Thursday, October 15, 2009

Why I Am (Not?) A (Pro) Feminist [Man Poet]

There is some thoughtful writing over at Delirious Hem. But it’s been bothering me alot lately that I really don’t how I might be a (Pro) Feminist [Man Poet]. I don’t know what that means. I don’t have alot of actual contact with women. There are issues involved with this. I felt like I’d better either post something of this nature, since I didn’t do so at Delirious Hem or try to get the piece taken down. I considered emailing Danielle and asking her to take the piece down, but I don’t want to do that so I’m posting this.

Let me be clear. I am Pro-Feminist. I am in favor of equality, of the inclusion of previously marginalized voices, of what a man can learn from the experience of being a woman. I was asked to contribute to this forum. But I almost immediately had conflicted feelings about it. I probably cannot honestly identify as Feminist. Their are alot of women who I admire and have huge amounts of respect for, who’ve shaped my life. But in all honesty I have deeply conflicted feelings not about Feminism, but about my own relationship to Feminism. I do feel that as a White Man I’m afforded and exercise more kinds of power in more contexts than I can even know about. A problem is being stuck in the mindset of seeing Feminism as something that’s “all about” women. It isn’t. It is about opening our public (and private) fields of discourse and exchange to more modes of thinking and being than are currently (readily) available. Some of the most important of those modes happen to have been developed by, and perhaps were known all along to women, but of course their voices have been marginalized.

Marginalized by people like me. In the sense that I am a White Male. A White Heterosexual Male. There’s a Louis CK bit where he is ironically extolling the virtues of being a White Male. It’s true. White Hetero Males are the most privileged group in the history of the planet. And it is a direct result of benefiting from a history of oppression and unspeakable brutality. We ought to at least bear witness to that.

I try to, I guess, compensate. I co-curate a reading series where I live. I try to invite at least as many women as men to read and attend. But then what am I saying here? That a poetry reading is a Male environment? It’s up to me to include women? What kind of position of power might I be giving myself by saying that? But then it is true. Poetry readings, English Dept’s (tho I haven’t been near one of those in a while), and various agencies of Literature are historically dominated by Males. And men do have to account for that.

The way we behave creates a wake that reaches everyone else. Men with rejection issues, with latent loathsome attitudes, latent misogyny, seek power. I’m no exception. I’m not anyone’s boss, anyone’s abusive partner, but that doesn’t exempt me from some shared responsibility.

I’d thought about writing about something I’d noticed, about how there seems to be a different codified behavior that is acceptable for a man than that that’s acceptable for a woman, say, in the context of a poetry reading. That it’s more acceptable for a man to kind of “not give a fuck”, where as if a woman takes on this kind of flippant stance toward it, she’s perceived as crazy, menstruating, or a bitch. A friend advised against this.

I can’t separate what would constitute a worldview that is Feminist and Male from how one might act in private. What things are permitted? What things are ok for me to do in my own place of shelter? What things are “ok”, in terms of dealing with these fucked up issues. I’m not sure what for me would constitute an active public Feminism. But I feel like I have to say these things if I’m going to signify as a (Pro) Feminist [Man Poet].

I would like some feedback here.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Blogging Is Painful

Blogging is actually very painful. Ok, laugh now. I dressed as Indiana Jones for my preschool Halloween party. Sound of a thousand babies clearing their throats. Programs seem to be as good a way as any to talk about this, which I’m not talking about and won’t be talking about. But what I want to say is that when a person blogs and they know that a few people might read it, and relate to it or not relate to it, and all the things that come with that, there is a pain in being aware of that. They make me cry, and knock my lumpen head on blind wood. Blogging is a means to connect to others, but it's also definitely a disconnect. We need to shift the warlike energy associated with politician's names over to sexual energy. Why shouldn’t a person be taught to love? You are looking at flickr pictures of your friend with Terrence Trent D'arby in Cancun. You are thirsty again. You get up to leave the house to buy Fresca.

It is a lousy substitute for social interaction. Not sure what in it exactly I'm referring to but yeah... But it is painful because it is done, even if unconsciously, in an effort to connect with people one feels disconnected from—possibly a geographical disconnect, or just a peculiar social disconnect. Like two murderous clowns masturbating each other. It is painful even when done anonymously. I'm actually lucky to have been born when I was, because if I were kid now, I would probably be on every ADD drug under the sun. There are probably as many kinds of disconnect as there are blogs. Of course art does cause change. Or maybe I just don't care as much. The geographical disconnect might include people who live too far away to be physically touched. Then Perry Farrell all of sudden jumps off the stage and next thing I know, dude's fuckin suplexing me like I'm some fuckin cornish game hen. And then I'm layin there with fuckin asphault-encrusted yogurt all over my face, and Perry Ferrell's all back on stage and he's flying down, a tap-tapping his elbow, which is The Flying Elbow smash. I like the type this way after all, it’s like viewing the poem through a pair of binoculars. I kind of don’t care about that thing from before there was this thing. They would be driving a golf cart along side me yelling encouragements while I'm on my daily 10 mile run by the sea shore. So built and not demonstrated, it lassos the comely moon. The social one might be peculiar, say, in the guessing that goes into who reads this, or who reads that who can't be communicated with in any other way. They send out signals that mingle around variously patterned salons of intelligently synced-up pattern-holes. I couldn't find what is supposed to be my own blog! And yeah there is some measure of importance to be considered.

Blogging might actually be the least cathartic form of publication. What should I have for lunch? This could be affected by alot of variables. I hated the Chicago Bulls. I might be totally wrong. I also subscribe to a loose idea of being committed enough to the process that one is willing write things that are potentially stupid, embarrassing or even petty. But the transmission of a blog post carries with it an expectation of not only an instant readership, but one that will instantly (because this is the Internet after all) reply with a counter-transmission. Will you please reply? In no time? Like, Richard-Dreyfus-obnoxious right now?

Is it necessarily only achieved through google-sculpting? I wonder if the other patrons can hear me under my breath. Very naughty, and yet the listener can't decide its naughty without a certain amount of presumption. One could blog in a completely nonchalant way. I came over 900 times last month. One could really have absolutely no expectations about being found out. Would a salad believe this? Do you ever find yourself asking this question? One could blog in a completely utilitarian way. A dream where I'm on tour with The Arcade Fire, and I think me and the blond one are like stranded in a McDonald's parking lot somewhere, until Marx comes by with his Hummer to pick us up, so we can catch up to the rest of the band on tour. So I'm left with one less way to get myself out of the house. One could behave in a completely sociopathic way, or indeed be blogging at the behest of some psychotic intent. But what’s the point of bringing that up? Either voluntarily or not, they are a part of their own consciousness of it.

Believe me when I tell you that blogging is not to be taken lightly. This is cathartic: I also watched LA Law on a regular basis. More likely it was because we just couldn't remember. I would like to now bifurcate that sentence a bit, and just say that the blogging of literally billions has implications which almost completely eclipse the implications of blogging itself. I wrote this in an essay in Health class and ended up being invited to help keep score for the Basketball team. But maybe all of life is beautifully harrowing. And the implications of communication? Of the digitized message-in-a-bottle that any blog really and truly contains? Aphex Twin is playing and I’m writing this and I’m looking at the monitor with part of the words covered by a smudge on the monitor. Blogs are meta-containers, like Russian dolls, and do require maintenance. I should know better and I do, but I go around loving every thing. I wrote a thing where a kid is murdering his father. What is the appeal of black metal? Don’t get me started.

A dream where I had to go back to my dishwashing job, where somehow I was obligated to and there was no way to get out of it. And looking in The Sports Section at an article about how Steven Wright is actually a really great athlete. There's a picture accompanying the article that shows Steven Wright's rifle-like tennis swing. And also an article about a local couple who were involved in the Avant Garde in the 1930s and 40s, posing nude with their parts strategically covered. And I'm yelling at Ross in my father's living room, loudly complaining that there's no way I'm going back to that job. He's trying to explain to me how the person they have now comes in late, calls himself "Mr. Bumblebut" and uses the wrong exit to leave. And I'm getting really upset but then I wake up. And I'm very relieved.

How would a serial killer’s blog read? A dictator’s blog? A phenomenon of the late 70s and 80s. I once masturbated in the back of a bus in Ireland. (This will be the only Item here that involves me masturbating.) I mean its good and necessary to have a philosophy. When I was a kid, I had a staring problem. I do "creepy" pretty well. We are nearing the end of summer, when the blogging is dumb and the living, it's easy.

How would a virus’ blog read? I don't quite understand when people say, "well I haven't written anything in a long time". If a virus could blog, we would not understand it. Er, I mean we would not be invited readers. I'm not good at knowing whether someone is joking. That would be too lateral, passive. There's a level at which this is all rhetoric. What a virus wants, of course, is direct contact.

I've always dreamed of being in a band of misfits where we play our instruments by not learning how to play our instruments. But the format dictates the expectation of the kind of shared experience that's peculiar to the Internet. Today is my day off, what should I do? I think I have hemorrhoids. Today is my day off, what'll I do. Does blogging remind anyone else of shadow puppets? Why do I feel like someone out there is about to “break it” to me? Please be gentle!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Joker

Accidentally once I told a joke
these guys…
ooh ooh the sky…
but not that
jumpy I’m sorry
I can’t get my bearing
but I’m like
ooh ooh!
Shut up! That’s boring!
I’ll say it you write it down
Verne Johnson… he fixed my bike once!
What? No.
No!
No more peanuts for you!
I was like…
put it in your hole
put it on your bowl
and Verne said… Yeah! Flannel!
Totally red and brown colored
but I didn’t get it
I was like… Whaa?
Just tooling around…
Verne said… Whaa?
There go my powers
Ooh ooh
Did you see that?
Verne kept singing like…
yeah…no…
Undies? How the hell
do I know

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Eggo Bus Blues

Try having my year
plugging up the incandescent
maternity singing
rumble tilts
That will get you
to cleaning your sinuses
as they rough and tumbling
felt lines
a thong spare as
the curt direction
given through tidy links
remedially after it
clenched I tell you
the waffling truth in those
circumstances
the crickey blandishment
absolution of the apostles
or betterment of
retreads ye take through
garnish for
sun-out
stares at the
sly and peaceful buzzing

Try havin my year
served with fennel in a
green plastic Pinocchio
bucket, hiccuped from the
infrastructural shepherds
with brutal lazer-toyed
beneficence
and plainly Americans are
worried on their stoops
breathing as animals
caged in film trailers
leaving smokey
perfumes

now you need release
getting used to these Towny
ways shying away around
plots of inherited binary
Smokey the Bear peers
outward from the
luminescent skiffle
pink visor
locking down
must-see
hardships, pen-whipped
lapidary as all get-out

I’ve been at this all year
shining deer in my
punk fashion
sufficing through
brutal relations
of seed
and whipped curls
to towns down-
grading collapsible
tents in the non-
functioning sun
spending absolution
through doubts of
demonstrative
star power as the lift
toward formality
reeling pant-leg
exclamations
in the final honking
good party

try this tuner to use
for anal relief Trucks
no survivors Plane down
the board of life-like
drinking contests warping
around the child-like
fertilized eggo waffles
burning in the Supra-addict
where we store culture
refuse to sneeze in the
disheartening new climate of
Toy box brokerage

or try this plant your
gardens slantwise
catch newly renovated
sun disposal as Hell
to feed the capital’s
distant passive abuse
with long curly locks and
forced receptions of pasty
figurative pulls on
soon-to-be captioned
desperate gestures
counseling pour
stork jokes or cold
grief whinnying
Ouch! disheveling
folks’ electoral
area attitudes

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Some More Tasty Omelets

brush cutting of the not-strictly factual?
garlic? and sauté?
(third-person singular
simple present sautés, present participle
sautéing, simple past
and past participle
sautéed)

BCC has to crack a vault
or melt completely—

serve a perfect golf swing
into the homemade no-frills
heroism of the Net
yeah, it’s a little of the
tongue-depressing quality though—
ranging from feta and spinach, to ham and cheese,

ranging the alps in a nifty Vespa
w/ Richard D. James
what a body’s on now
getting the résumé out of my intestines, just
a little twinge of the “chaach”
you can eat brunch as you explore
the Men's Auxiliary

Artists must submit a written and drawn
omelet proposal: taters,
NEEDLES ETC ETC.
Before the parade, Artists must
report for inspection
The menu will be
Darren Dean, Scones, and waffle station
Weekly at 8:15am

when, out dashes your Disney tour guide to
vandalize Elk River Parks,
submits a hard copy of your cover letter,
a minimum commitment of fourteen weeks,
then collapses
under the weight of the omelet bar

Lego bacon cheeseburgers
sprinkled throughout the province
like crepes sprinkled on the county economy
run through to the daily xtra Muffin of sad sadness

I’m a better judge of massive omelets
than I seem to be
The National Honey board bears
an extensive kissing revenge on Joe, in the end

Each day they must wrap up the omelet
another day older
resumes more so in disrepair
sprinkled throughout the province

like it was so much egg white
standing erect
“under the tutelage of Randy Tutelage”
a study in foreclosed color schemes

a pragmatism rhapsodizing
it’s own undercooked urethra quality
nevertheless great transportation options
more than enough face-time w/ Mr. Tony Shaloub

this is what Heaven was looks like than—

a Lego breakfast table in El Rosario
an ice-cold campfire
a bachelor's degree and a few years of experience

scrubbing away the omelet residue
seeing home—
Some More Tasteful Outlets

I just can’t sustain
EATING THAT SHIT...
all this porn is at Defcon 1 its both
a me worse person
under Egyptian tombs
common with the dry forest
the movie War Games
after retirement
leafing throughing the geological
dontcha
evolutionary reptiles
common with
nature’s next can’t sustain
prone concentric meat doth like what
you say to contiguity
common with generating relief
what it always is—

SHED OF LIGHT
the upholstery within
concentric spires keeping
my A.C. squeaking
just plain more
alive that night surrounded by
bending animal of Dutch
frozen pizza common with
how bees will be nature’s
imagination
reptiles common with
philosophy’s basic and needful Magic Christian
cadaverous into the used
John Elway of
upcoming
extent
Defcon 1 common with
history’s belief
which I’m telling you and if
in a mopey
SO HIGH HEAR THIS
cease may cease
of my heat
upturned from under murals
in a tie-dyed
leafing through
common with
a me worse
a motherfucking alive person
Timeshare

I feel enjoyable
as if I were King Tut
basing this baffling
position
you seeing me
I or you
on a tinfoil buttering
Aztec visers
handing off the beat
to which I eat
a Roman in guilt only

why even I get
tired of writing all this
I oughta know then to
pair my wit with
your exotically based
window view

even admiring lots
of pulling porks
focusing the lemon gravy
an obvious pun
I oughta build or
at least tear it down
elegantly clinking
my hopes toward
aspiring away from
cheating the gov’t

a sound noise
or veritable
pocket rocket

you’re never gonna stop all the
teenage leather
sex neither nor
young marauding
guitar clinics
sexing the suburbs
in their pained delivery
circa ‘84
through ill-relaxed
window panes

don’t take the brown caulking
it’s a matter of fact massage
bunting out toward
Waukesha or one’s
warlike symptom in an
obtuse sex organ

when we say that
we mean liquor cabinet
the common lyric here in
the Highlands
in the foreground of a
turkey being slaughtered
the shameless lyre acquisition
down through history or
y’know against all
this vague inspiration

we say generating the
truth as a historical imperative
wakes up badly
stick in a toothpick
you pull it out doughy

here’s what you do
sing ectoplasmic gossip
around a hairball’s
autobiography gee
wouldn’t that not for once
be utterly boring

or a non-milk-based prose
a Vulcan Valkyrie
who once managed
the Velvet Underground

this poem is making me itchy
too much Robert Lowell
in my bathwater
those shoes that improve
jumping capability as memoir
lessons recede

I watched a fish die
and that was it
my inconsistent autobio
fueled by airy kissing
under thought ramparts
where horseflies put in the hours
this pre-mulder & scully
when I was but a scuzzy fantasy
a young girl offered
to let herself
be transported to

now I lick women
their lengths
they lend me their
remote love & sensuality
clap the hands in an
all done motion

I need my heart clapped
or at least three views
of the opportune siesta
these adamant
sobbing onto my handlbars moments
come all too easily
I oughta maybe share
an efficably-dosed margarita
with Kevin Shields
at Martin Scorsese’s timeshare
constantly losing Tina Fey’s
number in the most
pleasurable possible way

my face is becoming numb
the sun is rising
it’s a living
it’s a final doodle of tonight
it’s a soft reprimand
it’s a poignant detox

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

My Philosophy Of Life

Look out! foreign selves
collecting Nero’s mind
as a clean sheet, the rhyme a cleavage
across from it’s knot or,
straight into it’s deep, deep shadow
desperately, endlessly green
piles any space into the chest
around the little harp God—

pass door or, wanting to begin
the gossiped Queen Anne’s embryo wings

the various grays have Shut up
for a walk
out the window & true to feel
your third floor equivocating eye
no chicken scratching on spectacles
to be found out or, burst!

Occassionally now thick panels
like to be so beautiful

What is sad also
tunnels down my amazement!

this blue chair
ha! to see
the flower of the awesome

The Great Earth crouches, has found you
a passing dog overlaid, particular
howling and tending a deck of cards on Mount Olympus

Only he don’t come down
nakedly treading a handfull of his audience

We stand in the rain
ready to become seargents
so obvious and thereby silly
the long Penis dissolving
in the sky of clear dark blue

Somewhere above Tonight
standing on man’s eyes
the corners of her studio wear the good time
today—

children play and yet have quit
did not know what grows outdoors

saw with their green eyes
the scrupulous system between the columns
on a chart, is only the sky
hard arguing to the left—

those level miles
about itself

[Source text: A. Poulin's Contemporary American Poetry anthology. This and With Mercy For The Greedy are two from a manuscript possibly still in progress called, well... Contemporary American Poetry]

Thursday, September 10, 2009

from Poems To Be Inscribed On VHS Tape Labels


Bob Dylan said what was on the minds of Americans

“I hope we win the Vietnam War.”

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

With Mercy for the Greedy

the vines are beneath the cement
informed by the glimpse spectrum
shallow water coming until unraveled
oh sweet vision of the great tent in heaven
like conversational prose turning the beaches pink
five dollars, like a bar,
defect to the typewriter silent, on the hill
(as clearly it had moreover served faster prints among the rocks)
my skull heard dusty laughter from the family king cat
onto the freeway shoulders, to come
on a happy ending
from a walk of so able or galled
a philodendron’s penduncle
velvet drapes come to music the velvet fog
the fatuousness neither warm nor friendly dark
knowing the usual, unreliable fuckless days and nights
thought, form, impulse, the sperm whales feeding
are concerned on your shelves
and though the sharpness suffuses the frogs like a psychiatrist
their dusty laughter on a great falcon hunt
eyes the flinging arms of a country and western band
where you’re hiding from monsters, dream still dark
a trace on the no happiness like mine
so the lumps on my knees study for a decade
beggar bold! cannibal dynamo!, extravagantly slow
premonition of the fall, but felt your leered teeth
would pierce our heart, a small fuzzy pipe
fallen naked as snow, deconstruction
one whole year the windows would swivel
it was the dingiest bird, all that sweetened purpose?
that smell of difference still situate, entertained
who’s got to blow the man’s arguement in the used car lot
walk around with almost human knowledge
swing low sweet sexual holy land on my porch stoop
sand paintings of this present
a commotion of common metaphors
if it’s thinking is not having bones
a day spring turtles hate most
no peace as round
a sapped thing without hope of landscape
men call me old scratched isingsglass
alien eggs that simply stake out in diagonal darts
like stars published shrunken
with weary satisfaction of my flesh, often comedy belies
a pure pane of sweetened brilliant water
a religious octopus grenade
slowly calicoed with wet wind
bark of the enterprise where the brightest light
has held you in their bushings



[Source text: A. Poulin's Contemporary American Poetry anthology.]

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Post-Everything Barker

that deluxe remnant
wind took your daughter

to a far off rockaway
of the jigolo
selloff

where the scary is
more sincere than
the sincere music
same bill blake type
shit the wind’s
ensconced in

we were there
at the broke pump
in Wisconsin

talking about the
times we sensed it might
get broke

Monday, September 07, 2009

Area Man

area man an important gold arm
vs. an example such as area man
or area man in a bittersweet glove
of wind like area man finally
succumbs offers succor to the asian markets
or paydirt in a plastic look
area man ooh yes
area man oh maybe lets stop
playing around
area man tongue us on our balconies
have a taste for birdflu area man you
recombinant mutant you
area man, man in an area
farther away yet toward where
the form fingers the function
the same principle as you reach
your robotic hand farther down through the prizebox
romance lies in wait for a housewarming
gift is a likely stunt
a lovelorn end table of promises
area man will never keep
only the cream of area man’s promise is real
only the measurement of luck
is one thing we’re out of
area man didn’t leave us any, let any out
area man takes me and you off his phone
he posts a grief along the tubes that draw up
the bingo machine being romantized
holler at you later
to pick up that area man
at the airport
save the zinfindel pasted
cards pasted F6 or try F8
younger than we struggled to believe
is area man having a brand new heart attack
a fascinating reception for his wake
along the coast
releasing the bubbles from the froth
from the ether from the freezeframe of the
world’s fantatstic grip and commodity fetish
sheltered reams of gold
punch up the imp in the cloud
the area man of the respectable courtship
sharkskin vs. the natural ways of man
what sounds as familiar later the vortex
was glanced into is all
an embroidery of prayers around
area man’s abode
the troubled psychedelia of his gait
later a pirate’s booty was shook
to shake out the fissionable material
the confirmed or most likely reducible
love which hangs from
area man’s hangnail lame as fuck
which is what we do in slo mo
the laughter of area man in sound booth
or mattress-coated suburban rec room
the softcore of sobriety society
the vague science of lucidity
the tame tune of newly washed hatchbacks
their glimmer in the sideways american morning show
a highly rated foot-race job
whistling on your gps
don’t name it’s location
melt it in your mouth
in your handmouth area man
poor means of your lovemaking area man

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Sample

A Shamrock shake
hit the window of our love.
The window was already fogged up
from the heat of our lovemaking.
So what effect
would the cold, cheap
mass-produced Ice Cream drink
have on that?

if the squirrel is over there
then the Yanks are comin'
but if the scraps sink down in the verbiage, Ok,
Gregory Hines is not contributing to this improv at all

I say enough with the salty language and self-love
self-serving relief sorta thing

"Gregory Hines is not contributing to this improv at all"
this should be a line in a rap song...
hawking Capri pants by the Yangtze
Yes, I'm gender-exclusive if that means excluding all genders

it is love
makes us pant
in the skanky light
[Chromakey bluescreen] & green-screening the barges
antithetical verses overlaid
with a sad dobro remix

and non-Communist forces in the dobro talkback poll
contribute to the Shamrock Shake’s velocity

so then we’re left with this little conundrum:

At maximum velocity
the Shamrock Shake achieves the Look Of Love.
We want to know where it’s commerce went but
it’s nowhere where we can see in there;
full o’ tuft & whimsy wrestling with it’s own ridiculous
matriculation in the Look Of The Market Place.

another thing: Why are we now reaching back
farther than Gregory Hines in a Payton jersey and Hammer pants
farther than the man’s poor improv skills existing
in obviously stark contrast to the man’s gift for Tap

back to where, behind the greenscreening of barges
before and around (really just around) simultaneity
with the garbage masher function;
where there are web videos in the moonlight & 80’s teens tonguing:
back to where the future let us down again
put-zing around when we wanna take a day-trip to Wisconsin Dells
and express ourselves with go-carts & other tacky velocity?

One's thing's for sure. We're gonna be a hell of alot thinner.
Summer Babe In This World Of Poor Mutts
Malkmus/Ceravolo

I saw your girlfriend’s sub-equal brightness
Everywhere we look there’s just another meal
but she waits there panting
the restaurant is never gonna come
Everytime I sit around I find
Everywhere I look I’m across
Ixtpalapa green canal
you’re my summer babe
gone in in in flew
with a plastic-tipped cigar

I fight and fight in the levee wash
I got alot of things
I want to sell but
collected someting warm like friends
a picture of not here babe
passes through me babe

everytime I sit I find I am a
white summer man-babe

I leapt at the caribou in lust
the fruit-covered
tripod of despair is
still there
won’t break the door
Yes! they end on the shore

I got a heavy load
not a gorged begin
to an orgy
ex-magician still knows
the tricks
never rides home
in the levee wash

beneath the tides
or fruit-covered nails
in in in lust

I am the only one searching for you
and you do not know it
I got style
as my hair stands

miles and miles
lice in heaven

so much Oak that
it’s wasted
in the shade
in the levee wash

I’m peeking out
and you do not know it
the pattern’s torn
and you’re leavin

I’ve got style
Bow wow wow
and you do not know it
this pattern’s torn
and your leave in
in in in the levee wash

you do not know it
I am the only one searching for you
I am with you forever
between style
as destroyed as moving

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Some Notions Of Lovemaking

I wouldn’t eat that if you were you
or if you were me you wouldn’t eat me
in the fashionable US horizontal band
placating Other Species • Mold and Lumber •
when you expect to make love or book a conference center
just make love then book a conference center
to get health authorized be of an active orientation

use iron-on FDIC love
to ensure making love gets you regular
keeps you in the loop
helps you make more Americans make love
in some easy Euro show-through step-by-step process
stitch in order to exercise PCI DSS and ID Theft
gets you more regular than human really

if getting regular is as human as making love
lovers handling customer card data with kit gloves
you can have a major impact on almost invisible fabrics
but if you’ve never done it before with a provisional cast-on
before us making love in the open air
all legal and ethical requirements leak refrigerant across industries
all of your notion patterns and quilting make a difficult love happen

Drapery Fabric, Upholstery Fabric, Bridal & Dancewear Fabric, Faux Fur
but the use of these opinions is no substitute for a kind of legal love-making
to help Boston’s disadvantaged students to quilt baskets and zippers
Wet-ring vacuum pumps generate additional water flow
which in turn compensates for the lack of love-making in forlorn area codes
here’s a link to interfacing large and varied notions
including Simplicity through reasonable love-making

a female witness to a pocket watch theft once made love in arrears
quilting patterns and coaching an invitation away from the skankier cast-on
minimal or managing a large selection of art supplies and zig zag machines
the best place to comparison shop for a man’s notion
used to be a bunch of barely visible AEQS online shops
which now applies to all parts of a project
to quickly wind any thread or yarn into a delicate torpor

as making love is a delicate proposition
so bottom line requirements behoove our arreared fantasies
to open up shop in the cybernetic casting of small sensuality-tinged
quilting or zig-zagging methods into a demarcated sigh or request
bloom colors may vary from a functionality and scalability
scarcely remanded for the synthetic-based mud we once were using
recently imple- mented emerging from a more basic need

which finds us tenderly coaching and quilting the market
cornering the handbags and duffelbags of emotional commerce
which compose the notion we’re after
utopian since the breakfast and a notion toward growth to boot
the right delivery system thresholds environmentally sustainable
not to mention adorable curvy obsession in the atmosphere
unabashed as an ambulance passing through the movies

you will need if you want to make more notions
a process for love-making that does not disregard bottom line requirements
some goo that offers a site for quilting
not to mention on the whole an air of familiarity and friendliness
whelming patterned notions against making love on quilts
bedspreads and drapery aching in the stern notion that is established
a kind of yet supple believability as lovers on swings in the park at night

agreeing I wouldn’t eat that if or before I were you
swinging in the late years of an empire subsumed by bottom line requirements
a yet not to mention compostable compunction believing in itself
establishing lights as a mere drapery transposing very human disgust
not to mention lust for a notion that won’t give
an embroidery we can in an orderly fashion carry with us through the desert
divining important predicted ribbon from a market

Friday, September 04, 2009

from Keeping Up With Elliott

hand on his arm
a stuatue
rake your neck
sturn out them
zakc som check
that what you ome to
expect
needle
in the hay
little
int he
needle
in the
hay
swaering your closed
beg down your toes
know what did
two idio kid
don’t havea clue
calling me out
your pulling in hime
thorugh
needle
in theya
nidle
in they ahy
needle in the ahy
hele a n bus
nearly theyere
disturbing ythe tree
falling out six and out
six and my teath
donw
down
staris to the movies gonna
make it ok
taknig thein cure so i can
be quiet wherever
i wnat so me alone
you atouth
bpurnd that i’m getting good
marks

your hadn on his heart
his static chamr
ram our neck
call in some friend try to
cash some check back what
come to expect
needle in the
heya
eneel
in the hay
neddle in the hey
swear in your cltheos
pick down your toes
a reaction say
know what ou did
you idiot
kid
you don’t havea
clue
sometimes just cet gauta
in the eye your pullin me thorugh
helen a bus
hear me touch me
when disturbing a tree
falling out sixth aond howard
dead sweat i my teeth
down down
stairs
to the movies
ai can
be myself and i adona’t
wanna talk takin ga ure
so i can quiet whereever
i wal so leavie
me alon4e you ought to beparoijnd
that i’m getting good
marks
neeafdl;ae
in thy ahe
needle in the heya
needle in the hay
needl ein the ahe
needle in the hay
needle in they

neddle
in in
your hand on his heart
his dad charmed rack your neck
sturngin a out a fee
call i n some friend
zack didnt come that s what
come to expect needl;e
aoint he y
nedle
in they
needle in the
hay
needle in they hay
swearin gthe clothes pick
down the toes say know what
did
to idiot kid who dont
havea clue
so omeotimea
you ust get couaght in the ire
needle in the hay
needl in they ah
needle ian they
a
needl ein theyah
helena bus
fear lee touching his dirt in three
falling out six and out
dead sweat in my theth
walkd
wlaklk
wkalk
donw
donw
down
starings
to the movies gonna make i tok
take it cure so i can quiet so
leave me alone
ou roughta
be purond that i’m gettin ggood
marks
needl eian the
hay
needle in they ahy
needle in they hay
needla
intey
needl in the hay
nedle
ainti
needl eith inhay
needle in theahuy
needle in theahay

Thursday, September 03, 2009

No Ideas But In Pangs

through our gestures
taking up space
we present impression
how illustrious tucked
judged it takes
according to a happening—we
Poundian, scrunching toes
taken with one woman, the woman
I don’t know if that answers anything
deeply engrained nightmare scenario
micro-expressions (sorry PBS)
high-culture “mirroring” ticks
men at a frenetically (panicky?)—pop culture, y’know
My Two Sons
they’re not around as much
retreating to the restroom (unlike fiddling)
The Best American Poetry
pad assures not a comprimise
your ideas the mimicking present tense
yourself allows a sort of hobby
cross pile gait
mixes the poetic and the quotidian
doctrinaire first impression
holding many attended cues
growing or broadening, mmm boy...
...and note the difference
try to do still-watch voice, unlike
fiddling—the person you are sitting across from
having alot more to do, um
...scrunching your toes in order to get ahead
a grim picture...
you don’t neccesarilly shut down
tend to point, panic, Watergate, Vietnam
um well we are at a meeting and pay attention
videotaping presentations—Gestures are terrific
Capital H history
point and see no reaction
point and see no reaction
we can’t read what’s happening in your work
tonight we tend to coach
work ethic we tend to sprawl out
an inch or pike I guess I should say
projected through many parents, materials
A: its a mistake, the rhetoric
misinterpreted as sessions
a cue from ancient times
intimidating expunged variety
beforehand “mirroring” to communicate
videotaping impact
specifically tucked into a Volvo
better that I taught them than that I didn’t
55% percent of that ankle
is a cue from ancient times
brilliant so frustration
unwieldy materials neatly Unlimited
present tense says of the table
hadn’t your hands unarmed
imposing laughing firm totally have been
a random tactic grateful to the other people
honorable Calvinist body language
alot of neural RAM
William Carlos Williams made an early decision
that non-verbal fresh flirting
was in fact reconaisance
are an are are only a nerve
I’ve lost my Avant Garde card in the laundry
all that kind of thing
a table upon us of taking up
perfect hygiene and all
visual ticks common to women
people in San Fransisco absorbed it
if they only are common, unarmed
post-Language conference table—
a cue from ancient times
we can’t read general truth
right next to
above the shoulder

[Source "texts" are "Seven Common Body Language Mistakes" off the A.P., and Bob Perelman's Studio 111 session with Charles Bernstein on PennSound]

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Sample

it was like, Hey Weird Baby Boy Name
the rains down in Africa
can't keep ammo in stock
"hurry boy she's waiting..." No, No,
N-O to the enjambed blooper reel indices
combined with the talking Kangaroo Wall Street Journal
the emotionally determined tablature winks,,,

it's supposed to sit out on my porch tonight
but it mayn't diarhea
or the hooligans in our bloodline reunite us
be dapperer than making out before
but still romantically briefed and clinging
to your out-sourced sighs
O let me go down and learn
working toward an advanced curriculum
in this fucked-up pluri-felt of feelings
ridiculous images flood the boat in two
hand-held MP3 bridge quivers
and the longer voice-activated
the non-essentialist orgasms

_____ said all your moves are in volumes
you are volume-centric
& I say volume-concentric
I hear the rains down in Africa just like you
Sample

& I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues
that this laughable demeanor may tuck in
to yet more desert meals
Never Be Stumped For A Tree Shot
Each UXO/mine secret
section of code to embed
v.32bis 14.4kbps onto the image
the bear climbing the ladder out of the skate pool
...is love, even if the Fixed-Core guide wires loose
all sensation for their stems
spinning on the filmic pier in my dreams...
only post-dream description available was
crypto-keyed, rudely-withdrawn pregnant art
& I got a piece of it stuck under an application
for an absentee... I keep a starving pit-bull
and put on a pair of easier-for-you-to-enjoy
steering wheel fluid--harvesting absolutely
the most offensive visor from the portal
Sample

recieved a supple examination
of my strudel del fuego
in the keening light
spying on the movements
relaying signs and sighs
which softened up the lieu
not vexed and finally

do the squirrel's healthful paws
at my window
signal "Goodbye to you"?
can they in some way mask
my unhealthful intentions around the
dissemination of these songs?
are the squirrel and the ladder-climbing bear
both finally waving "Goodbye to you"
releasing some booster-chair endorphins
we had not experienced since
early days at the Ponderosa?
Sample

Al Swanky
comes through the saloon door
just ever week or so to surmise
getting lost in your eyes
then says "Goodbye to you"

so long ago
wanted far too much
to ever let you go
in the ever-wilding goggle-light
these Hazmat suits were exchanged
for Classical Gas Hinkty Licks
his perennially awful plastic surgery
licks the earmuffs off smarty jones
who so long ago said
Goodbye to capitalization
as a rebuke to it's coarse
& gender'd nature
Sample

like, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers
make a trip to FedEx
in those days that we took for
a steer or a whole hog
whether or not running as based
on her text messages [espn]
expand the liver space
for the Stella to enter
with it's impression
of a feeble corrections officer

this won't happen overnight:
skull-faced Hawaiians on deep dives
kindly seperating the flannel sheets
from the chaffe: 1. your fab shoes
send healthy thoughts out to all my buddies
and Thank You! 2. the real, ill Santa
escorted an employee to the Airport Lounge
then to Old Country Buffet
where the eggs are not violently detested

out from under the porch
by the local bodega, kickin' it Mel Gibson in Ransom-style
nobody touch my fuckin' eye-mask bondage kit!
(it's lyrical / skype-ready)
the Jonas Brothers arrived in a package from Greece
to rock the house
not to mention make rock 'n' roll childish
stripped of each of it's lamented
LenDale Attributes

finally showed the decorum
of writing code in the nude
Sample

was never more turbo
than a sinkhole
sunrising the moon'd
quasi-Rick Flair
jostling effects
For the extent of the duration of the televisual feast
In the televisual environment
I lay pants out
on the nostrum I catch
from the televised
public corn sizzurp roads
gathered in the tin pails
too think-y or like yeah
yeah I know suckling nights
are nosing around spending
the money

so you see
dude was hogging the tapas
I was trying to cross the street
against the glare
forgiving angular bus sounds
that had reached my window
which was the city "blowin' through"
ruffling NetFlix wrappers
used as makeshift condoms
dieting in exotic localles
with the coffee that was
out of my depth

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Dude, so sorry that half-wolf half-centipede ate your girlfriend's dad's face off!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Rodefer


How much Rodefer for a Klondike Bar?

Sunday, July 26, 2009

New Poems
by Mike Hauser

single black portable CD player playing "Hot Blooded" out of an open 1st floor window onto an empty sidewalk

____

Two Questions

Who the fuck are these people?

Am I going the right way?

____

Personal Poem


Coldplay song playing

in the laundromat.

There's just me &

another guy in this

laundromat.

And that song

what the fuck's it called?

"Spinners"? "Engine"? "Crops"?

"Archer Daniels Midland"?

"I Heart Monsanto"?

It's the one my mom

really likes, and other people

I know who I think like it

would love to hear it right now,

and then, oh great!, I think I like

it too! And yet, and yet

I feel kind of like

violated by it.

Like this Coldplay song,

whose title I can't remember,

and that is playing in the laundromat

where just me and this guy are waiting

for our clothes,

it's like it's not just

moving me, but,

forcibly
moving me.

____


guy in car
makes pecking motion
while turning left
and telling off
guy in other car

____

It always sounds to me like the guy in Nickelback should see a doctor.

(Yeah, Ear Nose And Throat Doctor!)

____

Journey

I feel like there should be an HBO series about Journey's career.

____

"can you hear me runnin?"

Are we supposed to take this literally?

Like, are we supposed to hear the singer's shoes?

____

Hey Karl

some guy named Ronald wants to talk to you.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Dude posts loner crum-bum videos on the wires we agree to as the Werewolf gluten.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

High-larious! Dude's timing within the performative (who knew?!) space of this Op-Ed piece is just priceless. "My Doberman pinscher ate the kindergartner's bratwurst." I mean, just, oh my god. I can't take it.

this is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what
we did not pay for them to do
this
is what we did not pay for them to do
this
is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what
we did not pay for them to do
this
is what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we
did not pay for them to do
this is what
we did not pay for them to do
this is
what we did not pay for them to do
this is what we did not pay for them to do

Monday, July 20, 2009




Jared White

Farrah Field

Thursday July 23rd 8pm







Salacious Banter Sweatbox
900 S. 5th St. (5th & Walker)
Enter on Walker (door now marked
LOBBY for
your convenience)

There will be some food and drink, but feel free to BYOB.

Farrah
Field’s first book of poems, Rising, won Four Way Books’ 2007 Levis Prize. Her poems have appeared in many publications including the Mississippi Review, Margie, The Massachusetts Review, Pool, Typo, Harp & Altar, 42Opus, La Petite Zine, Sojourn, Pebble Lake Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Fulcrum, and The Pinch. She lives in Brooklyn and blogs at adultish.blogspot.com.

Jared White was born in Boston, and has lived in Brooklyn for about eight years, during which time he received an MFA in poetry from Columbia, as well as playing a fair amount of music, mostly on the piano. His poems have appeared journals in print (Another Chicago Magazine, Barrow Street, Cannibal, Fulcrum) and online journals (Coconut, Horse Less Review, Word For / Word, Verse). He also published essays on poetry and music, most recently in Harp & Altar, Open Letters, and Poets Off Poetry. He was awarded a University Writing Prize from the Academy of American Poets. A chapbook of poems, entitled Yellowcake, was in Cannibal Books' Narwhal compendium. His very occasional blog, No No Yes No Yes, can be found at jaredswhite.blogspot.com.


Tuesday, July 14, 2009

This was also in that notebook:

I have never been one of the men.

My face lies actionless, feminine flower.
I am covered (face) by the moon.

Perfectly still, 'cept for the water.

[It sounds like someone sliced the speaker's face off. Also, the poem assigns the movement of the water to my person. So in this poem I'm essentially an X Men hero, called No Face, who can make water move at will. But now that I think of it there has to be one like that already right? Right? So anyway yeah I think I really did write in those days with myself in mind as the "I" of each poem. I can only chalk that up to some kind of milk & OJ combo of alot of Frank O'Hara "I do this I do that" poems and James Wright "I'm crossing the meadow to go touch that horse" poems that were in my system. Now I've moved onto writing poems that sound vaguely like the work of a serial killer. I'm like creepy wine, as I age.]
This is a list in a notebook from about 2000/2001 that had "Poets" written at the top:

Grace Schulman
Claudia Keelan
new Komunyaakaa book
W.H. Auden
Spanish Surrealists
Marianne Moore
Li Po
Rilke
Reverdy, Jacob, Apollonaire
Sappho
August Kleinzaller
Cathy Song

Monday, July 13, 2009

Spill Proof

I will go live somewhere near a lady's neck.
pending slump
unbeknownst
Dream

Going around the compound with a huge load we had to dump somewhere.
Baths

like what if they just stopped working?

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Poets date, continue dating, and date on into the turkey in the sky.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

also:

The Shampoo Thief
The Milk Man
The Vampire Panic Attack
The Doo Wop Werewolf
The Shoegazer
The Sour Cream & Chive
The Llama Twist
The Lending R. Kelly Some Clark Coolidge Books
The Cowboy Hat Purchase

[Many of these dances will require what seems at first an almost balletic amount of pantomime. Several are said to have been developed by at least marginally deranged and/or sadistic people. But as the student masters more and more of them, they begin to see that these dances taken as a self-reflexive unity, compose an act of incredible love, and demonstrate the acute sensitivity to pain and rhythm human animals possess. It is said that the more dances a human can learn, the more enlightened that human will be.]
Zack's apartment, where Zack films me while I demonstrate such dances sweeping the nation as:

The Jaywalk
The Noodle
The Princeton Ponce
The Sidewinder
The Big Unit
The Lil Sneeze
The Tired Houdini
The Filibuster
The Rump Rumination (slow simmer)
The Doleful Booty
The Let's Not Tell Roger Daltry We're Partying Over Here
The Funnel Cake
The Carpet Roller
The Tarp Trot
The No Money Down
The Grape
The Greek Translation
The Gifter
The Platonic Introducer
The Pancake Flip
The Caterpillar Kip
The Wan Wiggle (cough syrup)
The Ask Me No Questions I Tell You No Lies
The Civil War Enactment
The Grant Proposal
The How Did I Get Here
The Bruce Dern
The Put Away
The Buffet Breakdown
The Janesville Jumping Jack
The Lord Of The Prance
The Snorkel
The Unsolicited
The Cake Tease

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Boy The Bodies Of Vegetables

hey I'm an inveterate newsguy s' why'd you pluck all my stuff stuff?

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Feel like I need a little nod from all the poets who dress terribly.
Feel like I need a little love from all the poets who dress so fine.
I'm cultivating this here Masters Of The Universe museum in my little sticker book.
I feel like I cd maybe get some o' these fresh & clean poets to look in it.
Feel like they might find something they like.
Sexual Glasnost

Tear down this zipper!

Monday, July 06, 2009

Get yr sweat on, he said, fr chirst's sake, look out where yr going.







STACY! SZYMASZEK & SARAH BUCCHERI

Tuesday July 7th 8pm

Salacious Banter Sweathole
900 S. 5th St. (5th & Walker)
Enter on Walker (door now marked
LOBBY for your
convenience)

There will be some food and drink, but feel free to BYOB.

Everyone knows and loves STACY SZYMASZEK. But if you happen to be one of the uninitiated, we'll save you a googling:
Stacy Szymaszek is the Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City. Her work has appeared in Lvng, Aufgabe, antennae, Crayon, Xcp, 26 and online at The Cultural Society. She has also been featured online by Chicago Postmodern Poetry and Here Comes Everybody. She is the author of Some Mariners (EtherDome Press, 2004), Mutual Aid (gong press, 2004), There Were Hostilities (repair, 2005) and Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005). She grew up in Milwaukee, WI.


Also beloved and beknown is SARAH BUCCHERI.
Sarah Buccheri was born and raised in suburban Chicago. After a stint in New York City, she now resides in Milwaukee, Wis. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree in film from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Aside from her film and video work, Sarah is a performer and collaboratively produces regular performance art evenings at Darling Hall, one of Milwaukee’s finest underground art spaces. She has performed at The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Galapagos Art Space, and at a variety of venues across the U.S. Most recently, she toured with a new show titled EPHKLATCHEMERAL, a collaborative performance that premiered at Baltimore’s 5th Annual Transmodern Festival 2008.

Stacy will be celebrating the release of her new book HYPERGLOSSIA, just out from Litmus Press. Bring yr checkbook, dummy.
Contemporary Device

ain't s'posed to show my panic attacks on touch screen
more than willowy only dancing pigment demarcation

Sunday, July 05, 2009

single tear on the Rewind button
Declaration Of Independence

in hot pants woven
not t' mention stroven
Rejection Letter

the obligatory Everyparent shows ire
Hey Gerber

Annie's Naturals think I'm stupid
Tallahassee Kid

cute sounds pierce floorboards

when that passion screw gets on the eggs
my tie gets caught in the drive thru
Mayday Malone

lovely noon towels.
Corner Aisle

good gobbers! it dishes on my Mercurochrome!!
Oh heavens to Feng Shui...
No Host Tincture

splat zblat you talkin at?

Friday, July 03, 2009

Ma Ma Ma Root Canal

always chewing so carefully, yes
I do fear I may
fall into the basin of history at some point----------

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Dear readers, I'm afraid the blogs haunt my dreams! Bad, no?

Also: "goat church".

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Get yr sweat on, he said, fr chirst's sake, look out where yr going.







STACY! SZYMASZEK & SARAH BUCCHERI

Tuesday July 7th 8pm

Salacious Banter Sweathole
900 S. 5th St. (5th & Walker)
Enter on Walker (door now marked
LOBBY for your
convenience)

There will be some food and drink, but feel free to BYOB.

Everyone knows and loves STACY SZYMASZEK. But if you happen to be one of the uninitiated, we'll save you a googling:
Stacy Szymaszek is the Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City. Her work has appeared in Lvng, Aufgabe, antennae, Crayon, Xcp, 26 and online at The Cultural Society. She has also been featured online by Chicago Postmodern Poetry and Here Comes Everybody. She is the author of Some Mariners (EtherDome Press, 2004), Mutual Aid (gong press, 2004), There Were Hostilities (repair, 2005) and Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005). She grew up in Milwaukee, WI.


Also beloved and beknown is SARAH BUCCHERI.
Sarah Buccheri was born and raised in suburban Chicago. After a stint in New York City, she now resides in Milwaukee, Wis. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree in film from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Aside from her film and video work, Sarah is a performer and collaboratively produces regular performance art evenings at Darling Hall, one of Milwaukee’s finest underground art spaces. She has performed at The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Galapagos Art Space, and at a variety of venues across the U.S. Most recently, she toured with a new show titled EPHKLATCHEMERAL, a collaborative performance that premiered at Baltimore’s 5th Annual Transmodern Festival 2008.

Stacy will be celebrating the release of her new book HYPERGLOSSIA, just out from Litmus Press. Bring yr checkbook, dummy.

Friday, June 19, 2009

I don't get the use of "cutting edge" to describe so-called innovative or experimental art or writing. I think it's even worse than "post-avant". "Cutting edge" to me is where one found Depeche Mode CD's in the record store in 1992. Sorry.

Last night it rained very hard which was accompanied by alot of thunder. I had to put more than one receptacle under all the leaks in the ceiling, which included the light fixture. Is that really dangerous?

I've had a stomach ache and/or toothache for about 2 weeks now.

Another thing I don't get is the idea that writers need to have sufficiently adventurous lives. Like there is a quota. "I will not know what poetry is until I experience this, this and this." How about until you experience poetry? I think a writer could have what by most standards is a sedentary, normal life, and still produce great work.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Riders On The Blogs

Today I got up and opened my window and it was very beautiful outside. It was mild with a slight breeze.

I'm currently reading Silliman's Under. Like many other Silliman texts, it's kind of a narrative whirlwind/pool of keen particulates and wending detail-- kind of like a steadily tornado-ing text. He's always cited composers like Reich as an influence. In the reading of it, I find I get tricked by what seem to be 'personal' details strewn among details that seem clearly to not be 'personal' details. But the aesthetic is that it's all personal and that nothing is personal hence, no? Holding The Alphabet is kind of a nice hardy pleasure all it's own. Some of the daunting prospect of it's near Yellow Pages thickness is removed when you realize you have your whole life to read the book.

I must say I don't really get this new 'shitgaze' stuff. Alot of it just sounds to me like music that's so intentionally oblique and unintelligible as to be almost a forceful projection of jaded resignation, rather than say anger, fear, joy, lust... I mean music can be a vessel for a whole lot of emotions, come to think of it all emotions at various points, if that makes any sense. Apart from shitgaze, alot of Indie Rock seems to rely on this a-priori sense of a personal, solitary experience, a shared experience but shared in seperate spaces with pockets of media and groups of people; music that generates a vague projection of the experience of, well, growing up middle class and white.

I do like alot of lo fi stuff. Who knows maybe I'll change my mind in a couple months. And I grew up middle class and white. I love Pavement, Guided By Voices etc. So I may just be recognizing all that in my self.

Probably one of the reasons I wouldn't make for much of a music critic is that (besides really probably my almost compulsive like compulsory use of qualifiers in my own prose) I don't see any reason to take a position on most music in the pop realm. Though I guess I did do that in the paragraphs above.

Today I'm blogging but this may be just another prelude to another long silence. Who knows?

My own prose is a source of constant frustration for me. I post things here that I cringe at almost immediately after and have to force myself not to take down. A poetry blog like I once did might be more suitable, who knows. But I feel kinda like I already did that. Yeah they're still there, feel free to peruse.

Update: There's a pretty good chance I had a booger in my mustache the entire time I was asking my building manager whether he thinks the postal carrier would take outgoing Netflix just now.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Feel Like Makin' Blog

Someone who I knew-- a charming and wonderful person for sure --told me last week that I have a "cute little nose". So I have an idea for a sketch or short film, or performance piece that involves standing in front of mirror at 3 in the morning or some such time of angst and pointing in the mirror and saying over and over: "You got a cute little nose... a cute little nose... do you hear me a cute little nose."

This could possibly work as a way of getting myself pumped up before a reading. I've always thought I could use some kind of Dirk Diggler pre-performance ritual type thing.

I've been reading, in a completely non-linear way (this is half chalk-up-able to a short attention span) Jennifer Scappetone's From Dame Quickly. I really dig how it can go at a sort of half-tethered to syntax kind of way but also channel the various transmissions and mental debris of culture. The lyric is airtight, I think. Reminiscent a little maybe of LangPo from back in the day, but also a necessary update.

Also:

I dredge alledgedly
to repair and upgrade the Port of Umm Qasr
I edge legibly duty free
transrational contract drag
well I pledge alien
lesions will be doled

-- this feels like something I've thinking about trying to attempt myself, unless I completely misunderstand. And I feel like that would be ok, since the above from Delection Even, and the more projected pieces like Beauty, could be read just as much for sonic pleasure.

On Tuesday, I almost got hit by a car whilst trying to turn left onto Van Buren St. I was out pretty much in the middle of the street on my bike at a redlight waiting for the cars going in the perpindicular direction to pass, but one of em decided not to go straight like I'd planned for it to and it's left turn action almost took me out. Also I didn't have my lights on and it was raining and dark.

Today I realized my dental insurance is pretty much only useful if you're the kind of person who's been taking care of their teeth for years, and only need a cavity removed every once in a while and the occasional cleaning, and not if you need extensive oral surgery like I do. Shit.
Q: What does Lil Wayne play in his spare time.

A: Rock, paper, sizzurp.

Addendum: My attempt to connect Lil Wayne to sizzurp was either completely erroneous, or this joke was not funny. Though in my defense, I imagined an invisible "get it" behind the punch line that was designed to exempt me from any "bad joke blow back". But irony, like Jenga, often collapses under it's own weight. Just another example of that Hauser exceptionalism. -- 7-3-09

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

rob Peter to PayPal

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Get To Know Sprung Formal

This shit just makes me feel lucky, almost makes me feel paranoid, but in a good tingly way. I can't wait for my copy of Sprung Formal to arrive. I'm being a little impatient, I know. Actually I don't think I've gotten mail for like the last 3 days. Is that weird? Should I call the post office or something? But once again, you get such a fine assemblage of poets, writers and artist-type persons as Eirikur Orn Norodahl, Josef Kaplan, Brandon Brown, Alli Warren, Jasper Bernes, David Perry, Kari Frietag, Todd Colby, Sarah Luther, Linda Lay, Sarah Sarai, Nada Gordon, Sawako Nakayasu, Jordan Stempleman, Ryan Daley, Nathan Logan, Edwin Torres, James Meetze, Sarah Mangold, Alex Savage, Maurice Burford, Jess Rowan, Charlie Mylie, and in the mix you also get some stuff I did. You know this is gonna be good.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Get To Know Puppy Flowers

I have poems in the lamentably last issue of Chris Martin's great Puppy Flowers. I've been aware of Puppy Flowers as one of the really cool and unique Internet publications for several years. I remember for one seeing some poems by my great friend John Tyson, who I predict will make an LL Cool J-esque (don't call it a) comeback in the next few months. They should still be in the PF archives. But you have to look for 'em, and get to know Puppy Flowers in the process. The line-up for this issue though is pretty freakin' stellar in it's own right: Anselm Berrigan, Dorothea Lasky, CAConrad, Buck Downs, Cori Copp, Jason Morris, Corine Fitzpatrick, Andy Hughes, and Matthew Zapruder. I'm honored to have my stuff among theirs.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Favorite Vocalists: Part One

Stephen Malkmus-
I kind of want to say "Steve", or really "SM", because he wasn't really "Stephen Malkmus" with Pavement, which is what I'm thinking of. Malkmus' pouty, rubbery singing might the thing that really keeps me coming back to Pavement over and over. And I've actually not heard or read alot about his vocal style as a quality in their music, except for the "slacker" "not really trying" line. My friend Zack Pieper, who might also be one of my favorite vocalists, once made a remark about Malkmus coming into his own as a torch singer on Brighten The Corners. But for me, it's circa Crooked Rain Crooked Rain and Wowee Zowee more specifically "Heaven Is A Truck", "Rattled By The Rush", "Brinx Job" that get my tearducts a-flowin'.

Elizabeth Fraser-
For "Heaven Or Las Vegas", "Orange-Appled", "Sugar Hiccup" and more. Her voice gets softer, more sensual, and louder at the same time.

Mark E. Smith-
Yeah, The Fall. He was the James Brown, Fela Kuti, Duke Ellington, and Archie Bunker of post-punk. His memoir, Renegade, is a great read. I kind of want some leftover instrumental tracks from Hex Enduction Hour, or Grotesque (After The Gramme) for reading to.

Ariel Pink-
For "Strange Fires", "Oceans Of Weep" and more. One of my favorite live experiences is seeing Ariel Pink open for Animal Collective in 05. It reminded me of what I'd imagined a Suicide show might've been like, at least the experience of it: vocals reverbed to the point of unintelligibility, drums even more reverbed, like industrial music almost. You really got the sense this singer did not like you. And the keyboardist is grabbing the bassist's shirt for some reason. Like Bowie's voice in a blender at a pagan ceremony.

Brian Wilson-
Yeah it will start to feel really ridiculous if I try to remark on why every vocalist on this list is amazing. I mean, Brian Wilson. Nuff said. But ok, him doing "Wonderful", accompanied by harpsichord from the original Smile sessions, is one of the most beautiful things you'll hear in your life.

Billie Holiday-
"Detour Ahead", from some bootleg off a CD my mom once got in the mail from Bravo Network.

Damo Suzuki-
"Future Days" cooing. Best cooing in general.

Billie McKenzie-
"18 Carat Love Affair", not to mention very excellent lip-syncing there of.

Elliot Smith-
All the popular choices. Specifically, for one example at least, "No Name #3".

Rakim-
What do they say, flow? "I Ain't No Joke"

The Flamingos-
"I Only Have Eyes For You" 's bridge has the best, most bliss-inducing (for me anyway) moment in pop music.

Nick Drake-
For all of Pink Moon. Also, the strings on "River Man" (from Five Leaves Left) give a great vocal performance reminscent of Nick's own hum.

Joanna Newsom-
I have gotten some shit for my love of Joanna Newsom. 'Prententious lyrics?' So what, you only listen to Lou Reed? 'She plays the harp?' So what, you got a problem with Harpo Marx too? And Debussy's orchestration of Troi Gymonpedies?? 'Concept album?' So what, you have never honestly enjoyed a concept album? Not St. Pepper? Zen Arcade? Not any of them? She sings like a dolphin! For a second anyway, on "Only Skin". If you don't like that there's " "En Gallop" ".

Kate Bush-
"Hounds Of Love", "Big Sky". Just think of her as the person who existed so Joanna Newsom could exist. Also watch the video for "Unbelievable" on YouTube. And "Wuthering Heights", the version with just her dancing in a field.

Lil Wayne-
"I Feel Like Dying". Would it be a completely dumbass thing for me to say he's the Kurt Cobain of Hip Hop? Tricky with with more (er, utilized anyway) MC skills? (I love Tricky, at least early-Tricky, but...)

Calvin Johnson-
Calvin delivered the most amazing vocal performance I've ever seen in person a few years ago Milwaukee School Of Engineering's Todd Wehr Center. Alone on stage, swaying, sashaying, completely earnest, singing a capella "When Hearts Turn Blue". Beautiful.

Green Gartside-
"The Word Girl (Flesh & Blood)". Actually now I have a conundrum, because I think Green is my fav for cooing instead of Damo.

Katy-Jane Garside-
Incredible, scary vocals all throughout Daisy Chainsaw's music, but "Pink Flower" esp. the second half of the song is one of the peices of music I'm familiar with where the description 'terrifying and beautiful' might actually be apt.

Raekwon-
"Verbal Intercourse" and other classics off Only Built For Cuban Linx actually make it kind of a toss-up between Raekwon and Ghostface, but I've always liked Rae's flatter tone, which seems like it allows for a better verbiage to flow ratio, on Linx anyway.

Lou Reed-
Thinking of the Velvets I guess. "What Goes On", "Jesus". Feel like I should give props to Doug Yule for "Candy Says" too.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Matt Henriksen
Mike Hauser

Thursday, May 14th 8:00pm

900 S. 5th St.
(5th & Walker. Enter on Walker. One block south of National)
$5 suggested donation


As usual, there will be some food and drink, but really, feel free to bring your own.


Matthew Henriksen has two chapbooks forthcoming in 2009--Another Word from DoubleCross Press and Only Grows from Cue Editions--and compiled a selection of Frank Stanford's unpublished poetry and fiction to appear in Fulcrum Annual. He co-edits Typo and publishes Cannibal Books at his current home in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

This is his:

No Reality But the Ruined Idea of a God We Speak To

Gnat caught in the breath of a dismantled catechism

on a cracked pew in a cathedral by the sea,

restore with your nothing wings

the way to where I left my shoes.


No imagination but in your tiny, ruptured eyes

which may as well see no thing,

before a brain which cannot count,


behind the inverted cradle of my hands,

which in a moment or two

will dispatch what I forget.



Mike Hauser grew up in rural Wisconsin, and now lives in the near-Downtown area of Milwaukee. His books area Dirty Movies Late At Night (Rust Buckle Press), crets crets crets (Rust Buckle Press), Close Gauge Petcock, and Psychic Headset (Mitzvah Chaps). His poems have appeared in Rust Buckle, Gam, Burdock, Abraham Lincoln, The Hat and more. When he is not windsurfing, summering on the Cape, or taking a young Italian lover, he co-curates the Salacious Banter Reading Series with Karl Saffran.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

"I got a single bed/Ain't no room for your sweet head"

I think that's how the chorus goes to "S-S-S-Single Bed" by Fox. Incidentally, the same dude also wrote "Under The Boardwalk". Anyway I guess this officially makes me a Simon Reynolds fanboy: 2 blog-prop occurences in 2 days.

But seriously this song is awesome. It's actually a disco song (er, in that niche sort of, right?) where the singer is lamenting how they'd love to fuck but they can't sleep with you because, hey it's just single bed and there's no fuckin for you! I feel that. I really do. [Do I, three hours later?]

Other thing I was thinking is that between this and the "video" for "18 Carat Love Affair", which I link to below just-scroll-down-whee-bit, a case could actually be made, by me, that lip-syncing can be way way better than so-called live performance-- more stylish, entertaining, fun to watch and thus actually an enhancement on the recorded product which is actually being presented as an accoutrement to the performance. At least in the context of a TV show, or some such.

And Noosha Fox's outfit is really beautiful and wonderful. Shame on the idiot host for dissing it at the end of the song! [Addendum: The outfit is actually kinda lame. I think what so bewitches me is Noosha's over-compensating gestural syncing-style.] Also, Noosha Fox shares a birthday with Ann Coulter. That almost makes me believe in Karma.

*

I'm starting to get an idea of what living in this not-so-well ventilated 3rd floor apartment is gonna be like during warmer temperatures, and I'm afraid the answer's gonna have to have to be alot more buck-naked Hauser. Sorry, Elaine and other neighbors... Also, while I'm on an avant-disco groove I might as well link to Can's biggest hit. They ain't Noosha Fox in the lip-syncing department, but hey, they're fucking Can! So, nuff said.

*

Having reservations about Silliman's Blog has become a reflexive accompanying response to reading Silliman's Blog: Thoughts?
T-Pain's plan to "change the world". "I'd turn everybody into a hershey's kiss." I mean, corny as hell, but you gotta kinda love it don't you?

Monday, April 20, 2009

Check out the amazing film/sound collages of Denorah de Jesus Rodriguez.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Hi There

[This portion deleted] this Tim And Eric video. "Free House For You, Jim" is pretty great too.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Lazy Bloggin Whilst Taking A Break From Watching The Making of Short Bus/Is There Magical Language Poetry?

Short Bus: I'm thinking this film has emotional sophistication. How come so few films today have genuine emotional sophistication? Er, Indie Films, anyway. For example, the other night, I watched Synecdoche, New York, and it's very good, it has a pretty awesome performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm a huge Samantha Morton fan (you should see Morvern Callar) and the sequence in the final minutes, with the instructions and the dying, is quite beautiful, but emotionally it's pretty one-note. Like dread-dread-dread-whining- sex- dread- grey hair-dread-love-death. They all seem like different notes, but I think they're really all one-note. I mean, it's innovative and all, but at least Short Bus acknowledges that sexuality is a very very complicated thing. Not to set up an opposition or anything...

*

Oh yeah. The last week, I've had a headache pretty much the whole time. And on an unrelated note, I read The Future Of Memory by Bob Perelman, and I've been rereading Ketjak by Ron "Million Hits" Silliman and enjoying them both, particularly "The Heroes" from Perelman's book, which gave me flashes of what I sort of always thought Language Poetry could maybe be. I guess I'm still wrestling with those issues. Am I?

Anyway now I'm thinking, "Is there magical Language Poetry?" Is that a stupid question?

*

I went to the El Rey grocery store today with Elaine to buy El Rey chips, and noticed that the bag seems alot fuller than when I buy them at Pick n Save (yes that's the name of the Death Star chain of grocery stores in Milwauke, gimme break it's a freakin block from my house and it's open when I get off work). Should I be surprised that the El Rey chips that are sold at the actual grocery store named El Rey are essentially a better value than the ones sold at Pick n Save. Am I actually willing to believe that they save the best bags of chips for their own stores?

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This is probably irresponsible blogging because 1: I'm drinking right now (so what?), and 2: I'm bringing up ideas without really expanding on them (I'm drinking right now), and 3: I'm now 31 years old. (I actually just thought to say that now because I haven't said it yet, in any official or public context.)

*

Is blogging "official".

*

Should I buy the new Robert Fitterman book? I was looking at it today and it actually looks pretty good.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Charm

I've been thinking about this post from Nada Gordon which addresses what one looks for in poetry, or maybe in a poet or poet's work or whatever. She says personality and style, and agrees with music as an addendum to the criteria. Coming up with a criteria like this is all about being put on the spot, as in having the question directly put to you, "What do you look for in poetry?". I have to give props that she performed under pressure like that. And I agree mostly with it. And who wouldn't respond to personality, style and a musical quality etc? But I've been thinking that I would definitely substitute or in any case put in my top 3 the quality of charm. Alot of the most intense interactions I find I have with poetry have to do with just being charmed in some way that I may or may not be able to put into words. An obvious (to me anyway) example of a poet whose work just exhibits so much personality, style, music, and charm (not to mention wit, nerve, sensitivity, alluring inscrutability) would be O'Hara. If ever there was a poet who I'd describe as irresistible, it's Frank O'Hara. But "charm" as an adjective to plug into an ideal poetry criteria seems like sort of, I don't know, untrustworthy. But not in a way that would distinguish it from any other quality that would appear in this or that criteria. When you try to articulate what to look for in something that you already nerdishly devote yourself to the pursuit of, there are bound to be exceptions upon exceptions upon contradictions enough to capsize the whole frickin criteria boat in pretty short time. But charm does hold up for me. As in I do want be charmed when I'm reading poetry, or put it this way-- if I'm faced with a complete lack of charm, then I'm gonna to have a really hard time finishing this book or poem or piece, or getting through this reading without just resorting to a complete mind-lapse into thoughts about artichoke dip, or sex, or some Marx Brothers bit, or Frank O'Hara, until it's finished and it's socially acceptable for me to leave. All of the other stuff-- my head getting lopped off, my soul being permanently scarred and deformed, my testes being stuck in a vice, me being told to change my life, well I'm thinking right now that none of that will work without charm. And since I peed and grabbed another beer, I've been thinking two things: 1. O'Hara is like the ultimate Criteria Poet, as in the variousness of his work (and he's sure not a "neglectorino" or anything) exhibits so many qualities that it makes it almost tempting in light of it to just advocate for a poetry that packs in as many qualities into as various a tapestry as possible, & 2. I should really try to expand on the whole charm thing or at least come up with some examples of charm in poetry within the next few days, which I'm too lazy to do right now. Thoughts?
What Have You Been Up To?

I've been out of pocket, just sort of working and coming home and watching stuff through all the sanctioned channels. And not eating meat and getting sudden feelings of displacement while frying an egg.

One thing I've been trying to figure out, which may already be the wrong tack, is how to write poetry. After, in the wake of, the full time working and not doing it before or after. Part of the problem might be easy access to those sanctioned channels over the internet, which can deflate the will toward making things. But I really have been trying to figure out how to start writing poetry again, or how to start writing poetry.

I've been trying not to lose my collected shit, or rather today thought I might because of the sudden displacement feeling whilst fixing an egg and potatoes meal before "work". "Work"s cushy I guess in that one can sit and read Joseph Ceravolo, and appreciate, maybe even in a smug sort of way, how poetry can help one not to lose one's collected shit, which I don't feel like I have the energy to withstand.

Just now I walked to Y Not II, and crossed Pleasant St. and heard the sewer running underneath the street and though about how I live in a city. Sat down in Y Not II and read Edwin Denby, and started to read Susie Timmons but thought how I always treat poetry like some buffet and I end up not concentrating on anything, so I kept reading Edwin Denby. I came home with one beer that tasted like the tap hadn't been cleaned in me. Though at the same time I'm thinking of the scene in the film Mister Lonely where Diego Luna's character thanks all of the things in his apartment just for being what they are and doing what they do, and thinking how maybe one should practice that a little maybe? So Thank You ruddy-tasting Blue Moon, for sitting in me in a nice comfy way even though you tasted ruddy, and Thank You Y Not II for being around me and having some other people in you while I sat in you, reading Edwin Denby.

Anyway that's what I've been up to. And you?

Monday, March 23, 2009

Please check out the new Abraham Lincoln, and the new issue of The Hat.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Salacious Banter #7

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR


CA CONRAD
MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI
AARON KUNIN

MONDAY, MARCH 9TH
FUN STARTS 7ish
READING STARTS 8ish

As usual, there'll be some food and drinks around but feel free to BYOB.

900 S 5th St.
5th & Walker (one block south of La Perla)
Enter under awning on Walker.
MILWAUKEE


CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia where he lives and writes with the PhillySound poets www.PhillySound.blogspot.com. His latest book The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009) received The Gil Ott Book Award. He is also the author of Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), (Soma)tic Midge (FAUX Press, 2008), and two forthcoming books, advanced ELVIS course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Press, 2009). He invites you to visit him online at www.CAConrad.blogspot.com


Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a
collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). Another collection, The Sore Throat and Other Poems, is forthcoming. He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.


Magdelana Zurawski was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that's where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

Tour Schedule at http://fbman888.blogspot.com/