Fast Times Collage

We / got / the / beat
Sean Penn going half-retard (Tropic Thunder joke)
First instance of glue in the locker on film.
First instance of I'd like a refund now please.
Bronco Burger vs. All-American Burger (white kids flippin').
Wing on over to London and you guys are invited, too.
"She lives in the France of her mind."
TROMP LINCOLN
When high school football was high school footba--Really?!
rooftop sniper=biggest boner
Two Weeks' Notice
employee manuals in the pedway

Behind Closed Doors

It would be very helpful if you'd shut it.
Was that myself to myself, asking for more privacy?
"Here I can relax and be myself" (palms smoothing bedspread, sewing pattern waiting, curlers pinned).
And she lets her hair hang down, sang the Silver Fox.
*
The dolls come to life, and I'm one of them, with my blinking glass eye, with my hollow plastic thigh.
The phone in the hallway with the long curly cord fed under the door.
Four girls to answer but you'd call out "GET it!" urgently if you were in a mood.
Family answering machines, secret three-way calls (third person pressed MUTE).
You didn't even know who was calling, picked up with a hope blooming in your throat.
Now we know who it is but still use a question mark--Hello?
*
My friends, your status update does not tell me what I used to what I want to know.
They say I'm bad at calling back and they're right.
I used to be alone so often.
They were only ever any good as surprises that spun out into the night.

Root of the Pandemic

doorknob pandemic
crossing guard pandemic
churro pandemic
dank platform pandemic
handrail pandemic
turnstile pandemic
button pandemic
flusher pandemic
can-I-borrow pandemic
school's out pandemic
job offer pandemic
e-blast pandemic
party planning pandemic

ancient Greek of or belonging to the whole people, public, vulgar, in Hellenistic Greek also used of diseases

after ancient Greek common, vulgar, or sensual love, as opposed to the heavenly or spiritual. See Plato's Symposium.

and bless you dusts off its etymology too.

The Superlatively Derogatory Colloquial Epithet, Shammy

with thanks to the OED and find-and-replace

You low-down shammies can put a gun in our hands but who is able to take it out?

Make one move, shammy, and I'll blow you away.

Oh, Life's a shammy, Bruce.

So I keep concentrating very hard, helping the pilot fly the 250-passenger shammy.

Eight milk-shakes (why had he bought eight of the shammies?).

Where are the harpoons on this shammy?

He said who put this hole in this shammy's head. Who could the murderer of this poor man be.

Ain't that blackshammy beautiful.

I'm one shammy that don't mind dying.

A prudent shammy like me has an IRA account, some short-term T-bills, etc.

Have I got a shammy of a stunt for you!

The Berkeley quartet opened its set jamming and vamping. From then on it was a shammy....

LA[S] under a personal name or a gang name means ‘Like a shammy’, and it's supposed to suggest to all who read it that the person or the gang is rough and tough.

I could turn and run like a shammy and dodge my way back up the hill to safety.

Squeaky-voiced and foul-fuckin'-mouthed as a shammy.

You a bunch of jive shammies.

Leonard Carlo is so upset, he can't even curse properly ... ‘shammy!’ he says at last.

St. Vincent's new album,

Actor, streaming now.


Also, Connie Converse, a singer-songwriter before there were singer-songwriters, who has since disappeared:

Holistic Work

The holistic sense of life without the exclusionary wholeness of art. Yesterday I was thinking about how to put into a poem the fact that I was premenstrual and the fact that the spring buds were finally bursting on trees. These holistic forms: inclusion, apparent nonselection, because selection is censorship of the unknown, the between, the data, the germ, the interstitial, the bit of sighting that the writer cannot place. More specifically I wanted to note how these two events were coinciding perhaps for the first time in my life, and how words like 'ripe' and 'bursting' carried their full connotations in my body, ecstatically. Holistic work: great tonal shifts, from polemic essay to lyric. I didn't know how to do this in any received way; though it seems like this subject must have found its form before, I was happy when I realized this might not be true. A self-questioning the writer built into the center of the work, the questions at the center of the writer, the discourses doubling, retelling the same, differently. The happiness was, I think, jouissance. And not censored: love, politics, children, dreams, close talk. Though nature has always equaled sex and all the men of letters know this, the fact is biological that they have never felt what I felt, just yesterday. The first Tampax in world literature. Yesterdaily, and grand. A room where clippings paper the walls.

Text and method borrowed from Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "For the Etruscans"; my text written one day before reading the essay for the first time.

Collage: Semantic Noise / April 23, 2009

    Help a guy get somethin’ to eat

’Cause he’s nervous, ’cause he doesn’t know 
      what’s going on

                          Where the fuck are we? 
    Did we take the wrong train?

China Shows the World How to Get Through a Crisis

                      FIREPROOF WAREHOUSES

If you tell yourself it’s just ten more, 
                                 then you can do it

               you tight ends of industry

People are shocked when I put on my assertive panties

      The largest indoor playground in the state
 
       A dress made almost entirely of feathers

Whoa So

i've been drinking some sangria and as promised decided to read your poem and i can't decide whether

1) it's really sad

2) it's sad but becomes a love poem in the second half, which is a different type of sad

3) it's wistful and I'm exaggerating / sad

3) i'm feeling tipsy-sad and projecting all my feelings onto it

4) do you get sad when you drink?

5) what do people do in that tiny town besides drink?

6) with all their drinking money, they could put on a carnival

7) a carnival cannot calm you down

Ethan Coen's Book of Poems

Codirector with bro Joel of Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? also has a book of poems called The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way.

"The Curious Will Click Their Way Through"

MA I like it so much. I am all for this eternity. I’d hate to be burned. I wouldn’t like to be eaten by worms. Maybe a tree can grow out of me. That’s it. But embalming is a very nice idea. I like this forever thing. You?

LA I would like to be burned. (laughter)

MA So this is a big difference!

LA I don’t like the idea of flames so much as particles. I’d like to become many, many particles.

No Year-Round School

No summer tans
No bad haircuts
No high drama
No crisp outfits
No poolside kiss
No growth spurt
No schoolyear
which spell-
check agrees
is not a word.

Origin Story: Ladies Lined Up

for #1, #2, and #4

Here is what I know about my great-grandmother: they called her Crazy Lily and the Ohio psychiatric hospital records noted that she was an imbecile, dead in the eyes. This was after she had had several children and her husband had left her. It seems she was driven crazy; by childbirth or single motherhood or heartbreak, who knows. She had to give up her children and my grandmother, Rosemary Clover, was adopted by the Groves, the family that ran the orphanage.

Here is what I know about my grandmother: she was smart and charming and went to college in the 40s and was captain of her Ohio State basketball team. She had three children, a girl then a boy then my mother, and developed MS. She suffered from bipolar disorder and had several breakdowns. My mother and my aunt and my uncle were sent to an orphanage during one of them, and were separated while there. My grandfather was away. The war--which? Later my mother was left to take care of her mother while the breakdowns continued. And then she had to run away to take care of herself.

Here is what I know about my mother: she grew up dirt-poor in Ohio and walked everywhere, which made her thin and tan. After graduating from college as a math major, she married an Italian-American army man whom she realized was a chauvinist a couple of weeks into the marriage. She lived just off the base in Kansas and played canasta with army wives on languid afternoons, bored to tears. She saw a flyer for a Political Science program, went to talk to a professor, and signed up. She received a Masters in Poly Sci, then went to law school in Wisconsin, where she met my father. She was one of few women in their class, and got the best job upon graduating, a corporate position at GE. She quit when her third daughter of four was born. That was me. She went back to work a few years later, this time as a pro-life lawyer. She loves babies. Then the political tide turned and there was no use for her to write laws that wouldn't be passed, so she was laid off at the beginning of this year. I met a new friend who said it was a good idea my mother's law made her wait 24 hours before going back to the clinic. Others would disagree.

Here is what I know about my sisters: one is a psychologist who works in forensic hospitals and prisons in big cities and so daily comes face-to-face with the most extreme types of personalities. One is a psychologist who works with children with autism and so daily comes face-to-face with a cultural and medical mystery. One is a polyglot and an epicure with a gab gift and some gag gifts and a love of the old country. I am a poet, which means I like extremes and mysteries and language and place and have wide eyes gazing forward and back.

Reading Way Into It

a pulse

gets broad then returns

take off the un

violence, justice

system

a lot of gambling

things don't have to be

how they are

but they are

Origin Story: In the Waiting Room

If you plan far enough in advance, the sky can prepare for it. Can offer a show. A muggy grey throb. A summer early and condensed enough to hold a full-blast June, July, August.

I've been thinking about origin stories because you showed me one. I've been thinking about origin stories because I have one. I was born at the beginning of the summeriest month. My sisters told me I was adopted. So I was in a way. That's how it works--that's what I told the kids at the shelter yesterday when the assignment was theme songs. I asked them what the fight was about and it was about one thinking he was better than the rest and the others reminding him he was there, too. Sheltered. I was trying to tell them that you start to believe the stories they tell you about yourself and that's why some of us start making up our own on dark drizzle days, but they wouldn't listen. They were talking to hear themselves and besides they didn't have homes.

On the beach at sunset. It was that dramatic. It was only a block from home. There's an inland coast and it is vast, measure it. I'd escaped--no trace, no people, no houses. Untethered and what crashed up was a lyric. Poor. It didn't matter--it was pure so I was born. I was an I, I was in the world's waiting room, the beach. It was that hackneyed. And so I went on seeking vastness and over-the-topness and mazes and mansions and all the invented towns of my dreams. I travel to them so I can leave again to know myself one more time. When I became myself I became maudlin, crushing on skyline and reverie. I became elemental and soupy with primordial. And when I'm no longer myself, to what will my lip-smack for grandiosity attach? Someone else's wonder, blooming?

Circles spreading on puddles. Green fists straining on oak branches. We leave our houses uneasily, half naked, wishing winter's store an exit through our appendages. Out, out. Leave this murk and bring me summer.

Forget All That Hip-Shootin' Aristotelian Logic

"Next time someone flips a coin, call edge. Stuff like that."

Mystic?

Feministic?

This Better Happen!

Maximum Gaga Trailer

Maximum Gaga from Josef Horáček on Vimeo.
Maximum Gaga from Lara Glenum on Action Books.

But the Great Depression Didn't Have Zoloft, Now Did It

I work part-time as a Tough Economy Expert.
My husband trains on Grand Theft Auto in the den.
He's thinking something reliable, like mob courier.
He's reminding me how long Pennsylvania is. 280 miles.
There's no business like show business, I insist
via teleconference, especially after your favorite
bands have folded and every child star as well as
every fiscal abstraction has lost its representation.
I sigh immoderately and swirl my toy rotary dial.

Riding with Gatsby, p. 60

old sport             he jumped off

                                 we started to town
    a dozen suns
                        had gradually faded

               that disconcerting ride

                                              "what's
your opinion of me, anyhow?"

                    bizarre accusations     flavored
       God's truth

  divine retribution
                       hurried
          swallowed               choked

                             doubt, his whole state-

The Xylopholks

Today's Poem

will be here in the morning. It's kind of about Facebook.

What Can I Say About Life With You?

Sometimes it's like being at a sleepover where you raid the kitchen at midnight
Sometimes it's like being at a sleepover where you smoke pot for the first time

The moon rises, and we note its size; dialogue and memory fold into diary; two views of a moonrise and you have a spectacle on your hands

Sometimes it's like being at an all-ages show
Sometimes it's like being at an all-ages show with your mom and you both lied about where you were going

The sun rises, and one of us ties back golden curtains to reveal a dream about wind on the moor
And one of us compiles a playlist of "Wuthering Heights" covers

And sometimes it's like wandering the moor
And sometimes it's like wandering the mall

Cross

I fish for the paperclip in the large potted plant. It is a plant that wants to be outdoors. Outdoors a house across the street blares commentary on a baseball game for the whole neighborhood to hear. Perhaps I’ll blare commentary on a poem from my window with a megaphone for the whole neighborhood to hear. In spite of its artificial-seeming form, I find it quite earnest in its subject matter, and other false oppositions. A pesar de la forma artificial, me parece seria la materia. In spite of the fact that it’s Easter, I’m doing my taxes. In spite of the fact that I love you, I’m being cross. In spite of the fact that no one uses words like cross or poison-dart look, young adult serial novels of my youth contained them. In spite of the fact that I no longer read young adult novels, everyone my age seems to write them. In spite of the fact that I am no longer a teenager, this month I have the anger of one. In spite of the fact that I’m figuring out how to accept my anger, bear my crossness so-to-speak, I’m still afraid and prefer to leave it in another room. In spite of the fact that I’m in this room, my mind is roving, gobbling up dust bunnies. Oh Jesus, oh jellybean.

{ twenty-seven }

I begin to see       I begin to see I haven’t chosen yet
I’m not the one they’d peg       they’d say I’m all here but
just ’cause you’re here doesn’t mean you’ve passed thru
(vanity mirror the glass is water there is a timelag)
On the other side       potions of belief       sandpaper fr yr doubts
Well I traded it all in       I pawned it for devotion
and it’s not like I think I can have it all they’re telling
me to try       to get it back       to get it back different
As if a fire by the lake with a circle of girls smoking leaves
from the forest floor were possible now       I thought a book
could solve it       I thought love would       I thought place
was a choice but it’s up to me       I’m just forcing
the crisis again       If I’d only choose and quit pretending
it’s already been done       but it means staring hard at
loss and I’ve been running       in the night-stories too
I am alone       Strange people land water       terrible journeys
A felled tree and you either walk across or you don’t
That coast tries to trick me into thinking I’ll find it there
if I return (I left it there) (I trick myself) but that’s too easy
I have to go on finding things where I don’t know to look
This hurts       I prefer browsing instead       I prefer clicking
piddling       getting up from the couch every five mins
There are other ways to knowledge besides sitting and
I prefer the kinesthetic I say       I am smartassing and I
cannot smartass my way out of this one I must choose
choose choose tighten all my bows take big gulps of air
take stock take stock take stock fingertips to the mirror
before diving into the pool where we speak underwater
in the golden light of practice listen watch wait and then

Hey Now

I was a
cowboy
stuck to
base-
ment
wood
paneling
before I
stole
someone's
psych-
edelia
*****
Now I'm
lassoing
limp
rainbows
selling
them as
bumper
stickers
at the
mall
*****
There's
a lot we
suspected
wasn't real
condos
Walmarts
subdivisions
corporations
but we were
just little
and they
liked that
we had
imagin-
ations
preferred
to leave it
at that.

Perfect Proportions

27 which is a triple
and if everything grows
exponentially as you
say when you say meme
and if we've known
one another long
enough for our cells
to be brand new
would you still recognize
me in the pitchless dark
would you still come away
come away come away

dreams are taking me
on my back in a rowboat
Who is this? And what is here?
It's my girl-self playing
Anne of Green Gables
as The Lady of Shalott
just another lass & her setting

Today's Poem

was a gift.

Don't You Kind of Feel Like

I secreted this? Like it just kinda oozed out of me on the Oprah show? There's not even a new album to tour behind. Miracles!

Imagination Needs an Underground

Don't you have a gif to upload or something?
--A.

A ladder slathered in glue &
dipped into a big-box warehouse
full of rubies sapphires & emeralds
with a combination lock outside
borrowed from a Disney afternoon
will not take your bone-
sack anywhere.

Below, the bog sits soggy
the ladder leads invisibly
from the lips of the manhole
to the moans of showersongs.

I listen. I'm encrusted, too
& throat-high with subwoof.

"It might have been so green here"

The manhole, the womanstick,
drudging.

Managed Service Point

Beach Comb

[if player doesn't work]

This One Goes Out to BHo

Bright Eyes covering the Magnetic Fields' "Papa Was a Rodeo" (from SCORE! 20 Years of Merge: The Covers). There's a particularly awesome duetted breakdown at the end.

Also on the album is an amazing cover of Destroyer's "New Ways of Living" by Lavender Diamond (yes I just keep going -- who or what is Destroyer, you ask? And I reply: a lunatic, a pompous member of the bourgeoisie, a man too obsessed with the immutable worth of his own cantos to even crack a WILDCAT © or a DUDE ©).

If anyone has any of the compilation CDs listed on the Merge site (particularly the Byrne, July, Poehler, Galifianakis, and Walker-curated editions!), do you want to trade for the covers disc?

Early Fear of Robots

Well, I really enjoy forgetting. I'm no swinger.
My face is a book but it's not what it seems.
They're the cathedrals of our time, someone said. Not me.

Things that have never had names before are now easily described.
Astronauts didn't used to read much poetry. I'd say that's changing.

Hope you don't mind LOUD MUSIC.
Most people around here have eaten dinner already.

She's not sick. She's got enough money and she doesn't have to.
"Ooh, a kissin' cookie!" And if it's sweet it's probably cute.

From the dream factory, a bonanza of beauty.



...floating footnote...

More Lyrics for My Favorite Band

I was clapping for your dance / I was dancing for your clap

I was scooching around in my anger / I was fainting into a nap

and the girls on the train with their Warhol tote bags
and the girls on the train with their space gusts
and the girls on the train empire-waisted
and the girls on the train shit-faced-ed

I was scowling for your benefit / I was benefiting from your scowl

I was facepainting by number / I was hardsetting my jowl

and the girls on the train go do-da-do do-do da-do
do-da-do do-do da-do....

School, and the Girls Who Go There*

It's all so mysterioso. Like I'll never know
why she stopped talking to me or he stopped
talking to her or even really why I stopped
directing speech at any number of once-nears.
But I think it has something to do with love
and its monarch-mouthed loyalties. I think
it has something to do with navy caps and
tassels on a sandy beach, and how the waves'
appetite is daily bizarro and constant. Lap,

lap.

♥

OK so I lost my mysticism. I traded it in.
♥ & its loyalties.

♥
♥
♥

Where was I? Well here I am,
having just read a poem about people
sprouting like plants sprout this time of year,
and wasn't I just saying this very thing last week
to a kind host in a faraway land ?

We had just met. The sky was blue. The air was cold.

And all along the stone wall I made myself a fool
gushing about plants-as-peeps by way of introduction.
Hello hello yo soy effusive and bizarro and since this is a
reverse interview I just though you should know
what you have already chosen. And look there, on the lawn.
(And look there, a lawn!) And look there, ye Mighty,
on the beach. There's me in my Ozymandias™ hotpants,
wriggling my way up.

*

Those Goofy Royals