For those readers of the blog in the NYC area: I’ll be one of the featured readers at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe tonight. Show’s at 10 PM, and I’ll be on the bill with several other fine performers.
The Nuyo is on 3rd Street between Avenues B & C. Stop by and say hi!
I awoke and rose
61 minutes later
thinking I’d just looked at the clock
a minute before. I must have
spent a minute
thinking about why I was awake,
then fallen back to sleep.
It’s as if I stopped
for a whole hour.
Only the memory
of having seen the time
tells me I’d existed then
in a time before
this groggy chain-smoking moment on the couch
in front of a screen waiting to be filled
with proof that I do maintain a presence
during the moments
when I am unconscious.
It is 7:15 AM, EDT, 8/29/09.
All hail 4:59 AM, EDT, 8/29/09.
It was raining then, as it is now;
I was hungry then, as I am now;
the urge to rise and work and smoke
were all the same back then.
Nothing’s changed except the time,
the light in the windows,
and this documentation.
If I go back to bed now,
(and I will)
will I even wake up
again? If I do, won’t my first thought
likely be the memory of this moment?
How, exactly, does the future ever arrive?
he’s getting down to work this morning
but daydreaming about
Pet Rocks
how some guy made
a million bucks
selling rocks
in cardboard boxes
with a little straw
and an owner’s manual inside
how they sold out
and how some people refused
to buy them and just picked up
rocks where they were
and put them in boxes
and called them pet rocks
and others sold knockoffs
that had little googly eyes
hot glued to them and those
sold well too
but the point was
everyone had a pet rock
and called them pet rocks
and cared for their pet rocks
and they were all just rocks
but more than one person
got rich anyway
he’s thinking about Pet Rocks
while folding the T-shirts
on his kitchen table
packing them in boxes
shipping them out
never even bothering to read
the slogans of the minute
that he silkscreened on the shirts
last night after midnight
The sand-filled boy
became bottom-heavy,
his past running through him,
holding him down.
Always so worried about time
running out
that he never learned to turn
somersaults
and reverse the process.
When they buried him, of course,
he found an equilibrium.
If he had been able to care,
he might have been happy with that.
this fading night
has been
dark chocolate
biting softly back
at my happy tongue
but dawn is coming soon
and with it will come the moment
when I will
bite down
to learn whether what I’ve chosen
measures up
my fear is not
that I will be disappointed
but
that I may not be
utterly delighted
that I will have imagined
more than I can chew
and that by dismissing
the good
because it is not
perfection
I will forget the sweet stab
of dark chocolate
that has enthralled me
thus far
Three tracks up, two for immediate download this week only: “By The Numbers,” a tender tale of a school shooting with great bass work by Faro; and perennial favorite “The Last Word,” aka “Let’s Fuck.”
Our first album, “Jim’s Fall,” included a 17 minute track of the title suite of poems. We’ve re-recorded it from scratch and will be re-releasing it as an EP of sorts all on its own, now broken out with each poem being its own separate track. My favorite track from that effort, “Jim Loses His Grip,” which is a staple of our live shows, is also up for your listening pleasure although not for download…sorry guys…
Keep watching this space for more info…and visit the “Show Schedule” tab above for access to the tracks and info about where we’ll be…for instance, I’ll be in NYC this Saturday for a solo show at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe. Love to see you there.
The ragged hair of the unkempt lawn
offers a mixed message:
cut me, restore order;
let me grow, keep a wildness in the city.
I imagine all the possibilities:
then, with a sigh,
pull the mower from the shed
and begin to hold my small place in the world.
The leftist
was all about summer,
enjoyed the humidity
and the heat. It made the people
dissatisfied, reminded them of the cost
of air conditioning, unsafe city pools
made less safe by the absence of lifeguards
due to budget cuts, and the way the police
stared suspiciously at small knots
of young brown men on corners.
The conservative looked forward
to winter. The cold kept the people
close to home, the snow
piled up in dirty ridges
like border walls, the rough and narrow streets
made rougher and narrower, and everyone
eyeing their parking spaces in paranoia,
guarding their spots with rickety chairs,
boxes, and entitlement for having gone out
and dug them themselves.
A few always said:
Give me fall. Give me
the riot in the trees, the flames
along the branches. Give me the dying
and the sidewalks full of debris,
the sense of things failing before they can be
reborn.
And the whole while the rest of us,
the unlabeled people,
thought all year round about spring
and its fertile mud, how early snaps
of warmth would bring hope of temperance,
how the green would hover unseen in the buds
and bulbs not yet awake, then
would in one day transform
the world when we weren’t looking
to something perfectly suited to our needs.
Somewhere, of course,
was an old woman who chattered incessantly
to herself about cycles
while sitting at her window as she had
for years
but no one wants to hear that,
whatever the weather…
In every Paradise —
and there are many,
despite what you’ve been told —
there is a weathered door
or shabby gate
for letting in the things
that are alleged to be anathema
to Paradise.
It’s no mistake or oversight.
It’s part of the plan to make things
perfect there.
It’s not a Paradise unless
it takes into account
that human need for
energy expended against
threat, and
also offers comfort
for those residents who are not happy
unless some taint of the Other
is possible.
The existence of the door
is known to all,
and in the gambling dens of Paradise
there is always action, heavy action,
on the exact moment when the hinges
will creak. Breathless with anticipation,
the happiest people in the universe
always hover silently
around the monitors,
hoping for that sound.
I’ll be doing two shows in the next two weeks — both solo features, without Faro.
Friday 8/21 at the More Than Words Bookstore in Waltham;
Saturday 8/29 at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe in NYC as part of the Verses Series.
Click on the Show Schedule tab above, go to Reverbnation, and then hit the “Shows” tab, for details.
Would love to see you there…
The five purposes of close order drill are to:
1. Provide simple formation from which various combat formations could readily be assumed.
Look for their fear.
Slip your hand into it, make it
your puppet,
pull it close,
make it rigid,
make it dance.
The dinner table provides
the ideal environment for this.
2. Move units from one place to another in a standard and orderly manner, while maintaining the best possible appearance.
Speak to them
with great attention
to their faults. Do not fail
to hit the same notes again and again:
inadequacy, failure, shame at heritage
denied and betrayed…and ensure
that nothing of the conversation
will be heard outside that room.
3. Provide the troops an opportunity to handle individual weapons.
If you are focused
soon enough the words
will come from them,
tailored, well-pressed,
4. Instill discipline through precision and automatic response to orders.
and when they cringe
you won’t even have to watch
to know it’s happening.
5. Increase a leader’s confidence through the exercise of command by giving
proper commands and drilling troops.
Won’t you accept the salute,
the hands above their eyes,
shading themselves from the heat?
You have earned it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* close order drill objectives, in italics, taken from USMC Website
Make up a word to describe
a sunflower’s turning toward the sun —
you’ll have to stand between flower and sun
with the sun at your back to do so.
You’ll tell me, then, that you can stand
to one side to watch, and that’s true:
but how will you know what it feels like
to be a sunflower if you do?
webcams will tonight be streaming
live images from inside the mind
of one travis benson, who has managed
to insert one in each ear and tune them
to a frequency of light he has determined
will allow the visual display of his thoughts.
before today, travis was a virtual unknown
who labored in a basement in some undetermined city
to bring his vision to fruition. only a handful
of esoterically inclined and fully wired aficionados
of the fuzzier edges of experimentation
have been aware of his work, as well as
certain governments who have sought him for some time.
in gray buildings on the outskirts of capitals worldwide
hired geeks stand ready to track him down when he comes on line,
as their masters imagine a future bonanza for intelligence work
if the technique works as rumored. the possibilities,
it is thought, will be endless: the passive voice of a spy’s mind
revealing all the intricacies of espionage, the names and places
of deadly deceits and plotted assassinations…at the same time,
artists have waited eagerly for this moment, hoping that tonight they’ll see
the threads of creativity exposed in the bright storm anticipated
in travis’ skull. what will be discovered in the crannies
of the genius who created this moment, a moment only ever before captured
in the illusory fragments of thought that until now have been deemed
masterpieces — the sistine chapel, the hulks of giant buddhas carved
into mountains, strains of gamelan and symphony, the words of writers
imperfectly reflecting what they were thinking?
at 2315 GMT, travis benson’s mind goes online
and screens go dark all over the world.
at first, the images are confusing: a forest of eyes.
a field of small birds feeding on germs. a city
where the streets are paved with chlldren’s bones.
an immense fall of leaden water salted with the hearts of mice.
as the viewers — millions of them, billions perhaps,
all focused on one travis benson — begin to sort through
what they are seeing, the images on the screen begin to shift
into a story of disjoint and ripple, unremediated rejections
and leftover resentments. in india, there are those who swear
they see kali charming them; american racists see nothing but black teeth
gnawing the arms of white women; a businessman in caracas
imagines himself in the grip of apes with scimitars. the pope,
secretly hoping for some proof of the divine, is startled
when jesus appears waving a wedding ring. a child in new york city
runs screaming to her mother demanding that new doll, the one
that dreams and beats and frets.
around the world, the people slowly reach in zombie time
for the switches. they go outside and stare up at the stars,
holding each other, talking of love, of family, anything
to erase what they’ve seen.
the artists turn back
to their canvases and keyboards,
painting and playing
hymns and wedding marches,
landscapes and erotic joy.
what the governments think
is classified.
and as for travis benson: what else can be said?
no one wants to know him anymore,
this ugly man who has done an ugly thing.
he disconnects
the cameras. he goes outside.
in the ensuing days
he will heal himself,
staring anonymously at the things
he’s wrought.
memory,
travis thinks, is a creature
of habit. it feeds in the same places
unless something changes…
and something has changed.
a frequency of light.
of lightness.
it’s cool outdoors for once
but the fan in my living room
is running anyway because
after days in a locked room
sweating the details with sad people
who are each sweating the future
as they try to figure out
how to get a job these days
now that their company’s closing
and after trying to help them
write resumes about things they’ve done on instinct
for years
trying to make them recognize what they’ve accomplished
with their perfect attendance and their good cheer
in the face of bad faith
trying to make them see
that they have done far more with their lives
than pack boxes and load trucks
trying to help them prepare to answer
jaded interviewers’ pointed questions
about their worth to another industry
trying to keep a smile on everyone’s face
(including my own as I earn my own pay
on the backs of their crises) and trying not to puke
as I offer multiple pretty versions of
“buck up little camper”
to people as scared as they can be
about being older and trying to get paid
and keep living in the new world
the way they did in the old world
after being asked by one of them
“so
if I do this right
I’ll get a job?”
and having every single one of them
go silent
as they looked to me for some
certainty
after a few days of that
i need this cool air
blowing on me
sitting
shirtless
tieless
and all alone in my room
I don’t know anything for sure
except that it feels better
here
than it did
there
where I couldn’t answer
“yes”
If I had
owned a gun,
if I’d had one at hand
any of the times I’ve wished for one,
if I had kept my little Browning
instead of trading it for acid,
if Dad had let me keep
the 12-gauge Ithaca,
if I had decided to take the .22
with me when I left home,
I’d not be writing this
now.
Which is a comfort
to some
but not to me, who hesitates
with a knife and can’t decide
on a pill, who is too heavy
for a rope, who floats and swims too well
to drown, who cannot abide
the idea of a long fall to hard ground.
If I had a gun
I’d surrender to its swiftness.
If I had a gun
I could make it do the work I can’t.
If I had a gun
who would stop me?
If I had a gun
there’d be no more “if,”
only
“when.”
Dark Matter 