Peek Thru The Pines

2012-01-02T22:10:00.000-08:00

TRASH AMERICAN STYLE #6
for Phil Cordelli and Brandon Shimoda

Every time you ask me to write
I forget or you forget that
I build
In the basement I leave the nozzles open
Run upstairs to check on the kid
Throw bread out of the toaster
Strum three Rolling Stones chords
Over the kid resembles a periscope
I brought the kid to sanitarium
He made friends immediately with two birds
In the waiting area
Cages
Yellow striking
A color worn to elicit luck
Like a white arm that spins in circles
The joint is loose
Remember that place where we ate meatball subs?
Saw Nick after how many years?
He looked the same they all did anyway
I was saying something about building
You can measure the gravity with this device
I rigged from a level I found in the mound of dirt near the baseball field
I don't know you wrote that poem years ago
It was one of your first poems I didn't understand it
I don't understand it
How about pricks beneath super dark trees
Over the left field fence
Tim who lived in the house through the woods
Would pretend to know how to spin his arm like a cat
I saw him walking down the road
Facial air
Was striking also
That is where we slept outdoors in the rain
I can barely leave my room
Magazines get delivered directly to my room
I am not addicted enough
"Come down into the basement" whoever said that
Sitting on a mini fridge playing the guitar
Whoever bought Danish cookies anyway ate them
A green cloud passing over means the rain is going to come hard
Understand what pricks would be doing beneath super dark trees
Or were the pricks a metaphor
Or super dark trees
I could never spin my arms like a cat
Drunken snakes they get drunk in the first place
My uniform was blue or blue was the color of my uniform
My uniform was white
I studied your line breaks I think they make sense at ;east
"Come down into the basement" some red-headed kid said
It wasn't his head that was red it wasn't his hair exactly red
Either whatever
How many lines is this supposed to be?
How do you know when a poem is done?
How do you know when a poem is a poem?
You sound like Lisa Turtle
She's on a date with that dude she thinks is really smart
He thinks he's really smart he's a turd
He wears a sweater vest or cardigan whatever
It is she says
Something like
Is art art? Are we art? And the turd gets a boner
Under the table
They're at the Max
Its the turd's boner that is art
It grows directly through the screen
And threatens the safety of everything within it
As any art is art should threaten it
Was much easier when I was trapped in a room
Only five hours to get the whole thing done
I could commiserate with the girls that kept me company
Commiseration became inspiration you know what I mean
I plugged the whole fucking thing in the world went dark
With possibility that kind
I was walking down a road in winter
People were shouting my name out car windows
I felt like somebody
I felt like that with you
I felt like that with you too
I never sweat so much or looked so crazy
But I was building building something daily
Even if just scratching figures into plaster
Seemed like everything was possible
Strumming the strings with a monkey paw
Getting felt up on the subway home

2011-11-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

TRASH AMERICAN STYLE #4
for Phil Cordelli and Brandon Shimoda

You asked me to write something on this blog?
I have nothing to "write"
And I m not embarrassed to be proud
Sweeping through this life like eating crap up off a shingle
And proud
To be
Listening to Chrome & Helios Creed
In the basement
Huffing ink from this stack of t-shirts vision
I have to get out to the familys vision
Me in a pile of dirt
Lifting history with a shirt that hurts
When a foul comes across the field
Displays of superior construction
Lance away what I did not want in the first
Huffing wood glue off my fingers
While the wings set
On the replica
Fly into the buildings also shrimps
I went upstairs to see what you guys were doing
Sugar off my brand new vinyl
One of you was cleaning out my wheelbarrow thanks
One of you was talking to my neighbor over the fence
All my racquets had disappeared I said Peace!
I had never seen her
She was laughing what did you say?
One of you was watering the carrot that had grown in the middle of the yard
Worker in metal
Working
On the ground
Def
What do you guys want for dinner?
We'll go without it
Why don't you invite your friends over for dinner?
The myth 'd me
I went to the store and bought chips
Poured 'em out on the dining table
Let's just go back and forth eat whenever Boba
For whatever reason it was charming to be on the verge of jumping off the roof
Like, I wonder what he's thinking, He's mysterious
At least I could hide in Theodore Sturgeon
Huffing oils off the carpet
Loaded up
Bathed with an eerie, flickering light
A great auroral display raging over half the world
The other half? A little stone cottage
Set back
From the road
A bit
Would make a nice place
To have sex for the first time, don't you think
About things
Like
Distances and elements
Chemical compounds
Why there are so few people who talk seriously about ecstasy
At the rave, for example, everyone was
Touching each others face
Not realizing the door threw up
The way to the terminal convent
In which the men bien sweating
Through the t-shirts vision
Independent of external light, and it
Showed clearly
A waste
Of barren rock
That seemed never to have known any form of life. Presumably
This desert
Land must come to an end
Somewhere (THEODORE STURGEON)
I went outside and you were there again
Talking to my neighbor
Who I had never seen
Where should I put the carrots?
Put them on your baby's head
One of you was in the shed
We called that the home
One of you was emptying concrete onto the grass
One of you was sitting on the porch
Cut a square hole in plywood
Push your burgers through the square
Its not a great idea but its an idea, so
Now you know I'm ready

2011-11-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

TRASH AMERICAN STYLE #3
for Phil Cordelli and Brandon Shimoda

Was it you
Who watched the bodies open
In the chimney
Was it you
Boys!
Faces smoked out
Chimney metamorphic
Bodies opening every facet
You por ejem who watched the lungs
Sprout panchos for paralegal rain
I just got off the ship, remember, so
Who watched the spleen sprout nine
Diminishing housemaids
Not that I am keeping track
It could have been Ben
Was it you then
Who watched
Ben fall off the top of the chimney
Recreating his lung as
Particulate matter?
It was you, it was fucking you!
Who put on the skull cap, walked around
The neighborhood
Pretending to be an old man
With a pancreas sprouting a snow mound
Kidneys sprouting as far as the ocean
Concerns the chimney is a beach
Put down upon the path
Tall grasses growing over
With the past
Smoke belching where Lucifer organizes
The fan to be
The name that heralds
Worlds
One of you was proud of that
One of you watched the shin protrude
And laughed
And licked the chimney rock
Eventually had to pass through dragon souls
Wasn't it
I didn't
Recognize the mother anyway
Fitting herself sideways through the door
When something delivers
Finish it
She had a stack of plates under her arm
They were expensive, she bought them in Stanford
Or Standford, Stamford
Watch the snake coil around the dead in Stamford
Watch the urine ooze from the eyes of the dead in Stamford
It will be a glazed doughnut
On sale at the A&P
The clerks hanging blue leaded blankets
Over the booze
Bought three apples and three lighters
Boston Chicken was open
At my worst
I was rotisserie
Turning and turning, who had to call medics
It wasn't embarrassing exactly
Out of my mind
A slice and punctured the dormer windows
With it horses plunging white waves
Told you that
With a paddle
Was more like you or whoever shaved
Just the top of your head
Monk or male pattern baldness
I couldn't get you up
You were both wearing tennis shoes
It was uncomfortable at the table
You wouldn't wake up
I had to shovel food onto your shoe
Hoping you would walk through the gates
With a light touch
Into the woods
Vetch comes
Into focus
Purple crown
Bees everywhere in the up to the head
We drove down there and immediately turned around
We were looking for drums
Snakes' urine
Figures frequently into the ponds
You missed
Bodies opening garden things and cooking
Things protruding from the shin
Laughter and smoking wood
Hearts opening flower things and book things
Could have sat but one of you started
Opening stains of communitarian black
We were close enough to Picketts Ridge
To walk
The rest of the way

2011-10-10T02:33:00.000-07:00

TRASH AMERICAN STYLE #2
for Phil Cordelli and Brandon Shimoda

I praise the mud
Is in you both
When the hand drops down
On the string
Of my
What you I am forcing
To draw
Lash of innard
If you were to pull
Wrap your hand in foil
Hold over the flame
Steve was there
Told us about it
Shirt covered in shit
From wiping ass and ejaculating
Flying it
From antennae
I was on the roof
I watched you both
Wanted to fucking die
For fucking your tits
That was all you'd let me
Jesus was presiding
Every book crooked
Turkey
Greek man had me by the neck
Knuckle
Storms over brick chimney
I was learning to write
Geoffrey was teaching
To read soft
Giraffe with red ribbon
Sniffed the black cushion
Then gleaned truth
From spread eagle
I would never kiss zits
Fucked up in a silo
One of the sisters died of an aneurysm
I could barely speak on the drive home
I thought of The Cube
Like we crossed a river
Didn't
He told us so many things
I wanted to be with both of you
Listening to Swiss innovators
Thinking also of Cher
Feathers
Wanted to rip the red bulb
Out of the wall
But the pussy was short
I blew out the back
And ate potatoes with Crooked Face

2011-10-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

TRASH AMERICAN STYLE
for Phil Cordelli and Brandon Shimoda

When told to carry out
Into the fields I brought
A picture of a spread eagle
I love you both Diana
My name is Diana
Piss in my mouth
Until I believe
I believe the walls
Chew shreds
Shooting soft pine is pretty
Powerful
Wrapped in duct tape
Around her arm
Diana statue
Picture of a double neck
Will solve the whole problem love
Fortune riding toward the fields
I give up on this I'm taking
Herbal birth controls
Whenever I'm anywhere near you
Are always blowing
Over priority weapons
Your hairs are on my thighs
Mean tools
When you went to Jamaica
I swear you were going gone blue
"Spastic," for example
Equated "Sad" with "Whoopie"
I put myself in the contraption
The doctor was home
Eating chicken with a
Woman wearing a pink
Bikini I stayed
Behind the man with spider hands
Because it was tempting
Each of you
One drain
Phylactery
That river came from one of you
A square in the earth
One foot in
It must smell terrible
I asked you if this should rhyme
You were watching the radio
The baby was on the porch
Batting a mosquito
I sprayed lighter fluid
On it will look
I was trying on both of your shoes
It was free
Was freezing
Diana is finishing her degree
Writing for the paper
Deer bones and a turtle shell
Girl became a sculptor
She made a white gazebo
Look good
I will take you even
Further into
The fields
You can take a ring off a tongue
You can imagine a tongue
Known so well
Disappear into
Vagina
Familiar was cut off
Then levitated right
Shut up and leave us alone
Remember I bought the first
Black and yellow
The four of them were sitting in dust
Preparing for a fight
I love you anyway watch me
Where does she put her hands
Anything like when we?
You had to pull the tape up
About that one
When you ask for this
On the court your shorts
Came open
Then you threw up and I worshiped
You were jumping like
A skinnier version
Of the dude who was
With her before I
Was blue
Running toward the fields
Diana and vines
She loves Chinese guys
Apparently there was no
One in the house
We blew it
I watched you walk over
The dog
Into the greenhouse
Where you shuttered
The windows
Once and for all
That was cool
The ground was red with tomatoes

2011-03-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

December 12, 2008, Re: happy to be getting a little further into the marrow‏

"it feels like i just took acid for the first time again" ---

holy shit, THAT is the achievement! whatever that feeling was or iS, it was a simultaneous erasure and revelation upon the flat world, and if that could somehow be re-created, within a different kind of TRAUMA, with the kind of disquieting ecstasy that cuts a slit in the backs of our necks and inserts itself, like an envelope-thin eel with white eyes, bringing us to the point on the circle where death and birth are conjoined, somehow, somehow --- then maybe poetry has a power beyond itself. as it is, poetry is a rickety ladder, a rotten rope; i am waiting for the GOLDEN CHAIN that might carry me up off of this oil-slicked tree.

best to cancel your relationship with email. mine has become compromised by work. i have no email at home, and only access it here at work, which has made personal e-mailing more officious than i would like it to be. but, saves money. season two of the wire? you should rent the entirety of THE HILLS. i rented the entire series (minus this year's), and never have so fully yielded to the waste of existence. incredible garbage. you will be TRANSFORMED! i literally lost a week of my life --- i was incapacitated with it. i couldn't do anything; eat, read, write. nothing.

i think our horseless collaborations come out soon; i sent them a bio, featuring a note about arby's. i'll do some arby's research soon --- i want free sandwiches. i think that we should re-film/re-create the commercial audio/visual fuck-up that you saw on TV all those years ago with your dad. do you think we could obtain that original footage? maybe arby's will give us access to all of their old commercial footage. of course they will. they owe us. well, not me --- they owe you.

2011-03-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

April 30, 2006, re: how does this sound

Prescient email! I have been shitting OIL for the past two days, regular shit plus orange oil - Ive been eating pretty healthy too, I have no idea whats going on, but Ive already soiled two pair of underwear, and two pair of pants cause it seeped through - luckily I was at home both times

how was the lamb roast? skipped the party. the idea of skipping town for Missoula is quite enticing! I'm leaning toward yes

2011-03-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

March 28, 2008, more ARBY

On those ads that come up on gmail I just noticed one that said "Free Arby's giftcard" and I think its a scam but I clicked on it anyway and it had included what they call the "Long Description" of Arby's:

"Arby's is a fast food restaurant franchise in the United States and Canada that is primarily known for selling roast beef sandwiches, potato cakes, curly fries and Jamocha milkshakes and spicy chicken strips . The company's target market attempts to be more adult-oriented than other fast food restaurants. The Arby's menu also includes appetizers, chicken tenders, salads, Market Fresh (deli-style) sandwiches and wraps. However, their focus has always been roast beef."

2011-03-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

March 26, 2006, re: 6x6

I think there was a mixed response to the Alps submission, and they want you to send some other work on in - so if its not too late, publish them in the other journal (which?). If you'd like, I can take a look at the written responses and let you know more specifically their reactions.

next Friday I'll be rolling in the green grass of Ireland

2011-03-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

December 8, 2008, re: inalpsea

monday is a cruel hoax. spent the weekend indoors. spent the first half of the weekend with z. schomburg, both in and out of doors. then the second half entirely indoors. left only for a carton of milk, which i then poured all over a small litter of dead rats; lit the rats on fire; white fireworks. reading old peterson field guides. eating corn tortillas.

i'm happy that the books landed in your lap. any consideration of audience is irrelevant; we must consider our friends. but something even more sustaining and valuable than that, whatever that might be, exactly. there is no public but friendship. anyone else can put a gun in their mouth, and pull the trigger, if i don't do so first. the alps, i feel, bears the influence of the pines --- carrying forth the same spirit. i would love to share with you some of the latest things; they are truly made of feces --- redolent and squishy.

what's life like back east? do you landscape in the winter? how is rebecca's job? is there time to hunt? have you yet bought guns? rifles or shotguns? i suggest a rifle.

seattle is peaceful. the hermetic life is the ONLY life. write when you can. one of these days i will plug the phone in.

2011-03-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

June 4, 2006, V4

Artaud has become the presiding figure for me in thinking about performance and especially V4, and retroactively V3 as well

here is a bit from an introduction to a collection of his work, speaking of a lecture at the Sorbonne about "The Theatre and the Plague" described by Anais Nin:

...Then imperceptibly almost he let go of the thread we were following and began to act out dying by plague. No one quite knew when it began .. his face was contorted wth anguish, one could see the perspiration dampening his hair. His eyes dilated, his muscles became cramped, his fingers struggled to retain their felxibility. He made one feel the parched and burning throat, the pains, the fever, the fire in the guts. He was in agony. He was screaming, He was delerious. He was enacting his own death... At first people gasped. And then they began to laugh. Everyone was laughing! They hissed. Then, one by one, they began to leave ... Artaud went on, until the last gasp. And stayed on the floor. Then when the hall had emptied of all but a small group of friends, he walked straight up to me and kissed me hand. He asked me to go to a cafe with him. He spat out his anger. "They always want to hear ABOUT, they want to hear an objective conference on the threatre and the plague, and I want to give them the experience itself, I wan to give them the plague itself, so they will be terrified, and awaken. I want to awaken them. The do not realize THEY ARE DEAD."

2011-03-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2008, re: pines pines pines pines

Fitful email access right now. Hands scratched up and sore back in a fleabitten farmhouse at the intersection of cornfields, the highway and the airport. You step out of the house and right into "North by Northwest." Wielding a chainsaw and working for a guy who wears Oakleys is certainly a change, but so is being able to piss in the woods again and not having to carry bags of soil though million dollar apartments, so I guess it all kinda evens out.

The reading was fantastic. Great location with a backyard, where we got to close the place down with just about everybody from NYC that I wanted to hang out with before we left. I raed a few new things from my notebook, a couple written at Kelly's wedding, great to just try shit out, stumble at the timing and make no pretense at "finished" work or delivering a polished performance.

I say we start doing it Sol Le Witt style, sending instructions for a Pines event. That way Anthony is now incorporated into the endeavor, and anyone actually requesting an appearance is incorporated. If I remember correctly he explicitly asked for something other than a traditional reading anyway. Lets brainstorm a bunch of ideas or draw up sets of instructions for "performnaces" that we can fax people. I was just looking at images and writings from Beuy's coyote performace and thinking this is the spirit of what we should be doing. Seems like there's no better time for us to jump in than when its totally inconvenient for both of us.

Oh, and I got a message from Steve who's in Crater Lake the other night requesting your phone # so he may be calling you soon. Keep that cell phone on vibrate.

2011-03-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

February 26, 2008, re: yo

I'm digging the work up on the blog - somewhat mystifying but very V4 like in that regard and wow, panel! is there a topic to this thing, or just a blatant excuse to converse in public and get free admission - should we enter the nausea headlong? something says yes but I'd love to hear your thoughts. you'll have to give me SOME info on this 4th person - female? would I know him or her?

settling back in here, digging back into writing / not leaving the house, having left deodorant and toothbrushing behind a while ago, shaping notes from CA into some things, good progress on a bunch of fronts that was somewhat interrupted by the trip. I was only too happy to indulge the grease with fried chicken and waffles at Lois the Pie Queens' in Oakland ...

2011-03-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

March 14, 2007, records etc.

Did I mention that immediately aftre I finished putting together the last of the books on the Saturday before leaving I had a brief but intence bout of food poisoning or something akin to it? Vomited into the trashcan at the UDP studio, up at the studio bathrooms, then on the train back home at 125th street, and at the 207th stop - a minor miracle that I didn;t shit my pants on the train ride, which is what I was really afraid of ...

I mustve been looking super-crazy - I had my hood on, hunched over, shaking, pale, and clutching the box of Volume Fours - the best moment was at the 125th street station - I started vomiting on the train right before the stop, into a plastic bag, barged out of train into the station clutching the V4 box and the bag full of vomit and collapsed on the seats in the station, vomiting some more - in the midst of this, I looked across the platform and there was a guy at the next set of seats, sitting there watching me, eating McDonalds

2011-03-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

August 17, 2009, Re: MB

are you still in maryland, among the mobile of crabcakes? are you -- or were you -- near any of those wild horse islands? are you back on the farm? what season are you in? how is the farm gang? how is rebecca? i'm feeling kind of weak without not having seen you in so long -- and not sure when the remedy will come. i was invited to read on the east coast this fall, but i haven't yet answered, because i hate the idea of READING being the occasion to travel anywhere, especially when i'd rather be eating hot dogs beneath an underpass somewhere, with not a poem in sight, and certainy no microphone -- but maybe a megaphone, or better yet, a shotgun, pointed right between the eyes

its a beautiful summer day here in seattle.

2010-08-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

I arrive at Lake Berryessa which is crowded with cars, fishermen, RVs and general noise. I feel cramped and depressed. I scramble up the hill beside the dam only to find barbed wire. In front of a surprised Indian couple I crawl out form under a fence. Dodging poison oak I walk back toward the car.

Up a trail I arrive at a sawtooth peak, with views of the lake and peaks beyond, Davis and Sacramento rising flat panes of color. The noise of the cars finally disappears, and then the wind picks up and rain starts falling. Sliding down thorugh a field of grass and wildflower to a creek which trickles in advance of receiving this rainfall. After the spare ridgetop this place is crowded with growth. Once again avoiding poison oak back to the car.

Note on driving back: "so many layers in this Central Valley sky"

2010-07-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

NEWFOUNDLAND

... or better yet, don't send word when you get there. Save the word, or give the word to someone else, someone local. There will be that conspicuous individual -- inconspicuous to the town, to the other locals, but the glinting scale to you, somehow familiar, maybe perplexedly so, but also acutely -- the person who will never leave, who wants only to leave, who has already left, but by both weight and bread of whatever you might be compelled to send back, spend locally. Looking forward to it; my thoughts are brutish, if present at all. Here on the west coast, the fog is still managing the morning. We're heading out soon to visit the neighborhood bookstores. I remember one in particular from when we were here in 1997 -- Shakespeare & Company, I think. I'll find a good book for you, though I'll be sure to keep it on the shelf, in turn -- pulled out slightly, with the bottom of page 19 folded under. Later ...

2010-05-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN
THE PINES
AND MASANOBU FUKUOKA

THE PINES: I notice that you're drawing, Fukuoka-san, … what will the picture be?

MASANOBU FUKUOKA: It's a sketch of a mountain scene, and there's a poem with it: Deep in the mountains, a gentle soul asks, For whom do the wildflowers bloom? For foxes and raccoons, Who know the pine winds and The spirit of the valley stream.

THE PINES: Can you explain what you mean by that verse?

FUKUOKA: Well, there are many ways of defining this "gentle soul". It could be a person... a flower... a tree... or even the grass. And if one could ask this soul why it lived all alone, deep in the mountains, it would answer, "I am not living here for anybody's sake. Just to listen to the fox and the raccoon, to talk to them and be with them... that is why I am living here."

THE PINES: Are you the figure I see in the drawing?

FUKUOKA: I'd like it to be me!

THE PINES: Well, it's certainly evident from your artwork and from your approach to farming that you value having a close relationship with nature. Were you raised in a rural setting?

FUKUOKA: Yes, I was an ordinary country boy, born in a simple country house. My father — who served as the leader of our small village—was a landowner and farmer. I grew up just as the other local children did... going to school and helping my parents and neighbors in the rice fields.

THE PINES: Did you begin farming as soon as you had finished school?

FUKUOKA: No, I first went to a special technical institute to study microbiology and plant pathology. Then I moved to Yokohama to become a quarantine officer at the Agricultural Customs Office. My job was to inspect, and experiment with, Japanese mandarin oranges and American oranges. I learned a lot there about the weaknesses and diseases of different plants... and greatly enjoyed my laboratory work. However, at the age of 25, I underwent a change of heart - and mind — that caused my life to be completely different from that time on.

THE PINES: Tell me about it.

FUKUOKA: Well, like many young people, I was having very large, ponderous thoughts about life... and my musings led to a lot of skepticism about the human condition. To add to my doubts, I became so ill during that period that there was, for a while, a question whether or not I would pull through.

Following my eventual recovery, I spent many sleepless nights wandering the streets. The morning after one such episode - when it seemed as though everything were about to explode in my brain — a flash of insight came to me. I suddenly felt that all human existence is meaningless and of no intrinsic value. Humanity knows nothing of real worth at all, I decided, and every action we take is just a futile, empty effort. I also saw that nature is ideally arranged and abundant just as it is... therefore, 1 was sure that we should work in cooperation with the natural processes, rather than try to "improve" on them by conquest.

I know all this may sound preposterous, but whenever I try to put those thoughts into words, they seem to sound that way. The revelation wasn't something that can be easily explained to another person.

THE PINES: Why not?

FUKUOKA: Anyone who's had an experience similar to mine will understand instinctively... but there's nothing I can say to help those people who don't have this understanding or aren't even looking for it. For example, do you think there's such a thing as a ghost? Have you ever seen a ghost? [With a smile, he points over the interviewer's shoulder.] Didn't you just see that one? People who've never seen a ghost usually can't believe in them. Those who have had such an experience, though, totally believe in the phenomenon... so there's no need to convince them.

THE PINES: How did this change in thinking affect your life?

FUKUOKA: I immediately quit my job at the Customs Office. Then I spent the next year or two traveling around the country, talking with people and trying many new experiences. Sometimes I camped in the mountains and sometimes near hot springs. Whenever I was in a city, I would sleep in temples or parks... and when I was in the country, I stayed at farmers' homes and worked in their fields with them. I actually started my wanderings with the intention of spreading my new understanding throughout the whole country... but whenever I spoke about the meaninglessness of human existence, nobody was interested in what 1 had to say! I was ignored as an eccentric. So I finally decided that in order to help people understand my theories, I'd have to demonstrate them in some concrete and practical way. I also needed to do that, of course, to convince myself that I was right.

Since I believe that farming is the most worthy of all occupations, I decided to return to my native village and become a farmer. I wanted to see whether I could apply my theory of the uselessness of human knowledge to agriculture... So that if people didn't understand my words, I could take them out to the fields and show them the truth of these ideas.

THE PINES: And you've been farming ever since?

FUKUOKA: Almost. During the Second World War, I was sent to work at the agricultural Experimental Station at Kochi, where I had to fall back upon my scientific training. After the war was over, though, I joyfully returned to the mountains and resumed my life as a farmer.

THE PINES: How much land did you start with?

FUKUOKA: After the war there was a massive land reform in Japan - called the Nochi-kaiho - in which large landowners like my father lost most of their holdings. My father died soon after that, and I was left with one small rice paddy about a quarter-acre in size

THE PINES: Did you begin practicing natural farming right away?

FUKUOKA: I had started experimenting in some of my father's mandarin orange orchards even before the war. 1 believe that - in order to let nature take its course — the trees should grow totally without intervention on my part, I didn't spray or prune or fertilize... I didn't do anything. And, of course, much of the orchard was destroyed by insects and disease.

The problem, you see, was that I hadn't been practicing natural agriculture, but rather what you might call lazy agriculture! I was totally uninvolved, leaving the job entirely to nature and expecting that everything would turn out well in the end. But I was wrong. Those young trees had been domesticated, planted, pruned and tended by human beings. The trees had been made slaves to humans, so they couldn't survive when the artificial support provided by farmers was suddenly removed.

THE PINES: Then successful natural farming it not simply a do-nothing technique?

FUKUOKA: No, it actually involves a process of bringing your mind as closely in line as possible with the natural functioning of the environment. However, you have to be careful: This method does not mean that we should suddenly throw away all the scientific knowledge about horticulture that we already have. That course of action is simply abandonment, because it ignores the cycle of dependence that humans have imposed upon an altered ecosystem. If a farmer does abandon his or her "tame" fields completely to nature, mistakes and destruction are inevitable.

The real path to natural farming requires that a person know what unadulterated nature is, so that he or she can instinctively understand what needs to be done — and what must not be done — to work in harmony with its processes.

THE PINES: That attitude certainly denies the "manipulate and control" foundation of established modern agriculture. How did you progress from your traditional training to such an unusual concept of farming?

FUKUOKA: During my youth I had seen all the farmers in the village grow rice by transplanting their seedlings into a flooded paddy... but I eventually realized that that isn't the way rice grows on its own! So I put aside my knowledge of traditional agricultural methods and simply watched the natural rice cycle. In its wild state, rice matures over the summer. In the autumn the leaves wither, and the plant bends over to drop its seeds onto the earth. After the snow melts in the spring, those seeds germinate, and the cycle begins again. In other words, the rice kernels fall on unplowed soil, sprout, and grow by themselves.

After observing this natural process, I came to view the transplanting/flooded field routine as totally unnatural. I also guessed that the common practices of fertilizing a field with prepared compost, plowing it, and weeding it clean were totally unnecessary. So all my research since then has been in the direction of not doing this or that. These 30 years of practice have taught me that many farmers would have been better of doing almost nothing at all.

People often think, in their arrogance and ignorance, that nature needs their assistance to carry on. Well, the truth is that nature actually does much better without such "help" from humans! Once a field is healthy and working on its own, natural — or "noninterference" — agriculture becomes a real possibility. However, as my orange grove demonstrated, such a condition can't be initiated suddenly. In Japan and other agricultural countries, the land has been plowed by machines for decades... and before that it was turned by cows and horses. In fields such as those, you wouldn't have very good results in the beginning if you simply stopped cultivating the earth and adopted a do-nothing altitude. The soil must first be allowed to rehabilitate itself. Fertility can then be maintained by surface mulch and straw that break down into the soil.

THE PINES: For folks who may be unfamiliar with your book, The One-Straw Revolution, let's review the basic practices you follow in your natural system of growing grain, vegetables, and citrus.

FUKUOKA: First of all, I operate, under four firm principles. The first is NO TILLING... that is, no turning or plowing of the soil. Instead, I let the earth cultivate itself by means of the penetration of plant roots and the digging activity of microorganisms, earthworms, and small animals.

The second rule is NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER, OR PREPARED COMPOST. I've found that you can actually drain the soil of essential nutrients by careless use of such dressings! Left alone, the earth maintains its own fertility, in accordance with the orderly cycle of plant and animal life.

The third guideline I follow is NO WEEDING, either by cultivation or by herbicides. Weeds play an important part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community... so I make it a practice to control - rather than eliminate — the weeds in my fields. Straw mulch, a ground cover of white clover interplanted with the crops, and temporary flooding has provide effective weed control in my fields.

The fourth principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. As I've emphasized before, nature is in perfect balance when left alone. Of course, harmful insects and diseases arc always present, but normally not to such an extent that poisonous chemicals are to correct the situation. The only sensible approach to disease and insect control, I think, is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment.

As far as my planting program goes, I simply broadcast rye and barley seed on separate fields in the fall... while the rice in those areas is still standing. A few weeks after that I harvest the rice, and then spread its straw back over the fields as mulch. The two winter grains are usually cut about the 20th of May... but two weeks or so before those crops have fully matured, "I broadcast rice seed right over them. After the rye and barley have been harvested and threshed, I spread their straw back over the field to protect the rice seedlings. I also grow white clover and weeds in these same fields. The legume is sown among the rice plants in early fall. And the weeds I don't have to worry about... they reseed themselves quite easily!

In a 1 1/4 acre field like mine, one or two people can do all the work of growing rice and winter grain in a matter of a few days, without keeping the field flooded all season... without using compost, fertilizer, herbicides, or other chemicals... and without plowing one inch of the field! It seems unlikely to me that there could be a simpler way of raising grain.

As for citrus, I grow several varieties on the hillsides near my home. As I told you, I started natural farming after the war with just one small plot, but gradually I acquired additional acreage by taking over surrounding pieces of abandoned land and caring for them by hand. First, I had to recondition that red clay soil by planting clover as a ground cover and allowing the weeds to return. I also introduced a few hardy vegetables — such as the Japanese daikon radish —and allowed the natural predators to take care of insect pests. As a result of that thick weed/clover cover, the surface layer of the orchard soil has become —over the past 30 years — loose, dark-colored, and rich with earthworms and organic matter. In my orchard there are now pines and cedar trees, a few pear trees, persimmons, loquats, Japanese cherries, and many other native varieties growing among the citrus trees. I also have the nitrogen-fixing acacia, which helps to enrich the soil deep in the ground. So by raising tall trees for windbreaks, citrus underneath, and a green manure cover down on the surface, I have found a way to take it easy and let the orchard manage itself!

THE PINES: Don't you also grow vegetables in a kitchen garden?

FUKUOKA: Actually, I raise such produce, in a semiwild manner, among the weeds all over the mountain. In my orchard alone I grow burdock, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, mustard, beans, turnips, and many other kinds of herbs and vegetables. The aim of this method of cultivation is to grow crops as naturally as possible on land that might otherwise be unused. If you try to garden using "improved" high-yield techniques, your attempt will often end in failure as a result of infestation or disease. But if various kinds of herbs and other food crops are mixed together and grown among the natural vegetation, pest damage will be so low you won't have to use sprays, or even pick bugs off by hand.

To plant my vegetable crops, I simply cut a swath in the weed cover and put out the seeds. There's no need to top them with soil... I just lay the cut plants back over them as a natural mulch. Usually the resurgent weeds have to be trimmed back two or three times afterward to give the seedlings a head start, but sometimes just once is enough. Vegetables grown in this way are stronger than most people think. In fact, you can raise produce wherever there's a varied and vigorous growth of weeds... but to be successful, it is important that you become familiar with the yearly cycle of the indigenous weeds and grasses and learn what kinds of vegetables will best match them.

THE PINES: Have you encountered any really serious problems with disease or insect pests over the decades that you've been practicing natural farming?

FUKUOKA: Since I turned the fields back to their natural state, I can't say I've had any really difficult problems with insects or disease, Even when it looked as if something had gone wrong and the crops would soon be devastated, nature always seemed to bail me out in the end!

Of course, I have made mistakes... just as every grower does. However, I never really think of them as mistakes! Back in the beginning, for example, when 70% of a field was overgrown and unproductive and 20 to 30% was extremely productive, I saw my limited harvest as a success. 1 figured that if a small percentage of the field did produce, I could eventually make the rest of the acreage do just as well. My neighbors would never have been satisfied with a field like that... but I just viewed the "mistake" as a hint or a lesson. One of the most important discoveries I made in those early years was that to succeed at natural farming, you have to get rid of your expectations. Such "products" of the mind are often incorrect or unrealistic... and can lead you think you've made a mistake if they're not met.

THE PINES: What about the wild grasses and weeds that grow right among your crops? Don't they ever threaten to get out of control?

FUKUOKA: Instead of relying on herbicides or mechanical cultivation to control weeds, I've always used legumes and other cover crops to limit the spread of the less helpful plants. I also throw straw on the fields as a mulch that will both discourage weeds and let the soil retain enough moisture to germinate seeds in the autumn dry season.

THE PINES: It all sounds like the ideal low-labor farming method. But what about the yields of your crops? Is it true that they compare favorably with those of conventional farms?

FUKUOKA: In the beginning my expectations and desires were not great... and my yields were not great, either! But as the condition of the soil stabilized over time and the fields returned to their natural state, my crop output began to rise steadily. I never noticed any dramatic changes, but eventually I found that I could grow rice without plowing or flooding the field all summer long, and still produce as much as the other farmers did with all their machinery and chemicals... sometimes more. My production has now stabilized at about 1,300 pounds, or 32 bushels per quarter acre for both winter grain and rice. That is close to the highest in Japan!

In the future, I expect that my yields of rice, barley, and other grains will continue to increase. After all, until recently I was growing the same kinds of crops that other farmers in the village — and, indeed, all over Japan — were planting. But as a result of practicing natural agriculture, I have now "developed" some new varieties, simply by allowing them to spring up in the fields. With those native seed cultivars, 1 think my farm has the potential to achieve the highest productivity in Japan... and possibly in the world, since my country leads the planet in average rice yields! If natural farming were used on a permanent basis, there'd be no reason why the production capability of any piece of land couldn't go far beyond its "chemical-based" levels... eventually approaching the highest yield theoretically possible, given the amount of energy reaching a field from the sun.

THE PINES: I assume that - given such favorable production figures - you've been able to support yourself and your family with natural farming.

FUKUOKA: I haven't made a lot of money, but my overhead costs are so low that I've never been in danger of going completely broke. For one thing, after I began farming this way, word got around that the oranges grown on my mountain were the largest and sweetest in the entire village. That fruit provides the greatest part of my income. Then, too, as my holdings increased and the soil improved, things got easier for us. Yes, I've been able to make a comfortable - though modest — living by practicing natural farming.

THE PINES: Has the large-scale agricultural "establishment" exhibited any interest in your ideas?

FUKUOKA: I first presented this "direct seeding noncultivation winter grain/rice succession" plan in agricultural journals 25 years ago. From then on, the method appeared often in print, and I introduced it to the public at large on quite a few radio and television programs... but nobody paid much attention to it.

In the past 15 years or so, though, it seems to me that the general attitude toward natural farming has begun to change. Various agricultural research scientists have highly acclaimed my no-till technique. You might even say that natural farming is becoming the rage! Journalists, professors, farmers, technical researchers, and students are all flocking to visit my fields and stay in my huts up on the mountain.

THE PINES: Why the sudden surge of curiosity about your farming technique?

FUKUOKA: I think it's because many people have gotten very far away from nature. Everything in this modern world has become noisy and overcomplicated, and people want to return to a simpler, quieter life... the kind of life I live as an ordinary farmer. You see, to the extent that men and women separate themselves from nature, they spin out further and further from the unchanging, unmoving center of reality. At the same time a centripetal effect asserts itself, causing a desire to return to nature - that true center - even as they move away from it. I believe that natural farming arises from that unchanging, unmoving center of life

It seems, also, that general recognition of the long-term dangers of chemical farming has helped renew interest in alternative methods of agriculture. Many people are looking at my methods and seeing that what they previously viewed as primitive and backward is perhaps instead far ahead of modern science!

THE PINES: You practice a low-cost, low-labor method of growing food that requires no heavy machinery, fossil fuels, or processed chemicals... and yet achieves yields comparable to those of more "modern" scientific methods. That sounds almost like a dream come true. There must be people trying natural farming all over the place!

FUKUOKA: Not really... because my method does seem like a dream to them. In fact, I think natural farming is actually a very frightening concept to many people. It entails a revolutionary attitude that could change the whole climate of our society and our civilization.

THE PINES: What would it take, then, to convince such individuals to try your methods?

FUKUOKA: It would be very difficult for single farmers or families to get started by themselves. Natural agriculture requires a great deal of work in the beginning - until the land is brought back into balance — and you can't do it alone unless you have a lot of time to devote to the effort.

The change might be brought about more easily on a village or small-town level, but I really think the best way to start this "one-straw revolution", as I call it, is on a large scale... through some sort of cooperative effort. The government, the agricultural co-ops, the farmers, the consumers — in other words, everyone — must decide that this is the direction in which our society should go. And, of course, if we don't get that kind of cooperation, the possibility of bringing about significant change in our farming methods is remote.

Most important we've got to revise people's concepts of nature. In America, especially, the outdoors that's seen often isn't natural at all... it's an imitation, man-made nature. For example, look around the grounds of the university. You'll see beautiful lawns, soft and comfortable, planted here and there with trees. The foliage is indeed lovely, but these aren't the trees and grasses that originally evolved here. They've been put here by human beings for the benefit of other human beings. The native plants were smothered or exterminated... and this nonnative, exotic lawn grass was nurtured instead. Allowing such an artificial landscape to return to its natural state would be good for human beings and for all the other animals and all the plants that live on this planet. However, not everyone would appreciate it... there'd be more flies, more mosquitoes, and other insects that people don't find very pleasant, and some would say, "Oh, how inconvenient. What a bother!"

THE PINES: Several weeks ago you started your American tour in California. did you see "artificial nature" there, too?

FUKUOKA: It was really a shock for me to see the degenerate condition of California. Ever since the Spanish introduced their grazing cows and sheep, along with such annual pasture grasses as foxtail and wild oats, native grasses have been all but eliminated. In addition the ground water there has been overdrawn for agriculture, and huge dams and irrigation projects have interrupted the natural circulation of surface water. Forests have been logged heavily and carelessly, causing soil erosion and damage to streams and fish populations. As a result of all this, the land is becoming more and more arid. It's a dreadful situation... because of human intervention, the desert is creeping across the state, but no one will admit it.

THE PINES: Do you think the widespread adoption of natural farming techniques could help reverse that process and make California green again?

FUKUOKA: Well, it would take a few years for people to learn how to adjust and refine the weed/ground cover rotation, but I think the soil would improve rapidly if growers really attempted to help it. And if it were done, California could eventually become an exciting, truly natural place... where farming could be the joyous activity it should be. But if modern agriculture continues to follow the path it's on now, it's finished. The food-growing situation may seem to be in good shape today, but that's just an illusion based on the current availability of petroleum fuels. All the wheat, corn, and other crops that are produced on big American farms may be alive and growing, but they're not products of real nature or real agriculture. They're manufactured rather than grown. The earth isn't producing those things... petroleum is!

THE PINES: Haven't you said that you'd view a severe oil shortage as a positive development?

FUKUOKA: Of course. I believe that the sooner our oil supply lines dry up, the better. Then we'll have no choice but to turn to natural agriculture!

THE PINES: But the typical "agribiz" farm has hundreds or even thousands of cultivated acres. How could someone apply natural agriculture in such a setting?

FUKUOKA: First of all, there shouldn't be such large spreads. It's unfortunate that, in the modern American agricultural system, a very few people are producing the food for millions of others who live in the cities. In Japan, the average field is smaller than in the United States... but its yield per acre is much greater. I can do all the work on my own farm with hand tools, without using power machinery of any kind.

But I guess those mega-farms in your country would need some machinery, at least for harvesting. In the future, though, as more and more people move back to the country and begin to grow their own food on small plots of land, there'll be much less dependence on machines and Fossil fuels... and natural farming techniques can begin to be used.

THE PINES: So you think that it would be feasible to someday adopt natural farming in North America?

FUKUOKA: Of course, of course! When you talk about nature, it doesn't matter whether you're referring to North America or Africa or Indonesia or China... nature is nature. After all, modern industrial farming is now being practiced almost everywhere in the world. In the same way, natural farming could be practiced almost everywhere.

I'm just a village farmer who has come visiting from another part of the same world. Through my one-straw research, I've come up with some important clues as to how people can relate to nature and live harmoniously with it... wherever they may be.

THE PINES: But wouldn't your method have to be adapted to fit local growing conditions in this country?

FUKUOKA: It's true that each place is somewhat different. Here in Massachusetts we are very far from the Pacific Ocean and even farther from my home on the island of Shikoku... so it may seem as if the experience and knowledge that I've accumulated would not be applicable here. However, the research I did on that little farm eventually led me to a practical and tested method of crop rotation. So I would suggest that beginners at least start with the techniques I've already worked out, no matter where they live... even here on the Atlantic coast.

A person who does that will probably have some problems during the first year, and the results may not be exactly the same as mine. But it should then be obvious to that grower why things didn't work out. Maybe a certain crop was planted too late, or perhaps the wrong variety was used for that climate and soil. By the second year of understanding and practicing my principles, a person should see clearly what needs to be done on his or her own land. I tell everyone who wants to try natural farming to take the benefit of my study and research and use it as it is... that is the smart way to begin. If you immediately go off on your own and begin looking for the true "nature" of your area, it'll take you 20 or 30 years to find it, just as it took me years to do so in Japan. Instead, your first step in any attempt at natural farming should be to throw away your preconceptions... then you can learn by simply doing!

THE PINES: Are you telling us to abandon all logical reasoning?

FUKUOKA: Yes!

THE PINES: But Mr. Fukuoka, you did a lot of experimenting and research yourself in the process of developing the concept of natural farming. You used reason... and now you are telling us to discard it all?

FUKUOKA: Exactly! Throw away your own ideas for a moment and let the results of my experiments be the seed of some new ideas and ways of thinking. Many people might be tempted to think, "Hmmm... my climate is totally unlike his, so rather than use white clover, I'll try this other ground cover." That line of reasoning could well take you off the track and lead you down a lot of blind alleys! Clover is necessary to keep the weeds back and replenish the soil.

THE PINES: But there are many kinds of clover that could be used, aren't there?

FUKUOKA: Ah, you see? That's exactly what I mean. That's your reason speaking! Don't question so much. If I suggest white clover, use white clover. If I suggest red clover, then use red clover. Over the years I've tried vetch, alfalfa, lupine, trefoil, and many kinds of clover... and I reached the conclusion that for natural no-till rotation of grains and vegetables, and as a ground cover in the orchard, white clover is best.

My findings have been verified by others, too. When I visited Rodale's Organic Farming Research Center in Pennsylvania recently, the people there showed me the experiments they've been doing for several years in interplanting grains and row crops with clover and other ground covers. And you know, the plots where they were having the greatest success were the ones in which they were using white clover!

THE PINES: In the Pacific Northwest, there's a network of organic farmers and gardeners called Tilth. They've started a "clover project" in which members in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia plant various types of clover in barley and corn fields, apple orchards, and vegetable gardens... all to gain experience with that cover crop. Don't you think that sort of experimentation is worthwhile?

FUKUOKA: Well, yes, it's fine... but the results are already here and available right in front of us! I did those kinds of experiments 25 years ago, and now others could benefit from my experience if only they'd look at the results. They could save themselves a lot of time and effort by just taking the shortcut of believing.

Americans, I think, find it difficult to believe. They have to experiment and see for themselves. But believing is the most direct approach.

THE PINES: Some people have noticed a spiritual, almost mystical quality to your theory of farming. Do you feel you're receiving insight and guidance from a divine source?

FUKUOKA: Although natural farming — since it can teach people to cultivate a deep understanding of nature - may lead to spiritual insight, it's not strictly a spiritual practice. Natural farming is just farming, nothing more. You don't have to be a spiritually oriented person to practice my methods. Anyone who can approach these concepts with a clear, open mind will be starting off well. In fact, the person who can most easily take up natural agriculture is the one who doesn't have any of the common adult obstructing blocks of desire, philosophy, or religion... the person who has the mind and heart of a child. One must simply know nature... real nature, not the one we think we know!

THE PINES: Can you be more specific about what that attitude should be?

FUKUOKA: Many people think that when we practice agriculture, nature is helping us in our efforts to grow food. This is an exclusively human-centered viewpoint... we should instead, realize that we are receiving that which nature decides to give us. A farmer does not grow something in the sense that he or she creates it. That human is only a small part of the whole process by which nature expresses its being. The farmer has very little influence over that process... other than being there and doing his or her small part.

People should relate to nature as birds do. Birds don't run around carefully preparing fields, planting seeds, and harvesting food. They don't create anything... they just receive what is there for them with a humble and grateful heart. We, too, receive our nourishment from the Mother Earth. So we should put our hands together in an attitude of prayer and say "please" and "thank you" when dealing with nature.

THE PINES: Do you think that, partly by helping foster such different altitudes, your method could influence more than the way we grow our food?

FUKUOKA: Yes, natural farming could lead to changes in our way of life that would help solve many of the problems of our present age. I think that people are starting to have misgivings about the way the modern world's ever-accelerating growth and scientific development, to question such things as nuclear power plants and the massive slaughter of great whales, and to realize that the time for reappraisal has arrived.

By living a natural lifestyle and demonstrating its usefulness in this day and age, I feel I am serving humankind. As the steward of my rice fields, I am making my stand against the need to use destructive technology or eliminate other forms of life. After all, the problems of our time are ones all of us must face in our own hearts and deeds. As I see it, the ultimate goal of natural farming is not the growing of crops... but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

2010-05-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

2010-02-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

ANNOUNCING: PILE (VOLUME SIX)

Buy it here and now or send $6 to The Pines
15 Day Ave #2, Northampton, MA 01060

2009-06-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

This tiny being I hold in my arms ...

This bundle of cells, tissues, muscles, keratin, blood, thoughts, sentience, growth (the lushness of your picture, Brandon, reminds me that Anna grows even at this moment) is so much more than life, and so much more than death. She is also “creative;” she will one day create life … she is perpetuation.

She creates even now: her movements, her expressions, her sounds. Her blue eyes, though the doctor assures me they might change, open into an unknown future and knowable past. Creation. She is a creation. She will create. She is inexplicable.

___________________________________________________________

One of the reasons I've chosen to work in the medium of poetry is the affinity of that medium to work in that imbalance of internal and external you spoke of above. And it may have something to do with my heritage, not just ethnically, but with my inheritance of the poetic tradition, something that New Wave does try to start an imbalanced, unsure, ambivalent engagement with, but with the inheritance of this world I inhabit, and the apparatus with which I engage this inheritance.

To start with my ethnic heritage, it is fundamentally unsure, being at one point down the familial line, the product of adoption, and the product of a stringent assimilation to an American in variously WASPy settings, settings known well to each of us, and which you seem to wish to engage very specifically in your work, Adam.

The whole of it takes place, as it were, inside her head, which we turn in our hands for another view, another in the manner of a mugshot, the mugshot which is used a means of identification, a means of preventing escape or concealing. In keeping with the doubled outward signs of the book, it also commences and ends with attempts at sight - both passages attempting to imagine, straining at seeing BEFORE sight, which I see in many ways, but in keeping with the most explicit or literal meaning, this seems to me to re-enclose yourself again within your mother, and to travel through that prehistory of yourself farther and farther backward.

2009-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

PHIL, Let's start at the intersection where the present and the past converge. You have completed three books--or, at least, there are three books that have moved beyond the confines of your process, into the world: B52, a limited edition (19 copy) unpaginated chapbook (Vegetables & Pork Press, 2007); New Wave, a full-length electronic book (BlazeVOX Books); and New Roman, a limited edition (19 copy) unpaginated chapbook (self-published, 2009). Before we talk specifically about these three books--and the peculiarity of the number 19--I want to consider them as a whole, as well as continuing parts within a much larger, more complex spectrum of engagement...

When I read these three books, my mind begins to traverse backwards the last fifteen years, to the work of yours that I first experienced: a series of paintings produced in the early-to-mid 1990's, while in high school--paintings which have endured in my memory as a revelation of form and forms, in the sense that the paintings were sites through which immanent forms revealed themselves--and revealed themselves to you--an alchemical and miraculous fact that seemed impossibly distinct from the work then being produced by other students; other work seemed to be operating under an imposition of subject matter, whereas your paintings (and drawings, etc.) seemed to have had their subject matter drawn out of their surfaces. Is this at all accurate to the process, as you recall? The reason I ask is because I see a very clear, if complicated, evolution between those early paintings, and your recent poetry--arrived at through the film, sound and text-based work in between--all of which have utilized variable senses, understandings and manipulations of "found" material. In other words, "found" as being latent, whether interior or exterior to the artist... BRANDON

BRANDON, To recall some processes of painting, many times an image or shape or face would fix itself in my head - and I'd like right now to recognize and emphasize that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the process, the image or the head involved, this is the most commonplace of processes - and painting it would be a way of thinking about it, figuring out why it stuck with me, and also ridding myself of it (though of course this many times would be only a fantasy - that I could choose to be rid of it). But also there is the starting point of the material as well, there was and is both the received and the found.

I think that my method is still largely the same. I don't believe in creation. I don't believe in author-ity, but in exchange, only in conversation, whether with vegetable, mineral, poet, photograph, street, sky, etc. etc. It seems to me that the most joyous and meaningful experiences any of us have involve the disintegration of interior and exterior, and this is where I'd like to work, to fix myself there, as a hinge, as a filter-feeder, to breathe and feed and to be a record of breath and breeze and feed.

Turning to your work, I'd like to start by asking you about these exhalations, this breath that I see and read and feel in The Inland Sea and The Alps most literally present in the symbol/letter/number 0. Obviously, this is quite a rich and expansive topic, perhaps too much so for this space, but it was a crux for me of the destabilizing sense I got from this work. I feel confident in saying "this work" especially because of it, the way it is present in and binds both the books. It serves as a stable element in size and shape, but is also changeable in position and meaning. So I guess there's not really a question but just curiosity about it specifically as well as the frames in the The Alps and this breathing between absence and presence. PHIL

PHIL, Its comforting to hear that you are not a "creationist"--though for as much derision as "creationists" receive, wouldn't it be great if we could actually faithfully subscribe to something so far-fetched and fantastical? Its not the narrative that we reject, necessarily--are we all really so cynical that we refuse to accept fantasy and speculation as prime possibilities to describe the state of existence?--its the terrible ideological influences that promote it. Anyway, that's beside the point...

I don't believe in "creation," exactly, either, and I might also articulate it the way that you have--that I also believe in exchange and conversation and communal acts. I believe in listening and in response, and in using available materials towards that response. (The filter-feeder analogy also seems apt; compost is another analogical process that makes sense to me. More on that soon...). "Response" could also be a way to define the "unremarkable" process through which you used to paint, in that you were listening carefully to the things that pronounced themselves in your mind, and the painting was the site (or stage) of your response to those things, their pronouncements. In this sense, the artistic process is not necessarily a "creative" one, or even an "artistic" one, but really more a process of attention, to which other qualifiers are unnecessarily attached. I have been feeling very much the same--or, have always, actually--that the works themselves (whether poems or paintings or drawings, etc.) are ways to approach, pay attention to, confront, and that "rid," or cast out--or cast in--the images or shapes or faces, or problems, then continually plague the mind. Peter O'Leary, in Gnostic Contagion, posits that, "Poetry is the sickness of the poet; writing poetry is the cure." What a miserable situation. Yet, somehow there is constant revelation and surprise in such misery.

Maybe this ties in to the

O

in The Inland Sea. I wanted the section break marker to play a more active role, to be part of script of the thing, in the same way as the enlarging dot in The Pines Volume Four : Black Sabbath Volume Four. I immediately began to conceive of it as an enso character, connoting a variety of things, among them emptiness and, subsequently, possibility. This relates to the mind and the body in the process of composition, but also to a sense of desperation, measured out between the sections, as a reminder both of the impossibility (the misery?) of the situation and the absolute necessity to stick with it, to see where the situation might lead. Failure and disaster are, after all, rich possibilities. The

O

also emerges at the point where the situation becomes more dire, as though an eye emerging from the darkness, from the dark accumulation of all prior attempts to respond, to stare me directly in the face, challenging my pathetic activity. Either way--as emptiness, possibility, desperation, eye, etc.--I am worthless, and the poem(s) both possess that knowledge, and are the result of it being true.

I'm interested, again, in the idea of "found" materials, but now even more so in "received" materials, as you say, and the compulsion to rid yourself of them, or at least work with them until they become ... what ... something else? What forms do these "received" materials take, and how have the various media in which you've worked risen to the occasion? Are their some forms or shapes or faces that you have not been able to rid yourself of? And, if so, what have they become, to you, over time? BRANDON

BRANDON, To begin with the most proximate point, there are a few faces, forms, shapes that have dogged me for a long while - one that comes to mind right now is an image that I first saw in a trashy book of alien abduction stories when I was a kid (age 8 or so?). I recall screaming and throwing the book down, and screaming for quite a while afterward. I would feel that face staring at me from the middle of the closed book. Actually I think I may have been abducted by aliens at some point. Its impossible to know, but it remains the only thing I am scared of. Many of the faceless or indistinct that populated my paintings from back then have something of this experience in them.

So what do they become? Cast out or closeted (in a kind of ironic coda to their supposed liberation) I suppose they are nothing more than the urge of the organism to split, to see itself as another, in foreign, sovereign, but familiar form. Whatever life they have then is supplied only by those who animate it. Thus, I think my turn to writing, in which multiplication can happen most easily. My process these days is so tied to the plant poems I've been working on. It is a vegetal process, or literally a process of fruition - a swelling, a storing up of sugars.

Coming back to "creation" - one can haul bricks into pyramids, very tall and precise and wondrous, but it is still a stack of sand and mud. In a way I wish it were not so, but there is also a spiritual element to this, a necessary humbling of all human endeavors, opposite I think to cynicism. I leave open the possibility of a creator or creators. That open space of deferred faith is exactly the circumference of your

O

.

Close to (close enough even to be at the heart of) your own project is the exemplary contradiction of human creation - Trinity and Oppenheimer's response, which throws us right back to the

O

again, which now I read as an ouroboros. Being a tainted activity, imagination is a sickness, yes, sickness keep one home from work, sickness slows or speeds up the bodily processes, musters the body's resources to fight. A disequilibrium, again a struggle of interior and exterior. I also read the

O

as making the whole book resemble Swiss cheese, and I think much of your and our work has some qualities of cheese - delicious and repulsive at the same time. PHIL

PHIL, the "delicious and repulsive" quality of work reminds me of that classic Royal Trux story about their show at the Knitting Factory, sometime in the 90s, in which Neil and Jennifer plodded their way through an absolutely monstrous, incoherent, disheveled, tone-deaf, "repulsive" set - in vintage, strung-out style - completely alienating the audience to the point of walk-outs and hurled cusses, if not bottles - only to re-emerge, after such a fiasco, to perform the most perfectly melodious and heart-wrenching encore. This, of course, is a double fuck-you, with the deliciousness standing in counterpose to the repulsiveness, and vice versa. Of course, we've talked about this fabled show before - though I have never met anyone who was actually in attendance - with great reverence for Royal Trux to be able to exist in both aesthetic forums/forms simultaneously, but also with some suspicion in the "reveal" at the end. In other words, does the deliciousness validate the repulsiveness? Can a work exist in repulsiveness only? What does an entirely repulsive work of art look like? I mean, one that seems to negate all possibility of a "delicious" element or validating immanence?

I love the alien abduction story too, and especially the idea of the alien face staring at you from the closed book. Maybe that face has never left, but has changed its form innumerably. There is something terrifying about a closed book, for that reason - for its ruthless silence, and for the faces and forms that you just know are lying in wait, continuing their lives despite the absence of the reader or viewer. How do you view, or think about, your own poems, or books of poems, in such moments of supposed dormancy? Have you ever confronted your own work in this way, as a particular life force that continues its activities when the lights go out, so to speak? You mention that the life that a work (or form, etc.) possesses is "supplied only by those who animate it," but have you ever been proven false in this assertion by the work itself, as it splits so fully from your intention and being that it behaves much like that alien face in the closed book? Or, does the alien face only have power because the artist, or you, allow it that? BRANDON

BRANDON, yes, the grinder again. Our ambitions to annihilate rather than reward the attentions of reader, listener, attendee. Armageddon Brothers, anyone? Pubic Turkey? (incidentally, I've always relished the symmetry of it: PT:TP) There's a reason I think that The Armaggedon Bros. is the lost collaboration, the underdeveloped arm of it - it's so difficult to find that extreme, and then to work in it. There's so much rigor necessary and so much personal sacrifice, so much that I've been unwilling to give (to both my relief and consternation). I think of Joseph Conrad's quote that's been in my head for years - "in the destructive element immerse!" and this leads me right to Brando, as one who waded into this stream of filth and debasement, one who made his whole body of work a negation of his own art, a parody of our weakness as viewers, and the weakness of artists, and also one who paid a large price for it personally. Though again his achievement rests on his earlier "beauty" and "skill", the Royal Trux show worked in a slow reverse.

I think also of Pasolini's "Salo, or 120 days of Sodom" - have you seen it? - the only movie I've ever seen which honestly made me feel like a worse person for having seen it. I felt like a prisoner in the theatre, trapped, victimized by my own ignorance and curiosity, no different from one of the prisoners in the film. So the lineup of spines, the closed book is silence, yes, but also the delicious and terrifying anticipation of abduction, the power of other voices over my own, akin to the tremors of excitement upon first opening a porno magazine or popping in the video. PHIL

PHIL, I have been re-watching Marlon Brando's acceptance speech at the 1973 Academy Awards - the speech that was not a speech but a 15-page statement delivered through the person of Sacheen Littlefeather, the American Indian activist who Brando got to decline the award on his behalf, in his absence. This is remarkable for a few reasons: that Brando wrote a 15-page statement; that he planned to have all 15 pages read live at the Academy Awards (the producer threatened Littlefeather, so she improvised a vastly abbreviated statement; she later read the entire thing to the press); that he refused the award for a performance many thought - and still think - one of the best acting performances in film history; that he sent an activist in full Apache dress in his place. In watching this clip, I have been thinking two things. One, that this would never happen within today's climate of personalities, i.e. Sean Penn might have some strong words to say about Proposition 8 in California, but he would never let his conviction disabuse him of accepting his rightful award - which, in many ways, negates his conviction, and any message that attempts to attach itself weakly to that conviction (thus negated). And two, that this "performance" does interesting things to the work - in this case, acting - itself. I say "performance," because it is an extension of Brando's work as an actor, in that it fits necessarily into the arc of his active life, and is not separable from the gestures, however differentiated, of stage and film performance; it is the inhabitation of a mind in a particular instance. (This is fed by Brando's own thoughts about acting, but also by the fatal constraint that acting imposed upon his life). But, the question remains: How is this actually related to the work itself, if at all?

Brando and Royal Trux were actually doing things that allowed the encompassing personas to be fleshed out; that the personas were fed by actual work, giving a greater degree of credence to the behavior "outside" of the work. The Armageddon Brothers strove for this kind of unification but, of course, never actually got started, and so existed - and exist - in concept only, a concept which I am still wedded to, but which is diffuse without a body and literal movement. In thinking of these examples, how do you see your own relationship to an "encompassing persona"? I guess the larger question would be how you see the relationship between your work and your life, but more acutely, how has the example of Brando (and others) manifest in your own behaviors as an artist and an individual, if at all? Have they been generative examples? And, in a similar situation, what would be your 15 pages, and who would be your Sacheen Littlefeather? BRANDON

BRANDON, artistically I feel there is a limited amount to be "learned" from Brando. Working in the medium of acting, and more specifically the medium of the Hollywood star system, from the beginning no separation would have been possible between art and life. His persona would not have been distinguishable from his art. Brando begat James Dean, and James Dean could not in any way last or even live, doomed by his flight from normative society, doomed by his wound, by his being a wound, a walking wounded.

Brando is instructive in his slow infection, in how he allows it to engulf him, even drawing a perverse sustenance from it. He insists on the centrality of the lie to the self, denying any basic truth, any immanence. I've also never recognized the difference between persona and a person. Performers we all are, just a matter of how public.

Brando plays out the contradictions in his 1973 Oscar scenario by sending a beautiful woman who may or may not even be Native American up for him dressed in what looks like a sequined version of Apache dress, all this distinguishes his gesture from Sean Penn's nauseating earnestness and brings it closer to Andy Kaufman.

Do you view yourself as a performer? What are your current feelings about "readings"? Do you refuse to do readings? If your poems are not spoken, do they still retain something of the oral? PHIL

PHIL, apparently Sacheen Littlefeather later posed for Playboy, which certainly has done a much better job than Hollywood of fairly representing the Native American! Although, equal rights are equal rights, whether applied to suffrage or softcore porn, I suppose, or so say those with moth-eaten brains.

If there is a limited amount to be "learned" artistically from Brando, then in what ways, or in what categories, can Brando be instructive? Is there really nothing we can apply of his performances, or his process within a performance, to the act of composition, be it for a poem or otherwise? What about his relationship to the script? Or his relationship to the mechanical, the organic, resistance, when in the middle of a scene? Or his relationship to embodied collage, as in The Missouri Breaks? Or maybe even his underlying embodiment of music, musical qualities, which is to say, in another sense, organic qualities? I don't know if I necessarily have an answer for this, but he certainly has imparted a sense of courage to the process -- to embrace the error, the aleatory, the impending failure. His performance in Apocalypse Now, for example -- what was that? Its totally muddled, yet somehow ecstatic; he's clearly in a different movie than the rest of the actors -- and that bears its own instruction -- and the same is true for most of the movies that he is in -- that he stands as somehow ecstatic within and against his own performances, his own movies; he is nowhere, he is everywhere!

Maybe this is a proposition for our own role as potential "readers": to transcend the space of the reading by seeming to be completely unrelated to it; an embodied non sequitir. I am constantly revising my own ideas about and relationship to readings, and though I don't like "performing" poems, per se, I also don't like not performing poems; yet if there is a spectrum being hyperbolic and underwhelming, I would side with underwhelming (though not, say, the underwhelming of the Steven Wright school of performance) -- maybe more the underwhelming of drowning. Matthew Klane and I were talking about reading styles, following a reading we both gave in Chicago, and I like what he said about his reading, that he is always "trying ... to transform the space into something strange, still, silent, buzzed." I like those possibilities, and the combination of those four qualities. If I am going to read, I too want to transform the space, to fundamentally change the nature of the environment in which the reading is but a temporal feature; this requires a nearly Method understanding and/or relationship to that environment, so as to engage in the context as fully as possible. And in the way that "strangeness" and "stillness" and "silence" and "buzzedness" are all qualities that inspire various senses of dread and discomfort, I am partial to readings, or reading styles, that either make the audience uncomfortable, put them into a trance (though sleep is fine too), or force them into wishing they were dead (if not actually killing them, which would be a blessed snake eyes...) This, of course, has to conform to what is being read; I wouldn't read light verse or irony-laden contemporary vacuum bag verse this way, but then again, I don't write that kind of poetry.

Do you refuse to do readings? How many reading invitations have you turned down? And, why? What has been your most enjoyable reading experience - both as a listener and as a reader? What would be your ideal, in terms of your own performance? We talk about distributing Arby's roast beef sandwiches, playing records in an empty park, etc ... BRANDON

BRANDON, Excellent points about what can be taken from Brando. I think my comment reflects more a doubt about being able personally to approach the force of his work. The magnitude of his personality, the force with which his methods are developed and adhered to, is daunting. I wish I could crack a magazine apart the way he could crack open a movie and step right through it, or pull the whole thing down with the weight of his ineptitude and ridiculousness. The Pines is one place that this spirit has been approached and the nearest I have come to this. The "muddled ecstatic", "embodied collage."

I'm still working out my approach to performing poetry, though surprisingly it has become very important to me. I thought when I started writing that I would never read. I saw writing as a way of throwing up a second skin, one that I could live behind, but I've come to need to embody my words, and to perform them. I've never actually refused a reading myself, and as a matter of fact I'm a little frustrated with the passivity of the whole thing, the way its tied to promotion.

My favorite reading I've ever done was one I launched into the night air, alone or practically so. I had attended a group reading and realized when I got there that I may be called upon to read something, and had brought nothing with me (shades of Providence ...). I realized as I sat there that I could actually recite at least one poem from memory. I was not called upon, but that hardly matters - I felt that I had incorporated my practice and my head and body and voice in a new way, and only then I think really felt, yes, I am in fact a poet.

Stylistically, I suppose I tend toward the dramatic, and against the monotone, the flattening effect, the insistence on the disembodied, textual nature of the work. I want when reading to inhabit each poem, to route the words through my lungs and gut, to resound with it. I want also variety in presentation - each poem should have a new voice, and different approaches will be needed within poems as well. I feel in a way that its only upon reading that I can accomplish, can finish and can know a poem, and this only really in public. The Poem is a public act, in writing or in sound. The Work is everywhere though - I think New Roman is a workbook, B52 too - I've never read from these and I never will. PHIL

PHIL, Something about your desire in reading reminds me of Wim Delvoye's Cloaca, which I saw at the New Museum when I was living in New York. Did you ever see or hear about that? It was/is an incredibly elaborate machine that accurately mimics the digestion system/digestive process, producing actual pieces of shit; in other words, its a shit machine. The idea of routing the words (of a poem, or otherwise) through our lungs and guts in the process of reading, and to resound with that routing, is not only to resound with the process of fully inhabiting the words, but also to re-enact, as a machine might re-enact, the creative process, so that the reading is a simulacrum of the creative process. The words are equivalent in both cases, if slightly aslant from each other, in the way that shit generated by a machine is shit slightly aslant from that generated through the human digestive system; the processes are the same, but the vessels -- and therefore the influential universes -- are completely divorced, which requires that the reading (the machine) be lent a different dynamic thrust, to bring both results up to that equivalent standard. Also, the foregrounding of the machine reveals more fully the formal qualities of the creation, whether shit or poem, and that revelation seems necessary, whether as a way to move beyond the creation itself, or to expose it for the ghastly anomaly that it is! Aside from that, I like thinking of public readings as, literally, regurgitations; the audience as witness to a horrifying -- even if incredibly simple -- process of creation.

Your favorite reading is also one my favorite readings -- I am living vicariously through you now -- in that it was one in which you didn't actual perform out loud or to the witness of any audience, but that you incorporated yourself into the spirit of a particular reading in your own way, up to your own standards of "participation," right? Do you feel like this sense of "incorporation" required the context of the group reading, or at least the company of other readers? Or do you feel like this sense is something that could be achieved with no audience or accompaniment whatsoever? In other words, does a reading require more than one person to be a fully incorporated, functioning reading? (Maybe the "night air" is populous enough...) And what about that experience confirmed you as a poet? Again, this is question of the self in relation to others...

What was the poem, by the way, that you remembered in that moment? And, was this reading on a rooftop? BRANDON

BRANDON, The poem was "Arctium minus":

Arc, burdock, dry heart
they’re here to prosecute your rot
light it or break it apart

in buckets of cold water
or strange street markets

down with the willows
when else has been bled out
telltale with wake

the false-leading make
one round span
their paths shared

When I wrote "night air" I was a little afraid of being dramatic or cliched, but I let it stand because the phrase is accurate - it was a night a couple of months ago, a January night when the cold is so intense that when you step outside and take your first breath, the cold winter air is a palpable presence for a moment in your lungs, and this only heightened the sense that there is a different reaction when a poem meets and travels through the air, is composed anew in the air, routed out and back in throught he ears, and hits your brain again.

In this instance, there was no rapt or rowdy or bored audience, also no rooftop, just a gas station, a closed cafe, a row of parked cars. So there was 1. the interior, entirely brain-bound recognition that I knew this poem "by heart" and 2. the act of speaking it aloud alone. And there's also the dynamics of 3. the possible, unrealized reading of it to the audience.

I'll be back for that after some lunch.

Ok.Regarding #2 and #3, generally I feel like a reading does require an audience to generate the risk, and the essential awkwardness that makes it work. There must be something at stake. There must be something unsightly, I agree with you and Matt Klane about this: there's gotta be some chunks of corn or undigested matter in the product - or right there's the model of regurgitation: only the barest hint of breakdown. Chewed a bit and thrown right back up. Really reading does seem like shitting or puking with the door wide open. Often I feel as I leave the stage or site of reading that the stink trails after me.

I think part of the satisfaction of #1 is that of reconnecting my work with an older tradition of poetry. My first experience of a poem was my grandmother reciting Whitman's "O Captain My Captain" to me, and the drama with which she did so. That she could recite this totally from memory was thrilling to me, and serves as a reminder of what poetry could mean to one who did not write (far as I know) but was one of a perhaps more or less vanished species of people who lived with poetry in their hearts (though I was quite impressed by an email I got recently from Adam, who reported that he'd finished New Wave and had some really insightful comments and reactions, thiking through his own reactions, such as in this excerpt: "... on the last three pages (I wound up printing this out because I couldn't read it on the computer - hope that was okay; I promise I won't sell it) and looked at it as an image after I read, "and nobody is going to like your ending," a line that always feels true no matter what you read. But after that, I found that the way you laid the remaining words on the page forced me naturally to speed up the tempo I was reading, almost like the ending of that Beatles song, "A Day in the Life," where every note blurs and blends together. It felt fitting as the words seem to spiral and descend and even have one remaining bulge on the second to last page before it's just leftover letters and punctuation..." I was impressed that he waded through all the shit when he had every incentive to ignore it and/or skim it over).

"Arctium" is much more traditional than much of the work you or I have produced, and as such for me it reconnects with a sense of the poem as form of memory, and as song. Like a song or a melody it had worked its way into my head without my knowing it or being conscious of it. It had been digested, ejected, and I had gained this nutrition, this energy from its intestinal path.

And then again, all this, and the poem above, seems like a dubious or negligible nutrition, quite like the briny and porous Arby's sandwiches, really regurgitation and nutrition wrapped up in a shiny foil sack, sliced off the end of the Cloaca machine -animal and machine, and really, essentially inhuman, unhelpful, false, and devoid of real value. I'm still trying to work out what the nutritional value of writing might be for me, much less for the reader or listener. What nutrition do you receive from the practice of writing? What do you consider formative moments or experiences in shaping you or pushing you to write? PHIL

PHIL, Would it shock or disturb you to realize that it was actually me, dressed up as your grandmother, reciting Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" to you?

(...my "O Captain! My Captain!" moment, if one exists, was the obverse of the one you experienced, which was no doubt bound to a room, a house, a landscape from your childhood -- that gave the recitation a full-figured enough context to allow for a transmission of love. My earliest memories of poetry, of receiving poetry, are ones in which I was totally disgusted by what -- the what, and air of what -- I was hearing. Looking back, I realize that my disgust was an ill-formed manifestation of being perplexed, and wanting very seriously NOT to be perplexed. Of course, there was also a Victorian air that I couldn't -- and still cannot -- stand, and though the Imagists and Surrealists and, basically, the Modernists (et al) came to cut the foul odor loose from that air, and to cut loose the air itself, there was something missing in the transmission -- there was neither love nor hint of love, and so I was left to fester, perplexed, in opposition to that feeling.

Miraculously, that disgust was eventually transfigured (in high school, junior year) by a book of poems that -- maybe like your grandmother's voice -- evoked an experience as full, and certainly as alien, as love, though love with an entirely different heart and mind and soul, and vocabulary: John Ashbery's Double Dream of Spring. Do you remember when I had that book? I found a copy at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in downtown Danbury, and bought it for its cover. It was green -- maybe there was a contour drawing of a weed, maybe a thistle, or something, I don't remember; I've never seen it since -- but I was lured by the cover, and then started looking through the poems, making no connection between the poems and the poems that I had been confronted with elsewhere. The book was strange, the book was frustrating, the book made no sense to me as a "thing," as a literary object or record or artifact, or anything. I was so totally perplexed, that I adhered to perplexity as a kind of faith, and ultimately fell through the wall of that perplexity into an entirely new and different realm altogether, one in which perplexity was THE RULE, in which I was an adherent citizen. It was love, though better than "love," for being 100% counter to my anticipations of that feeling. The book gave me a terrible headache, and I ended up getting rid of it, so deeply had it effected me.)

Maybe tied into this idea of disgust (transfigured into love) are all of these things you have been speaking of in relation to readings: "risk," "awkwardness," "unsightliness," "shitting or puking with the door open," and so on. There is a profound vulnerability attached to the abject -- a sense of supreme humiliation. Writing is an intensely private thing, and readings are intensely public events, and maybe we don't consider often enough the incompatibility of the private and public spheres, but concoct all manner of sociological algorithms as to why and how the private and the public are needfully complementary, that we would wither away if we dwelt only in one or the other. I think this is true for being fundamentally social, though I'm not entirely convinced that our lives as poets need to conform to the same prerequisites. Hmm ... maybe it IS inevitable; we write, we share what we write, we cannot help ourselves -- we WANT people to walk in on us while we are wiping our asses, or jerking off, or pissing in the sink...

Speaking of which, has anyone ever walked in on you while you were taking a shit in a public restroom ... and STAYED? I mean, realized what was happening, and just WENT WITH IT? Being in the audience at a poetry reading is often this situation; you see the person with their pants around their ankles, you hear the sound of shit hitting water, you see the person bent over, staring at the floor, and you just ... fucking ... stand there ... watching. Humiliation is the right word. As readers, then, it is up to us to take advantage of that humiliating, utterly compromising and compromised moment, to fully reconcile the disastrous disjunction between the private and the public. Humiliation is a crisis state -- therefore, an opportunity. One of my favorite poems by Frank O'Hara is "The Hunter," which ends with the line: "Alone, / in the clouds, he was humiliated." BRANDON

BRANDON, I do actually remember only the cover of the Ashbery book. I also remember looking through Borders at John Ashbery books, particularly "Flow Chart" and "Three Poems" - looking at "The System" I think it was and feeling something akin to vertigo. I also remember thinking that, if you read this, we couldn't be as alike as I thought we were. I mean I was a pretentious fuck who tried to read Dostoyevsky and Sartre in eighth grade, but this stuff was of a different order altogether, it really seemed almost alien, like scanning through the phonebook for numerological messages or looking for life lessons in an appliance manual.

And it would not surprise me, it would actually make sense* that you were the one reciting "Barbara Frietchie": there was clearly someone else in there, or a sort of ventriloquism at work, someone else speaking with her liquorish breath. From her I came to associate poetry with extravagance, with the excessive, with disequilibrium, and with rage. These were her states, all rapidly cycled through daily, in no particular order, and almost without reason. She and by proxy poetry was a logic that I could not anticipate, one totally alien to me then, equal parts comfort and confusion.

*Actually, on second thought, it would surprise me a little. PHIL

ADAM, I know you have generated around 155 pages of material toward a project (novel? memoir? history?) titled "Mischling" involving your own family, and more specifically the imagined death of your grandmother, while at the same time facilitating and responsible for the most fundamental, and most radical act of creation, that of another human being, your child. Is there a connection between the two? What made you choose to pursue this project now? What has it been like to represent them in writing?

I was intrigued in the extreme by the fact that within this project you've tried not only to present a portrait of a family but that you've improbably and in an act of creative hubris written sections from the perspective of a perpetrator of mass murder, Ion Antonescu. What was it like to attempt this? PHIL

PHIL, first... I'm an outsider to writing, which may be the most audacious act of creative hubris on my part. That said, I chose to write this at this juncture of my life, where birth and death exist within close proximity to each other, after visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C with the rather recent knowledge shared by my grandmother that in all likelihood, several relatives perished in the Holocaust. There's a walkway between two sections of the permanent exhibit, windows on either side, with the names of cities and towns of European countries affected by the Final Solution. I stared at all the names of Romanian places with no grasp of what I could pass on to my children... I am Jewish and Italian by heritage, but I could never play the part. Liz became pregnant that same summer and I began writing. It's all very trite, really... cycles of life and death, questioning the heritage I will impart to my progeny. Maybe, writing Mischling is my subconscious attempt to tell my child who he or she is. Maybe, it's my melodramatic effort to hold onto my sole surviving grandparent. Maybe, it's just that I've been reading a butt-load of Roth, Auslander, and Chabon. Throw a little Puzo in there and you get the "maztoh-pizza" that I'm supposed to be.

As for the Antonescu component, that's inspired by de Bernieres. He wrote from Mussolini's perspective in Corelli's Mandolin. At first, Mischling was going to be far more expansive than what I've pared it down to; now, I'll probably turn the Antonescu journals into a one-man play. Writing from his perspective, however, only frightened me when I realized how easily my own half-Jewish voice became so violently anti-Semitic.

By the way, Dostoyevsky in eighth grade? Me too... never finished it though. Instead, I think I moved on to Portnoy's Complaint. ADAM

ADAM, You're certainly not an "outsider to writing," as you phrase it -- or, if you are an outsider to writing, then that is because we are all ... fundamentally ... outsiders to writing -- outside of writing -- and the act of writing itself is the "audacious act" of trying to become the composition that we so persistently score upon the surface of things. What I'm trying to say is that your writing seems to be -- especially in this case -- a natural response to the radical opening up of your identity, by way of your family, your family's history, which is, in every respect, your child's history; you are bringing these things to bear upon your present moment, because, as you say, there is the subconscious need -- certainly the attempt -- to tell your child "who he or she is," and in order to do that, you need to tell yourself who you are -- and in order to do THAT, maybe you need to re-imagine your own history through to your birth, so that when your child is born, you are prepared -- or relatively so -- with the back story at which your child's story begins, and writing is the way to literally incise that story upon the structure, getting ready. There is nothing "hubristic" about it. Besides, you were writing (poems, stories and songs) at the same time that Phil and I were starting to do the same, and with similar influences, and certainly influenced down the directions that we are -- maybe -- still traveling, which makes me realize that you have existed in the writing all along, as a cell of ultra-renewable ink, and in the thoughts that have necessitated the act, for us.

I'm curious to hear about the actual moment -- or minute, or hour, or day, or location, or sensation, or thought -- in which you started to write again, after not having written for so many years (I'm assuming, aside from the occasional work). You were talking about your visit to the Holocaust Memorial, and the windowed walkway, and of course you have also been talking about having a child -- so those transitional spaces, that transitional phase, is suggestive -- but I am curious about the actual moment in which you felt compelled to write, and what that was like -- how it felt, where you were, what you did next, and so on. BRANDON

BRANDON, Although far from complete, Mischling has been an unexpectedly fluid experience. It usually demanded little effort, likely because much of it is experiential, historical, or reminiscential. I wrote the first words during an evening shift at my second job. It was autumn; I had a new crop of students at school... my life would have been rather routine had Liz not just become pregnant a month earlier. Unfortunately, any response to your questions will be rather lackluster, as I don't know that I was fully aware of the impetus to write. I was aware of the heritage and past that I was unaware of; however, it wasn't until recently that I realized the writing may, in fact, be to archive something for my child, even if some of it will exist in hyperbole and second- or third-hand dialogue.

There was no single moment when I felt that compulsion you mentioned, but rather a series of events building up to now, including the glass overpass at the Holocaust Museum, in which I was becoming increasingly anxious about sustaining the memories of our generation's grandparental generation. First, the passing of my maternal grandfather, then paternal grandmother (her husband having passed away years before I was born), in 2003 and 2005, respectively, learning of my future indoctrination into fatherhood, discovering, albeit vicariously through my father's return to Italy, other Rabascas exist, that we're documented in a book, that my family has a street named for one of its patriarchs in Calitri. Each event urgently pushed me to write, perhaps for my child, perhaps for my own selfish purpose of battling oblivion.

But, as you mentioned, much of this remains external; the internal I have hardly discussed, and not surprisingly in this light, something the protagonist of Mischling seems to struggle with, something Phil observed as conspicuously absent in an early draft. Hopefully, I've reconciled the internal and external within the character, if even only partially so. Perhaps, the two are mutually exclusive and should never be fully melded, but rather balanced.

Which brings me to my question for both you and Phil: just as I'm struggling to balance the external and the internal as I write, do the two of you feel you're attempting to balance things which prefer imbalance? Brandon, although I'm only partially through The Alps, I observed the "squareness" and exactitude of the all section entitled "The Alps." The words almost become the negative space of the box. Do you find yourself struggling to balance space? Phil, you appear to be on the opposite side of the pendulum, when in several sections of New Wave, you seem to stamp out the space. And, finally, do either of you find a connection between this and your heritage? Or are either of you motivated by some other force in this regard? ADAM

ADAM, one of the reasons I've chosen to work in the medium of poetry is the affinity of that medium to work in that imbalance of internal and external you spoke of above. And it may have something to do with my heritage, not just ethnically, but with my inheritance of the poetic tradition, something that New Wave does try to start an imbalanced, unsure, ambivalent engagement with, but with the inheritance of this world I inhabit, and the apparatus with which I engage this inheritance.

To start with my ethnic heritage, it is fundamentally unsure, being at one point down the familial line, the product of adoption, and the product of a stringent assimilation to an American in variously WASPy settings, settings known well to each of us, and which you seem to wish to engage very specifically in your work, Adam. Each of us is somehow divided in terms of our heritage, and its been quite intriguing to see this played out in our respective endeavors, especially your work, Brandon, and especially in the unseen depths of Lake M. Or perhaps this is the wrong title, or wrong bit of the wider search which I invoke, and so to return to a work I can touch and see and read now, The Inland Sea, the work begins and the words are summoned to this site under the cover of a photograph of your mom, aged 16 (?). The whole of it takes place, as it were, inside her head, which we turn in our hands for another view, another in the manner of a mugshot, the mugshot which is used a means of identification, a means of preventing escape or concealing. In keeping with the doubled outward signs of the book, it also commences and ends with attempts at sight - both passages attempting to imagine, straining at seeing BEFORE sight, which I see in many ways, but in keeping with the most explicit or literal meaning, this seems to me to re-enclose yourself again within your mother, and to travel through that prehistory of yourself farther and farther backward.

This re-enclosure I think has some kinship with the history that Adam is seeking to narrate, proceeding though in this medium of imbalance called poetry (though egad I think right now that term cannot possibly be used to limit or slander this project). This I think proceeds from the same hubristic impulse I spoke of above, and I don't think any project could really be this compelling to me without some element of hubris, of wanting to transcend, or to enter into another being, or a world in which one has not or no longer exists.

These thoughts are furthered and spurred on by a strange experience, that of looking into the dark, new eyes of your child, Adam, looking right into this moment just past the "sight-before-sight," just past the shores of The Inland Sea, the womb. Looking into the eyes on the cover of The Inland Sea which are also your eyes Brandon, which is the same substance of which you bodily are made, and which rests on my desk next to the photo of Anna Katherine, the very substance of which you are Adam nearly give me vertigo it is so incredible, so joyously unthinkable, unable for me to hold in my mind. And yet you hold all this simply in your arms. PHIL

ADAM & PHIL, I cannot imagine that bearing, of holding a life within my arms that is the absolute confirmation of life and the absolute, and simultaneous, confirmation of death -- of looking into the darkness that is light, and knowing that -- simultaneities imposed -- a genuine opportunity has risen to be nothing but a giving, loving substance. I'm enthralled with how one might evolve, and also of how one does. For I think of hubris in the "creative" act, and the lie that is the "creative" act, for the fundamental process of uncovering that which already is, that struggles into form, by life, by attending to that thing by giving it form -- whether a child or a book -- whether Anna or Mischling -- and how the opportunity that has arisen is to vanquish the opportunity for a life in which hubris is driven against the fulcrum, for the gift that fatherhood, or motherhood, affords -- how it is squandered, incessantly, and without fail, for being the continual failure. What I mean is that a life is usually lived for the self, as a poetic or artistic "uncovering" is also predicated on the egoistic lens, but what a poem, or what a CHILD, truly demands, is something more ecstatic, more transcendent than love -- in thinking about "wanting to transcend, or to enter into another being, or a world in which one has not or no longer exists" -- which requires the delimited mind to energize and endure -- but something utterly nameless, and literally transcendent, in that the self is completely remade in the life of someone or something else -- given over. But, there are impossibilities for this, and what a struggling form evokes is exactly the limit of our existence in the face, and in the substance, and life, of the reinvigoration of the genesis of that which has already been foretold. The "dark, new eyes" just might be the ONLY thing we are truly meant to see to FEEL, and therefore, the precipitated razing of the heart. As oft-quoted as Rilke is, "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? / and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: / I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. / For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, / and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. / Every angel is terrifying." There is an overwhelming fortune in the gift, that is, the life, and what might separate from us, or you, Adam, is exactly what will feed and cultivate the life of someone, or something else; the book is being written . BRANDON.

PHIL & BRANDON, the art of writing is so insufficient a tool to accurately describe the past week: my firstborn, a girl who is half of what I am, half my wife. My daughter is part of who Liz and I are as a married couple, part of those family members who make us what we are, all of what she herself will be. No words exist to describe the feeling of seeing your once microscopic “creation,” known to you only by images akin more satellite views of weather patterns than an infant, emerge into breathable air, a whole being; yet I continue to write about the inexplicability of this now tangible organism physically dependent upon my wife, the source of nutrition, food, life.

I had never loved my wife, nor myself, more than when she, Anna Katherine, came into the world. Nothing I write illustrates that childbirth is undoubtedly the most joyous moment imaginable, albeit a clichéd phrase. I cry even now, though it feels like moments ago that Anna cried for the first time and I, being asked to declare the sex after sitting by Liz’s head behind a curtain blocking her surgery from view, with uncertainty, simultaneously declared and asked, “That’s a girl, right?”

How have we as friends… no, brothers evolved from our teens, stumbling through the woods at night, eagerly soliciting fake acid from dealers at Dead shows, ranting on and on about our displeasure with the mediocrity and two-dimensionality of our classmates (never admitting to our own), foraging through my mother’s pantry for anything other than Snackwell’s cookies, arriving finally at this stage in adulthood where we become responsible for creating life, nurturing it into the world, and fostering that life to one day create on its own?

My words suck. They bleed with agony over my failure to describe this most ineffable phenomenon. And yet, how hypocritical that I continue on. I want to end but my fingers refuse. My urge to convey and share the birth of Anna prevails, just as my desire to transport the ordeals of my family to others manifests itself in Mischling.

As Anna is not a mischling, is this what Mischling becomes? Language rearranged from my brain, words retelling all that I am, as an insufficient device for explaining to my daughter who she is? And who is she? She is me. She is my wife. She is my parents and siblings and grandparents. And she is none of that as she will become her self, very much apart from me, very much a part of me. Rilke’s quote is fitting, Brandon: I’m terrified; how will I suppress my hopes for who she will be so that who she actually is develops into who she will someday become?

This tiny being I hold my arms, this bundle of cells, tissues, muscles, keratin, blood, thoughts, sentience, growth (the lushness of your picture, Brandon, reminds me that Anna grows even at this moment) is so much more than life, and so much more than death. She is also “creative;” she will one day create life… she is perpetuation. She creates even now: her movements, her expressions, her sounds. Her blue eyes, though the doctor assures me they might change, open into an unknown future and knowable past. Creation. She is a creation. She will create. She is inexplicable.

I don’t believe I’m spoiling anything, as it is specifically foreshadowed throughout the novel, by discussing that there is a moment in Mischling when Adam’s character meets his firstborn child, the parallel universe of my own actual existence. How inadequate a description it is, especially as I wrote the draft prior to Anna’s actual birth. Now in revision, re-creating the moment is impossible. What could be more hubristic than this endeavor, Phil: to write what can never be written. The language does not exist, nor will it ever, to convey that moment. No matter how long I stare into her eyes, I remain incapable of retrieving language to describe her, to explain the hours of labor in which I never loved my wife more, or to elucidate what “family” means now. As I repeatedly look away from typing to her sleeping cheeks, perhaps simplicity will write this portion of the story best.

My daughter. My Anna.

2009-01-30T22:16:00.000-08:00

COMING SOON ...

It is death--but if one is permitted to say so, it is not a tragic death, or else, if it is more accurate to say it this way, it is not mythic death, or death followed by a resurrection, or the death that plunges into a pure abyss: it is death as sharing and as exposure.

2008-10-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

Kein Eingang

2008-09-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

The venue was named for you
not salaried or seasonal
milled in a round of yew
asheared earthen spindle in bloom

That tongue in your throat is not yours
it is your mother-tongue
apart upon the torch
fact-checked and low in frequency

Touch me the butcher lifted his hindquarters
aiming for the hymnal either
a snack of verdigris and Gold-Bond
a rude block of hawkhead and twine

Seven times in the anglican teeth
cut and wet and lips parted and balls dripping with steamed wax
a pair of ribbons inducing deep sleep
drunk on resin and the professor’s blank stare

Brash fires I can think that plain
lifting among the assembled multitudes
gulping sod waters a quarry we mass
along the interstate a prod for the ancients

I can think that again in the rose bowl
night is a pale has die like a has
die like a has yes we did I
ain’t I think that you look

2008-08-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

We came out purple in pins yes we
Did I think that you did too
Wow within
Wooden outbuildings litter the berry

Did you think
I meant between the knees
Grows a dark and wild principle
She is stuttering. She wants to make
And so marmalade on the inner pink
Men and women combine
Larger structure dallies in mud. Guh, Let go---

They were kicking you, Persia
Clouds of sky frightened into walls of prey
Forests of cloud bestilled against ground plugs

As I said the dust
Thundered
Not a single tail abandoned our bodies
Function wet
Stomachs rising in lust say the devil
Shall go oh forever

2008-08-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

2008-07-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

2008-07-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

2008-07-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

We came out purple and plain
I think that you did too, within us
wooden outbuildings

Did you think I meant
between the knees a dark and wild
principle, where men and women
combine patterns of larger structure

They were kicking you, Persia
clouds of sky, frightened
forests of cloud. Be still

As I said the dust thundered
past. Not a single tail abandoned
our bodies function our wet stomachs
rising. The devil shall go on forever

2008-07-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

Let us despise many things • You look terrible in that • Come into the closet with me • The last measure of a perfectly demonstrative saint • Where will the patrons arrive through what breach in the stone wall • Let us despise many particular things • The keystone the arch the arch enemy the frenemy • She is my model for how I would like to dress but cannot • I never understood how someone's head could yield such preposterous hair • It is all within the shape my frenemy • Let us despise a small set of things • What she noticed first was the woman's enormous breasts and the fact that she was not wearing a bra • There was nothing either cold or alcoholic in the chest that advertised otherwise • If you stood at a certain distance and squinted all of the icons would match up correctly • Two old men as if were were killers • That looks marginally better than the first option • Touch the wood the plastic the cloth • The saint drifts in over the quince • Let us despise the ratios of the things we previously committed to loving • The cornerstone the lodestone the archivolt the pedestal the column • I remember watching her when she was a baby and multiple • He blamed it all on an encounter with a stuffed-clown though I didn't believe him he was a douche bag • I noticed the two blocks of cheese and my hunger in noticing • The river crept along beneath our feet while we picked up the packages one by one by one • Let us despise things in their infancy

2008-07-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

We came out purple and plain
shimmering, I think
that you did too, within the us
of the wooden outbuildings
Did you think I meant between the knees
where there was dark and wild
the rest of us, insuperable
cabins where men and women combine
like patterns of larger structures
the frame, the castle, the collapsible fort
They were kicking you, Persia
up clouds of sky, emerging in frightened
forests of dust. Be still, as I said
the dust thundered past. Not a single tail
abandoned, our bodies the function
of our wet stomachs rising
The devil shall go on forever

2008-06-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

This is for you for you remember you this is for you remember remember you this is for you the coneflowers and the confetti and the drunk woman in the yard upstairs downstairs she needs a proper chair for you remember this is for you for you for you this is for you for you for you for you the coneflowers and the confetti how long it took michael to get to the house of lust and love not love of lust for you for you confetti how long it took michael to get past the house of grave disgust the woman in her bed upstairs the kitchen basement den the pantry she needs a proper chair to lift her up the stairs for you remember for you for you this is for you coneflowers and confetti and jewelweed in the front and coneflowers in the rear and jewelweed by the box and coneflowers in the kitchen cut in water in glass in the yard upstairs downstairs the basement kitchen den the pantry she needs her son to leave his room that she might be lifted to her bed her pillow confetti this is for you remember this for you is this for you upstairs the window the clock the thermometer took michael to get to the house of love and lust not love of grave disgust upon the hill coneflowers fellating the weed jewel the flower cone confetti not love of grave disgust nor lust for you she lifts into her bed her pillow charm a plastic rock the stems that break to soothe the bites of grave disgust the woman in her bed upstairs the pantry the den the office the books the stacks the drawers she needs her to son to leave the curtains alone for you for you remember this is for you how long it took michael to get past the house of lust and love not grave disgust to lift her up the stairs remember you for to her bed coneflower of love and lust not weed of jewel not flower of cone fellating her son to leave the jewelweed along at the curtain for you this is for you for you this is for you this is for you this is this is for you for you for you for you for you for you for you remember this is remember this is remember this is for you for you for you

2008-06-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

We came out dark and purple, plain
and shimmering, and I think
that you did to, you within the us
out of the wooden buildings
Did you think I meant between the knees
like the rest of us, very small
wooden houses where men and women
bought and sold larger structures
castles, collapsible fortresses, grand
vaults of sky, Persia. They were kicking
up clouds of sky
and those emerging were frightened by the dust
steaming sign in the forest
pressing against them. Be still, I said
as the dust thundered past. Not a single tail
we lie abandoned, our bodies made
aware how wet our stomachs rise
and fall, organic twists inside, the devil
should go on forever, as time has now
flushed meaningless, for now
it seems a substance
oozing into the fen and pipe

2008-06-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

2008-06-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

FOR FLATTENED OUT FOR FOREGROUND PALMS

We are not a cultivated democracy
of young people and young trials
untested necessity of living
a psychic life of promise can make you
feel bad. Order does not
grant civilization but for combat
every stripe every question
its own inertia
to harmonize back to the promise of a humble
people leave it up to the future.

When the old icon emerged
upon the stage the oaks swayed
luminous with people
who refused to pay. The fucking Johnny wore
a cowboy hat in the sideways
rain. What possible future
how comfortable do you feel
within the vice of your predictions
that family counts their energies
waits for help at the renaissance
horizon. I do not understand
speaking vis-a-vis the social order
hence seduction abnegation
strange work for inconsolable women

Lost we tracked back to the pond
found only the saucer stones
that had been lobbed hours
earlier a diminutive person
held us in sway something familiar
we would see years later
in California. Not yet the trees
break. Let's joke for a moment -azoa!

2008-06-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

ALMOST NOTHING BUT HORROR BLEEDS IN THOSE WHO ATTEND TO THE ANGUISH OF OTHERS WITH THEIR COMPLICATED INSTRUMENTS

The being of a subject it is
in turn an infinite migration
not in any way consistent
but a dialectic of the heart
I hate you and I hate that speech
or science of the reason
comes between us well attested
of the heart and of the reason
irreconcilable the question
in these terms I hate you in
these terms that graffiti love
of love writes they or we
have inappropriate love between
us love and reason is
to enter into a hateful spell
to bridge a superior moment
maybe this is not the garden we
imagined at the outset driving
past the iron birds and iron eye
the birds were perpetually dating
from the power the heart
nor love is what it is
identical in its explosions from
the iron birds and iron eye
quizzing like a lime within a crook
is always beating carrying
argument as a rolled up corollary
does not maintain itself
that love does naught to reason
you away from the heated coils
so what they are entrancing get
the fuck away from
them you do not cease to ruin
and assign the ruin designate the ruin
you do not know how to seize or catch
but thinking is not love
and missing is not love but its
own essence would thus say
all that it could all that you could
by missing it and missing all of them
exemplary force of confession
does not mean that this tradition
is beginning nor that it is tradition
at all the banquets we cowered
beneath the table look at all the ripe
bananas in the waters in the florals
occurring overhead or that love has not
occurred contrary to the deliberating guns
that never miss the target thinking
and by love the thinking love
returns again to thinking
walking beneath the overpass
looking at the engleman's I wanted
safe to say I will be hungry for
a couple months at least that I
will want to engage outside of the
Occident to know it from our history
together in a box the leaves bent
at the windows the underwear in the box
above is in fact no stranger
to any of the figures that you made
against the sheet fidelity abandon
self deliverance by axe denominations
let us kill all the encumbrances
including Jim and Sylvia and Will
and Bill and Louisa the absolute
of all conjoined meanings
let us end this knowledge claims
pointed or ridiculed I grew to
hate the pouch the animal is a series
of bad faith responses to our questions
insistent or insidious without
a doubt that comes so close and closer
to all things the evidence of the power
of fulfillment as we walked into the waterworks
and pet the rabid lamb by the love of hell
the fatherland remains the same
the furthest movement bucking
if we take them all within the copse
singular on the hillside works
how then can we hope to repeat
the things that we have missed once
and universally dismissed and missed
such an undertaking in our absence
pleasure or desire vows sacrifice
we sat in a church-like circle and discussed
the things we wanted to do we wanted
to do nothing but leave the circle
mount the stage draw the curtains
set fire to ourselves in unique
denominations between caress
and devotion the speech you asked for
delivered in the worst of moments that
is why I want to remove myself
to deal and only delicious joy freed
from itself is success

2008-06-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

2008-06-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

I listened to the largest of them talking
in my ear the brutal mention of the ship
stem ranking closer to the pasture over
whelmed by filaments of canuum elementum over
head the writing made a tarnished
lake they all came down head
dresses flaring like the time do you remember
we were illegal between the rocks the hats the
appo frontal asklepios in your
face criss-crossing streams that prompted
entry anyway we could
we watched the people grow obese along the railings
mantles graying little
auks the wizards touch the bluest
water deepest at the edges counter
intuitive so we made the signs turn
north the things were sold against us
watch this pool now look at this apple

2008-06-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

the makest has a lucky hand in
wretched names spelled in grease
moving through the vast happens
would bore the hell out of me
apart, torn up, backwards
wet of the ring in pink ether
the cart elevated the moving
yes, this is good work; burn
out the array of poseidon figures
are one hundred and eighty pounds
with his cello amply strapped
where the plug cements
we returned all of the old cassettes
and were given no credit, had to put forth
long strips of indeterminate origin
the heat sensors were on the top
it was a movie about slavery
both felt negligible at best, as friends
walked hand-in-hand past the large window
with his tongue hanging out, as if dead
everyone gathering around the outline
are not going to eat his food

2008-05-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

exploring a new breed
of oil, in a region
of perfect weather,
floating on gray water

& the holes in the ship
leaking their port
of origin, a fire,
an invasion, a death

less wild, and littler,
tasked at tallying concrete
sparks, flying out masks
for the closing party

in the towering white
branches, a modulated
West Coast, a natural source
of restlessness

better than the mechanical
COME DOWN AND CRY
of these roaring
landslides and inundations,

the PLEASE DO COME into this
wildness, this radical space,
come hacking a second tail
out from your body

2008-05-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

2008-05-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

2008-05-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

2008-05-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

2008-05-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

A whip-stick out is where if a record
of motion were made you might
get a divvying - or if there is swaying
and over swaying the surface
slides like a whip-tilt, like Poseidon's identifiers

High elbow from the blocks
whip kick windmilling
around the dean of wet faces,

the backlit palms
for flattened out for foreground palms
rolling down in cross-film
in seal body roll

Leaching matter a genetic shock
from protean Hollywood
shot by shot
rolled where a shift
No breath in the last
worry-free
flight simulator -
a fluid cane

Crossing if there were
arms and legs
divvy and bundle.
A stick pin.
A brooch hung
with so much curly foam
a god Poseidon

Kick from the quads.
No less real than,
it noses in the tunnel
you in the downpour.
The sun is
to flail for time.
Count - elongate for the count,
A stranger to you.

Jove; Laredo rose;
your perfume has the fluidity
of legs.

2008-04-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Up close and naked

Passion which fluid before swimming
Far rock ordnances
Crept down the 'ard
Metal formed from blood
Osiers and before ate
Branches in peaks
A valley, creeping bright
Sweat on processed skeet
The bodies leapt in tow
Atop the thatched-off water closet
Asymmetrical gunners and the policia
Fronds form a grid //

// whose on deck
Like they don't have anyone else
My problem; he's got a uniform on
Those albinos
Should let him use the sword
On, weird guy
Carlos, you're drunk
Could I give a shout out to my main salad girl at Pizza Hut
I started losing my hair when I was nine years old
The black, bodybuilding Charlie Brown
Pour some honey on me. Let me see you get really mad

2008-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tendrils waving

Rockwell in the city

A leafy public waits for the float

Network of public space. The public

Sitting in the open field, gesturing, closural

Actually. Generation's injunction: "Make it

Flat. No less real than laurels

In the round. All tomorrow's

Rest

Cools on the oil-ringed pond

Bellies; Hmm, I choose that one

The blonde and the belly-cream

... I like John, I like Bob, I like Frank

A genetic shock. The sun is falling

Off; the flood opens

A plain forest

Provides a habitat. No real thinking

Clouds the facility

With association from privilege

The addendum: Keep it white, though study

The counterargument

As argument. I love the country

Many windows, many umbrellas, many imprints

Attache

... doves in the beams, the halting camera, the animals

Stuffed into the ladders, withdrawn

Metallic. Steak like Nick likes

This be the city, however

2008-04-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

Leafy tendrils waving.
A city's public remain hidden.
A network of public and private spaces,
a trail home. Real labor
and real history left behind,
caught up in rising motion.

*

Air cools on the oil-ringed pools.
Rows of bellies,
not as smooth and slippery,
ripple and squeeze faster, closer.
The sun is falling off,
fingers missing; the flood opens.

*

A genetic shock; an electric fence;
a flood plain forest provides
habitat for lanterns
and silent hand signals.
Twisted into each other
from the impact.

2008-04-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

Inherited instincts, coming down,
become swimming, fluid legs.

Metal from your blood.
Willow branches raised in peaks.

In a valley, creeping bright,
our hands widen and lay claim.

Asymmetrical
around the body.

Twigs form a grid, blackened
and up close, naked.

2008-03-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Sing the Song of the New Royale Massacre

truck out the maps
the newly elected thicket
down the leg propped

on the ledge, a song
of steel and plans and snap snap
I want to climb down it it. Clean it

pocked, but I want to comb
the thicket
out, I want to sweat the human
'til night hustles day
beyond the back wall. Where the rams

hit in the head with a bag
of bread like stones
noses in the tunnel
breaking, forwarding sea

caught in profile
in her closet. All of the pieces
The baboon puzzle

you in the downpour
channeling minerals
from the body

I forgot about the white
horses driving through the cradle
You reached into a Chinese box

and it would seem so
sure smelled like it
In granular stereo

2008-03-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

4.

follows a "which":
all other creatures,
multitude of course.

687 must come
scary as tall

suss the hurling
valley doors

stretch a brick
to this precipitate
of nature -

laminate dolphins
hellcats forever

on the hair of
the one
which is hard

2008-03-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

inside cells distributed
the length of a scale
played on disobedience

is another is

to sit over carpet
pink bounces
and is taken away. old hag
rocks, engineers nanomaterials

to ‘sense’ exhibitionism
in the 145+ feet
particles lasting ebony

drip, exfoliate
entirely new replacement parts
in a way that makes
the whole eye
shift, from electrical insulators
to germ-killing

tinker birds on a boarded-up house
a cement tunnel
a smorgasbord, concentrated

preponderance of chloride atoms
fragile, and their special, Daniel

fighting through loads of ice
prove they were not cousins. I did
not even know
they were in
their objects in tailored structures
electric

is what makes Loo-Choo
right among the fly-over wake

electric as a way of
choosing the lesser light

made of tiny
weight conserved

reinventing
the weak scale, is unification

2008-03-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Fox and Friends

Abundant pets, it was cracked when bought, gekkering, loose: opportunistic meaning-tail. The magic phrase is a mnemonic, Krumme Lanke. Massed thunderheads fat and batten, still chimey, their desert underside with bottle-brush the petted time suggests: tail, tail. And not perceived (though its imperfection cited) as a flaw in either but a crack in their relation, in thicket of cities a tell. Tell on noxious name nostalgia. And the fox's friends in the works of Biberkopf, Bolaño, Borges, and James, so chimey, rounded and fat, which carry thicket and underbrush, oversit a tail. Coming down flaw preside a mind yet? Will blank be a last stand, at home in Arizona? More missing spots in atmosphere: a more lax pace in atmosphere. Missing storms playing over and above to overstate the sieve of space: and forms bathing in it-stuff, vengeance in the blood "boiling up". Massed canteen doors, which, like hairline fracture in the grosses of the highest-massing profitable store, prefigured more than they spoke. The underbrush, a natural array, feels to be repeating another effect to the interloper, like bright muted lights that haunt and are penciled rhetoric to the mouth. It is a film about corruptive nature and their pets. Oh, it was a dumb-bell cracked worse than a vase.

2008-03-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

dictionary of traded goods

a song of truck
steel, maps and plans

pockmarked in the time
of basements

human-shaped
until day takes over

*

a tunnel lamp, a sea
of overnight

& you a downpour
& a funnel

channeling minerals
out from the body

*

a looming rubber
drive, a letter

low-vibration
rituals

haunt the backseat
in granular stereo

2008-02-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

in wide focus, blurred slightly at edges

faster, faster
pudding

hung like sap from the armor

aprons bundled in the air
make sense, though might not

hold so of a mind. The saddest
"I" I've ever heard

distilled
where like agave dew

that killer fresh
a long time took

to decide
to decide on
just the saddest
itching." Outside

Young pony in the closet
defenseless. The shattering of plates

not "I remember the molds"

some kind of top
such and such a bottom

Shooting in the desert
by scalloped feet. The aerial
The giddiest of German
Tetris with
rental tables. Don't
compare. A plain.

Roses for the dwarf Cheyenne
constantly wanting
to count each line

and long, the coming to life
then death
Oh, that's my aunt's question

young colored pegs a professional
hired

Comparing projection leapfrog.

2008-02-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

a harness of terry
passing

trace brown contentions

the terminator?

organisms spent like castles in sora

places look
like square holly coaster
imagine feet found in the mangroves

twisting where the sidewinder splits

drifting until incompatible

not really a tree, a graph, heretical

the eye repeatedly like a dixie a thousand times over

between the fluencies
branchings—

reproduction is the lowliest degree
with stories of weather

shaped and continuing
faint

no absolute as light

I tore my veil, the fox consoles

2008-02-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

Overgrowth, bellying,
in wide focus, blurred slightly at edges,
writing, faster, faster,

a bundle or volume of air
in an apron -
it makes sense, it might not hold

being so of a mind. The saddest story
"I, I've ever heard
of nectar, of time, of distillation

like agave dew-drops, the call of
distinction, a slice that killer fresh
took a long time to decide, a long time

to decide on just the saddest
itching." Outside body cavities, a title is not
"I remember the molds"

but, conditioned,
some kind of top and such and such a bottom.
Drunk part,

a minimal volume extruded
slopes. A valley. Shooting in the desert
by scalloped feet. The aerial view

of a stack drunk like weird Tetris with
rental tables. Don't compare. A plain.
Equality way of doing one, complex

and long, the coming to life and then death
of this drink stacked.
Oh, that's my aunt's question,

it can't be mine. Stack pounds moderately
down, young colored pegs a professional
hired to name.

Comparing projection leapfrog.
Salmon-colored, prosthetic
Individual Works.

The big ones are more perfect
(perfect vehicles a short run).
Prudence, shell and whale.

2008-02-14T12:59:00.000-08:00

2008-02-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

2008-02-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

Minted swallows, lace cues
tracking rusts, ritual crowdings
this motion picture bothers
the hunted lovers

Duck-walk to the face
servicing the mail truck
the gray, blunt steel

Describe the lamp, the sea urchin
the sound from sickles
with bum blood and fabric

The tune of looming panic
playing rubber like a sport

We'll drive you to the other one
we have to release a target to confirm
a round blot on the conference

You lunch so nobody cares
"we choose at some point
how to physically construct our letters
these tendencies remain largely unaltered"

You only go where you live
pockmarked for publication
the time of one building
a rhetorical basement

Predictably shorter than the cages and the balk
keep the vehicle on the corner
you can only solve the movies once

Why would you funnel a downpour away from the spout?

2008-01-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

2008-01-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

Memorandum

There has been an alarming increase in the number of dead trees along the Town right-of-ways, most likely caused by the dry weather of the past years.

This, along with the frequent windstorms and emergency road blockages that need to be cleared, has depleted the budget.

I appreciate your attention to this matter.

2007-12-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

Edifice

I saw you in a city like this, a hill of half-finished condos
above the triple-deckers of the flats. We made hand signals
to indicate recognition, and moved on. I creased it all in,
stoppered at the edge of the maw. Many arms of mutilation,
willing distraction.

2007-12-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

obviously fox—naming is human and the woodland is fox

chains, or ropes of a harness,

passing is that it? can you trace them

beyond the terminator?

flowing through where organisms are mere

discards

drifting apart until incompatible

not really a tree, a graph

of the eye from scratch a thousand times over

all niches taken, these soft peaks of Sawteeth

we choose between the fluencies

of branchings—

reproduction, is in the highest degree, work,

a stream with pools, stories of the weather

shaped and continuing to shape—through rejection,

earliest skies, faint visible traces,

no absolute necessity, even as light

climbs, the fox consoles

2007-12-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

objecthood: breaking of the perfect symmetry will result in the possibility of giving names

*

inside cells distributed
and the length scale

One way is
Another is to (i.e., ).

to

engineer nanomaterials
to ‘sense’ exhibitionism
in other particles
in generations of long-
lasting

exfoliation

they tend to clump
on both

building, leading to entirely new
replacement parts
in a way that makes
the whole eye
shift, from electrical insulators
to conductors, germ-killing

through the skin and then travel
to vital organs

a smorgasbord
a concentrated soup

a preponderance of chloride atoms,
more silver
binding

light

both ties
so fragile
and their special shape

individual
of their directions
opposite up to 0

objects are
impossible

assign names
into complex materials
into tailored structures
of the electric field

alternating
low frequency
current

lights replace electric as a way of

bumpers or channels
planes or common

spherical atoms
choosier about the

of light they
made of tiny

weight conserved

reinventing or

existing at
the weak scale

is
unification

with greater

2007-12-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

3

rattle in stride
interrogation

flight patterns
twin finding

beneath
motors

elevations
collide escape

twisted
pollen viable

passage test-
level craters

absolute
planting

heights
of light choking

moonlit
weight

2007-12-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

2

a balance handful
silt pyramid

stillborn
trace vision

experiments
in tar

salt dimensions
stretch brick

saturation
boards refracted

poisonous mortar
formulas

carving tunnels rotate
the tones

creasing floods
second-sensing

clay
a swimming friction

2007-12-11T18:46:00.000-08:00

1

bitter consumed
frozen wider

attention
cylinder iron

sheets recede
texture

gas-lit tender
never stain

favor walls
smoke-elm

staying warm
sunken

temperature grew
hammer slow

under lakes
different legs

carried light-
change

2007-12-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

for Matthew Henriksen

1
out of the that wish

2
your neighbors territory been gas

3
last wind been

5
waiting fort echoes forests more mold everywhere shade pastures

8
eyes look sense everything cry track tomb goad battalions

13
bites chick dates dog

21
oiled greens strap day streets horseback

34
along sicknesses pour belly-chest cows

55
shot behind departure the attack attack

...
objective hunger back arms to the tomb stores

2007-11-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

2007-11-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

PRISONER AT DERBY MAY BE HOOPER YOUNG; Arrested at Point of Revolver After Scuffle. Detectives Spent the Day Hunting in Brooklyn -- Search at Bergen Beach -- Schmittberger Criticizes Titus.

*

employed: a dark lane was just barely visible

2007-11-14T19:41:00.000-08:00

bone set
soft tissue

spreads black
seed heads
through the grasses

cross-species
premonitions
march, wild

bunch of muscles
and the fathers
holding hands

split between
the ghostly right

to tend weeds &
to breathe
cotton

2007-11-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

a mouth butter

1 x 1 inter
mixing

oils
inhibit
bonding a fusion
crust

small
dark
blue sp ots

des
cended hit by
ray

tested

give
slightly
crac

king

piercing

mouth
prim

new molten

in mem
ory in vision

ary gift
song

2007-11-06T18:32:00.000-08:00

body is part ward

“qualifying body” means a body

corporate or an unincorporated body

it may have been through The Pleasure Chest

six little pigees

so erect they cast shadows

in the names of songs

in tidy, minuscule block letters

flashing lights or distorted shapes

that began in the middle

on the street now known as Juneau Avenue

once called Division Street

the team have yet to identify the 21st victim

some cryptic statement about him

being plump and juicy

wearing a nicely round fur helmet

*

ELOPER WARD A SUICIDE; He Was the Englishman for Whom Mrs. Bradbury Left Her Millionaire Husband. JUMPED FROM A FAST TRAIN Body of the Man Who Had Just Been Released from a California Jail Found Beside the Northwestern Tracks in Iowa.

2007-11-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

yau

Finland
perished
1921
1949

claw marks
over the
leaden floor

sorrows
left the room
mirrored

rough
right cheek
lost in air
anthem

green
lightning
was born
again

another way
to fight
violins

2007-11-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

exhaust engulfed or drowned

the convent is no refuge

their weight or vibration

could trigger unplanned

arcing wires of

sheared-off hydro poles

relatively primitive

combinations of dying

engine movements

hazardous residues

of cell biology: acid bath,

the glassy waters

ideal for high-speed

mountain growing

on a pillar of fire

2007-11-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Watch inside exchange surprise, take in machines

Long, long ago, nobody lived in America.

Today there was a tomato soup.

It will be an oh-so-slow erosion of that virtuous circle;

be vigilant instead and have fun.

Can you explain this to me? This state of enmeshment?

The plant is huge and cannot grow beyond its current boundaries,

lifting heavy boxes, doing surgery on livestock,

picking from a list of pre-determined runways.

The beaches are not as clean as normal.

2007-11-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

system end

pattern

a link break

un-nerved

eye

base-wire

invisible

intense in cell

ceiling

2007-11-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

face dropping

albino
birthright

forty tons

of Alps
in neck

nervous

dynamite
of chaos

2007-10-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

of being

single lives
of distance
pave
the cities

street lamps
shine nothing
and fold
within

words in the subways
cut our throats
to actual
transparence

*

the swept floors
of woods
before sunrise

frozen
glass and dreams

forgiven
after the party
of the future

slabs of smoke
await news

*

shipwreck thin
sky
pressed on low grounds

violence hid
in the gullies
tight with docks

the unknown touch
wet lips blue
bright in the flood

2007-10-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

"We're trying to bring to everyone's attention that there is a night."

low-slung amber
inkiness
crawls

birds left
dark
in tungstens

dragging
out of sync,
shift work

toxic chemical
light-dark cues
rhythms

the ebb and
hunger
onset, unhinged

sky-blue
500 billion photons
morning larks run

late sunrise
locations,
Light Treatment

western edges
same-timed key
signal

seasons
wear yellow
evening events

redder and redder
night-shift
cancer rates

profoundly blind
impacts
just below

submariners
filter
and dissipate

unnecessary
spray light
at twilight

2007-10-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

Trained Sloths & Baskets

Tuck a prize slip inside a small balloon and then inflate

NEVER use a non-stick pot or pan if you have birds!

You have the worst bathroom graffiti in Charlotte

I originally had 3 ducks, but one (her name was Jolonna) was eaten by an owl on July 14, 2004

She compares a fetish party to a Halloween party

ARTHUR FONZARELLI AS ARCHETYPAL SHAMAN

He was just a cross between Joan Rivers and a man

Tyra has our cat in her knapsack, I have some blocks of cheese

For the next thirteen years he continued to live in luxury with his wife and concubines

Selling bomb pops and dreamsicles to the neighborhood kids--a treehouse is never done

2007-10-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

on Avenue A
the nights
stretch you
further than
shadows
& terrible
November
pulses
through
your sweat
the night
air your
tongue
across faces
you’ll never
sleep
with
safer in
your
mouth than
5th Avenue

2007-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

pre-columbian

mouth-like
underhills
deposit insistence
in the womb
of NYC

slope death
ceremonies in-
toning parallels
in multiple seed
partners

face south cues
serial them to
invisible
dragged back
damage

structure 013
regenerates
compressed
early group mothers
on the side

forces health
“sister drawer
beneath the
6-inch win”
dower

lowest cellular
ceramics
for the disappeared
combs reinforce
small saints

bedrock
pottery a littered
universe texture
a stiff body’s
aerial technology

in each house
valley rocks spur
confluent
mirror
photographs

full of mounded
supernatural
flower-heads
two cigarettes
idol raw materials

2007-10-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

splashdown
faction

air offcliff
membrane post-
rain-
shapes
gaseous
at the grassways
rate

foot retorts
rich heart-
set rides

2007-10-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

"Maps offered a means of both physical colonization and conceptual control. They imposed a form of differentiation and orientation on either plain or impenetrable forest, spaces that threatened to overwhelm."
fr. Mapping Reality, Geoff King

2007-10-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

1.

down to red
fingers
slice
through roads

*

headlit
smashed
fingers
on paving

2.

side by side
children
awake
with claws

*

dark birds
gathering
furious
children

3.

chemical anger ex-
plodes
cruising
our lovers

*

growing thin
fears
our lovers
& the wildness

4.

drifts
drawing
pieces of ash
of wood

*

un-blind
leaves only
pieces of ash
floating up

2007-10-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

triple stacked chimneys
flush with ceiling sky
same gray as cement
the street is old
many people have walked here
ghost steps under tires
no traction & we spin out
standing still
the heights change in unison
one brown car & crumpled napkin stay put
in the focus
streets not linked
streets circle
flat sky falls below our heads & shoulders
until the ground dips
in transit at the front of ourselves
events continue unseen
commerce inside the bank
in the alley
this slice rooted to a car
throbbing
in the focus

2007-10-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

stone shoreline

salt concentration

laid her head down

wind

back & focus

fish down in grass

absorb the neighbors

overpass

no candy, milk, sound

in roots

low ceilings

a tire track

alley, urine

leaves blowing fire

single stalks

radio towers

2007-10-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

green soft things
die with neglect

turn hard
sharp rolled into twine

empty puzzle stakes carved
in trunks

iced in a spacious cabinet

kill off
original members
turn out duplicate
codes

nailed and
piped in the ground

twine-sliced ankles
still you don’t
drain out

a fox will
leave a leg

red-cut
stars above your toes
and the tree line

2007-10-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

the body, mapped and fully mappable.
shrink-wrapped on with no ventilation.
inverted beneath the skin, infecting blood.
when an arm comes off, a region disappears, thoroughfares break down.
travel is rerouted, parts abandoned.
the dark skin above: hot, insistent, tempting to pierce.

biology and chemicals manifest.
what is the isotope that makes veins glow?—roadwork.
from high above, all bodies infected with maps glow.
moving fields of color gather in groups and blink out.
a count, in the darkness, of survival.
our ability to be tracked by heart.

how many bodies fit in this black spacesuit?
how many ground-down bodies fit in this black spacesuit?
without water, in this black spacesuit?
six black spacesuits, linked by tubes to the central engine.
traffic flows through the tubes.
where are the grandmothers up here?

2007-10-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

"Accusations of witchcraft and heresy are often connected with matters of ambiguity or non-conformity. That which might otherwise be subversive can be projected onto another plane of reality, leaving the conceptions of the ordinary world relatively untouched."
fr. Mapping Reality, Geoff King

2007-10-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

Moving many ways.
Green patches of blue field.
Directions we will not cross, ghosts.
Types and speeds of forward.
Fiction, elevation, minimum size.
Bonds from the place we were born.
Mountains, abandoned.
Us, too slim for lines.

*

stuck with rooted feet, giving up active particles through your nose.

a small, fast-winged bird migration.

you grow more wooden; you fly forward, reckless.

a bird blindly inside.

lines of root-thread from your foot, flying forward.

*

we cannot
take you apart
& wildness
wraps around
in wind, vaulting
miles of
storm & blood,
tracing lines
with your
carbon

2007-10-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

        he freed up on the turbide
        limb sans atoms stuck
        in the diamond working
        liken yellow rapper

        wearing he ogles
        the cade of swans
        about the double-thick
        lines the cursor of the modern

        sure, burnt, but
        also able to get in along
        side is pasture arm, rolled up
        alongside realize the date of a wife

        in wood in the mud axle
        blood, you guessed
        it, like a dance party
        down central ave

        you saw here the wheels disconnect
        the oomp
        and the ugly red, the tiny monkey flow
        on demure, stop every

        mile marker the pass wheel hung
        the older chop indiscriminate is
        my baby, baby who new
        two ladle

        h, ave seen the object
        trip forth from the coiling pyramid
        was green think
        i will never be this aim again

2007-10-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

        thought that made the wood to play
        as is, the turnip in the shoot
        both staring down, gale harboring
        the band springs up springs

2007-08-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

2007-07-28T14:29:00.001-07:00

2007-07-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

2007-07-28T14:20:00.000-07:00