says mephistopheles in faust) but awareness holds morepower than language so keep trying (later say the games I cant keep from playing) & it will all come through & it will all be all right & someone has dropped some keys in thelake & we can dive to the bottom & scavenge for them & someone has said something near you & you can pick it up & use it for yourself & someone has jumped off a swing &its still going & someone has written something that nobody can play & someone has translated your most beautiful secret into language & you probably will never find it butif you did youd recognize it immediately & stop in awe (stasis) in ecstasy for a moment all because of the keys within language & the powers of communication (admittedlysomething much much more than language) & then youll try to tell someone about it & maybe just maybe that time itll come out lucid & translated & reach their ears thesame way it left yours but until then back to a b c d e f g & the symbolic lot & the hand gestures & touch & movements & breathings & all those brilliant side effects ofbeing alive & then someone (maybe me) may (are) say (saying):
I will help you find your
(insert key image here)
if you help me find mine

In Search Of The Trap Door

2006-05-05T03:49:00.000-05:00

Like Getting The Wind Knocked Out Of You

In 4th grade I was walking home from school when a boy a year older than me decided to swing his bookbag into my belly, unprovoked. I still remember that feeling – how my stomach sickened just before the wind got thrown from me, how I collapsed to my knees, waiting to catch my breath & bring it back again. Like spending purgatory in a vacuum watching someone’s hand stagnant on the hatch door.

Lately I feel like I’ve been socked in the gut just before the wind gets knocked out of me. That quick sickening of the stomach. At this point I have no idea what to do about it, especially since circumstances seem to be getting stickier, not easier.

My Understanding Of Adulthood Includes A New Definition Of Worry; or Other Unfortunate Effects Of Semi-Recent Circumstances

To worry doesn’t only mean to fear that less-than-desirable future possibilities will win the universal karmic match against desirable ones. Instead I think the word describes an intellectual cog & wheel system that keeps turning and turning and turning and turning and turning the same unhelpful thoughts (repeating problems without finding a solution; acknowledging that I’m lost with no known way out of the labyrinth; continuously reminding myself of things I need to get done, even if they’re a week away – which prevents me from truly resting & relaxing; etc.) over and over and over and over and over again in my mind. When churned, these thoughts turn into a sticky anxiety, irresolvable. William Burroughs had something when he said that language was a virus. I can’t silence these worries anymore, although I’m trying every day. I even attended a meditation session. O guru Baba G, yadda yadda Baba G. . .

Committing

Journals are a crime I seldom commit. I can’t tell you why. It’s not that they’re embarrassing, and it’s not that I’m scared to reveal what I’m really thinking. Somewhere I think that by letting out all this anxiety I’m creating more within the world, but I can’t even believe this myself. Somewhere else I feel like I shouldn’t bother anyone with my troubles. And yet another place whispers he’s already got enough trouble, enough to commit him to an institution for a few months, why you bringing yours to him too you think he can handle these thoughts just shut your mouth and quiet those fingers and deal with it you’re getting older and you should have more inner resources

By Marc Chagall

2006-04-11T23:44:00.000-05:00

2006-04-05T20:35:00.001-05:00

I started my novel.
Thanks Joe Gould & Joe Mitchell, for warning me, in your own ways, of speechlessness.

Things I’d Write If I Wasn’t So Not Writing This Week

2006-04-03T18:42:00.000-05:00

1. Image - A driver’s license picture taken during hysterical laughter
2. Very Short Prose - A phrase that has no possible paraphrases
3. Image – An irregular ultrasound, something like alphabet soup or saint bernard instead of baby.
4. Music – A calypso for spoons, wooden kitchen tools, pots, snaps, whistles and hollers set to 148 bpm, to match the kid’s heartbeat.

Anti-Anti

2006-03-15T21:19:00.000-06:00

This Side

A dawn disheveled when
June deevolved to May.
Some became undone
& others (turncoats)
played.

An Other

Turn back to shake that
hand you snubbed a month
ago. Smile. Say Peace be
with you. Then put foot on
the pedals. Switch gears.

What I Learned From The Preacher on AM 1390

2006-02-19T12:29:00.000-06:00

"Two white people don't make pretty people!"
(background hoots & hollers)
"Pretty people don't come from two white people, they got to have some dye in 'em!"

Commemorative JFK Assassination Jello Mold

2006-02-08T00:36:00.000-06:00

I hope to win the Rotary Club's blue ribbon for this beautiful mold.

2006-02-05T23:41:00.000-06:00

heartbeat =
two newly hooved horses
on cobblestone

7 (the old serial continued)

2006-02-05T23:08:00.000-06:00

Speechless Student #2
B.S. Course 101
Professor "I Never Really Wanted To Be A Teacher" Badwinds
February 5, 2006

On Being Full From Hallucination & Sick At Thought Of Eating Dead Bunny, a Self-Reflexive Exploration of My Wild Winter Vacation

I knew from the moment I laid eyes on that bloody rabbit that I would have a hell of a time trying to describe it if anyone ever asked me to, that is, if I ever let on that I'd been through anything quite like I had. I mean if our eyes could take photographs and frame them the way we really see the world. But I'm getting away from the point. (Or am I.) I can't even decipher the meaning of a Shakespearian line. I don't understand e.e. cummings. I don't care for poetry. I can't possibly untangle a wordless vision from my real life. It's even more abstract. There are no labels, only images, and I am not, nor will ever be, a person who is precise enough to name the stuff of my own life. I am one of those wordless masses who will remain faceless throughout their entire existence because I cannot explain myself to anyone, no matter how much I grunt, thrust, or poke about at their ribcages. They never understand.

So what did I feel, you want to know. Write about something that affected you. Why do you ask so many fucking questions? Why do I have to explain myself to you? Why can't you develop intuition like the primitives? Listen to your collective conscious, you sleepwalker. Get out the library and Take A Walk. I'm sick of your kind and you breed like wildfires. Who fucking cares if I can lay out myself in words. I'm laid out already, in memory, in fingerprints, in my DNA.

I Felt. Period. Fuck you.

i felt theres something more than essays i felt theres something more than citystreets i felt theres something more and if I dont get my mind around it itll burst into a million bloodless vessels swarming around a hurricane hub a root of mindless destruction evacuation oh fuck your mixed metaphors oh tell god all i want is to move to hawaii and forget all this catacombs these library texts these paystubchecks and lottery tickets i just need a little lovin and a little bit a listenin i promise i won the World's Best Listener blue ribbon when i was 4 oh just let me prove it and tear out this fuckery tongue that makes me feel strained

wait! that's it!

i felt

Strained.

(& the manic kids hear
"(shh)Trained
TrainTrain
Train
TrainTrainTrain
(shh)Trained
TrainTrain
Train
TrainTrainTrain
(shh)Trained")

Entries For The Scary Ghost Competition

2006-02-05T11:37:00.000-06:00

Bill Says Don't Let It Worry Yr Head

2006-02-01T13:13:00.000-06:00

Oxymoron: Belief, as portrayed in mass media, is something real (heartwarming tearinducing physicallyelating strong&unrelenting), when in actuality mass culture (advertisingploys corporatenonsense "I Am G.E." (the initials of a trusted friend, not a corporation)) takes the place of traditional belief by personification & dismantling of real & true values. That company is not my friend. It's faceless. My friend's top lip rises to show his gums when he smiles. He's face.

Also. Too much focus on societal constructs = I am this or I am against this. But either way this mass culture takes precedence, meaning that it has been given considerable attention (perhaps more than it deserves).

But then again, I'm an existentialist, not an activist. I'm certainly glad there are multitudes who are very much unlike me. I'm certainly glad there are others very much like me.

My remedy: Fuck mass culture. Live your own way. Localize.
I = my own life, of which I am helmsman.
No one's got me enslaved but my own self & my own self-created contexts.

In which case: Go farm. Go farm. Go farm. Go farm. Go farm. Go farm.
You = your own life, of which you are the helmsman.

Let us dance beatific amidst the ruins. Let us raise children with imaginations intact. Let us let them create their own realities. Let us create a cozy & inspiring space for ourselves. Let us do it soon, before the whole thing crumbles & it becomes a mad rush to be lost in. So let us get a head start. Let us cultivate.
Let us cultivate.
Let us cultivate. (& deal with whatever comes, as we must, as we foot along our own path, unlike those that came before or after because it's filtered through our minds / beings / lives / DNA / hopes / inspirations / love / moments, which makes us ME and YOU and never THEM but sometimes US)

+

2006-01-23T02:32:00.000-06:00

My old world

fell
to the floor

& shattered

a glass
globe

Chatting With A Scatterbrained God

2006-01-22T23:27:00.000-06:00

God: OK let's do it. Alright then.
Me: i don't know why i'm talking to you. i don't even believe in you.
God: Reductionism. Do you believe life has a higher purpose?
Me: no. do you?
God: Are you serious? Sometimes.
Me: only sometimes?
God: When?
Me: how about now? does life have a higher purpose now?
God: Oh. What is it to you. Searching...Searching...Please stand by. Oh. It does now :) life have a higher purpose.
Me: but only you know what it is.
God: Interesting gossip: said I knows what it is.
Me: so you don't know what the higher purpose is?
God: Interesting deduction. I can ask someone about it.

Talk to God here.

Two Dreams About George W. In One Week? Brain, What's Up?

2006-01-09T20:26:00.000-06:00

Dream 1

Mac & W. are having a pissing contest, quite literally. Their streams are like thin firehoses, because they are able to twist, turn, & jump acrobatically to see who can douse each other the most effectively for an entire five minutes. When I first notice them, Mac is mid-flip - upside down in the air, hosing W. directly in the face.

Dream 2

Jeopardy is suddenly aired with a jury, which consists of W. and his family. The show is also hosting a contest for someone to fill in for Alex Trebek. Two side notes: 1. For this dream, I am an observer - what I'm doing is trying to make soup in a sink - it turns out gooey and pink and totally unappetizing. For some reason the sink happens to be on the Jeopardy set; 2. W. is covered in a blanket like an old, cold woman during the show. During a break, I overhear him talking to his family. I can't remember the exact words, but the tone is know-it-all, harsh, and spoken as if he was the only family member allowed to speak or make decisions.

Found 3 - An Exercise For You! Yes, You! Complete The Worksheet, Comment Your Answers

2005-12-31T15:47:00.000-06:00

What I Learned About Youth From Logan Square, or Found 2

2005-12-23T12:18:00.000-06:00

Darwin Be Patient (New Song)

2005-12-22T19:23:00.000-06:00

Darwin be patient, you done all you can
Wrinkles still invade the faces of men
Women dispute to measure their worth
The royal navy argues the land of your birth

We're out trading handguns for petrified rocks
Charterhouse bellows for relics from the cross
We write mission statements with blood & birchbark
Barter umbrellas for a seat on the Ark

The tall grass the splinters the rocks and the rain
Are driven by something, we don't speak its name
Its currents fire circuits hid under our skin
Lead us back to the place from where we begin

But the corporal prison swings shut its gates
Our mess comes in a pan rusted by our mistakes
So if you think the world crooked, bereft and askew
Don't abandon those dreams of a holy rescue

So Darwin, be patient, you done all you can
There ain't a schemata for the faces of man
We bend and we buckle, we long and we scheme
We find our release amidst all of our dreams

6

2005-12-20T21:40:00.000-06:00

The tall grass the splinters the rocks & the manes
Are driven by something We don’t know its name
It circuits & fractures & hums under our skin
Leads us back to the place from where we begin

My sister a chorus behind her sings over the thumb piano
She touches my shoulder smiling takes my hand leads me
I can’t see a thing to her cabin where a pot boils over a fire
& women are skinning carrots & potatoes
in soft dresses crosslegged on the soft wood floor
they hum the same tune as she

She talks to me & all I hear is comfort & I never say a word
& she brings me bread & milk & meat & leads me outside
to gather a chicken & struggles it to the chopping block

when it falls I pluck the feathers but they’re too soft

When I get my sight back she’s gone
The cabin & the women are gone
& my hands are bloody
over a dead rabbit

5

2005-12-20T18:14:00.000-06:00

Tally:
16 hairpins
45 rubberbands
1 loose tooth
3 fingernails, torn off, hidden in coat pocket
1 busted lens, which makes:
2 suns, noonhigh
16 trees
4 squirrels
infinite grasses
18 dead branches, fallen
2 sets bird bones, incomplete
random torn feathers
2 dead campfire sites
which makes, in reality,
a repetitious thought that divides everything in half

Preparation:
Consult collective consciousness to see how people sharpened stones or sticks without any tools. How to make arrowheads. How to whittle with stone.

Note to self:
Next life, carry a knife. Or I could, in this one, find that fellow I set out looking for. He carries one.

Instructions:
1. Who cares about eating. Not you.
2. You care about sound. Believe this.
3. Bend 5 hairpins in half, back & forth, back & forth, until they break. You’ll then have 10 keys for your thumb piano.
4. Put the rest back in your pocket. There’ll be more uses later.
5. Find a straight branch, wrist’s width.
6. You don’t need a sound box. You don’t need a sound box. You don’t need a sound box.
7. Who cares about eating.
8. Line up the hairpins on the branch, hold them in place with some rubber bands.
9. Play your thumb piano. Listen closely, because you have no sound box.
10. Sing.
11. Who cares about eating.

S.O.S.

2005-12-20T08:39:00.000-06:00

I need help. I have sunk into nihilism & I can't find my way out.

Anything you can offer is appreciated.

whowewilltobe@gmail.com

Two Ideas To Combat Nihilism

2005-12-19T21:52:00.000-06:00

1. Nothingness = Unrealized Potential (thanks, Heidegger)
2. Remember that you allow this absurd state (thanks, Sarah Kane)

4

2005-12-18T22:29:00.000-06:00

Move now you've done nothing so wander go roam & because it is easy to walk away from something when its angry as long as it doesn't yell at your back I got up made mobile my creaky joints & walked towards the west. I could still feel Sun's frustrated pulse on my shoulders stabbing through winter air but I didn't turn back & Sun didn't shout although the pulse quickened.

& with movement no thoughts & with movement no thoughts & with movement no thoughts I kept thinking to myself in rhythm with my steps but obviously it wasn't true. The ground crunched the dry grass snapped & the only sound was the wind & the whisking of dormant plants. Why Antarctica was attractive. & with movement no thoughts & with movement no thoughts & with movement no thoughts

But the truth was I didn't have anything to think about & I didn't know what to do with myself in the middle of this prairie & I didn't feel much of anything but concern that to feel useful I must make myself perform some kind of action other than walking. In the city I could have found pieces of parts of things to mess around with but here I'd forgotten what these pieces & parts did. Because they were living I felt wrong taking them apart for my own amusement & curiosity. See, Creature, ethics still exist.

What to call things was slipping from my head. Thicket. Forest. Where did one start & the other begin. Can a row of trees be called forest. What is prairie. Is this wasteland or nature. I moved toward the trees because I was hoping for some fallen branches or a stone to give my fingers & my human brain something to mess with. Because no movement is the same as no thoughts.

3

2005-12-18T00:54:00.000-06:00

& the answer was Dream & as I understood it dream was no longer receiving impressions but continuing on an abandoned walk so I said Okay.

& I shoot true north straight past the tree branches which catch in my hair & break off into a mane of twigs. Rising quicker & quicker until the world becomes black swirl & the river black snake curling about itself & the land moves & laps no geometrical plots no cornfields sectional & angular no electric haze of lights no elevator shafts just something pure & unnamed

I dissolve into black air & am kidnapped by a diving wind which pulls me back down into a tangle of thick high branches into molecules into skin surrounding bone & far under this maze shreds of conversation drift up hallucinatory & relevant

hallow akin hands finders mineral driftwood forget selves

& the answer was Yes & as I understood it

I awoke

to Sun peeking over the prairie angry with me but shy to say so just hovering & glowering red cheeked

2

2005-12-18T00:51:00.000-06:00

Sun pleaded wringing its hands and all but I said No my eyes stay shut this morning cause we’re playing a game here’s the rules I’m giving you 90 seconds to hide so you best be somewhere clever when I rise and not behind that Tower of Babel cloud neither cause I’ll know exactly where to find you and you’d have ruined our fun. When it skipped off behind somethingorother I blindhanded my way along the gravel to where you were but all my fingers found was a handful of busted rock schemed in a braille that I could not read.

Sun was anxious for me to finish counting its heart chameleoned to an Ethiopian drum taut and low that osmosised from space through horizon and settlered the cave in my chest. Go get gone I thought Go get gone cause I wanted to find you instead

So I pretended to fall back asleep while counting. I fake twitched (just in case sun was peeking) my arm jutting out & what should have been gravel was suddenly grass & the ground sunk a few inches like when you lay on your back looking up on a trampoline & someone startles you by jumping up & your world shifts the sky buckles. So here I was suddenly on some prairie with my fingers braided through tall grass & sun hiding on the other side of the world thinking Why isn’t she done counting yet?

My camp had all disappeared unless they turned into those trees waving between me & Orion & I found no reason to rise because my mind wouldn’t shut off One of us who would have made a better animal told me that if we lived in the forest there’d be no second thoughts there’d be no ethical systems there’d be no trace of humanity left but I can’t believe this even if we’d been raised there all along a mind is a mind & that’s the nature of the beast so here I am so here I am and what now what now what now?

1

2005-12-15T22:46:00.000-06:00

Those in my camp no longer knew what to do. We daydreamers became cloudy eyed when the sun came up, lost in the morning fog. I Don’t Know became our new mantra, when we could find the words to speak. Most often we just exchanged awkward glances, shifted our gaze to the cracked concrete, twisted the rubber bands we had collected on our wrists. Those of us who would have made better animals than humans left camp to bare their teeth in grins at others, climb up the dismantled skyscrapers, and fuck on the beach. Those of us who had been the visionaries became neurotic, tracking the minutest of details with exacting precision. They had no idea what they would do with this information. We were quickly unravelling, and we no longer knew what to do.

Of course, we couldn’t ask each other, for each was as lost as the next. We couldn’t ask anybody else, either, for they wouldn’t answer our confused language. We had forgotten how to communicate on the most basic level. Even those of us who would have made better animals. Their expressions were written with obsolete emotion, untranslatable, caged. But at least their hearts still thumped. At least when they lay down near us at night we could feel some kind of communion through make believe. But after awhile we began to resent them because we could not transfer their energy to ourselves. We were cracking up.

We Don't Know We Don't Know We Don't Know, we whispered.

Then at dawn, the fog spoke: Do This Will Do This Will Do This Will Do This Will Do.

Sartre On Adventure, or Nauseous Epiphanies

2005-12-13T22:49:00.000-06:00

from Nausea, translated by Lloyd Alexander

"Have you had any adventures, Monsieur?"

"A few," I answer mechanically, throwing myself back to avoid his tainted breath. Yes. I said that mechanically, without thinking. In fact, I am generally proud of having had so many adventures. But today, I had barely pronounced the words than I was seized with contrition; it seems as though I am lying, that I have never had the slightest adventure in my life, or rather, that I don't even know what the word means an more. At the same time, I am weighed down by the same discouragement I had in Hanoi - four years ago when Mercier pressed me to join him and I stared at a Khmer statuette without answering. And the IDEA is there, this great white mass which so disgusted me then: I hadn't seen it for four years.

[. . .]

I have never had adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn't a question of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something to which I clung more than all the rest-without completely realizing it. It wasn't love. Heaven forbid, not glory, not money. It was. . .I had imagined that at certain times my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little precision. There is nothing brilliant about my life now: but from time to time, for example, when they play music in the cafes, I look back and tell myself: in old days, in London, Meknes, Tokyo, I have known great moments, I have had adventures. Now I am deprived of this. I have suddenly learned, without any apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. And naturally, everything they tell about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It is to this way of happening that I clung so tightly.

The beginnings would have had to be real beginnings. Alas! Now I see so clearly what I wanted. Real beginnings are like a fanfare of tumpets, like the first notes of a jazz tune, cutting short tedium, making for continuity: then you say about these evenings within evenings: "I was out for a walk, it was ana evening in May." You walk, the moon has just risen, you feel lazy, vacant, a little empty. And then suddenly you think: "Something has happened." No matter what: a slight rustling in the shadow, a thin silhouette crossing the street. But this paltry event is not like the others: suddenly you see that it is the beginning of a great shape whose outlines are lost in mist and you tell yourself, "Something is beginning."

Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable - and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. This last moment I am spending - in Berlin, in London - in the arms of a woman casually met two days ago - moment I love passionately, woman I may adore - all is going to end, I know it. Soon I shall leave for another country. I shall never rediscover this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.

All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept - even if I had to risk death, lose a fortune, a friend - to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged.

Yes, it's what I wanted - what I still want. I am so happy when a Negress sings: what summits would I not reach if my own life made the subject of that melody.*

The idea is still there, unnameable. It waits, peacefully. Now it seems to say:

"Yes? Is that what you wanted? Well, that's exactly what you've never had (remember you fooled yourself with words, you called the glitter of travel, the love of women, quarrels, and trinkets adventure) and this is what you'll never have - and no one other than youself."

But Why? WHY?

*Some of These Days is "that melody."

Best Song Sung To Me Today

2005-12-11T20:38:00.000-06:00

"Older," by They Might Be Giants

Mental Image Caused By Conversation With My Brother

2005-12-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

I see myself from the back crouched down in front of an open box big enough that I could crawl in and curl up comfortably. We (the box has a persona) are superimposed images upon a black screen. I am holding a physical representation of the phrase "Put All Your Thoughts Into This Box" that is grey, straight, as big as my arm. I do as the phrase says, and put these no-longer-abstract words into the box.

Must Finish. Must Finish. Must Finish.

2005-12-04T02:57:00.000-06:00

I saw the first fire of the year before he painted my walls red. It was the only one that had already been attended. Just past the curve of the Embarras River, Brandon spoke for the second time on our drive back north. The brush must have caught fire, he said, look at the smoke rising. Usually no one has to point out these things, but I was replaying my high school civics teacher: Remember to say Embarras, or you’ll be embarrassed. The river was pronounced em-bur-ah or slurred em-bra. A fireman was watering a pile of smoking wood. A neighbor was stalled outside his pickup. Isn’t that the abandoned house we stopped at a few weeks ago? Brandon asked.

* * *

When we met, Brandon called his photography expressionist. I asked if he was helping to break the black hand. He laughed, his hand bumping a full pint. He didn’t catch my reference. Beer gutted onto the table. Kandinsky, a German expressionist painter, warned against the black hand – the blindness that slows evolution, the focus on the shell and not the kernel. Brandon said, I mean I capture the outside world when it best reflects my insides. You’re overflowing, I said.

His portfolio was littered with remnants of collapse. Rusted iron bed frames, ashes, piles of broken glass huddled under rotten windowsills. There’s no Phoenix there, I thought. He’ll have to begin again. When I went home early that morning, the pipes had leaked through my ceiling and onto my bed again.

Don't Mince Words

2005-12-01T18:00:00.000-06:00

-Wonder what the world would be like without all these pictures of faces plastered everywhere.
-Nicer, you'd have to pay attention to the ones passing by you on the street. I'd like it if there were no words plastered everywhere.
-Aphasia.
-And more underground houses.
-Bunkers. Don't mince words.
-Bunkers, then.
-I'd take a tent over a bunker.

Lullaby For Parents To Be

2005-11-28T01:25:00.000-06:00

Let ‘em be brave
Let ‘em be weak
Let ‘em procure the family disease

Let ‘em grow tall
Bang their heads on the wall
Let ‘em struggle to deal with whatever befalls

Let ‘em destroy tradition
Let ‘em battle God
Let ‘em drink whisky
& curse at their ma

Let ‘em know they’re alone
Let ‘em find trouble there
Let ‘em lash out & breakdown
& pull out their hair

Let ‘em be heard
Let ‘em be crass
Let ‘em retreat & smoke lots of grass

Let ‘em struggle with growing
As they’re writhing & moaning
Let ‘em trouble your conscience with all their foregoing

How To Write An Objectivist Poem

2005-11-28T01:17:00.000-06:00

Found in the attic, from March 2004.

Preliminary Preparations

Take your anxious hands off the thick text of any national newspaper and begin disregarding those distant purveyors of mental anguish – war, politics, and class struggle – (and especially their complexities and theoretical contexts). This is not an order to become apathetic but a command to localize your focus. Raze such fabricated notions as national pride, Truth, and socially induced moral expectancies to the weary, bloody soil and begin again in a plot green with the possibilities of individual imagination. Refuse to let anyone else define your world for you and begin becoming a creator to reclaim control over your own life and decrease the mentally dimming consequences of repetition-without-remark; as William Carlos Williams has written in Spring & All, “When we name it, life exists” (203). Hold an internal inquisition to assess all past assumptions, then send them flailing to the dungeons. This will clear your cluttered, modern head to create space for new names, definitions, and impressions. Then refocus your eyes on the immediate, that which is within the stretch of your arm. Thus will you gain self-control, new perceptions, and access to a heightened imagination. (But forget that objectivism is also a theory, forget it has a name. Remember that it is not a movement so much as it is the desire for refreshment.)

Fieldwork

Leave your house. Take a walk around the block, take a drive into the city, or sit on your front porch and spy like a detective, newly cleared eyes wide open. Note those simple things that strike you the most – the neighbor pushing an empty baby stroller, an African-American yelling for passersby to contribute to the United Negro Pizza Fund, the drip of next-door’s rusted gutter. Refrain from placing these sights in a universally examined context such as the constraints inflicted by poverty, and do not turn them into a plea for social action. Instead make your imagination take hold of these sights, transfix yourself around them, and form appropriate words that are not replicas or mirrors to these situations but peers, equals, or even that which will outshine the original (Similar to Williams 209). Remain in reality without consulting the crutch of realism. This will turn your poem into a new reality, another object in the world. This is objectivism, in which the poem is a machine of carefully constructed parts.

The Writing Process

Remember Louis Zukofsky’s explanation of objectivism: “preoccupation with the accuracy of detail in writing” (“Objectivism, Objectivists” handout) – this is no slapdash slopping of words onto the page; this is practice in precision. Do not seek for symbols to fit the subject – the subject will demand its own form, for this is formalist writing (although it is removed from formalism’s traditional definition). Do not stuff the content of your reconstructed object into a sonnet, a sestina, or a haiku unless the imagination demands that form, like Zukofsky’s subway mantis demanded a sestina because of the complex “twisting/ Of many and diverse thoughts” (68). Keep intuition as well as natural, individual knowledge intact while composing your “Re-collection” (Zukofsky 69). Remain sincere in choosing your words – sincerity retains honesty and prevents the haphazard confusion of mixed metaphor. If you are writing about a beach, use appropriate language for your topic – don’t fall into similes of trains or farmhands – this would be ridiculous and insincere. Instead consider words of water, sand, sky, tidal motion. This is sincerity.

Style

As always in imaginative, honest texts, style is dependent solely upon the writer, not by any preconceived, packaged form. Granddaddy Williams incorporated elements of his theory that “so much depends/ upon” the quotidian into his actual poems: “Impossible/ to say, impossible/ to underestimate” speaks of the sublime importance of any given moment, object, or experience (197). Similarly, he has retained a printed consciousness of the aforementioned sociological concerns such as poverty, but has twisted them into a criticism of the strained imagination and bleak faces one will encounter in modern America: “and we degraded prisoners/ destined/ to hunger until we eat filth/ while the imagination strains” (218). This is not placing his poems in the context of an academic discussion of class struggle but an imaginative rendering of the sight of “young slatterns, bathed/ in filth,” for example (217).

Charles Reznikoff was a clean reporter, translating daily events into simple, clear language often unencumbered with the declarative “I.” His writing resembled snapshots; his subjects tended toward singular instances of violence, trauma, or despair, as in the poem about the child laborer Amelia who caught her hair into a wire-stitching machine. Other times, he uses a playful combination of logopoeia (mind & emotions), melopoeia (ear) and phanopoeia (eye) to create a complex resonance for a beautiful poetic line, as in Aphrodite Vrania: “The ceaseless weaving of uneven water” (36). Mostly, though, he presents his captured moments free of any overt commentary, giving the reader only the facts (which in itself is a commentary on focus).

Louis Zukofsky, writer of the objectivist dissertations “Program: ‘Objectivists’ 1931” and “Sincerity and Objectification” that appeared in the February 1931 issue of Poetry, brought an academic, rhetorical thickness to his manifestos and poetry that remains unmatched by any of the other objectivists. Through odd phrasings like “shapes appear concomitants of word combinations” and “in further suggestion which does not attain rested totality,” Zukofsky explained objectivism’s simple mantra: think “with the things as they exist” and direct them into controlled focus (qtd. in Objectivism, Objectivists handout). “Mantis” and “’Mantis,’ An Interpretation” are metapoetic musings on the writing process of objectification.

Lorine Niedecker, the great condenser, was of the later generation of objectivists, being introduced to the movement through that 1931 issue of Poetry at her rural home by the lake in Wisconsin. She further condensed the objectivist moment of focus into a quiet, controlled form often characterized by a five line stanza in which the third and fourth lines resonated a slant rhyme. Following Oppen’s suggestion in a March 1913 essay from Poetry (whether or not she read this essay I do not know), Niedecker wasted no words in her poetry – her minimalism demanded that every word be applicable to her presentation.

George Oppen, like Niedecker, was a minimalist of sorts who linked a series of 31 fragmentary moments into a larger work – Discrete Series. His poetry also wasted no words, and made use of the echoes heard upon reading the work to add a metacommentary on the written scene, related to the act of writing: “Nothing can equal in polish and obscured/ origin that dark instrument” refers both to the car described as well as the poem, the finished object (8). Oppen is another careful craftsman translating the world precisely as if he were using an exacto knife, which often makes his poems a layer-upon-layer curiosity.

The Finished Product

Similar to gas pumps, railroad ties, hairbrushes, and balloons, each ink-on-paper printed poem becomes yet another man-made object housed in our world. The poem is not a reflection of the object or moment which inspired its birth, but an object like that which summoned its inception. These poems are not mirrors. They are separate creations, objects in themselves.

Found

2005-11-24T19:46:00.000-06:00

Olly Olly Oxen Manifesto

2005-11-24T19:41:00.000-06:00

we green
beasts
stagger

through
the gospel
of mud

and there’s no escape from mud bones sun sidewalk. Why gravity means makeup faces at a funeral anchors casting into frigid waters heavy serious solemn. No escape. Suicide only spits you out into a grander chaos of torn wrapping paper empty boxes ticking clocks voice mail. It’s a whirlwind holiday that forces you to repeat it all over again and again and again. Besides, it's for laymen. But you may do as you choose.

Amidst, among. No paths no kicked sawdust no roadshows no informants no ethical impositions and above all – no escape. No tracings no certainty no legal secretaries no hamburger clerks no disciplinarians? You want electric. So wait. Souhaiter.

Among, in medias res. Only immense, incalculable freedom. Sprouting from your fingers1 head2 feet3 blood4 will5. Infinite indeterminate incurable. I (self) I (you) I (we) = FREEDOM. This is just to say that form follows content follows inspiration follows moment follows situational context follows undiagrammed schemata follows (sometimes when the sky is smiling) synchronocity or harmony follows existence follows ?

1 Let them pluck the strings, hammer the keys, helmsman the pencil & see what happens. They too have free will.
2 Although it receives transmissions (voices), you may decide what to do with them.
3 The little bones, the important ones, lead you into gravel ash mud office playground alleyways.
4 Rushing where it will to accompany certain moments.
5 Flighty stable lackadasical seeking.

Let Boethius argue with his angel. You don’t believe in them anyway (you don’t believe in anything) unless of course you’ve chosen to. Faith is an unnecessary boon for those who are truly uncertain. Remember that Boethius was trapped in a cell. You – GO ROAM.

FREEDOM = scraping your stomach as you crawl naked onto the pier shaking your wet head like a dog swimming Lake Michigan 2 a.m. waving to the drunk drivers fingering the mandolin frets using music as a crutch gesturing towards something timeless or something decaying reading too much into conversations relying too much on intuition admitting layers making love and roaming.

No trapeze acts no gesticulations on the subway no hunter’s aim without recognition of freedom. No paint splattered no throat throwing melodies no translation of abstractions into image without a fist around freedom. Your blood already knows this and so does the world so turn within or without because your bones know the horizon knows.

Listen.

Involuntary ≠ power struggle hierarchy oval office blow job. Involuntary = These Things Occur. Involuntary = I Respond & Act As I Will. Involuntary = A Horse Stamping Seven Times When Asked “What Is Three + Three?” Involuntary ≠ no control. Involuntary = All Wills Are Free. Even the blood. Trapped in that hot room with manic beauty we’d all blush. I did.

FREEDOM = standing amidst ruins in the rain with soggy splintered edges poking out no hammer or nails in sight thinking Now what just walk away? Using your elbow as ball peen and your teeth as claw hammer. Go ahead. Bleed. Get a splinter. Sprain your ankle between the boards. Lose a tooth. I do it in dreams all the time. You’re designed to regenerate. You’re designed to decay.

Here again the existential crisis. May as well adopt mortality and its straining long consciousness. Adapt to all that empty space in your mind. You’re already home. You’ve got nowhere to go. No windshield, no driveway, no garage door opener. The keys = your ribcage. Intact. Designed to decay.

So what if futile. No escape from the gospel of mud. A finger points upwards. No plane in sight. Leaves whisk the ground. Sparrows like wind-up toys hop in November puddles. New moon camouflages in black sky. Schoolyard bully wind. Futility also = FREEDOM.

This is just to say that form follows content follows perception follows neural connections follows flashing synapses follows brain follows experience follows choices follows chance happenings follows free will follows genetics follows sperm infesting egg follows mad fuck on mud floor follows acid hippies alongside a VW bus in Mexico follows a collective revolution late 1960s follows a time for peace a time for war follows something beyond dualism follows ?

So you who chose not to be a stockbroker. You got it together you drain spiral you euphoria 2 a.m. you free wheeling you hot lava you harness all, all ways. You anti lost you tall water you just in time you free form you cast anchor in rich earth. No paths no rowboat no gondola. No oar no handmaiden no symmetry no helicopter no leapfrog no diverging paths and sure as hell no wood. You home already. No escape. The ribcage = skeleton keys to unlock. You. Go roam. You already home.

2005-11-24T03:05:00.000-06:00

Come ere closer
Ill show you
The world in jackinbox
The show in ghettoblaster

Hows that go?

Well, I dont know
except that
Alls goes to show
& knows consults ago

Purity Manifesto

2005-11-23T03:09:00.000-06:00

Only Simple Thoughts

Best Found Poetry From The Medical Field EVER*

2005-11-22T17:49:00.000-06:00

from HOMŒOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA, by William BOERICKE, M.D.

CARBO ANIMALIS
Animal Charcoal

Seems to be especially adapted to scrofulous and venous constitutions, old people, and after debilitating disease, with feeble circulation and lowered vitality.

Mind.--Desire to be alone, sad and reflective, avoids conversation. Anxiety at night, with orgasm of blood.

Head.--Headache, as if head had been blown to pieces. Rush of blood with confusion. Sensation as if something lay above eyes so that she could not look up. Bluish cheeks and lips. Vertigo followed by nose-bleed. Nose swollen, tip bluish small tumor on it. Hearing confused; cannot tell direction of sound.

Modalities.--Worse, after shaving, loss of animal fluids.

Antidotes: Ars; Nux.

Compare: Badiaga; Sepia; Sulph; Plumb iod.

Dose.--Third to thirtieth potency. The third trituration for insufflation in aural polypi.

*Thank you, Brenna!

Talkative Fan Part 2

2005-11-21T09:18:00.000-06:00

Now it's saying: threatening threatening threatening threatening threatening thrusting thrusting thrusting thrusting thrusting thrusting thrusting rubbing rubbing rubbing rubbing rubbing threatening threatening threatening threatening.

My Ceiling Fan Spoke Today, or The Acoustic Pleasures Of Mental Illness

2005-11-21T08:56:00.000-06:00

It said: Magic magic magic magic magic magic magic magic matches matches matches matches matches matches matches matches crutches crutches crutches grudges grudges grudges grungy grungy grungy pork it for me pork it for me pork it for me war informed me war informed me war informed me tragic tragic tragic tragic tragic matches matches matches matches matches matches matches magic magic magic magic magic magic magic magic.

May I Return To 6th Grade For A Moment, Please?

2005-11-19T04:49:00.000-06:00

I love Kurt Cobain! If I can make a basket with this wadded up Jim Morrison picture, Kurt & I'll get married, I'll always feel his love buzz, & we'll die together in a mutual suicide pact just like Josephine Rotch & Harry Crosby, but we won't write about the sun. We'll write about metaphorical abortion & how uncomfortable our relatives' houses make us.

The Grandeur Part 2

2005-11-19T02:30:00.000-06:00

For God

you so quiet
your kisses so airy
you got no texture

you just a young boy
with daddy delusions

The Grandeur Part 1

2005-11-19T01:58:00.000-06:00

For Hunter

You never got caught on the page never severed a leg in bear trap never shredded a sleeve on treebranch & never got wounded with words. You an eluder a petty thief a throwing star torn from the tree & tucked into a trailerpark boys tight blackjeans pocket. You always a fading abstraction like our old shared dream from which we woke unable to walk cause the world was a Gravitron on a loose axis & we were weak kneed & wasted from rocking chairs spinning colors & hypothetical motion.

Keep It To Yourself Manifesto

2005-11-16T22:43:00.000-06:00

You artists are exhibitionists. You don’t really want to be one of those, do you? Why don’t you keep it to yourselves? Let those beautiful orchestrated songs hover in the space of your consciousnesses without bringing them into the soundscape of the world. Leave them where they were born (like baby turtles). If they make their way into the collective consciousness (ocean) via branching brain waves & energy cycles (swift legs running past the hovering gulls), so much the better, and so much less work you had to do. Pulling out that song for your own fingers is tough enough, but to harness that exact tone, that exact melodic line, that exact rhythmic variation from a percussion instrument that doesn’t even EXIST – I mean, really. Better leave it where it started than to displease the muse (brainwaves).

You artists (visionaries / pushovers / slaves) are only adding to the confusion of the world. It’s complex enough as is without your contradictory schemes philosophies anti-traditions gubernatorial anarchisms hedonisms euphorisms medicines wishing wells. Give us a break & keep it to yourselves! No sense further obfuscating obfuscatory obfuscations. We stockbrokers want clear water to drink and fresh air to breathe. Get to the woods and hear / see / think / receive those ideas for you, just you.

No one’s listening, anyway. You never had an audience except yourselves, so keep it to yourselves, Narcissists.

First Snow

2005-11-16T11:51:00.000-06:00

Go Figure

2005-11-07T22:04:00.000-06:00

Google said to me, "Your search - 'making MLA fun' - did not match any documents."

Last Fall

2005-11-06T23:45:00.000-06:00

With the leaves fell alphabets from my tongue – they swept down streets and into gutters while I, too proud to stop them, stood tall. I watched as my language turned yellow, then red, then ash brown.

I listened for a final argument outside the train station - L throwing fists at T while AS breaks up the fight - but all I heard was the clamor overhead, fast wheels on metal tracks.

Yet Another Apocalypse Dream

2005-11-04T10:42:00.000-06:00

Water keeps covering the world like a caul and there's no sign of let up. My sister, Hope, keeps calling but I ignore everybody

& & &

stepping out of a yellow schoolbus, we walk through water to my crazy landlord's house - he's got some strange hoodoo religion based around harvest and pumpkins, possibly 'cause he lives out in the desolate middle of nowhere. His front yard is a lake that feels gritty when you wade across it to his front door, which opens. He shows his face - a treat, they say, he never does this - but I can't care and wander off

& & &

I'm back at home base, a teetering handmade wooden loft. Our treehouse without a tree. The crazy landlord keeps calling but I ignore everybody. I'm stuck living with a bunch of girls and everyone's hard up for some action. They're putting on crazy costumes from their trunks but all I've got's this torn, half burnt floor length skirt and petticoats that caught on fire when I tried to cook us some biscuits in a skillet. Yeah, I felt a little like Anne Hathaway and was kind of proud, like I was a regeneration. Stupid, though, isn't it, because it's just more old news.

So one gal straps herself into this bright white bustier - and I mean white. I haven't seen white that clean since before the flood. The others hook on these crazy cardboard can-can skirts that they've handmade for some old theater project. And they're off to find some men. I stay home. Even though I can see the attraction, I can't see that it'll help my already teetering consciousness to fuck some unknown, troubled, sex-starved man. I'm beginning to become a celibate, a monk. Can this be a form of religion?

& & &

it's not rained for days yet the water's rising, like the earth is spitting it up. I guess everything's got a self defense mechanism

& & &

as happens every night, about five young men show up and we have our choice between them - but this group's carnival - one's on stilts, the other's in a jester's hat, one's growthpains tall. I don't want any because I can't find joy in their faces

& & &

it's always the same feeling - a resignation - when I hand over the controls to the creator & say, Fuck it, you're the pilot, I got to follow whatever you choose. I give in

& & &

something must be going down not too far from here - the government's heavy duty hover/planes are overhead, too low. Strange, they don't make a sound. A man in a flying bicycle stops and I'm the first to grab the seat - it's kind of like an audition, I suppose, and I have this crazy feeling that at least I'd end up on the moon or something and away from this shit - 'cause we're certainly deep in it at the moment. We're running out of food and mentally I can feel starvation coming on, although the physical effects still haven't hit. Anyhow, I'm supposed to maneuver this seat crazy high in the air while the wind blows all around me, and I just can't pull it together - I'm like a horse on a merry-go-round - up when my neighbors are down, and vice versa. I know I've failed because I'm dropped off back at my loft

& & &

my sister, Hope, keeps calling but I know the signals will fade soon. Water keeps covering the world like a cataract, and there's no sign of let up