Dark Matter

i’ve determined that reading literary theory has added nothing to my poetic repertoire — neither skill nor useful knowledge.

i’m a gonna stop.

I’m back in NYC after a long year…

SAMPLE— Film, Music, Word, & Performance
Wednesday, March 30th (6:30 – 8:00pm)

OPEN MIC NIGHT featuring TONY BROWN, KYRA WOLFE, &
ELIEL LUCERO
Hosted by OSCAR BERMEO
FREE!

Bronx Museum of the Arts (1040 Grand Concourse at
165th St. Bronx. NY)

DIRECTIONS
Train- Take the D or B to 167th St/Grand Concourse or
the 4 to 161st/Yankee Stadium.
Bus- Take the Bx1, Bx2, or BxM4 Express to 165th and
Grand Concourse.
Car from Manhattan- Take the FDR Drive to Willis
Avenue Bridge, stay to your left merge onto the Major
Deegan North. Exit at 138th St & Grand Concourse.
Proceed to 165th Str & Grand Concourse.

FOR MORE INFO

Home

Sometime in the last hour
she typed
“the joys of a fresh blade”
into the subject field
before posting a message.
Then, she posted three collages
she’d obviously made after settling a new
Xacto blade into
its handle.

So: it is not about
what I first thought it was about.
I think about it anyway
while flicking one of my own knives
open, shut, open, then shut.
When this one’s locked
the blade does not shake
and the joint will never break
when stressed. That’s the sound of security, I say out loud,
that whisper-snick of the lock engaging
when the blade reaches its proper place,
and I shave a short stripe
off my forearm
to test the edge.

But we’re so different, I think.
Cutting is cutting
and craft is craft.
Collage rejoins severed things;
but then again, things do have to be severed first
before you pick up the pieces to begin.

I set the knife down for a moment.
There are three pictures on the screen. I have no idea
how long it takes to make such things.
There was never a chance or a choice
to learn it before now.

So I’ll email her and ask one thing:
How strong and sharp does the edge have to be?

The most recent poem I posted is, I think, pretty different from what I’ve been posting.

It was a piece I had been working on, had abandoned, and decided to revisit after the “ghostly” comments of yesterday (thanks, upendedurn and anselm23). I figure if an image is in the air enough to make a couple of people look for it, and to make me use the same image in a different poem, it’s time to go back and look at it again.

I put finishing touches to it, at least for this draft, and posted it. I felt like I needed to get back in the saddle fast after yesterday’s locked, whiny post.

I looked it over and realized how different it was structurally, and it struck me that a major difference was that it was written in Word instead of directly in the LJ posting space. That seems to make me more willing to stretch out and play with longer lines, more extended narrative structures, etc.

The tools, I think, make a difference.

I long ago stopped writing in longhand, not finding it especially well adapted to the way I write (with lots of editing as I go, cut and paste, etc.) Word works well enough for me.

I may go back, now, and see if there is a difference in the way I write a longhand poem as well; something I’ve missed there that I need to recapture — something in kinesthetic learning, etc.

Does anyone else have anything to say on their experience with this?

Ghost, you call me. Not the ghost, but
Ghost, making that my proper name, not (of course)
my Christian name, but the older kind: the one
that means something and tells something about you
that remains true. There’s nothing new
about me being a ghost, only that I’m called
by that name now, and I’m finally comfortable with it.

Back when I was just a guy, long before I leaped off
that bridge to get here, I used to daydream about flying
and walking through walls. I used to wish for the power
to blow through a window so everyone knows you’re there
and you don’t even have to show up.
I never had impact, and didn’t want risk,
so my fantasy became impact without risk: that would be the life, I thought.
A good joke: I’ve got the life I wanted, now that I don’t have a life.

I used to cringe when they told scary stories at camp.
I remember that later I laughed at horror films, pretending bravery.
Once you’re here, you find it’s nothing like those things. It’s all so – routine.
You show up at regular times, whistle a little in a dark hallway,
provide a moment of clarity to someone who’s used to being safe and warm.
You become a lesson no one believes in until it’s learned.

But it’s not all bad.
It’s a beautiful world when you can’t really feel it.
It takes your breath away sometimes to see the way it moves.
I spend years just standing in front of the strangest things:
not sunsets, not rainbows, but garbage trucks and fires
and drive-by victims. It’s all so beautiful, the way
disposal has become an art form. (It was my art, after all.)

So, Ghost is what you call me, and I’ll take it, the way
I always took it: with a bowed head. Before, I would always
come when called because I had no place to be
other than the place I was called to. Nothing’s really changed:
I blow through, bother you, maybe I’ll be remembered in your children’s stories.
Maybe we’ll see each other one night on the landing, where
you might call me Ghost,
or you might call me imaginary.
No matter.
I’ve always answered to either one.

I’m having a bit of a crisis — just a dip after a bit of hypomania — my therapy appointment last night made me think about stuff I don’t like to consider.

I do not like to admit how much I miss certain things, certain people.

I am not complete. Not in that stupid ass Jerry McGuire way; more like there’s something missing that ought to be there — a hand hold for people to get a grip on. I’ve chipped them all off, I think.

I feel my age. I’m aging away from the people around me. I am afraid of looking ridiculous. I am afraid of that.

I snap too easily, say dumb things, can’t think, can’t concentrate. I haven’t written a poem longer than twenty lines or so in months — not because they aren’t there to be written, but because I can’t focus long enough to write them.

I’m afraid of not being a poet anymore.

I am failing at things I should do easily, and I don’t know how to get back to wwhere I was. I don’t even know if I should or can, but I know I don’t like it here.

Is this all I’ve got to look forward to? Because I’m scared of that, too.

I’m living scared. I’m never scared. I’m always scared.

This is not good.

(NOTE: please don’t call. I’m not going to talk about it after this. I needed to give it away because I needed to look at it on the screen and know I’d admitted it in public — I’m scared of where I am right now, not in a suicidal way, but in terms of how I’m changing.

Thank you for reading this.

Repeat: I’m not going to speak of it again. Please, do not call me.)

First change: the title.

WELCOME ABOARD

Continue reading

I’ll look at this again in the AM. Feedback?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Career Advice

Welcome aboard.

First, orientation:
this place is big, a brick
house with no funk.

Next, code of conduct:
You would not believe how easy it is
to not speak to anyone here — just let them talk
and they’ll barely notice you.

Stay one step ahead of the boss in terms
of your computer savvy
and you can play God
indefinitely.

Lunchtime: try a salad and an antipsychotic
chased with pure spring water. Save a
Diet Coke for later, when you will need
the caffeine to help scrape together a little attention.

The bar across from this building is another world.
You will need a special suit to breathe in its atmosphere.
The creatures there use camouflage and mimicry to stay alive.

The grim men you see haunting the conference rooms
after marketing meetings and training classes
live on leftover brownies and stalled ambitions.
They own the sports cars at the fringes of the parking lot.
In other places, they would call them ghosts.
Do not let them touch you.
No one you work for will ever return your love,
even if they say that they do.
Do not allow yourself to pretend they will,
even for a second. They will only know you’re leaving
when you turn in your badge,
but if you work here long enough,
you won’t need the badge at all,
because everyone will know you.

Everyone already does know you, in fact;
we seem to remember you,
as if you’d worked here before,
so we already know everything we need to know
about you.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=585967

Fucking Wolfowitz.

it is not just your right to love
where love takes you, it is also your calling;
not only your right but your duty
to call yourself what you want to be called;

not just your right to sleep in a house
you built, but a blessing; not only your right
to speak your heart there, but the only way
the house can stand for more than a lifetime;

not just your right to move, to eat, to have
your body be your body and not a symbol;
to breathe and taste the mountains and the sea,
and not the tang of burning coal, wood, oil, or flesh.

and it is not only your right
to know these things
but to be able to hold them tight against you
when you are cold, hungry, and bleeding,

for they are not just speech.
they are warm as blankets.
they absorb. they wrap the naked,
cradle the dead.

one thing, though: they make terrible flags.

I have the right
to breathe if I do it quietly.
Panting makes
the body less brilliant
and more brilliant bodies make
the nation brighter.

I have the right
not to be sad. There are sad
people elsewhere, but not here.
Sadness is a function of
being elsewhere. Sadness
is a face of foreign jealousy.

I have the right
to be a foreigner if I can forget how it looks
to be one. I have the right
to pray to God in my tongue
as long as I understand that God
speaks only one.

I have the right to a homeland,
to the colors of the flag
and the afterburners’ red glare;
to smell Tibetan incense in the mall, or to marvel
at a temporary ethnic frieze
draped on the town hall.
I have the right to patriotism,
to enjoy the parade
(if not the right to admit
silently, not out loud, that
I cannot explain
why I am still applauding).

I seem to recall other rights
but they are historic
and mostly decorative.

Late at night I boil them down
and make a poultice
against the pain of missing them.

Bourbon Congratulations! You’re 123 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (83), and liquor (104).

Screw all that namby-pamby chick stuff, you’re going straight for the bottle and a shot glass! It’ll take more than a few shots of Wild Turkey or 99 Bananas before you start seeing pink elephants. You know how to handle your alcohol, and yourself at parties.

Anyone who knows me is unsurprised by this result.

suck.

Alix Olson and Pamela Means are doing a show at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore the week AFTER I’m there.

AND the Sox are playing the Blue Jays on the Sunday I arrive, but earlier than I’ll get there.

While we’re on the subject of sucking: Why are vampires considered hot? I personally think the whole concept of combining “sucking” and “really sharp teeth” is not so sexy.

I’m going to be in Toronto from late on April 11 to the morning of April 15, leaving me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night to get into a moderate amount of trouble and (more to the point) see some poetry. An open mike would be lovely, but not really important; hearing some stuff is.

I am there for work, so no mushrooms and/or visible tattoos allowed, and I need to be somewhat stable and up pretty early everyday.

Anyone got a clue as to what’s what? PSI site has nothing. I know Talaam Acey and Saul Williams hit the area pretty regularly, so there’s got to be some scene up there.

Also: I tried to get Wetspots info from Ms. King, but nothing ever came of it. Anyone got a new e-mail?

1.
David Bowie sang “Young Americans”
endlessly with his hair dyed pure black
and his skewed eyes fixed
on the vision he’d been after all his life,
knowing that trail of shine and substance
he’d left behind surely had led somewhere
but from this end, it was hard to describe what
this place was, the long hours and crowds
vanishing in the sodium lights, Ohio a memory,
Berlin a memory, New York a future memory
and ahead only the business of describing
buses of survivors rolling on broken roads,
his wonderful hands filled with cocaine,
bruised children, the keys to buildings
unbuilt; his voice spilling out between stretched fingers.

2.
I bought all your records.
Then, you showed up
in my mom’s collection.
I owned you, damnit.
No escapes allowed.
You have ceased to be the target
I aimed at for so many years.
I won’t wear you on my mask anymore,
since she’s already there.

3.
The lost chord, as the Moody Blues called it,
was played one day in 1994 by a Winger fan
who abandoned it in favor of another speedy run
at a pentatonic box. It had edges as long
as the Lake Michigan coast and stuck into the ground
where it fell. A fault opened around the point
of entry and we fell into it one day
wondering “what is this place?” When the guitar
I was holding broke a string on its own, unplayed,
we fled. After, we tried to describe it
and decided that you couldn’t really call what it sounded like
rock, or pop, or punk, or jazz; more like volcano, or meadow,
or the burn on your elbows after sex on the carpet.
It was less music than geometry. Physics perhaps, or biology;
the striations of the voluntary muscles drawn out to breaking.
It sounded fatal. This hasn’t stopped me
from trying to play it again.