Please Know You've Cheered Me

It's windy in Iowa. 
I wrote this letter weeks ago. 
Months? 


The leaves are packing their bags. 
I've a poor tooth. 
I hate it when dentists talk about 'bone loss.' 
I don't want to become some gap-toothed old fucker. 
Yet how they can spit! 


There's wonderful news after all.
I bring it up the hill to tell it to the mad oak. 

Caketrain issue 09

CAKETRAIN issue 09 is now available for pre-order.
http://www.caketrain.org/
Get it while it's still hot!

MINE REJECTED POEM, BY ME REJECTED

JUNE A DAY OF MY WRACKING BREATH

                                                                 

I

The morning dove a remnant

bone-kindred light. He broached the subject with

a shovel in his baffled hands. It  was his duty,

his loading zone. Cornets rang their golden shells.

The giant fell, they

II

dragged him in and kicked. 

III

Cold hands, cold feet, cold in other places sweet.

You  are my cloistered cure, my slutty purse, my alibi.

Open your delicate blouse, lift your linen skirt.

Upend your tongue, unlatch your gated thighs,

release me from my squandered pen 
where beasts go slovenly forgiven. 

IV

  

The day its lurk and tremble. The day its lowly creek. 

Everywhere its tongue fitted out with high-toned

brake and halted scrub, a calendar of weed atop a post.

Strangled root, loam-full mouth, hands dug down,

and man that hurried animal clapping at an awn.

It raises our woolly sleeping selves. It goes, it gone.

IV

The cold bed is the old bed is the sold bed.

Come find the unmoored Bohemian Cemetery,

a quiescent slurring iron gate near Summit Street

and Prairie Road by drunk-lit Hilltop Lounge.

The beauty of the stone that is there at rest

and linden peace where birds go to feast.

Blackberries and wild rose cling there fast.

A MANDATORY SENTENCE

Poetry 
is one 
mistake
madly 
fucking 
another 
into a 
brilliant 
garden 
overrun 
by 
weeds.   

AMERICA IS THE LAND OF ...

OF FREE JAZZ AND STRIKERS
AND THE DESPERATE NEED
FOR A LIVING WAGE AND
HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

It's like free jazz. 
No more nothing. 
Down with death. 
Go cat go. 
It's a perfect nothing. 
It's nowhere. 
Everything is empty. 
America needs
a shovel to dig holes. 
America needs
a smoke. 
No one's got a match. 
Everyone's on strike. 
The wages of sin 
is death. The wages. 
The sin. 
America grab
grab a backpack. 
Walk the highway. 
Walk to where 
there is no highway.
Rain on 
the lonesome. 
Make it now. 
Make it a perfect
emptiness. 
Like Jack. 
Jack Kerouac. 
Down with death. 
It's perfect. 
Let's ride. 

A POEM for Rufo Quintavalle

Lemon, 
   penny.  
Marble, 
    ash. 

POEM

A BRIGHT AND SHINING PEOPLE

Clog dancing drunk or huffed.

Rickety children bouncing off walls.

Bite him, bite him good!

This be us as we live

the lives of Riley.

Hung from a axle tree,

hung from a bridge, hung

from the stone horse of

the village founder in

the western square.

I seen Johnny Cash out front of 
the Pit Pony Tavern.

Est. 1974.              

I tried to sell him jumper cables.

'Not worth my time, son’ 
is what Mr. Cash said.

I'd sell jumper cables to anyone back then.

So I got a tattoo that says 

‘Not worth my time’.

Life is 

theft. 

QOUTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QOTE QUOT

I say, "I'd like to see
The poems Li Po
Distributed in the Yellow River"
And Whalen says "Alright
We'll go down and dive
And See."

by JACK KEROUAC, from 'Haiku Berkeley'
in POMES ALL SIZES (City Lights, 1992)

That One Day All Money Will Be Made From Mint

THE WORLD SHALL BE LIKE UNTO A FORM GIVEN YOU IN A DREAM BY SAINT JOHN OF PATMOS (6-100), JULIAN OF NORWICH (1342-1416), CHRISTOPHER SMART (1722-1771), WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827), WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939), ANTONIN ARTAUD (1896-1948) AND VAN MORRISON (1945-2075) 

142 The rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! The rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! It’s falling down! It’s coming down! It’s falling down! It’s falling! It’s coming! It’s falling! It’s coming! It’s coming down! It’s falling down! It’s coming down! It’s falling down! It’s coming down! It’s falling down! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain like rain like raining! O the rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain!O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain like rain like rain like raining! O the rain like rain like raining! The rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! O the rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain ! O the rain! O the rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like raining! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain like rain like rain! O the rain like rain like rain. O the rain! O the rain! O the rain! O the rain like rain like rain like rain like rain like rain that rains on us. That falls on us! That comes down on us! That rains on us! That falls! That falls! That falls! That comes! That comes! That comes! That comes down on us! That falls on us! That falls! That falls on you! That falls on me! That falls on us! The rain that falls on us! That falls! On us! On you! On me! On you! On me! On you! On me! On you! On me! On you! On me! On all of us! On all of us! On all of us! On all of us! On all of us! On you! On me! On all! On! On! On! On! On! On! On! On! On! On! ~~~~~~

On rainy evenings I allow myself to feel the influence of Robert Creeley's book FOR LOVE

***

FINGERNAIL MOON
OF JOHNSON COUNTY


You were going fast.
It was beautiful,
how fast you were going.
You were beautiful
like a perfect incision.

It’s crazy.
No one knows anything
but the fish go in the river anyway.

A Garden Variety Materialism

Two wooden horses.
Think of that.
Two of them.
Two.
Made out of wood.
Who would do this, to wood?
That particular type of wood.
From a tree.
Said tree doubtless felt pain.
Which ended thus
In the forms of these two.
One horse and then another.
The two of them together.
Two wooden horses.
And their likeness,
Especially their likeness.
Outstanding, this likeness.
To each other, of course to each other  
But also to horses, a horse, the
Perfect horse.
A horse of meat and bone,
Neighing, shitting.
That one.
Different from these.
The two.
The two of them.
Think of that.
Two wooden horses that maybe do nothing or
Maybe do no more than stare at you.
A miracle stare.
Because they are wooden horses.
Because they are neither quick nor dead. 
Because they refuse the apple-bits in your hands.
Two wooden horses.
On my desk.
Did I tell you that already?
That they are here, before me,
Right on my desk.
Like two scullers.
Gliding in weird mist
On the River Arno.
In Florence,
Where the Uffizi is.
Ciao.

A lineating lineation

7 Poems Encountered On A Night of Singular Evolution



1

Darkness
then the wine-dark wine.

2

Like an avalanche my desire to sit and think of nothing.


3

The memory of a baloney sandwich
is gospel to my hunger.

4

The woodpecker in his autistic dawn
and the fingernail moon that floats
above the drunk
trundling the tracks
toward the abandoned silo.

5

I walk in snowfall
where hope rots the dark heart of
despair and my duct tape shoes are in need
of a good mend.


6

I walk in light-fall so that I can gorge on oranges.
The juice that stings my chin where I cut myself.
I drink three glasses of water. I can’t slake
this thirst. Outside wings are beating loud ungainly melodies.
There is a crow
named Bartok who plays for me and my friends.



7

And then went down to the beach where
I yelled at seagulls and chanced on a tree trunk
worn down to an amputated bone of great character.
The light hung from a ceiling of messy cloud.
I thought of Carol whose ass thrilled me,
of that gasbag Geoffrey of Monmouth
(see also William of Malmesbury,
Adam of Usk,
Henry of Huntingdon)
and the free jazz scene of Milan, Illinois.

RISE AND MEASURE

Rise and measure, rise
And measure, rise and measure
Rise and measure, rise and measure,
Rise, and measure, rise and measure, and the angel
Stood saying, rise and measure, and the angel
Stood saying, rise
And measure, and the angel said
Peace visit thy house, peace visit
The length and breadth and height of it,
Peace visit thy house.

He cometh up and is cut down
Like a flower, he cometh up
And is cut down like
A flower he cometh up and is cut down
Like a flower, peace visit thy house,
Peace visit thy house and is cut down like a flower.

Like man that is born and hath a short time to live,
Peace visit thy house and is cut down
Like a flower that is born
And hath a short time to live,
To suffer us not, to fall not from peace
That visit thy house like a flower that is
Born and is cut down.
Peace visit thy house.





***





Note: If the phrases above seem familiar, that is because they are familiar or should be to any literate reader of the English language since, say, the time of King James.

ON PERSONAL ALERT

Birds are everywhere in bookstores.  
My cat dragged
the day. It was horrible.

I wish they would resist
what is grilling in their blood,
what the jaw bone preaches when the rest is gone.

The human
animal is more than a pocketful of dimes
and the dimness found there.

POEM

Here is a poem from Jean Valentine's most recent collection
Break The Glass (Copper Canyon, 2010):

"HE DISAPPEARED INTO COMPLETE SILENCE

The wild ladders of longing
no longer pieces of wild wood, sawed off
and fitted to each other,
no longer stored in a closed-off room
with one blank window

But called back, through
the closed-off wooden ceiling, to his
speech returned."

[52]

Quotes

They say one of the hardest things for the young monk to master
is tennis.
Michael Earl Craig.

The poem must be meaningless.
Richard Hugo.

Lucidity is the wound closest to the sun.
Rene Char.

The only aristocracy is that of consciousness.
D.H. Lawrence.

If you are a poet, all you have to do is  be there when the bread
comes fresh from the oven.
Rene Char.

Words

Some words of mine here
http://www.everyday-genius.com/2011/02/jon-cone.html

And here
http://snowmonkeyjournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/jon-cone.html

And here
http://www.elimae.com/2010/12/About.html

POEM

HAPPY WERE THE PEOPLE GIVEN NEW POSTURES TO PERFORM AT DAWN AND AGAIN AT DUSK


If it isn’t comprehensible, then what shall we do with the body, Mother?

Five Titles To Which Numbers Are Applied

1. DIMINSHERS
2. SAD THE LONELY HAPPY
3. INTO THE CRUST
4. WILLS & REFERRALS
5. I-80

FRANK O'HARA and DONALD DRAPER of MAD MEN

In an episode
of the television show
Mad Men,
advertising executive
Donald Draper
reads aloud
the final section
of Frank O'Hara's
poem titled
'Mayakovsky.
This poem
is from O'Hara's
collection
Meditations In An Emergency
(Grove Press, 1957).
Here is
what Donald Draper
reads:

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interersting, and modern.


The county is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.


It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

SENTENCE: an exemplary instance of

Of the weird way they cut meat in the market, of how hard it was to get milk, even finally with the assistance of Eddie Kent, of the very existence now of the flowers in the garden, the tulipan hedge that screened Eddie's lawn from the swimming pool, for instance, the zapotes like chocolate jello but tasting of delicate flavors (so she said), of all these things he would have known nothing, had she not told him.


Malcolm Lowry
from DARK AS THE GRAVE WHEREIN MY FRIEND IS LAID
(New American Library, 1968).

CAKETRAIN

The latest issue of Caketrain is available for pre-order here

http://www.caketrain.org/

Do yourself a favor and get this one while it's available.

You won't be disappointed.

REVIEW

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The psalm is sung to that Other we will never know. The knowledge of its imparting is sorrow and joy. It tells us only of what we cannot say, what will be revealed only when there is little left of us to know. The burning bush gave something that was not a psalm because Moses carried the tablets down and the people learned the meaning of fear. The other side of that same currency is where the psalm tunes its harp. These are ancient currencies, beyond the clock’s tock, the heart’s closing gates. If poems expressed a usefulness then these would be the suits brought against such an expressiveness. Perhaps the ideal reader these poems calls to has never been prepared by an understanding of poetry or song. And so one must go to that place where wonder sets the seas on fire. There set your final self down. There take up that golden light. Be some furrowed deep, a flame of inextinguishable beauty, a sword, a chalice, a tree upon which meaning crucified by song is given flesh once more.

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A SELL OUT NOTHING BUT A FREAKING SELL OUT!!!!!!!

My chapbook THE PLESYRE BARGE has officialy sold out
at Greying Ghost Press.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/GreyingGhostPress

Another fragment from something I wrote that I hope to use one day

***

When we left no one
came to say goodbye
because even the neighbors remembered how many times
we left milk on the porch
to sour.

***

A sentence I wrote the other day which I will use in a poem someday, I hope

...

I revered the murals in your father's house, especially the one called
The New Boredom.


***

REVIEW:

Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lutz is a writer of lyric sentences. He composes one, then another, then another, then another, then another. Eventually, or finally, these sentences obtain to some kind of fever. The story which these sentences build then breaks. The story ends, abruptly or not, but it ends. Lutz was championed by Gordon Lish, which makes eminent sense, though he materially reminds me at certain moments of Harold Brodkey. (Brodkey was also championed by Gordon Lish at one point, but they had a falling out over some trivial matter, which happens.) Aspects these stories demonstrate: brevity, grotesque detail, sadness, sexual thrummings, an admixing of strange vocabularies and syntactical disruptions, narratives rooted in dream or nightmare, undiagnosable symptoms. And so on. This is a book poets would enjoy. Also paranoiacs. Or writers of the new grotesque. Or writers (and readers, let us not forget readers -- are there readers in this day and age who don't first and foremost think of themselves as writers?) for whom the dark is more intriguing than the light. More effective than what I've expressed thus far would be to quote Lutz. Here are the opening lines from his story 'Onesome':




To get even with myself on behalf of my wife , to see just how far I had been putting her out, I began to ingurgitate my own seed. I had to go through everything twice the first night, because it came out initially as thin as drool and could not have possibly counted as punishment. The next time -- I had let an hour or so elapse -- some beads of it clung to a finger, and a big mucousy nebula spread itself in the bowl of my palm.




I don't mean to suggest the above is 'representative', though it is suggestive of Lutz's style. No matter what one might think of his stories, one can't help but marvel at his brilliantly employed sentences. *




* In this sense, and in this sense alone, he is equal to that other great writer of the lyric sentence: Barry Hannah.




View all my reviews

REVIEW:

A Crackup at the Race Riots by Harmony Korine


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I thought the book was a novel, at first, then realized quickly it wasn't, that it was more compendium hastily and sloppily arrived at than a careful selection arranged by an unstated artistic purpose. The book felt very zine-like, a gathering meant to shock and spur, a punk-like contempt within its many furies. When I learned that Korine had indeed written and published a series of zines this book made more sense as an expressive experiment. Those of you who know Korine for his brilliantly strange, disruptive and disturbing movies will find this book familiar. At times it reads very much like a filmscript in the process of being made more final, an unrevised nightmare on the way to a greater concision. If you enjoy Lynch, and maybe Richard Brautigan -- if you enjoy Brautigan's play with innocent forms -- then this book might interest you. It is a book filled with a great deal of space. You'll read it in an afternoon.




View all my reviews

REVIEW:

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I would recommend this book to any student pursuing a liberal arts degree, and to any who might be working toward an MA or PhD. The importance of the issues this book raises can’t be downplayed. Crawford presents here a serious, elegantly written apologia for the trades as a choice for those about to enter the working world bringing with them little but a knowledge of what is arcane, obscure, and perhaps even morally suspect. (This last, my interpretation though not far-fetched.) It is an unfortunate belief in today’s society that the trades and, in particular, those trades that fix the world around us – think mechanic, electrician, carpenter, plumber etc. – are held in low esteem by those who imagine a better life for their children and even for themselves. Yet it is these very occupations that offer much that is cognitively rewarding as well as a measure of independence, and the true material possibility of effecting positively the world in which we live. The trades offer us the chance to experience both unambiguous success and failure – it is the possibility that we might fail before ourselves and our peers upon which Crawford lays the basis for a moral soundness, a kind of humility that he finds lacking in much of the work that we are asked to do in our so-called information society. The office work place, and the work done there, is harshly exposed. For anyone who has performed mind-numbingly dull, deeply unsatisfying and clearly pointless office work, this critique will sound a clear bell. As a former employee of a conservative think-tank whose job consisted in writing reports possessing only the sheen of objectivity but nothing else, Crawford learned a great deal about the dispiriting forces that curl like wood lice in the modern office. So Crawford saves money. He opens a motorcycle repair shop, and while working as a mechanic begins to meditate on work, the nature of work and why some work is sustaining and why other work weakens the soul and body, causes the upright man to wilt, the good woman to surrender herself to pettiness. It is those parts of the book where Crawford writes about motorcycle repair that he attains a pure lyricism. A work of idealism, SHOP CLASS is nevertheless rooted in the pragmatic and material; it is a work that is democratic yet does not shy away from admitting our desire for the rewards that accrue from our personal merits, to know and feel ourselves in possession of human agency, to be given the chance to express an excellence in our daily lives.






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Epigram

My love for epigrams compels me to relay this timely message from Lisa Robertson, encountered in the chapbook cuba A book by Monty Reid (above/ground press, 2005):

People are fucking in the ruins of their recent past.

***

One could hardly believe otherwise.

GREYING GHOST CHAPBOOKS

Please help me unburden Greying Ghost of my chapbook THE PLESYRE BARGE. There are only a few copies left and can be ordered here http://www.airforcejoyride.com/gg25.html

The world of small presses where craft and care are fully exemplified ...

AN ADAPTATION OF A TRANSLATION

PROTEVANGELIUM OF JAMES (18.2)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Now I slouched in my cab and did nothing.
And I stared at the sycamore
and I saw that it didn’t bend in the wind.
And the high crows didn’t move much.
And I stared at the fields and saw
a corona of dusty
cornstalks. Workers

lying in rows and their hands
were cracked. They lifted
the dust to their mouths and they put the dust
in their mouths so as not to taste what they put there.
Their faces they pointed skyward. And


there were hogs
that did not want to move and so were led.
The slaughterer raised his knife and his hands
remained up. And


I stared upon the waters and beheld
the hogs there and they drank less than an ounce,
it was nothing. (How great the span
between zero and one.)


And they moved in due course.


***


This passage can be found as the epigram to Mary Ruefle's collection of poems entitled Tristimania (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004). It follows that text literally in some places, and evades it completely in others. Where the text comes from originally, I have no idea.

TWO DOMESTIC POEMS

Shoes going nowhere

they too
are eager to leave

*

The memory of bells rung, of hills and light
from an open window

ghosts, all

PRAYER FOR THE BLOODY NEW YEAR WAR

It isn't much this thin bread.
If peace be prevented, then give us the gun's small silence.
If there be fewer friends, then grant us our lax indifferent enemies.
Let the ill,
the sick,
those who hurt now and those who hurt tomorrow,
let them all find
refuge.
Let the strong break at the kneess.
Let bells ring round and clear.
Let gentleness reign.
Let kindness be what we know,
one day and all of one night.

A Public Service Announcement, Not Really

Only a few copies left of my book The Plesyre Barge.


Get it here http://www.airforcejoyride.com/gg25.html

May the gods etc.

Review: I IS TO VORTICISM by Ben Mirov (New Michigan Press, 2010)

The poems of Ben Mirov come at you from odd angles. They seem about to tell you something – eat a hamburger, learn to juggle, go to the movies – but surprise you instead. One feeling is ‘[a]nger at the cucumber’ and ‘beer is also a feeling.’ Literary and artistic allusions abound – Max Jacob, Robert Walser, James Tate, Moondog, Tu Fu, Haruki Murakami – yet these poems aren’t freighted like you might expect. They’re light, they move quickly, short efficient lines, spare images in simple language that ask the reader to leap from one line to the next. Though Mirov nowhere mentions him, Tomaz Salamun -- the Slovenian poet who will one year in the near future receive the Nobel Prize -- is a looming influence. Just as Salamun proceeds recklessly through a poem, so too Mirov. In an age when workshops distribute their polished fakery everywhere there is something incontestably courageous in writing a poem that aspires to be nothing less than a sincere and final dishevelment. “No feeling is also a feeling,/a powerful one surrounded by all feelings.” The poem concludes with a wonderful fragment that ‘[f]lows together at 4:17 in the afternoon.’ This seems an allusion to that other wonderful poem about Time’s passing: Frank O’Hara’s ‘The Day Lady Died’. Whereas O’Hara chooses to move his banal catalog of time-ridden duties to that moment where the narrator experiences a grief-filled alertness – and experiences being thrown out of time -- Mirov uses a catalog of timeless instances – narcotic, artistic, poetic, sensual – to remind us suddenly that this flowing outside of Time is nevertheless surrounded by Time: all things flowing together at a specific time in the afternoon. I wish I had Mirov’s facility for producing poems with such grand aristocratic ease – at least this is the way his poems appear to me. I wish I had his material disregard for what a poem should be or sound like. And I wish I had his ability to leap from line to line, to segregate revelation and issue the results sequentially in a way that yet makes a sense. Of his parents Mirov writes: ‘They are so dear to me/like two wolves who raised me/to be nothing like them.’ [6] A group of people playing ultimate Frisbee gives each other high-fives and this is an occasion to wonder about high-fives, what they mean and what happens to them as the occasion for their display recedes: ‘The high-fives continue well into the night, at the bar, thought the intensity of the exchange grows less and less. For some of us the high-fives continue even longer, as we lie alone in bed.’ [23] Loneliness kept at bay is what high-fives are really about. The image is poignant, innocent. It suggests. The prose poem ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ is a collage piece based upon an English textbook for Nepalese students: ‘How many years did the house stand after it was built? […] Did the various automatic machines in the house realize that there was no one home in the house that day? What do you think caused the sickness and death of the dog? What happened to its dead body?’ [20] The original writer was some kind of genius that Mirov discovered and worked on as Lish worked on Carver. And the odd title? It’s given an explanation, of sorts. This collection comes highly recommended.

Another Item From Greying Ghost

An elegancy done

on my behalf by the

great Greying Ghost

of Salem, Mass.

REVIEW OF THE DRUNK SONNETS BY DANIEL BAILEY

---


THE DRUNK SONNETS by Daniel Bailey (Magic Helicopter Press, 2009)

http://http//www.magichelicopterpress.com/drunk.htm

To be drunk is to swing between the poles of malice and beneficence; it is a state wherein the fist is as likely as the feather to make a statement, and subtlety becomes an impossible language no one attends to nor cares anything about. The drunk is dangerous precisely because emotion is tempered only by intemperate recklessness, and the ‘considered opinion’ a drama without any weight whatsoever. At its most extreme, the condition of being drunk renders everything intolerable. And joyfully so. And monstrously so. It is the morning after, as the headache pounds the brain pan to black tissue, and the stomach roils at merest sense of shifting breeze, in which drunkenness leaves an invisible mark in memory: what actually transpired the prior evening is anyone’s guess. We refrain from trying too hard. I said what? I did what? One’s shit eating friends allow their testimony to define our experience: Dude, you were fucked!

Daniel Bailey has written drunk sonnets, though I do not believe he wrote them while drunk yet even so these wonderful poems suggest much about an inebriated sea, waves moving like mountains above shifting plates. These sonnets, upper case throughout, are direct in their stumbling directness. One reads them and feels a finger jabbing at one’s chest:

I’M A LITTLE HUNGRY BUT DRUNK
I WANT FORGIVENESSS IN A BEEHIVE
LIKE A DOG WITH THE BENDS IN THE ARCTIC
AND COVERED IN ICE FURS

‘Drunk Sonnet 1’

Right from the start these poems establish themselves, uncluttered by any looming vocabulary, they nevertheless draw us in, simple language thick with a kind of bereftness. Which does not want to be anything other than what it is: poetry clothed in love and all of love’s varying confusions. The tone is shifting, we all know why because being in love is being drunk, and being drunk is to be ridiculous even as one proves the measure for what is sublime, lit-up, brilliant, an inward glowing matched by an outward.

There's conscious craft here. These sonnets (there are fifty-three) pay attention to an idea of the sonnet as a formal lyric construction. The first forty-three adhere to a strict form: two stanzas of four lines each, followed by two more stanzas of three lines each, for a total of fourteen lines. From sonnet forty-four on there is a breakdown, of sorts. It’s been a long night, we’re winding down, try as we might everything gets a little shaky.

The drunk imagination might very well be inclusive but it is frequently uninteresting. If you want to hear cornball, really pay attention the next time your friends are wasted and in a confessional mood. I love you, man. Really? I’m not even sure you know who I am? Bailey doesn’t ever resort to imitating the deep banality most of us fall into, or he does indeed resort to imitating this banality but he shores up this tendency with an invigorating high hilarity. Maudlin is dashed in these poems upon the rocks of its own parataxical awareness:

I’M GLAD THAT YOU’RE ALIVE AND DOING WELL
I’D HATE TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU DON’T EXIST
I CAN SAY THAT HONESTLY AND I AM GLAD I DON’T
[HAVE TO LIE
IF YOU KNOW ME, AND I THINK YOU DO, YOU KNOW I’M NOT
[A LIAR

‘Drunk Sonnet 9’

This is special pleading, obvious sentiment, touching if overdramatic but the drunk seldom stays put – alcohol serving as steroid for attention deficit disorder – and Bailey moves him along (‘him’ because I imagine myself in this poem):

EXCEPT WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IN LIFE
AND I HAVE TO BACK AWAY FOR A LITTLE WHILE
INTO ANOTHER CORNER OF LIFE WHERE I’LL SAY ANYTHING
TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE IN ME RIGHT NOW

SOMETIMES THE ONLY THINGS THAT WORK OUT ARE MUSCLES
AND I GOT A VERY FEW OF THOSE AND IT HURTS
TO SEE YOU DOING WELL AT ALL

OR TO IMAGINE YOU DOING WELL, BUT YOU ARE
BUT I MAKE IT THROUGH THE DAYS
AND THAT’S OK, I THINK, AT LEAST I CAN DO PUSH UPS


Dulled physicality, dulled control over the body, these are aspects of a literal drunkenness. It is a perfect touch that in the midst of confession there occurs an assurance that one is able to perform up to a minimal standard of physical competence. Hand out the Presidential ribbons now. Which is very funny.

The pretty young woman sitting at the next table is reading from Samuel Beckett’s Three Novels and The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. We’re all clichés, even in the matter of things we love.

I don’t want to be someone for whom excess becomes a burden, a noise. I want to be that person for whom love is a matter of importance to living, whatever else I might say or not say about its presence in the small grim skies I often sit under. In the distance I see the thunderhead. I see people hurrying to and fro. They aren’t drunk, aren’t jabbing me in the chest with a finger. They aren't all: LISTEN, BUDDY, YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME! The music isn’t loud SO THAT I MUST SHOUT ABOUT WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WRESTLE WITH LOVE, because there is no music, for once. Perhaps these poems aren’t intended to be my pleasure, yet they are. I have no difficulty placing them beside Ted Berrigan’s SONNETS. (Another love besotted sequence.) In the distance is Petrarch and closer but still at some remove is Shakespeare and his monumental sonnets, that cathedral in words, but I can see it from where I sit, I really can. And this makes perfect sense to me. The compass of the heart aligns itself no matter what, sort of: “I FEEL LIKE A SMALL TRIBE OF HALLELUJAHS/ GETTING SENT UP TONIGHT, STUCK IN THE RAFTERS, ECHOING”.



‘Drunk Sonnet 53’

GATE LEFT OPEN & FOUR GONE ASTRAY

...

LESSER HABITS
I went outside today and looked at the sky for oh about ten minutes. It was clear and high, you could look at it for hours if you had the time. I had to get ready for work. Back inside I got ready to go. Then I did.


THIS IS NOT ANY KIND OF

Vanishing rare that day was. Today is pleasant. Not really. What does it matter what I feel? What you feel? One of those stupid senseless arguments took place today. In my house. The kind of argument you have with someone you love that is full of such animosity. Why are humans like that? Why do we do the things we do? Not learning is what humans do best.

DECIDING TO BE SOMETHING I AM A LAMPOST
I must confess to feeling a great deal more contempt for literature than at any time in my life. Poems seems utterly idiotic to me. Contrived, overwrought, a scaffold made from lies. But I like the imagination going where I will never go in life.


MY HANDS HURT
You reach a certain age and your hands hurt. I’ve worked at manual jobs a lot in my life, the kind of jobs that leave your hands a mess at the end of the work day. It is getting harder for me to type. My fingers are often sore. At times I find myself unable to pick change up from flat surfaces. This is depressing to think about. Growing old isn’t a great pleasure. There is not one thing associated with growing old that is to be looked forward to. Perhaps death. But death isn’t a part of life. We live through other people’s deaths. We don’t live through our own. Perhaps there is a god after all. Have mercy on me, O Inept Maker.

O You Red Wagon Naked In A Geo-political Context

***

My severed!

Lonely, apart!

Rough-edged, bloody!

I bought the milk and eggs like you told me to.

Then I climbed from the river.

Marilyn Monroe Reading James Joyce

I wanted something to eat. I didn't know what I wanted to eat and couldn't come up with any ideas. I was thinking how wonderful it would be to write a book and have a really pretty girl read it. My hunger went away. It astonished me, that my hunger was so easily defeated by desire. The question was would it stay this way, would I always be someone for whom desire would provide an immediate alleviation from hunger? Because I had my doubts. I had read Hamsun, after all. But for one moment, in the spring, in the sunlit exterior, it seemed as if an answer had been stumbled upon, gracelessly perhaps, though indisputably. I felt like Descartes or how I imagined Descartes felt upon discovering his 'indubitable proposition.'

BOOKS I WOULD LIKE TO READ IN A WORLD OF ABUNDANT GENEROSITY

Look I don’t have any money. I don’t have any pennies – okay maybe I have a few pennies – but I don’t have any money right now, and I want books, I want to look at books, hold books, I want to look at front covers and back covers, I want to read blurbs the better to understand what I am reading because I don’t understand words too well, I don’t understand poetry yet I read poetry all the time, well not all the time but a lot of the time, and did I mention I don’t have any money, not much anyway, I mean I’m not wandering the streets or anything and I have a lousy job stocking grocery product in a grocery type store, and I hate it but that doesn’t matter, what does matter is that I have no money and I really feel the urge to read some books and the books I want to read are below these words, these are the books I want to read, so anyone? anyone out there? publishers? editors? poets? ... why not? why not send them to me? It doesn’t matter, either way, I’m not asking for a lot, just the books below, send them to me.



Gordon Lish COLLECTED FICTIONS (O/R Books)
Ben Mirov GHOST MACHINE (Caketrain Press)
Daniel Bailey THE DRUNK SONNETS (Magic Helicopter Press)
Sam Pink THE SELF-ESTEEM HOLOCAUST COMES HOME (Six Gallery Press)

Thar She Blows!!!

In all its living glory


http://www.airforcejoyride.com/gg




because I spasm sometime appears again



http://www.airforcejoyride.com/gg

My new chapbook is almost here, and here

Again it remains, remains as possible. As the possible
outcome, newness, what happens next, my chapbook
the one I have been proclaiming, the possible arrival
of its arriving. I call it THE PLESYRE BARGE. And it is
an available or near available thing, hand-made by hands,
by GREYING GHOST OF SALEM, MASS. Think of buckles, think
of hats, think of hands making hands making hand-mades.
Pleads: this thing is for you to buy. Buy it. Thank you.

THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE
THE PLESYRE BARGE

O the advert!
O the commercial heart!

An Enigmatic E-mail Sent To Me

GREAT OFFERINGS


veqomu meaa atuopovy mivaku iqogude ypyrisel adunuyec
hywid kyifugype ayco utuqu erodeubiur ritaso
egadag tigejy xoda ofutiro oiux yeladasico
aisivociqy byna imatyq labijoj xyzaiwu hycekuolaa xybir
ewavyyd foaezeboel ytiov ylipowat evoz avafyl iemak
usenaniba voumexoac ohiife ruoumik ovynewu oegayvu cioibah
uiquufobea awahelevi nupucejo yjide
feage wapaf uuweve ofifokeaoc
oxao youcocepe ieva myyodyge itipoqit oemudio
dyhup etej ejieteqo ehygen dijowuayb hajiho ycykejibuk
aborycud efiki ceuhim lygyzuqya
aweguy oehy ixehujuho nodyepaotu
toxue ebajitee pyfoip lopufely
zycofigul oudehal ehuxol ytoiutuqa elyoaj vulusato ylyz
erobivi siby yveoevacyi unevaaryp guhilulet obou xyoedel
ajedy jybypu erua ewarovag omyu auretafof yhezuhyole
pinosah nemud dauififyx qeda
jytigahoy kywuj enajecynyz uheahuyyfy
kajyn inyv uxey
bija axadiyrys ehuvuefu

New Title

Observe the new title:
A CABINET OF ORDINARY FEROCITIES.
Everything else remains intact.

Advertisment

Please consider
purchasing
my chapbook
THE PLESYRE BARGE
from
Greying Ghost
of Salem,
Mass. If

you do
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small simple
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undying
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Available
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Document

PROOF CORRECTIONS: THE PLESYRE BARGE (forthcoming Greying Ghost)


pg. 2 The second last line of section 3 reads “In the cold the crummy north-west-wind bends …”. Delete hyphen connecting west to wind, so the line now reads “In the cold the crummy north-west wind bends …”

***

pg. 4: The first line of section 1. Here I use an antique method of abbreviating William in the name William Harvey. The name is abbreviated by ‘Will’ followed by a superscripted ‘m’. Thus: ‘Will[superscripted 'm' goes here] Harvey'.
***

pg. 7: First line of 2nd stanza: delete extra space at beginning of “told me it’s fine…”

***
pg. 8: Last line. Delete extra space at beginning of “to wrap our splintered …”

***

pg. 9 In the quotation by John Clare, second line, “you Are. You must excuse …” Are should not be capitalized. It should read: “you are. You must excuse me for I have nothing to communicate or”

pg. 9: Last stanza on this page. Second line. In my copy the possessive form of the proper name
‘Sir Clyde “Humpy” de Bank’s’ contains a symbol – a rectangle containing an X -- where the apostrophe should be. Please delete symbol, add apostrophe.


pg. 10: Add italics to phrase “You, too!” in the poem’s penultimate stanza.

***

pg. 11: First line. ‘Rest-room” should read ‘restroom’.
.
***


pg. 16 Italics missing from several lines in MONSTER PICKS UP A TENOR. The following phrases/lines should be italicized:

… Got my golden
horn to drink from, man.

And:

[… ] Don’t fuck
With me or my tenor!
Sweetest slice
in the world comes
from my horn.

And:

“Believe Me, If All Those
Endearing Young Charms.”





***

pg. 20 In the subtitle ‘From Reports of The Princeton University …’ there is an extra space between ‘of’ and ‘The Princeton’
Please delete.

In line 7: ‘awn’ should be italicized ‘awn’.

In line 8 ‘Stems’ should be italicized ‘Stems…’

In line 25: ‘way’ should be italicized ‘…way leafy.’


***

epigram

I fell in love with a girl.
O and a gash.

John Berryman, LOVE & FAME (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970).

THISTLE

Outside is the grim thistle. Through streaked-fly window the dull bisected horizon. A blue foil with cloud-like melt. That remains till dark and then falls away from me. I see the stars on nights when it is clear. I see the moon. There are nights when I think the moon is close enough for me to reach out and touch. I could stroke her cheek. In my eyes the moon is a woman. And she smiles. I would like to think her smile is directed at me, but I don’t know.
Now it is dawn. I stew low in the kitchen. It is a sparse affair, a table, a single chair, a cupboard inside of which are the following items: one bowl, one plate, one cup. What did I say? Simplicity is fierce like a potato. I am unworried by this isolation in which I live precisely because it is so simple, and in that lies my sense of a being who is supremely secure. In his own protected world. The water has boiled so I pour it into the French press. And that is how my day begins. With the simplicity of a pot of coffee. Is it simple? Well. The smell is one thing that you would notice. That earthenware aroma of bean treated by flame. How could one not like coffee. I suppose some don’t but I don’t know if I could like anyone who doesn’t also enjoy coffee. One moves in lesser realms.
My days are unlikely. They strike me as days drawn from another century. I hardly strike myself as modern in any way. My temperament is slow-moving and inclined toward what is wet and gloom-filled. Those things make me happy or happier. I think at times that I am not entitled to one moment of happiness, and this does not bother me in the least. I move. I rise. I get up. I brush my teeth. I come out of the bathroom into the kitchen to make coffee and this is how my day begins. I apologize if this strikes you as dull. Because it is. This is what being human means to me, because this is how I live my life, like a hog opened above a drain.
The phone rings.
Not today.
Why are you calling me?
I didn’t say anything of the sort.
You’re a liar!
Afterbirth!
Shit-stain!
Ha!
This conversation. Kaput!
I put the phone down. I hate talking on the phone. I hate the intrusion it works into my day. For in spite of what you might think I’m a busy man. I work hard at my job. And I do not like to be interrupted by the distractions the day might bring. Oh we go toward the day.
I go.
I trundle these here sliding stairs.
One foot preceding another. I could tell you about the climbing of stairs, how the weight shifts, how the heart floats inside the rib cage, how the teeth rattle against each other and how one’s eyeballs slosh about in the cavities that hold them. The sensation of climbing stairs is familiar to you because you are human, a monster like myself. If we share nothing else, we share a common combustible fear. When I get to the top of the stairs I will sit at my desk and open my notebook. I’ll begin.
For now, though, I climb the stairs. I notice my right hand hurts. The hand that serves me throughout the night. For that reason alone it would be my favored hand but it is also favored since it is deeply scored like the field-stones leading to the water pump hidden by an overgrowth of wild forsythia and where another new growth, something vine-like and thorny, seems to have established itself. This scoring is quite beautiful. I don’t mean to brag. But it seems so to me. As for the new growth, I noted it in my notebook only yesterday. Using pencil. Held by my right hand.
Small details reveal much about the person who remarks upon them. A pencil, for example, that is specified in a certain way, for example. A subtle unveiling. You have learned a little about me. And I might not have even the slightest clue. In fact I know I don’t. You should feel proud of yourself, for your alertness. Your eyes are working fine. Behind your eyes there might be secret plans for riots. And devotion to a merciless insurrection.
A heresy.
There being no greater heresy than love.

A Workshop

This looks like a very interesting workshop. I only wish I had the time to attend.

***

95 Cent Skool: Summer Seminar in Social Poetics
By jms | 1/20/2010 | 1 reacties »
The 95 Cent Skool is a 6 day long experimental seminar that will be offered in Oakland, California, July 26-31, 2010. It is convened by Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr. It will explore the possibilities of poetry writing as part of a larger social practice, at a distance from the economic and professional expectations of institutions. We believe a dozen people sitting around a table can’t ruin poetry, but that costs, professional context, mythologies of individual genius, and client/service-based models can — and in our own experiences teaching in pay-to-play writing programs, often do.

Our concerns in these six days begin with the assumption that poetry has a role to play in the larger political and intellectual sphere of contemporary culture, and that any poetry which subtracts itself from such engagements is no longer of interest. “Social poetics” is not a settled category, and does not necessarily refer to poetry espousing a social vision. It simply assumes that the basis of poetry is not personal expression or the truth of any given individual, but shared social struggle.

The 6 days will feature:
• Morning discussion groups lead by Juliana and Joshua
• Two guest speakers: one on the political economy and one on ecology
• Afternoon group and/or collaborative writing sessions
• Dinners and drinks at a nearby bar

The 6 days will not feature:
• Workshops led by a “master poet”
• Agents or editors who will advise your work into publication
• A Richard Wilbur Celebration Night
• Instruction in reciting poetry to bring out the emotional content of the poem

The final program will be available later in the Spring.

Each participant will be asked to contribute up to 1% of annual gross income as their 95 cents exclusively towards operating expenses. The workshop leaders and as many other organizers as possible will donate their time. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Email us if you’ve got questions about how much you can pay. We will also help in finding free housing for any participants in need.

The program is open to any interested participant with any level of prior engagement with poetry. This program is not affiliated with any institution of higher education and no transferrable institutional credit will be offered. There is no application fee, but space is limited. Please send a note indicating interest and experience to 95centskool@gmail.com

Please feel encouraged to re/post this listing to your blog or otherwise redistribute. If you would like to receive further information about the 95 Cent Skool, please email 95centskool@gmail.com, or join the 95 Cent Skool facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=300963159304&ref=mf
The 95 Cent Skool will happen with the support of Small Press Traffic and 'A 'A Arts.

Thank you very much,

the 95¢ Skoolers —

The Window: a play for puppets in three acts

ACT I


A man. A woman. Perhaps lovers.
Somewhere sometime.
Low music, intermittently.


Shannon:

In a dream I saw a woman swallow a python made of agate!

Jimmy:

When I was born my brother ran into the room and screamed, ‘Get that thing out of the house!’

Shannon:

Why do you insist on the lung’s cloudburst?

Jimmy:

That was nothing. Seven hammers and two butcher’s aprons, and three blind mice.

Shannon:

Price of an orange.

Jimmy:

What did you –

Shannon:

Price.

Jimmy:

What?

ACT II

Shannon:

Of.

Jimmy:

I don’t –

Shannon:

Price of an –

Jimmy:

Illness? A desperate longing?

Shannon:

[Slowly, with contempt.] Price of an orange. You dumb fuck!
It isn’t the fact, you being mean and everything. But you just couldn’t do it.

Jimmy:

They didn’t have to burn them. They didn’t need to press them with stones.

Shannon:

Perfection is a form of terror. Who spews such nonsense?

Jimmy:

Fight me if you want to. But it won’t do any good,
I still walk beyond certain fences. I’m protected
like a seashore, a porkpie hat.

Shannon:

And women accused of witchcraft.

Jimmy:

Plurality is sweet in the singular form.

ACT III

Shannon:

Who the fuck cares, who the fuck?

Jimmy:

Let me sour a beer in a familiar dive. Smoke
like a red-winged blackbird.

Shannon:

Sack it, sister! Clock out!

Jimmy:

No star is as bright as a cat entering a room.

Shannon:

Style doesn’t subvert class consciousness.

Jimmy:

But those in power know only their own corruption.

Shannon:

I would love even in the harrow, under stone,
sky, tempest, tyrant. I would love, Jimmy.
I would, too.



FINIS

POEM

Here is a wonderful poem from Remainland by Aase Berg, translated by Johannes Goransson, (Action Books, 2005):


THE HARE INFECTS DAD WITH RABIES

Hare-spring conduit
hare track
rabies is freedom
in the Year of the Hare

Here in the blackfathermilk
of loneliness
from the man of the woods
with hare