6am, 30 September 2007

my sister and i went dancing in Miami, and when the lights came on at 5am, everyone in the club grew uglier. we could see who was on what for how long and how strong, and my sister and i became suddenly better looking. we drove to South Beach to celebrate with pancakes in an unpleasantly cold café.

at the booth behind us sat two large men, and it was impossible to discern whether they were siblings or lovers. one berated the other as his hamburger grew cold, and eventually his performance caused the whole row of tables to shake:

(my sister turns around)

"watch it buddy."

(the man jumps up)

"what the f_ck? what the f_ck?"

(my sister is from Baltimore)

"you're bangin' the table."

(bulging waistband implies gun)

"what the f_ck?"

(my sister is from Baltimore)

"[silence]"

(three men at corner booth stand up)

"is there a problem here?"

(man turns to face three men)

"what the f_uck?"

(three men step forward)

"is there a problem here?"

(lover/brother stands)

"what the f_uck?"

(three men in unison)

"we from New York."

(man steps forward)

"what the f_ck we care 'bout New York? "

(lover/brother steps forward)

"we from Camden."

[lapse]

we asked for our tab and left for home, while (unknown) rappers exchanged numbers in the corner booth of the café.

La Jetée v. les singes

i watched La Jetée.

it rendered me speechless.

something must be said.

[
Chris Marker's film left me wishing i had never seen 12 Monkeys, not because it was a poor adaptation (it was a surprisingly close reading of the original, right down to the mise-en-scène of the jailors), but because my mind wanted to superimpose Gilliam's interpretation. the underlying issues are the same in both, but in 12 Monkeys they are subsumed by the narrative, effaced and rendered invisible to the point of impotence.

]

these things:

memory, Freud, childhood trauma, Oedipus and obsession

are at the fore of La Jetée,

without the distraction:

moving subjects...

poetry

the difference between

and prose

not to mention

allusion:

Vertigo.

carnivorousness

my yin has been threatening to eat a hamburger for over a week now, and in an attempt to stave off her carnivorousness, i suggested we head north instead and dine on ahi burgers. my question was timed to minimize the impact of left brain influence and she agreed, but this is beside the point.

the point is that the last time i had an ahi burger was well over two years ago, with two friends now living cross continent, Pacific and Northwestern. they were keen on late night dining and more than once we shared meals in diners, ordering french fries and covering them with kitschup.

one night, in Fort Lauderdale, we sat waiting for a milkshake and i expounded dubious wisdom, insisting certitude and eulogizing impermanence, not knowing both of them would be gone in less than one year's time...

on the occassion of the 4th anniversary of my father's 55th birthday

We rode in silence. My hand on your leg but all I held was my own counsel, wondering if the words were cutting through you...

We made our exit. Three right turns. And stopped after the first left in the road. Birds behind us and above, forming and reforming. Ebb, flow, a mandelbrot in the sky...

We watched and commented. You said surreal. I said they were there to pick the bones and wondered if you took my meaning. Or rather how you would take it. You said nothing...

We returned to our drive and you said you would never love anyone more than me. I waited and strained. My will was overcome by a lapse in judgment:

"Is there was a 'but' coming?"

You said no.

We hugged after we parked, came inside, lay down and talked in the dark. About him, about us, about our failing youth as it ails and withers in the face of experience. At best we have a pressed leaf (where a seed was once planted, and a tree might have grown)
next to our deathbed hearts...

Before we met I felt my will shaped by fate, and now I wonder if I was wrong. Perhaps she is as cruel as I've heard. My charm is not what it was, and the old bird has lain raw our skin and taken her toll in pinpricks and tar.

- from my journal (approximately), 25 September 2005

poem fragment under construction

the last day of summer passed without mention,
and i woke up in autumn,
wondering where it had gone:

was it

squeezed
between dreams
stretching inward
towards infinity?

or

was it

trampled
beneath the weight
of an endless
night?

or

was it

merely forgotten,

lost to

the celluloid

memory -

Bogart's Parisian Golgotha.

Rosh Hashanah is like...

relishing

kasha varnishkes

hiding from

gefilte fish

and playing with

Mr. Potato Head

and

the wake of self

inflicted

haircuts.

shofar, so good...

i met a (witch) doctor yesterday who told me my yin had the blood pressure of a cadaver and was in desperate need of red meat. she (the doctor, not the yin) had just conducted a thorough exam of her (the yin, not the doctor) feet to rule out the possibility of hormone-related gall bladder meridian disturbance. thankfully the results came back negative, but the doctor whispered that my yin may, in fact, have brain cells living in her stomach.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my yin and i are ringing in the new year at her mother's (yin-in-law?) place this afternoon, and i'm excited because not only will this be our first year celebrating Rosh HaShanah together, it will be my first time celebrating it at all. i've been practicing my "L'Shanah Tovah" (in my head), and so long as it doesn't get lost amongst the fragments of French and snippets of Sanskrit,
i suspect the evening will be a success...

dancing with kid sister

we once sat outside, drinking tonic water, and eating brownies in the rain. she was in love, i was out; we were not where we wanted to be.

two years ago, in the midst of quinine and chocolate, we sat on crab-
infested couches and danced in the streets, waiting for the ping pong balls to stop falling, hoping to find a way to stay in, and out, of the loves we thought we were...

illustration from:
For An American Girl With a Czech Surname
1st edition chapbook, limited to 50 copies
(suggested) contribution $5.00
email: circlesallthewaydown@gmail.com

allusive eulogy for James Dennis Carroll*

in a movie theater
eyes shut:

i saw you

freezing in
the arctic
of our dreams.

i saw you

the sand sifting
through your fingers
like another's darkness.

i saw you

anxious with
thoughts of bare oceans
that move as thighs
of an eventual sunset.

i saw you

dancing like the children
of great diplomats
with our lean bodies draped
in bedsheets and leather flags
while the orchestra made sounds.

i saw you

always too near
and I am everything
that comes moaning free
and wet
through the lips
of our lovely grind.

i saw me

like you

(I wasn't built by
any process
other than
the poem itself...)

the poetry did not arrive
until
the plagiarism was over.

*all italics from Jim Carroll's Living at the Movies, © Penguin Books

in memory of swimming in Fort Lauderdale at night

Robert Lowell
(died thirty years ago today)

“I am not feeding you,” she said

(and meant it)

so begins

the thai tofu toothpick tango.

the car, the talk, the question:

do you want

an eighties flick,
with cusackian overtones?
and we can talk
in the parking lot,
in front of the record store,
with the sun burnt,
sienna
and sinking in the sky.

or

a late nineties indie,
with kerouacian undertones?
and we can ramble as we walk,
and amble as we talk.
long tracking shots as we trek
from the record store
to the book store
to the twilight shore.
changing store fronts
marking the shift in mood,
(dissolve to)
swimming in the ocean at night,
our push to keep apart,
the undertow
pulling us back together.

excerpt and illustration from:
For An American Girl With a Czech Surname
1st edition chapbook, limited to 50 copies
(suggested) contribution $5.00
email: circlesallthewaydown@gmail.com

self-plagiarism and repetition along a vertical axis

Variation on "Ladri di biciclette"

From birth
to breath
we steal:

one moment.
one moment..
one moment...

calling it our own.

Children watch
fathers abandon
them for bicycles.

(the dharma
can never be lost
can never be found)

We channel Goths and Gauls
from the cinema-ed comfort of
condominiums, watching Empires fall

in post-election years.

Writing
variations
on responses to
Italian neo-realism,
no longer looking for
Buddhahood, Mario Buda.

Eight years since.
one moment since..
eighty-one years since...
one moment since....

the Smiths v. Dorian Gray

it's raining and gray outside.

i'm listening to the Smiths

in a poorly-lit living room

and

anticipation mixes with laze.

earlier this morning

i remembered Gainesville.

i read Oscar Wilde

and watched

insomnias unfold.

the metallic click of space heaters

on February nights.

i still recall:

that

fleeting feeling of fleeing

those empty days

and the

siphoning of night.

two years ago (tonight) was like:

"transgression"

image from:

For An American Girl With a Czech Surname
1st edition chapbook, limited to 50 copies
(suggested) contribution $5.00
email: circlesallthewaydown@gmail.com

Scrabble, Jane Fonda and Jache

i spent last night playing Scrabble and reading about Jane Fonda's orgasms, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i received a communique from Jache sometime in the middle of the night, and although it has been more than a year since my flirtation with text messaging, this one has refused to leave my mind. i teetered between concern and disturbance for most of the morning, and only just now did i call and leave a message:

w

or

ds

fall

short,

is

t

he

re
simply

not

hing
to be sa

i

d

?

two years ago (today)...

i invited a friend to my apartment and asked her to perform a puja on a small altar i had obtained four days earlier. i had purchased it at a thrift store in the western end of the county, and the location was staffed exclusively by downtrodden employees who lived in barracks-style dormitories on the property. the compound came into existence because (allegedly) a man had a vision of Jesus Christ in Fort Lauderdale in the 1950's. but this is beside the point.

the point is that the altar cost four dollars, and my purchase was inspired not so much by a vision as by blind faith. something compelled me to spend the weekend sanding and stripping the layers of varnish off the nightstand, and once this task was complete, i reapplied three layers of eggshell, hiding from the downpours under the stairwell at my apartment building. Mardou was in Denver with her boyfriend for Labor Day weekend and i was certain with her return would come the news of her relationship's demise, freeing us from the totem of infidelity around which we had been dancing.

that's not what happened, but this is also beside the point.

the point is that my friend came over and performed the puja. she explained to me that the altar would be no more holy after the ceremony than it had been before, that we were merely bringing awareness to the divinity that already dwelled within. she said that it had been

holy in the thrift store,

holy as a nightstand,

holy as lumber,

holy as a tree.

she said it would be holy in the landfill, long after i was gone...

the altar now sits in the bedroom we share.

excerpt from a dream journal

"in the dream i'm on the set of some porn movie as director or producer, and i'm surrounded by slightly overweight middle-aged performers, 45-50 year old. some scenes are on the beach and others take place in a theater. the final section is in a cold room of some second story walk-up. the thermostat is set to thirty degrees.

i'm unsure how these dreams were connected, or why they are so unsettling, except that they were permeated by the same listless sadness. i could sense it in the tired, over-worn bodies of the actors, and their quiet desperation haunted me as i woke, and woke, and woke, and couldn't stay asleep as the sun slowly rose on the other side of the curtains...

when i finally rose, i felt physically sore, like my own body was one of those about to be abused in the dream."

smaller portions

apparently brewer's yeast is this year's pumpkin, and on my walk to fetch the paper this morning i encountered a giant one-clawed crab vying for sidewalk dominance with a (presumed) middle-aged crack addict riding a child's bicycle. suffice to say that my presumption applied less to the man's age than his crack intake, but either way he was kind enough to announce his presence, and i turned to see his sun-beaten stomach revealed by his wife-beaten t-shirt rolled halfway up his torso. he turned into the McDonald's parking lot, where i can only hope to imagine that he used the drive-thru window.

but this is beside the point.

the point is i took another piece of past karma off my plate yesterday afternoon, and i was left feeling not only relief, but also astonishment at how high it was once was. after six years, seven months and twenty-nine days of piling various calamities on top of one another, i've spent the past few years reducing the one-time smorgasbord to a mere smidgen of its former self - the lesson?

smaller portions.