how incredible are these b&w of the Beales' Grey Gardens?
http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/grey-gardens-the-beautiful-decay/
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Lunch Poems. March 19-27
March 19
My fingers taste like cigarettes, cigar-shaped though
and my cola is part vodka.
It is still my birthday 21 years and 3 days later.
When they told me "beware the ides,"
they left out the warning of whiskey.
We read "I think I'm going crazy"
And what to do with this terrible hangover and the weekends,
OHara?
March 20's Found phrases
she's hair bowed and low-bellied in pyramid mode
oh, she's something in Sanskrit
where am i?
je ne sais quoi
upon return to the states, he exhausts a carton of Gitanes
both have become decidedly unFrench
BOOM! he booms,
or rather he types
these loud letters to Upper-Penninsula babies
just to feel connected.
March 21's marsh
Though we lasted the winter
There is no sure footing
There is grass in my neighborhood again
There are rats again
On the patch of land that escaped cementing
We celebrate our clever survival
All of us narrowly avoided that turn to stone
When one comrade takes to a scurry,
My dog lunges after her breakfast.
I lost a shoe in the muck.
March 23's phone call
He'll PROVE his nunchucks
raps the receiver, but won't believe my crystal ball
"Then tell ME what I'm doing now"
You are purging what's left and yellow
you are standing too close to a window
you are asking the WRONG questions
Ask why not how and I'll fill your ears
with the stuff of inheritance,
mystical theories
He'll say,
could you call another day?
March 24's dog day
It is hard to know whose is whose
as we've begun to resemble one another.
On gray days, I begin to think that
we, black haired and stark white, are all we have in the world.
Oh but that,
that is the last pair!
you Varmint! you Devil!
Inside her all my soles, but no soul!
March 27's aftershocks
when we are too exhausted to fight, we walk and wait for the sun
here it comes.
the earth shook last night, there is proof in the broken ground.
or did it split from cold?
either way, it rushed to fill its voids with the left gravel.
who's to say we couldn't fill our own as quickly?
My fingers taste like cigarettes, cigar-shaped though
and my cola is part vodka.
It is still my birthday 21 years and 3 days later.
When they told me "beware the ides,"
they left out the warning of whiskey.
We read "I think I'm going crazy"
And what to do with this terrible hangover and the weekends,
OHara?
March 20's Found phrases
she's hair bowed and low-bellied in pyramid mode
oh, she's something in Sanskrit
where am i?
je ne sais quoi
upon return to the states, he exhausts a carton of Gitanes
both have become decidedly unFrench
BOOM! he booms,
or rather he types
these loud letters to Upper-Penninsula babies
just to feel connected.
March 21's marsh
Though we lasted the winter
There is no sure footing
There is grass in my neighborhood again
There are rats again
On the patch of land that escaped cementing
We celebrate our clever survival
All of us narrowly avoided that turn to stone
When one comrade takes to a scurry,
My dog lunges after her breakfast.
I lost a shoe in the muck.
March 23's phone call
He'll PROVE his nunchucks
raps the receiver, but won't believe my crystal ball
"Then tell ME what I'm doing now"
You are purging what's left and yellow
you are standing too close to a window
you are asking the WRONG questions
Ask why not how and I'll fill your ears
with the stuff of inheritance,
mystical theories
He'll say,
could you call another day?
March 24's dog day
It is hard to know whose is whose
as we've begun to resemble one another.
On gray days, I begin to think that
we, black haired and stark white, are all we have in the world.
Oh but that,
that is the last pair!
you Varmint! you Devil!
Inside her all my soles, but no soul!
March 27's aftershocks
when we are too exhausted to fight, we walk and wait for the sun
here it comes.
the earth shook last night, there is proof in the broken ground.
or did it split from cold?
either way, it rushed to fill its voids with the left gravel.
who's to say we couldn't fill our own as quickly?
"a self being forged in, as language..."
latinized, i am lucky.
reputed, repeated and inextricably soulless, so
petrified, I opt for atrophy, seeing as
I am proof.
reputed, repeated and inextricably soulless, so
petrified, I opt for atrophy, seeing as
I am proof.
*
there is
no air in here-
where
a disembodied voice can sing like a canary
(no strings)
there is
no air in here-
where
a disembodied voice can sing like a canary
(no strings)
plucked headlines
there is err-
or
glitches in the gospel
sprung from canon
the deity shrugs
in candor
there is err-
or
glitches in the gospel
sprung from canon
the deity shrugs
in candor
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Force of Imagination: Montaigne erasure pt. 1
of the force of Imagination.
I am one of those who are most sensible of the power of Imagination: every one is jostled by it, but some are overthrown by it. It has a very piercing impression upon me and I make it my business to avoid, wanting force to resist it. I could live by
the sole help of healthful and jolly company: the very sight of another's pain materially pains me, and I often usurp the sensations of another person. A perpetual cough in another tickles my lungs and throat. I more unwillingly visit the sick in whom by love and duty I am interested, than those I care not for, to whom I less look. I take possession of the disease I am concerned. at, and take it to myself. I do not at all wonder that fancy should give fevers and sometimes kill such as to allow it
too much scope, and are too willing to entertain it. Simon Thomas was a great physician of his time: I remember, that happening one day at Toulouse to meet him at a rich old fellow's house, who was troubled with weak lungs, and discoursing with his patient about the method of his cure, he told him, that one thing which would be very conducive to it, was to give me such occasion to be pleased with his company, I might come often to see him, by which means, and by fixing his eye upon the freshness of my complexion, and his
imagination upon the sprightliness and vigor that glowed in my youth, and possessing all his senses with the flourishing age wherein I then was, his habit to body might, peradventure, be amended; but be forgot to say that mine, at the same time, might be made worse.
Gallus VibIus so long cudgeled his brains to find out the essence and motions of madness, that, in the end, he himself went out of his wits, and to such a degree, that he could never after recover his judgment; and might brag that he was become a fool by too much wisdom. Some there are who through fear anticipate the hangman; and there was the man, whose eyes being unbound to have his pardon read to him, was
found stark dead upon the scaffold, by the stroke of Imagination. We start, tremble, turn pale, and blush, as we are variously moved by imagination; and, being a-bed, feel our bodies agitated with its power to that degree, as even sometimes to expiring. And boiling youth, when fast asleep, grows so warm with fancy, as in a dream to satisfy amorous desires: "Ut, quasi transactis saepe omnibu rebu profundant Fluminis ingentes fluctus, vestemque cruentent."
Sunday, August 9, 2009
favorite.
this poem in its full (and...correct) version is lost somewhere in papers. from memory:
spread
as if to say let anything worth taking be took
on the other hand,
i need my fingers, i'll cross them. even if crooked from sprain, i'll cross them.
snap and send coins winged. outline cloud creatures, squint and squish between.
air arrows, drag triggers. fan out in shadows to fly.
measure the miles in the inches of knuckles.
wet and feel wind. wind cassette guts.
flip a bird or flick bent paper. tie a ribbon around and remember to remember.
point
as if, as if to say it is you, but it hasn't always been.
spread
as if to say let anything worth taking be took
on the other hand,
i need my fingers, i'll cross them. even if crooked from sprain, i'll cross them.
snap and send coins winged. outline cloud creatures, squint and squish between.
air arrows, drag triggers. fan out in shadows to fly.
measure the miles in the inches of knuckles.
wet and feel wind. wind cassette guts.
flip a bird or flick bent paper. tie a ribbon around and remember to remember.
point
as if, as if to say it is you, but it hasn't always been.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
the hive mind project: A ten page diatribe against the Dark Mother. An analysis of the Electra Complex.
yesterday was my last day of summer semester. i delivered a speech on why "Crash" is a racist film & a presentation on a project on...sylvia plath...and honeybees....and cheating jaguars...and daddy-complexes...happy apple pies...and such.
consists of ten prose poems, heavily informed by Sylvia's (yes, first name basis) "Bee Poems" & also "Daddy" & "Lament" in conjunction with her journal entries (mad, mad stories, domestic consolations, rough & tough Ted Hughes, etc.) Other sources were research on bees, attempted research of Otto Plath's dissertations & my own poems.
Excerpts, fancied lines:
1. Intro (erasure)
"fight against a simple-mindedness, a narcissism, a protective shell against competing, against being found wanting To write for itself, to do things for the joy of them.
What a gift of the god?
Create Queen: a mad, passionate Queen. Immediately I want her husband to keep bees, and I know nothing of bees. My father knew it all."
2. Maestro of Bees
The sting of bees took away my father
who got sick in a minute & wouldn’t see a doctor (I am alive & so-there!)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again
He survived the honey-flavored cancer
and wasn’t he lucky? isn’t it awful that (the blood hive-holed my brain)
the sting of bees took away my father
he rots in a grave he barely paid for
bee-bearded near death, the man had tantrums (a shot went home, a sniff of cocaine)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again
3. the only one...huge enough for me
"The women lie down for artists.
The mad girl (only a silly girl) scars her legs with nails
through her hands. The stigmata, I said, frozen.
Lesson learned & bang smash on the mouth
Chased by red-gold Whiskey Macs. The bandeau
Is blood-soaked. The wimple, bruised & I
Stink of decaying orange from the vandal.
“I shall keep,” he barked, my blood"
4. The Beekeepers
"We were interested in starting a hive, so I dumped the babies in the factory past a row of orange stucco cottages that flood whenever the river rises. We felt very new & shy within a yard of miscellaneous Devonians in raincoats, bulgy tweeds, shirtsleeves. I had not thought to bring a sweater. I stood for a moment, on the bridge-end.
The man in black is the rector. He carries his dark felt head. The midwife is in the blue coat. She too has a black box head. Everybody had screening. I felt barer & barer. Have you no hat? Have you no coat?
I have a boiler suit. "
5. apple-pie happy
"I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke for instance, or writing---I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst and fast into a bowl of cookie batter. And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper’s (no less!---and I hardly can believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen."
6. The Contents of the Black Box
"She came with sugar candy. She smelled of vanilla when our morning gruel, coffee was black & bitter-edged & diabetic, He needs it, honey, twice a day.
He’ll keep you in a cigar box & twenty-five just like you (rather crude) until you’re planted in the family plot. Escaped the panzer-man, did you?
O & isn’t he the bees knees! Fourth husband material, indeed. You know, in bed, he smells like a butcher. Sure, he’ll write a book to you. Saying “sweetness, sweetness” to the gas chamber with you!"
7. The Red Queen's Race, The Requeening Game
"I put on my red-hot shoes & join in the swarm: the race of winged, unmiraculous women, those spasmodic tricks. Some Dody bird, who I took for long dead, explained the rules of the hive:
The Red Queen needs no pawn to defeat the black rooks.
The Red Queen hears no backtalk from her cell in the mute sky.
The Red Queen is your competitor. You compete for the hive."
8. The Queendom of Dreams
"Waking, I can't help longing for lost Edens, but I am only an outlet blocked as with wax.
The Queen is waking in a constructed cell built by too dreamy a drone. It’s sure to collapse, a suffocating cuddle death. A caged & wild pulse there at the center, but I know now that my ribs aren’t broken.
My pen fell from my hand after two aspirins & I fell asleep: head swimming off “The Island of the Dead.” Strange visions read about: “Why Men Desert Their Hives.” The hive is a black box. The hive is an algorithm.
Electrocution in tinfoil veins, a new satellite shot into stars; The planet halted & at once I was lifted up, died in my stomach & fell forward, hung in middle of a room, someone twirling me about. Faceless crowding & I spun & they spun: surgical, distant, stellar. Me & my experimental predicament."
9. The Cellar Jar
"a.m.
I have my honey, a jar of it.
I will sleep through the wintering. Better than shock treatment.
p.m.
Today, you made a fatal decision. And you vacillated like a nervous seesaw-- gulped, chose blindly & immediately wanted to reverse a decision which is speeding into finality now already on the w of mails, minds &secretarial files. You are an inconsistent and very frightened hypocrite:
you wanted time to think, to find out about yourself, your ability to write, and now that you have it: practically 3 months of godawful time, you are nausea, a stasis. You are plunged so deep in your own very private little rote forbidding and enormous.
Your mind is planned, diagrammed for you—practically the way it will be at Smith next year: and just now that kind of security seems desirable—it is just another way of absolving you of taking responsibilities for your own actions & planning, really, although now the issue is so confused it is hard which choice would take the most guts: and which kind of guts. Marcia i you are doing neither: the woman at
you can now learn it—you won’t have it this good again, baby. "You
i think there are probably three people who read this, so you three, i need something to do with my time for the rest of july & august, and i am going to spend some time crafting or working on visual representations of poems, prose, etc.
With that in mind, if anybody would like to be the recipient of any sort of crafty, zine-esque, versions of any work on this blog, or would like to read full versions of the plath pieces, it would not only give me something to do and give me some new & keen editing eyes, but make me feel super-duper.
email me: nikkimarss@gmail.com
hi, deidre!
consists of ten prose poems, heavily informed by Sylvia's (yes, first name basis) "Bee Poems" & also "Daddy" & "Lament" in conjunction with her journal entries (mad, mad stories, domestic consolations, rough & tough Ted Hughes, etc.) Other sources were research on bees, attempted research of Otto Plath's dissertations & my own poems.
Excerpts, fancied lines:
1. Intro (erasure)
"fight against a simple-mindedness, a narcissism, a protective shell against competing, against being found wanting To write for itself, to do things for the joy of them.
What a gift of the god?
Create Queen: a mad, passionate Queen. Immediately I want her husband to keep bees, and I know nothing of bees. My father knew it all."
2. Maestro of Bees
The sting of bees took away my father
who got sick in a minute & wouldn’t see a doctor (I am alive & so-there!)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again
He survived the honey-flavored cancer
and wasn’t he lucky? isn’t it awful that (the blood hive-holed my brain)
the sting of bees took away my father
he rots in a grave he barely paid for
bee-bearded near death, the man had tantrums (a shot went home, a sniff of cocaine)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again
3. the only one...huge enough for me
"The women lie down for artists.
The mad girl (only a silly girl) scars her legs with nails
through her hands. The stigmata, I said, frozen.
Lesson learned & bang smash on the mouth
Chased by red-gold Whiskey Macs. The bandeau
Is blood-soaked. The wimple, bruised & I
Stink of decaying orange from the vandal.
“I shall keep,” he barked, my blood"
4. The Beekeepers
"We were interested in starting a hive, so I dumped the babies in the factory past a row of orange stucco cottages that flood whenever the river rises. We felt very new & shy within a yard of miscellaneous Devonians in raincoats, bulgy tweeds, shirtsleeves. I had not thought to bring a sweater. I stood for a moment, on the bridge-end.
The man in black is the rector. He carries his dark felt head. The midwife is in the blue coat. She too has a black box head. Everybody had screening. I felt barer & barer. Have you no hat? Have you no coat?
I have a boiler suit. "
5. apple-pie happy
"I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke for instance, or writing---I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst and fast into a bowl of cookie batter. And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper’s (no less!---and I hardly can believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen."
6. The Contents of the Black Box
"She came with sugar candy. She smelled of vanilla when our morning gruel, coffee was black & bitter-edged & diabetic, He needs it, honey, twice a day.
He’ll keep you in a cigar box & twenty-five just like you (rather crude) until you’re planted in the family plot. Escaped the panzer-man, did you?
O & isn’t he the bees knees! Fourth husband material, indeed. You know, in bed, he smells like a butcher. Sure, he’ll write a book to you. Saying “sweetness, sweetness” to the gas chamber with you!"
7. The Red Queen's Race, The Requeening Game
"I put on my red-hot shoes & join in the swarm: the race of winged, unmiraculous women, those spasmodic tricks. Some Dody bird, who I took for long dead, explained the rules of the hive:
The Red Queen needs no pawn to defeat the black rooks.
The Red Queen hears no backtalk from her cell in the mute sky.
The Red Queen is your competitor. You compete for the hive."
8. The Queendom of Dreams
"Waking, I can't help longing for lost Edens, but I am only an outlet blocked as with wax.
The Queen is waking in a constructed cell built by too dreamy a drone. It’s sure to collapse, a suffocating cuddle death. A caged & wild pulse there at the center, but I know now that my ribs aren’t broken.
My pen fell from my hand after two aspirins & I fell asleep: head swimming off “The Island of the Dead.” Strange visions read about: “Why Men Desert Their Hives.” The hive is a black box. The hive is an algorithm.
Electrocution in tinfoil veins, a new satellite shot into stars; The planet halted & at once I was lifted up, died in my stomach & fell forward, hung in middle of a room, someone twirling me about. Faceless crowding & I spun & they spun: surgical, distant, stellar. Me & my experimental predicament."
9. The Cellar Jar
"a.m.
I have my honey, a jar of it.
I will sleep through the wintering. Better than shock treatment.
p.m.
Today, you made a fatal decision. And you vacillated like a nervous seesaw-- gulped, chose blindly & immediately wanted to reverse a decision which is speeding into finality now already on the w of mails, minds &secretarial files. You are an inconsistent and very frightened hypocrite:
you wanted time to think, to find out about yourself, your ability to write, and now that you have it: practically 3 months of godawful time, you are nausea, a stasis. You are plunged so deep in your own very private little rote forbidding and enormous.
Your mind is planned, diagrammed for you—practically the way it will be at Smith next year: and just now that kind of security seems desirable—it is just another way of absolving you of taking responsibilities for your own actions & planning, really, although now the issue is so confused it is hard which choice would take the most guts: and which kind of guts. Marcia i you are doing neither: the woman at
you can now learn it—you won’t have it this good again, baby. "You
i think there are probably three people who read this, so you three, i need something to do with my time for the rest of july & august, and i am going to spend some time crafting or working on visual representations of poems, prose, etc.
With that in mind, if anybody would like to be the recipient of any sort of crafty, zine-esque, versions of any work on this blog, or would like to read full versions of the plath pieces, it would not only give me something to do and give me some new & keen editing eyes, but make me feel super-duper.
email me: nikkimarss@gmail.com
hi, deidre!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Louis comes around
sometimes, I let him lie to me
while I am clicking sounds for money
he says it was easier then to find a house
he says mine reminds him, the red reminds him
of the 60s
he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo through a talk box
it’s an ancient art, he says playing a single note
he has vocal paralysis, whatever that means
he’s on dialysis too.
Louis remembers his voice and the 60s
when he built an empire with fake jewelry
and fell off the truck bell-bottoms
he remembers Carson’s and green
where gold was
it was easier then a record, an empire
he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo in my bedroom
all that jive, he could sell it.
I believe he’s lying
how about another round?
sometimes, I let him lie to me
while I am clicking sounds for money
he says it was easier then to find a house
he says mine reminds him, the red reminds him
of the 60s
he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo through a talk box
it’s an ancient art, he says playing a single note
he has vocal paralysis, whatever that means
he’s on dialysis too.
Louis remembers his voice and the 60s
when he built an empire with fake jewelry
and fell off the truck bell-bottoms
he remembers Carson’s and green
where gold was
it was easier then a record, an empire
he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo in my bedroom
all that jive, he could sell it.
I believe he’s lying
how about another round?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Sweat Poems
chance-composition, found phrases, sweaty things
many thanks to kristy lueshen; time spent with her in summer heat inspired many of these delusional moments.
1.
it makes me so anxious, om, inclusion monotone
and besides, I decided to forget all about drum circles
when I realized my, om, my fear of form,
the need of a fixed line
still, I would choose the well-worn circle
of all of these afghans
that have been your insides all winter
the ceiling fan, om, is not working
2.
I meant to dock, yes sir, but never to melt this way
wilting like the heads of flower children
in a wasteland garden apartment
I cannot blame them
for the particle floating in my teacup,
turned misnomer, isolated on its own layer, made from fine bone
and today, the wind only carried fuck sounds
3.
I know now that my ribs aren’t broken
just fragile boxes above my pelvis
stuck up on the fourth floor in a plié
my doctor told me not to worry
oh my, he doesn’t know enough about cartography
4.
the new wave is now a western
commute to cupcakes with a heavy queen
a sludgy morass of familiar power,
sanguine about the big fly by tree lines
bring bread just to be safe, a psychic feed
walking away from the apostolic, there is no superior street
my mother gave me these hands,
but everything wants to fall out of them
many thanks to kristy lueshen; time spent with her in summer heat inspired many of these delusional moments.
1.
it makes me so anxious, om, inclusion monotone
and besides, I decided to forget all about drum circles
when I realized my, om, my fear of form,
the need of a fixed line
still, I would choose the well-worn circle
of all of these afghans
that have been your insides all winter
the ceiling fan, om, is not working
2.
I meant to dock, yes sir, but never to melt this way
wilting like the heads of flower children
in a wasteland garden apartment
I cannot blame them
for the particle floating in my teacup,
turned misnomer, isolated on its own layer, made from fine bone
and today, the wind only carried fuck sounds
3.
I know now that my ribs aren’t broken
just fragile boxes above my pelvis
stuck up on the fourth floor in a plié
my doctor told me not to worry
oh my, he doesn’t know enough about cartography
4.
the new wave is now a western
commute to cupcakes with a heavy queen
a sludgy morass of familiar power,
sanguine about the big fly by tree lines
bring bread just to be safe, a psychic feed
walking away from the apostolic, there is no superior street
my mother gave me these hands,
but everything wants to fall out of them
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Nu-Clears
Many, many years ago,
at a Goldwater rally:
A daughter of a union buster twirls a lock of golden hair. Across the room, a judge's son is wrapped around her finger. She glances a repulsed glance and exacts her gravity. Electrified, he thinks to himself "we have to be close enough for this force to effect us."
He collides with her
and the two discuss their Barrycenter:
"In your heart, you know he's right," he reads from a pin on her mohair sweater.
"It's just nice to meet another so like-charged,' she gleams.
"Together, we could power the stars," he croons.
United by the State, they became Mr. and Mrs. Nuclear.
*
The planet then was a violent, boiling fireball. The Nuclears felt quite star-crossed, the nightly news citing (nightly) a nation divided at their name.
"The American way of life in peril! We must build a solid foundation. We, the Pillars of Creation!" recited Mr. Nuclear.
A shudder, an eruption. From deep inside the young Nuclear body, a strikingly photogenic Sun emerged first, followed by his glowing sister, Moon.
*
The son, born of some stellar explosion, was the light of the Nuclear lives. The faint young Sun promised to shine brighter each day. But soon the wayward son began to disappear at night, stumbling through the garden each morning.
"I floated across the ocean in a golden bowl," the Sun explained, but the Nuclears’ nerve wreckage found no fix in their son's excuses.
They followed him once, to the edge of world, watched him descend.
"Every dusk, I am ready for death," the Sun cried.
They could no longer look into his face.
Moon wears a different face each day. She wonders if this makes her featureless, wanders low in the afternoon sky, waiting to be seen.
Some evenings she's dressed all in white playing hostess, making the rounds with a tray of sugar cookies. Her hips move just like those she came from.
Her mother too was a performer, a glittering goddess.
She drives the boys crazy, bathes in the lake.
Many have died from not protecting themselves from her.
This dark side of Moon still wears the footprint of a man, still bears his flag.
*
And Mrs. now with cancer and Mr. attached to a tube, there were ancient urges unanswerable and modern pressures mounting.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
everyone on division street is wearing a fucking stupid t-shirt today.
could you
please describe
the dent that
forehead made in the bathroom door?
Monday, June 15, 2009
to write a haiku for you: go steam boy!
craft seminar: constraint poem
i decided to work with japanese forms: dokugin/renku renga, haiku mondo, sedoka, katuata, Traditionally a renga (and its organs: hokku, waki, daisan) is a collaborative effort, each stanza coming from a new, different voice. The multiple voices of my solo renga come from: Steamboy (anime film, unrestrained), Dylan Thomas (drunk laureate) and "The Communist Manifesto" (landscape of "Old Europe")
the constraints i took on then, were primarily the decided syllable counts for each line, stanza. follows traditional 5-7-5, 7-7 (with plenty of slippage)
from risk comes progress
my cogs, my human engines,
just a little more?
one valve! now two! three! now four!
a bit scalded, but that’s all
bones ground into bread
a brass valve to open skin
soon a Great Exhibition!
enemy to ash
what I seek is up, up, up
will you come with me?
thus is written in the book
the stubborn man, his dunce cap
the book of rays and angles
pistons in his blood (I swear)
is that the postman back again?
the parcel: the ball, the plans,
the news of your dead father
smoke signals steam chase
pregnant with mineral pressure
from atmosphere, jaws
even if hammocked in air,
the man with the handlebar
is nothing to hold onto
O’Haras deal arms
convinced that machines fight wars
they live by their guns
Scarlett makes trembling dogs of men
you’ll call her Miss O’Hara
father steel from steam
this ain’t Niagara Falls
where did father go?
under the thumb of money
extreme densities, extreme pressures
alchemy, a cult
the world waits for steam castle
not faith, not sorcery
shimmering gift of the gods
mankind released from toil
costly inventions
from inside the royal coach
am I to tremble?
fish men fear a submarine
internal contradictions
Columbus was not for this world
escape steam castle
and explore our english parts
which me do you like best?
the heir of a balloon race
a little demonstration
a ticking steam bomb
diplomats, great gobs of em!
bow down before science
bring up the pressure
find those elder ribs
the world is waiting for this?
the thing that smashed our house
we must kill the steam castle
by air land and sea
buy all three, get a discount
what is science for?
to make people happy here
the nation must be preserved
you must turn the wheel
ride the wire, flood with the window
to unmourning waters
a fleet of tempers
new cathedral battleground
where is Her Majesty?
she’ll see nothing at all of
steam troopers, aerocorpses
cross imagery
a spectre haunting Europe
you’re sure it's not birds?
battle wagons can’t climb hills
god help us all, it’s starting
quintessence, progress
Scarlett umbrella, a target
there’s a man in this machine!
fire in the belly
a kind-of commodity
are you forgetting?
threats to the next century
from risk comes progress, father
a low-sitting star
born from air: steam and new clouds
what we seek is up up up
maniacal, monacled
a world wide feeding frenzy
for the steam head
i decided to work with japanese forms: dokugin/renku renga, haiku mondo, sedoka, katuata, Traditionally a renga (and its organs: hokku, waki, daisan) is a collaborative effort, each stanza coming from a new, different voice. The multiple voices of my solo renga come from: Steamboy (anime film, unrestrained), Dylan Thomas (drunk laureate) and "The Communist Manifesto" (landscape of "Old Europe")
the constraints i took on then, were primarily the decided syllable counts for each line, stanza. follows traditional 5-7-5, 7-7 (with plenty of slippage)
from risk comes progress
my cogs, my human engines,
just a little more?
one valve! now two! three! now four!
a bit scalded, but that’s all
bones ground into bread
a brass valve to open skin
soon a Great Exhibition!
enemy to ash
what I seek is up, up, up
will you come with me?
thus is written in the book
the stubborn man, his dunce cap
the book of rays and angles
pistons in his blood (I swear)
is that the postman back again?
the parcel: the ball, the plans,
the news of your dead father
smoke signals steam chase
pregnant with mineral pressure
from atmosphere, jaws
even if hammocked in air,
the man with the handlebar
is nothing to hold onto
O’Haras deal arms
convinced that machines fight wars
they live by their guns
Scarlett makes trembling dogs of men
you’ll call her Miss O’Hara
father steel from steam
this ain’t Niagara Falls
where did father go?
under the thumb of money
extreme densities, extreme pressures
alchemy, a cult
the world waits for steam castle
not faith, not sorcery
shimmering gift of the gods
mankind released from toil
costly inventions
from inside the royal coach
am I to tremble?
fish men fear a submarine
internal contradictions
Columbus was not for this world
escape steam castle
and explore our english parts
which me do you like best?
the heir of a balloon race
a little demonstration
a ticking steam bomb
diplomats, great gobs of em!
bow down before science
bring up the pressure
find those elder ribs
the world is waiting for this?
the thing that smashed our house
we must kill the steam castle
by air land and sea
buy all three, get a discount
what is science for?
to make people happy here
the nation must be preserved
you must turn the wheel
ride the wire, flood with the window
to unmourning waters
a fleet of tempers
new cathedral battleground
where is Her Majesty?
she’ll see nothing at all of
steam troopers, aerocorpses
cross imagery
a spectre haunting Europe
you’re sure it's not birds?
battle wagons can’t climb hills
god help us all, it’s starting
quintessence, progress
Scarlett umbrella, a target
there’s a man in this machine!
fire in the belly
a kind-of commodity
are you forgetting?
threats to the next century
from risk comes progress, father
a low-sitting star
born from air: steam and new clouds
what we seek is up up up
maniacal, monacled
a world wide feeding frenzy
for the steam head
never mind the bridge
the city in its shadow
how did you get here?
hell boiled, a stolen gun
a son set free. go steam boy!
a hand trying to crush me
we stand in my delusion
could it be, a carousel?
something nice for the children
the crucial moment, a lift
Scarlett, the damsel
in the control seat
could they have seen it?
steam shatters, steam soars
steam clouds freeze into steam faces
the city in its shadow
how did you get here?
hell boiled, a stolen gun
a son set free. go steam boy!
a hand trying to crush me
we stand in my delusion
could it be, a carousel?
something nice for the children
the crucial moment, a lift
Scarlett, the damsel
in the control seat
could they have seen it?
steam shatters, steam soars
steam clouds freeze into steam faces
Friday, June 5, 2009
the story of the honeybee and us: segments.
Poor honey suckers, foulbrood America, no one warned the end of the world? so sit and sip what is sweet--too soon toxic from female floral parts
that flora,
she must have called to you. convincingly of age and wind-whispering just so ripe and ready for foraging, that under-the-skin-buzzing.
and rebuzzing, she sold her sweet roadside. even when some chiseled corporate body, urged chastity. some saviour he was, that a foolish drone with salvation leaving the corners of lips pursed and long-chapped.
he submits: “make your business waggle”
hums- - -“with whatever drone I encounter.”
Colony Collapse Disorder and Pollinator Decline
Statement of
May R. Berenbaum
Professor and Head, Department of Entomology
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
and
Chair, Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America
Board on Life Sciences and Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources
Division on Earth and Life Studies
National Research Council
The National Academies
before the
Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
Committee on Agriculture
U.S. House of Representatives
Berenbaum, who hasn’t been sleeping well,
wonders at "The birds and the bees."
Through her muzzle cries, "Bloodsuction!"
charges, "Insecticide!"
promises, "Reverberation!"
Noticing suddenly their no-air-neck-ties, Berenbaum’s audience applauds the apocalypse.
From 2006: reported losses of 30-90% in American beekeeping operations. Environmentalists and beekeepers were first inclined to attribute to known agents of death: parasitic mites. But inconsistent symptoms suggest increased stress, a new and unidentified cause of death. This phenomenon that threatens American eco-systems, food supply and bankroll has been given the name "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD.
A lesson in honey being
diet: honey, nectar, pollen or royal jelly (for queen morphology) secreted from the heads of workers
communication: chemicals, odors and so-called 'dances'
social classification: euSocialists:"What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee."
hierarchy: the ruling class (fertile females) the doomed drones (fertile males) and the working soldiers (sterile females, child laborers)
Worker Bees
"we work but not for ourselves"
we are all-singing, all-dancing
born fully-formed and winged
newborn bees patrol and clean, grow quickly into
nurses to new larvae, feeding warm wax or royal jelly
until they can secrete wax from own bellies, chew it soft enough to mold
into a hexagonal cell: rebuild the honeyhome
the honeymakers:
nectar sucked from flowers is passed from older mouths to younger.
drive off unwanted water with flapping wings, cap and seal with beeswax
(perhaps this is none of yours)
myself as honey bee: in the wake
With a start in honey-comb bed sheets
Where I am queen of nothing,
Inhale my fight-or-flight or sip an ethanol sleep
And know it makes no difference. Still,
I do prepare for a wing-slow.
If I avoided chemicals, or could, my head might hang honey-colored,
Though now only a haystack, combed daily by fine and bared teeth.
At the back of my hive-holed brain, there is a soft collapse this morning.
“The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.”
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Craft Seminar Week 1
from a copy of The American Poetry Review, cut & arranged & pasted on the face of a greeting card that originally read:
Thankful Heart
Thank You
Appropriation Week 1:
did i float unaware of the 3000 lb. machine
This is the S curve, the tilt, the jump.
I can't just be tracking the lapses
the bliss of sleep and tea
You must be able to be empty.
the steel vehicle now a lost memory
moment given to any flimsy fawn who makes it to its feet--
"What are the 39 steps?"
where the gondolier's hat, what century?
our desperate sombreros and run, my froggy, run.
the apartment to a sprint,
And Odysseus is on his way here now,
for the train, and yes, I'm sure I'm being followed.
Thankful Heart
Thank You
Appropriation Week 1:
did i float unaware of the 3000 lb. machine
This is the S curve, the tilt, the jump.
I can't just be tracking the lapses
the bliss of sleep and tea
You must be able to be empty.
the steel vehicle now a lost memory
moment given to any flimsy fawn who makes it to its feet--
"What are the 39 steps?"
where the gondolier's hat, what century?
our desperate sombreros and run, my froggy, run.
the apartment to a sprint,
And Odysseus is on his way here now,
for the train, and yes, I'm sure I'm being followed.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The (continuous) start of a Dialogic(?) Text
Derrida, you’ve rendered me illiterate! Reads “Deconstruction” as “Destruction.” Perhaps I could consider it a gift, though it could take as long as a lifetime to repay, and likely only on credit. Is that a tongue in his cheek? or a mound of tobacco?
Approaching a text, I am advised to interrogate its borders, limits and origins. I tip-toe the perimeter, avoiding a centre where there is no sure footing. A structure is built and bears, having endured its own genesis. Too dreamy an architect, I’ll have blood on my hands.
Destruktion, says Freud, must be externalized as it stands “nearer to Nature than does our resistance.” Freud and I circled each other, aggressors with minds to save, thus solve, our selves. Thinks “it must have been the cocaine.”
An amalgamation of the French words for differ and defer, differance opposes its own identity. It marks two different things as it defers any final definition. Pleasantly confounded, I wait for (want for?)a wholly new, plastic language.
(Intentionally?) Less than perfect translation insists upon a play of forces within the text itself and between the text and the reader, who applies her own force and allows her own play. Léger de main (in my fake French)
The contradictions of cultural binaries seem only to suggest repressed desire, only semi-present, but pointed to by the traces of semi-absence. Female in form, contentious in content: a grown child, dogmatically borderline, a real faker.
Differance, like me, decides itself neither passive nor active. For a spell, only pencil: ink implying permanence and strike-throughs admitting defeat.
This swap of a letter poses (quite silently) a phonemic challenge, as the “error” can only be noticed when committed to paper. Sings “what a difference an a maaaakes.”
“There is nothing outside the text.” Heidegger is a friend of a friend, a practical stranger. This keeps me an outsider, while he is caged inside his own text, translated into an additional text to be cited within another text referred to by a next text.
Approaching a text, I am advised to interrogate its borders, limits and origins. I tip-toe the perimeter, avoiding a centre where there is no sure footing. A structure is built and bears, having endured its own genesis. Too dreamy an architect, I’ll have blood on my hands.
Destruktion, says Freud, must be externalized as it stands “nearer to Nature than does our resistance.” Freud and I circled each other, aggressors with minds to save, thus solve, our selves. Thinks “it must have been the cocaine.”
An amalgamation of the French words for differ and defer, differance opposes its own identity. It marks two different things as it defers any final definition. Pleasantly confounded, I wait for (want for?)a wholly new, plastic language.
(Intentionally?) Less than perfect translation insists upon a play of forces within the text itself and between the text and the reader, who applies her own force and allows her own play. Léger de main (in my fake French)
The contradictions of cultural binaries seem only to suggest repressed desire, only semi-present, but pointed to by the traces of semi-absence. Female in form, contentious in content: a grown child, dogmatically borderline, a real faker.
Differance, like me, decides itself neither passive nor active. For a spell, only pencil: ink implying permanence and strike-throughs admitting defeat.
This swap of a letter poses (quite silently) a phonemic challenge, as the “error” can only be noticed when committed to paper. Sings “what a difference an a maaaakes.”
“There is nothing outside the text.” Heidegger is a friend of a friend, a practical stranger. This keeps me an outsider, while he is caged inside his own text, translated into an additional text to be cited within another text referred to by a next text.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Last night, I dreamt I was tricked into a suicide pact.
The Skin is, Now--Dardin Appropriation Attempt #1
i.
I ache too. Dull and too constant in green. You don’t expect blue: a patriot might. But it grew when you graved the Japanese flag in the skin of my forearm. Blue rays red at angles
still, only green
ii.
It is red and it is rising. There is no birth, but still life. A throbbing green where you planted for them only I grew up in the third space. I dug to the reasons When I knew you were leaving Kept whole and cornered The skin is, now all rays and angles
iii.
There is no glide. But we search for the vowels in A void. There, in the green speech patterns of silicon mouths, an active voice. You count A.I. I think “Oh, You!”
iv.
I found a secret constellation in your forearm and oiled my lips on purpose and woke up green. It was new when it moved east in my cheek, my speech changed
but I said I’ll see you still.
i.
I ache too. Dull and too constant in green. You don’t expect blue: a patriot might. But it grew when you graved the Japanese flag in the skin of my forearm. Blue rays red at angles
still, only green
ii.
It is red and it is rising. There is no birth, but still life. A throbbing green where you planted for them only I grew up in the third space. I dug to the reasons When I knew you were leaving Kept whole and cornered The skin is, now all rays and angles
iii.
There is no glide. But we search for the vowels in A void. There, in the green speech patterns of silicon mouths, an active voice. You count A.I. I think “Oh, You!”
iv.
I found a secret constellation in your forearm and oiled my lips on purpose and woke up green. It was new when it moved east in my cheek, my speech changed
but I said I’ll see you still.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
today i typed "craigslust" instead of "craigslist."
Some misguided advice,
overheard: "if you like to write, you should really get a Twitter."
occurs to me: this piece could ultimately prove Twitter-esque, that is, if twitter is, in fact, to chitter.
In a conversation witnessed, (which wants to say “privy: to but has some doubt) something of interest: “ear witness,” which basest research confirmed as “The Earwitness: 50 Characters,” a work of Elias Canetti. First blank filled, I scoured the internet for body text, pausing intermittently to wonder at life on Internet B.G. (Before Google!) The found passage starred namesake, The Earwitness, who dons a pair of “secret ears” at his 9-to-5 as all-knowing, never-forgetting.
Come Happy Hour, The Earwitness removes his ears and loosens his tie from a single-Windsor. He buys a round for the bar. People like him, people trust him.
The Eavesdropper (The Earwitness) is either architect or voyeur. He has either dreamed up or found his shelter in an enclave. He is perched there, as Guardian, or is hidden in plain sight.
The Overhearer has strayed, or was perhaps windblown, from her trajectory and has happened upon a safe space just below an eave. Resting there, she is part of the façade.
Eavesdropping finds itself on the outside of social etiquette, though nowadays the Suits call it tapping, (careful-not-to-type-taping) and it’s been cited as a necessary means of protection.
protests: I am awfully polite, really! Of course, there are some days in which I lose sight of social graces because my hair needs washing and I've mislaid my lip balm and music only plays through the left of my ear phones and I can only hear half of "The Gift," the short story John Cale recites to me about a fatal magic trick. In the wake of monogamy, a special delivery, but it's lost its sex without "Booker T." I read somewhere that Lou Reed scribbled it sometime in college and I'm failing as a writer and as a daughter and as a set of eyes, or lungs or legs, but not yet as a pair of ears.
I should sit, from now on, ears cupped, on the subway,
eyes could close to convince an ocean in each palm.
And like the wave, we can never get away from our source.
overheard: "if you like to write, you should really get a Twitter."
occurs to me: this piece could ultimately prove Twitter-esque, that is, if twitter is, in fact, to chitter.
In a conversation witnessed, (which wants to say “privy: to but has some doubt) something of interest: “ear witness,” which basest research confirmed as “The Earwitness: 50 Characters,” a work of Elias Canetti. First blank filled, I scoured the internet for body text, pausing intermittently to wonder at life on Internet B.G. (Before Google!) The found passage starred namesake, The Earwitness, who dons a pair of “secret ears” at his 9-to-5 as all-knowing, never-forgetting.
Come Happy Hour, The Earwitness removes his ears and loosens his tie from a single-Windsor. He buys a round for the bar. People like him, people trust him.
The Eavesdropper (The Earwitness) is either architect or voyeur. He has either dreamed up or found his shelter in an enclave. He is perched there, as Guardian, or is hidden in plain sight.
The Overhearer has strayed, or was perhaps windblown, from her trajectory and has happened upon a safe space just below an eave. Resting there, she is part of the façade.
Eavesdropping finds itself on the outside of social etiquette, though nowadays the Suits call it tapping, (careful-not-to-type-taping) and it’s been cited as a necessary means of protection.
protests: I am awfully polite, really! Of course, there are some days in which I lose sight of social graces because my hair needs washing and I've mislaid my lip balm and music only plays through the left of my ear phones and I can only hear half of "The Gift," the short story John Cale recites to me about a fatal magic trick. In the wake of monogamy, a special delivery, but it's lost its sex without "Booker T." I read somewhere that Lou Reed scribbled it sometime in college and I'm failing as a writer and as a daughter and as a set of eyes, or lungs or legs, but not yet as a pair of ears.
I should sit, from now on, ears cupped, on the subway,
eyes could close to convince an ocean in each palm.
And like the wave, we can never get away from our source.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
“Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?”
Of Note: This is a new version of the first poem I ever wrote, really. An edited version, maybe? Or an overworking...
Or, Z says "You are so sad. Why?" or "It's not good or bad, but intriguing."
--Define Natural Disaster.
Or the cartwheeling storm winds
or the inches of map keys
to steady the trembling into
a relative distance between
(younger then)
and silent
when I saw the Great Flood
watched trees disappear
an Arch under water led nowhere
per
say
We meet on the Equinox
at the New Madrid Fault
and wait to be swallowed
cling to the still amid shake sounds
I'm certain you'll sick of
such yellow haze
join in the grey middle
after your gold rush
and we’ll shout it loud
Or, Z says "You are so sad. Why?" or "It's not good or bad, but intriguing."
--Define Natural Disaster.
Or the cartwheeling storm winds
or the inches of map keys
to steady the trembling into
a relative distance between
(younger then)
and silent
when I saw the Great Flood
watched trees disappear
an Arch under water led nowhere
per
say
We meet on the Equinox
at the New Madrid Fault
and wait to be swallowed
cling to the still amid shake sounds
I'm certain you'll sick of
such yellow haze
join in the grey middle
after your gold rush
and we’ll shout it loud
watching Vertigo
If I were a Judy,
I’d have called him Scottie in a soft growl. I’d have rid the drug store’s shelves of peroxide and pins and never let the brunette show. I’d have thrown that necklace into the Bay with my confettied letter. I’d have pursed my lips and worn the goddamn suit. I might’ve always tasted tears.
I’d have painted myself in her place. (whose?) I’d have checked out of the Empire and built a love nest in a bell tower. I’d have lived as an accessory to frailty forever.He’d never look down.
I’d have resigned my wander(lust), because two together are always going somewhere.
It wouldn’t have mattered to me.
If I were a Judy?
Am I not a Judy?
I’d have called him Scottie in a soft growl. I’d have rid the drug store’s shelves of peroxide and pins and never let the brunette show. I’d have thrown that necklace into the Bay with my confettied letter. I’d have pursed my lips and worn the goddamn suit. I might’ve always tasted tears.
I’d have painted myself in her place. (whose?) I’d have checked out of the Empire and built a love nest in a bell tower. I’d have lived as an accessory to frailty forever.He’d never look down.
I’d have resigned my wander(lust), because two together are always going somewhere.
It wouldn’t have mattered to me.
If I were a Judy?
Am I not a Judy?
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