good news/bad news

the good news is (there is no good news and) my class is canceled, something to do with raw sewage in the basement. i smelled nothing myself, but the air conditioning was definitely not in operation. the experience, one might say, was more dank than stank.

the bad news is (there is no bad news and) i have a headache, and i blame it on a particularly gruesome French horror movie we screened this morning. it seemed to posit some sort of link between female masturbation and the onset of schizophrenia and psychopathy.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i've been foraging non-stop for the past couple of days like a wildebeest. it's all a part of my latest dietary experiment, which is designed to do something to my mojo. it will culminate this weekend when i plan to sit around with my eyes closed and my mouth shut for hours on end, withdrawing from sense objects and the like.

(like you do...)

twelve hours ago

1+1=1

john/yoko

And we talked about them
in an Amsterdam bed
not even an
ampersand
between them.
The audacity

the beauty

the courage
to call up the press
corps and state:

the making of love
will end this war.

Walt+Jache=_______

she told me, among other things, that she had been considering rubbing garlic paste on her foot. but this is beside the point.

the point is that somehow our conversation

(and those that came before)
(and those that are yet to come)

sent me back to Uncle Walt, and an afternoon i spent with Jache, watching him annotate "Song of Myself" and explain that Whitman was my "150 year old queer Brooklyn Angel." an excerpt:


I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance,
always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction,
always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights,
well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul,
and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

...

well put.

what's for Munch?

yesterday, after lunch, i talked to a friend of mine whose first child is due in October. he showed me an email from his wife: a 3-D sonogram image of their future son (or daughter), which she had Photoshop-ed into a famous painting by a dead Norwegian. it was truly bizarre, in appearance and intent, but this is beside the point.

the point is that another friend of mine called me yesterday evening, just after supper, to leave a joke on my answering machine about a one-legged waitress. this, too, would be beside the point except that his wife's labor was being induced within the hour, and by now they have seen and embraced their beautiful new baby girl.

the only logical conclusion is that there is some sort of tenuous, ethereal, (non-causal) connection between my mealtime activities and the reproductive cycles of my friends.

(unrelated); i am planning some manner of fast for next week.

short poem written after a brief encounter with Lorca

I wish to learn more of Lorca,
his generation and murder,
that nameless grave in Granada.

as i came down the stairs...

as i came down the stairs last night i happened upon the following:

three people (presumably students) standing beside
five large trash bags (definitely clear), looking at
one stray cat (mainly gray) staring down
one raccoon, (possibly) rabid.

"There were mysteries around here." - Kerouac

changes

the last time i saw her was over seven years ago, when i drove two hours in a black VW with a garbage bag in lieu of passenger side window. it was late autumn, and someone had smashed out the glass the night before to steal a twenty dollar CD player. i chattered and froze the whole way there, trying to keep warm by talking to the woman who was my wife.

it didn't work.

what i remember most was her diatribe about two buildings
(still smoldering)
that fell down two days after i moved to New Jersey.

[lapse]

last night i saw her again,
older, softer, happier...

likewise.

geography

somewhere tonight in West Boca,

there are cats fighting on the rooftops and fence posts,
bullfrogs mating on the golf course under the baptism of sprinklers,
and one sleepover in progress, a giant bird keeping watch over it all.

ten miles northeast,

there is a boy up past his bedtime,
stumbling his way out of the rabbit hole
into a research proposal, listening to a mysterious British beauty.

yikes, tomfoolery, and procrastination

there is a yikes in my room and tomfoolery underfoot; i labor under the feathered weight of procrastination. Borzage and Hemingway walk into a bar and say:

[
H: 72 hours from now it will be finished.
B: 48 hours from now it will be too late.
H: 24 hours from now it will be forgotten.
B: 12 hours from now it will be a dream.
]

the preceding dialog is translated from the French.

Oppenheimer, NJ (1965)

I see you at a cocktail party,
seventeen, with the man
who split the atom.

He is helpless

and smiling.
You are wrapped in a serpent,
as he pretends to be Death

destroyer of worlds

while you laugh,
sipping a Manhattan,
twisting your hair.

the strangeness

last night i dreamed that Hitler was on the loose, and i ran through the streets trying to warn whomever would listen.

i warned my professor, who worked in a comic book shop;
i warned my ex-wife, who engaged in a warehouse diatribe;
i warned an event organizer, who loitered next door.

but the strange part was the way in which i voiced my concern:

"Hitler! Come meet Jean Genet."

(w)retching v. fetching

last night a thought occurred to me:

is it better to be a fetching wretch, or a retching fetch?

my initial reaction was that fetching wretch was the way to go, but my impulse was born of linguistic prejudice. it feels good in the mouth, something about the "g" sound's (near) elision with the "r," that beautiful silent "w" sandwiched in between.

and yet the whole matter became more complicated when i stopped to consider what i was saying. the implacable nature of wretchedness is a heavy burden to bear, especially when weighed against the passing discomfort of retching. perhaps i had it all wrong, for who would trade the pleasant deceit of vision for the unchanging divinity of sight?

"i think i need to think about this some more."

the response?

"yes, it sounds like that's exactly how you need to spend your time..."

blind man v. flibbertigibbet

in class yesterday we screened a very odd French film which was marked by a distinct absence of sound and one (brief) glimpse of an adolescent penis. but this is beside the point.

the point is that on the way to class i saw a very short blind man crossing the road wearing a backpack and carrying a garment bag. i felt an urge to describe him as "a blind midget scurrying across the road" - but he was a wee bit too big to be a midget. my situation became further problematized by the ambiguous linguistic morality of the term "midget," especially in conjunction with the rodential gerund "scurrying."

this line of thought then led me to the next realization that i really had no idea if the man was blind or not. he had a cane, and was tapping his way through the crosswalk, but i really had no idea. this simple situation, thirty seconds at a red light (which would soon become a green light), had created all manners of story and elaboration, imagination and obfuscation.

how many empty symbols and syllables do we assign to each moment of our lives, instead of just allowing the wonder to wash over us and carry us away?

pointless

yesterday, after depositing Mardou at the airport, i had tea with an amateur Serbian astrologer who told me about the various houses (1st, 7th, etc) and how they may (or may not) relate to anything. she warned me that Neptune is a slow mover, which seemed somewhat rude, but i suppose she does have a point.

i, on the other hand, do not.

taxi says what?

i'm about to go pick up Mardou (curbside) and take her to the airport. i'm pleasantly surprised because i didn't think i would get to see her this visit. but this is beside the point.

the point is that this time last year we weren't even speaking, and these are the things of which i have to remind myself (right now) to make it through these mid-afternoon malaise...

faith

i am learning, right now, what it means to practice faith.

it does not feel like i thought it would.

untitled

the taste of coffee,
black,
on the morning
of the first snow
in November.

the smell of rain
at midnight,
cool,
on the last day
of spring.

the pain of leaving
a woman you love,
beautiful,
as you say goodbye.

waiting to drown

two nights ago i dreamed i was on an ocean liner. i walked the decks, wearing a life preserver, and eventually found myself at the rear of the boat looking out over the edge at the sea below. i stepped up onto the railing and jumped.

i felt the cold rush of water pass my ears and, before the life preserver could pull me back to the surface, i pulled it up across my shoulders and over my head. it sat floating next to me while i calmly waited to drown. but this is beside the point.

the point is that the dreams are (slowly) beginning to return, and i still hold hope that they might somehow serve to relive this strain i am under.

"what's going on?"

good question.

i drove up to a stop light on my lunch break and heard what sounded like the voices that open "What's Going On?" before the sax comes in. i turned to my left and looked into the car beside me, a gray Mercury sedan, full of young men talking and laughing.

one of them was casually holding a gun.

i slowly turned my head back and waited for the light to turn. i went to the park and ate my sushi. i watched the birds circle overhead, thinking of Marvin.

"brother, brother..."

"Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream..."

i have not remembered (well) my dreams in many weeks, and i cannot help but sense there is some meaning in their absence. the past few nights have seen their slow return, and i wait bated and breathless for this confusion to clear. this morning i dreamed for hours a single line:

the use of consextualization and rack focus to turn the object into...

(six) toeing the line

i went to work last night and a friend of mine told me her neighbor had deposited a polydactyl cat. this particular (beautiful) genetic aberration has 22 and a fetching feline tuxedo. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i would love to love this cat, and my living situation is about to change, but i'm not sure about the timing. timing seems to be so much of everything these days (it always is) and last night i called Mardou as i walked home from work. her grandma had died, and she had spent a frigid, miserable weekend in the Midwest. she said:

"i'm going to be in Florida this weekend."
- why?
"i'm a bridesmaid; it's my second job."
- oh...

and so we made plans (perhaps) to have chutney for breakfast Monday morning after she finishing holding court on Sunday night. one would think this is beside the point, but it's not, because:

Mardou is the one who taught me timing, two summers ago when it seemed as though the sky was sliced open and dumped stars on the earth below.

one last tries

Jache came over yesterday to discuss, with me, my confusion. he made a chart with words on it like the following: "poet, artist, yogi." he spoke of parallel lines, Ginsberg and bodhisattva. he told me that sometimes you have to create "one last try"

...but sometimes the universe creates it for you.

the things not read on misty Sunday mornings

...