Crap: What happens in the colon of an ineffectual poet.

5/19/03
Brooklyn

There’s this way of revealing things: not like undoing a knuckle-shaped knot, or pulling a rope through both of your ears. It’s not a style of saying anything. No echos in lecture halls, or hiccups in church. Not the sound that you exhale over bad rows of teeth. No sound at all actually.

David takes a long piece of plywood out of the shed, and runs his hand across it’s edges. He slids the handsaw back and forth, and it splits in half, falls to the floor. The V-shape reminds him of his lover's rooftop, bracing a ladder against the pink bricks. Here, we realize what a cut does: how her bed became an umbrella and something like rain ran off. He sees chairs set out like suspension bridges, wades in knee-deep and washes her off.

Everything changes. Their functions change. And when the sheet takes the shape of a wing, it becomes the wing I think. And when a a girl takes the shape of an azalea, she pinkly sits on the edge of his belt. She asks for a hammer to nail down her head.

He is not a carpenter today. A metaphysician, maybe.

Dear David, sometimes I think I still sleep beside you. I like the way you blow through the door. I watch for wet David-dew on the cool stoop.

5/22/03
In transit

It’s always a question. Even if the question doesn’t ask anything of anyone. Like putting together of puzzle of something you've never seen. This goes here. And that goes there. Like that, yes.

She ran away from her place in the mountains. Ran down, I guess. And soft rock is always playing, everywhere she runs. Not fast. Airports. Orange alerts. Pieces of clay crumbling off the mountains. They run down. And maybe that’s it: down. Gravity giving you four feet to stand on.

So Jane says “you should write every day.” She says “you should write in spurts” she says “you must find your poetic space.” I like undecided people.

2/23/03
Brooklyn

Today it's acidic. Clouds coming over like acid. Acid in my mouth and stomach. Something claw-like there, a bread hardened on the counter, difficult to chew. Don’t mind me. Don’t mind at all, sitting in the bathroom with a book of early William Carlos Williams. But instead of looking for the loops of repetition, I’m wondering where he did his residency. What kind of patient made him nervous. What kind of face did they make during surgery?

Today is hospitalish. A whitish room with a greenish light. A nursish girlish bedpan dish. Peeish greenish. Shish shish shish.

----

So your skin is green and you’re eating a falafel in the street with a boy you haven’t seen yet (In fact, you don’t know if you’ve ever seen him). But he’s there, looking like he just lost. And you are lost, reading your way through the gutters of Paris. You don’t speak French.

In short: Acid clouds bubbling up like a bad movie. Tomatoes that sag in their small gardens. Brain waves. I don’t know why, but there are brain waves zigzagging across the streets whispering their engines to everyone. (If an engine could ever be polite enough to whisper in this neighborhood.)

2/24/03
Brooklyn

So I decided to mark my places every day, mapping it out I guess. Nothing poetic here, sir. Just a crumble. A little bit of a kiss leftover, in the fridge, waiting for me I think. So I don’t know why I can’t make sense when I write. Something about not stopping for anything. Because if I stop, I won’t ever start … won’t traverse through it. Like remembering the weather report could somehow change the sky. Knock on wood, knock on something that matters.

I’m not writing an academic paper, sir. I can’t pronounce Goethe. So what kind of work have I got? What kind of soft light in the room? Do I have any takers? Any bids on the table? Is there any way to run my fingers over this apartment and not feel like I’m already gone? Little by little, scratched out. Like a smell, waning along the street. Settling somewhere. Where do smells go? Hmmm. I know that has something to do with a swallowing. Smells vs Atmosphere. Dear God, where does the smoke go after its done? He doesn't know. He doesn't know. So I’m done with you sir, done with all your fire.

2/26/03
Brooklyn

Cremaster 2: Barney barely knew his inner cowboy. Then he invited everyone in to show it off.

So strange, the way terror comes slowly. Shivering in the subway, seeing someone that might be Jeff Magnum, maybe not. Maybe you lip synch Tom Waits for the entire train ride, knowing full well that the frog in your throat is not a frog at all, but a piece of shrapnel. That’s the way it goes when it’s raining. Frogs and gutters and gone-fishing-music playing on labor day. Gone-fishing music, the kind that reminds you of the lake. Or maybe the way your mother describes the lake all these years later. Her memory, so fragile that what looked like a lake is a glass vase teetering on a muddy shore. And if you’re not careful it will all come crashing. You, mom, the lake, everything inside the past that seeps out.

That’s it. That’s the only thing I have to say today. Because Barney didn’t do his memories justice. Plastic and vaseline. Rubbery forks.

2/27/03
Brooklyn

I blame Anna. How startlingly productive the sun seemed before 8pm, how it shrank to the size of a distorted dwarf. Blame Anna. She didn’t do the dishes or fill the water jug or clear out a path to walk through wind. Blame Anna for the shingle of bills on the table. Blame Anne for witchcraft and weather-vane tampering. She was the one who left the light on. Fire Anna! Take her out to nice place and when she’s wiping her mouth with the white linen napkin, give it to her. Fair and quiet. She won’t say much in public. Anna, Darling. I love you. You know I love you. But the weather is telling us all to move on. Blame Anne for wanting her own way out. Let the coordinates fall to the floor. Anna! You are exquisite, a leggy kind of careless. Lift up your skirt. Show me the shining. Anna, dear. Anna. These cups of hot sap. Pour the adhesive into my hands.