Monday, April 23, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Achiote Press!!!
Sunday April 29th at 3PM
Canessa Park Poetry
Help us welcome Achiote Press into the world
with two new chapbooks:
"the immaculate autopsy" by Todd Melicker &
the chap-journal "Achiote Seeds" featuring work
by Barbara Jane Reyes, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Rich Villar.
& readings from:
Oscar Bermeo
Todd Melicker
Barbara Jane Reyes
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Alfred Arteaga
and possibly echoes of Antonin Artaud
DISCOUNTED chapbooks will be available!!
$3-5 suggested donation at the door
curated by Tiff Dressen
Can you Canessa? Come to 708 Montgomery Street (X-Street Columbus)
tucked among the inner organs of North Beach
***************************************
Achiote Press was founded by Craig Perez, Jennifer Reimer, and Len Shneyder in 2006.
Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, educator, literary events coordinator who now makes his home in Oakland, Califas, where he is the poetry editor for Tea Party Magazine.
When not writing, Oscar devotes his time and energy towards new culinary experiments, working admin at a local charter school
and enjoying the bliss of married life with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.
***
Todd Melicker is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. His poems have appeared in Switchback, Five Fingers Review, Volt, and the Colorado Review. He currently lives in Santa Rosa, California.
***
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Interlope, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA.
***
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis “Notes from the Margins,” a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. In addition, she has served as a freelance writer and editor for several trade journals. Currently she is working on her first novel, tentatively titled Maganda’s Comb, and she performs regularly as a storyteller in her local area. Her blog Binding Wor(l)ds Together can be found at http://wordbinder.blogspot.com.
Canessa Park Poetry
Help us welcome Achiote Press into the world
with two new chapbooks:
"the immaculate autopsy" by Todd Melicker &
the chap-journal "Achiote Seeds" featuring work
by Barbara Jane Reyes, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Rich Villar.
& readings from:
Oscar Bermeo
Todd Melicker
Barbara Jane Reyes
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Alfred Arteaga
and possibly echoes of Antonin Artaud
DISCOUNTED chapbooks will be available!!
$3-5 suggested donation at the door
curated by Tiff Dressen
Can you Canessa? Come to 708 Montgomery Street (X-Street Columbus)
tucked among the inner organs of North Beach
***************************************
Achiote Press was founded by Craig Perez, Jennifer Reimer, and Len Shneyder in 2006.
Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, educator, literary events coordinator who now makes his home in Oakland, Califas, where he is the poetry editor for Tea Party Magazine.
When not writing, Oscar devotes his time and energy towards new culinary experiments, working admin at a local charter school
and enjoying the bliss of married life with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.
***
Todd Melicker is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. His poems have appeared in Switchback, Five Fingers Review, Volt, and the Colorado Review. He currently lives in Santa Rosa, California.
***
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Interlope, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA.
***
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis “Notes from the Margins,” a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. In addition, she has served as a freelance writer and editor for several trade journals. Currently she is working on her first novel, tentatively titled Maganda’s Comb, and she performs regularly as a storyteller in her local area. Her blog Binding Wor(l)ds Together can be found at http://wordbinder.blogspot.com.
Bar Rooms after Claudia Rankine
The friend I made in a random bar while on the road said ‘I was a history major.’ So why are you in marketing? ‘Well marketing is the history of human desire. I love seeing how desires change.’ [people I thought] The history of human desire is a cotter pin in the wheel of tragedy. I didn’t say this to her, but I’m sure she was aware of it. Looking back we were probably drunk enough to explore every desire that was firing through our synapses like electrical storms [this too is supposition]. Distanced from each other’s original desire, maybe in the form of someone– there was a truth in the wine– the word– wine– desire– what is desired.
The history of the cocktail has its roots in the XVIII Amendment. There was a shortage in the supply of good alcohol. Soda Jerks found they had a new life as mixologists watering down the unpalatable taste of bath tub gin with sweet syrups and juices in order to make desire as sweet as possible. This kind of history is a vice.
The vice squad patrols history and recently it has taken to revising, in so many liberal forms: revisionist, revisiting, reinventing the winners and losers to find out if the golden rule holds water.
In the 15th century, modern Gaul, or the Iberian peninsula had a rampant desire for G-d. Social engineering rendered flesh into ash. It seems this is a history of viciousness. Still, desire works itself into the equation, on both signs of the operand, there is the fact of intervention: one man hand god hang man the other. Burning things isn’t new in human history.
There’s the quest for fire, to burn is to control, maybe Benjamin meant the burning bush instead of Adam’s power for bringing things to life in the garden, to life is to be burned, man’s a weatherproofing. Without fire we’d still be living in mud huts.
Fire is a chemical change– raw energy desires fuel and renders it into carbon. We refer to ourselves as carbon based life forms.
Celan uses the term black milk in his poem Todesfugue. Being poetic means being misread. The black milk of Celan’s Todesfugue isn’t a metaphor, it is the fact that milk with ash turns black. This is a concrete fact in an openly metaphoric body.
There’s room for intervention: what does desire have to do with it? Without spending too much time describing unfathomable reasons– there was the desire of history running into the desire for scapegoats.
I wonder if marketing can be applied to human tragedy – how’s it possible to sell destruction? It’s the 21st century and the sale is on for
ribbons–
flags–
experts– resolutions–
plan(e)s–
chiefs–
panels–
reviews–
committees–
alert levels–
supply–
budgets–
support–
bases–
effort–
(extraordinary) rendering–
combatants (invented or otherwise)–
parliaments–
constitutions–
G-d (wholesale desires)–
elections–
distance–
[the] dream (A- or otherwise)–
medals–
the ____ of one–
____ strong–
fliers–
literature–
[paul] wolf[ensohn] [blitzer]
‘you sending the wolf?’
‘Oh– you feel better– motherfucker?’
‘Shit negro– that’s all you had to say.’
There was a debate in the poet circle that [we]’re responsible for the war. Curiously this is a desire too. However a stretch for the poetic imagination – or otherwise engaged consciousness – the poet’s desire for a space in society to be more than fanciful abstraction – a heart ache in prosody – it is the control of language that makes commodities of destruction in short supply. Price figures – a return on investment – only if you collect every soul. What is the return on the written word?
Ancient societies believed their language was sacred and that writing it down would kill the word. Word is telling me that I’ve written 620 words (now 623). Being a writer is bloody work.
Alcohol as interlocutor presents a simple challenge: how honest should we be with each other?
‘You’re Jewish?’ Yes. ‘Look, I don’t mean any disrespect, but believe me when I say some of my dearest friends are Jewish.’ It’s ok, I get that a lot. ‘What?’ Sounding like a Jewish father from Brooklyn. ‘Have you been to D.C.?’ You mean the Holocaust museum. ‘Yeah, did you love it?’ No. I’m not sure that’s something you can love. ‘Well that’s not what I meant’ Of course not. ‘But how moving, I took my oldest daughter and she cried by the end of it.’
This presents a certain challenge in regard to memorials. What is to be their intended effect? I don’t think that tears are the end all and be all of a memorial. If A desire to lubricate our eyes exists, then history is full of wasted tears thanks to repetition.
I really didn’t like it. ‘Why?’ It’s like the Disneyland of Holocaust memorials. ‘That’s terrible.’ I know, but go to Yad Vashem. ‘Why? Well I mean why do you like it more.’ It’s not a question of like, it’s a question of breath. I’ve never felt, even when drowning in the ocean, that this was the first breath in my life, until I walked through Yad Vashem, and had to learn to breathe again.
Paul Klee gave Benjamin a painting called Angelus Novus
Benjamin went on to write about this angel: ‘A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.’
Benjamin went on to say ‘To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.’ Maybe marketing is about creating a moment of danger between need and desire. The hapless instant when what you have isn’t enough and that which is desired is all there really is. The materialism of historic desire can be then understood as that which makes man most emptiness when destruction is the only satisfactory response bridging the gap between desire and need.
When J-‘s father was alive he would call me his white son. I had then as I do now my own father. I took comfort in knowing that I was a white son to a black father. In Last of the Mohicans Chingachook says ‘where are they taking my white son?’ when Hawkeye is being lead away. Where is my black father today? I’ve never had the desire to be black or even a white son to a black man. However, there was a certain comfort in knowing that the chasm between black and white could be bridged by fathers and son. I’ll extrapolate this to include mothers and daughters. Finally let’s just say people. This too is in my imperfect past.
I’ve slaughtered 1244 words now, twice that which came before. Writing is a bloody preoccupation.
When I was 19 and working in a law office I began to do drugs with a Jewish lawyer from Canada that had a penchant for speed which he called super lawyer juice. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t even enjoyable. He wasn’t all that sane. One day while driving to get a burrito he started the car and the radio came on. ‘You know you’re getting older by how much talk radio you listen too.’ I was glad to be young.
The dictionary defines Commute as ‘to give in exchange for another.’ Solitude for the road. Time for money. Imagination for servitude. During commutes I started listening to talk shows. This was how I exchanged the road for people. I didn’t know it then and I deny it now but it’s not always my preferred state of being – alone. This he probably didn’t know. Just as well he might’ve tried harder to keep in touch when I was done with such a dangerous pace of life.
‘The dead only know one thing, it’s better to be alive.’ Of the lines from Full Metal Jacket (unofficially the official film of the marine core) this one sticks out to me. There’s a lime pit full of corpses executed. Eddie Adams snapped this photograph
During the Vietname war. He won the Pulitzer for this image and it became a firebrand during the 60’s. He never hung this it in his office. As a matter of fact he wanted to forget it. Kerouac said I spent half my life writing On The Road and the other half living it down. No one took anything he wrote quite as seriously as On The Road because it didn’t have the same spiritually charged experience for them. It’s dangerous to come out swinging.
Of that which is forgotten about images, the prisoner being executed had just blown up a building filled with the executioners family. This is a desire for biblical justice. Hamurabi would be proud.
My grandmother had a twin. Besides the memory of a twin that she was too young to remember and only exists through the stories her parents told her while they were alive she has a scar that serves as an umbilical cord. Hades would be proud. A man claiming to be a doctor came to immunize the two of them. He injected something in their backs, close to the spine. My grandmother survived her twin died. My grandfather hunted this man down and shot him in the middle of the village square. This went unnoticed by authorities. Hamurabi is proud. I’m here because of chance.
Desire works itself into everything. Everything can be placed in two buckets: needs and desires. When needs are commodified into variant grades then they become desires. We desire a better toaster, more stylish than the one we have. We desire a faster car when there’s no reason for having such because there are restrictions on the speed at which we can travel. The need to move from point A to point B is a natural phenomenon. We require the freedom, however limited and imperfect to extend beyond the confines of our locality. We’ve given ourselves the ability to do this imperfectly. The degree to which this imperfection is refined and marketed is the extent of human desire’s ability to sustain a marketplace comprised of false needs. The history of such needs crafted through carefully selected words. Market tests must be conducted in order to establish linguist predispositions of the human desire. That which we fundamentally need can be turned into an expensive commodity by exemplifying the cost savings of our desire, should we act on it today, we’ll get a second one free, in four easy payments of 99 99 99 99 99 9 9 9.
9 is the last digit of a base 10 counting system. In the beginning was the 0. 1 is the first occurrence of anything or materiality in the necessary tools we use to create multiplicity in the world. What can be multiplied can ultimately be sold and counting is perpetuated.
Genesis begins with the act of creation. John begins with the logos. These are both places of departure. A desire for reinvention. Euphemisms – to restate how something began and then like Adam we create our world through language. Through language desires are understood as historical materialism. Back in the bar this all seems inconsequential when slurring becomes an involuntary act. This too seems inconsequential because Billy Joel is on the juke box and we’re all staggering through own libidos singing only the good die young.
2022.
The history of the cocktail has its roots in the XVIII Amendment. There was a shortage in the supply of good alcohol. Soda Jerks found they had a new life as mixologists watering down the unpalatable taste of bath tub gin with sweet syrups and juices in order to make desire as sweet as possible. This kind of history is a vice.
The vice squad patrols history and recently it has taken to revising, in so many liberal forms: revisionist, revisiting, reinventing the winners and losers to find out if the golden rule holds water.
In the 15th century, modern Gaul, or the Iberian peninsula had a rampant desire for G-d. Social engineering rendered flesh into ash. It seems this is a history of viciousness. Still, desire works itself into the equation, on both signs of the operand, there is the fact of intervention: one man hand god hang man the other. Burning things isn’t new in human history.
There’s the quest for fire, to burn is to control, maybe Benjamin meant the burning bush instead of Adam’s power for bringing things to life in the garden, to life is to be burned, man’s a weatherproofing. Without fire we’d still be living in mud huts.
Fire is a chemical change– raw energy desires fuel and renders it into carbon. We refer to ourselves as carbon based life forms.
Celan uses the term black milk in his poem Todesfugue. Being poetic means being misread. The black milk of Celan’s Todesfugue isn’t a metaphor, it is the fact that milk with ash turns black. This is a concrete fact in an openly metaphoric body.
There’s room for intervention: what does desire have to do with it? Without spending too much time describing unfathomable reasons– there was the desire of history running into the desire for scapegoats.
I wonder if marketing can be applied to human tragedy – how’s it possible to sell destruction? It’s the 21st century and the sale is on for
ribbons–
flags–
experts– resolutions–
plan(e)s–
chiefs–
panels–
reviews–
committees–
alert levels–
supply–
budgets–
support–
bases–
effort–
(extraordinary) rendering–
combatants (invented or otherwise)–
parliaments–
constitutions–
G-d (wholesale desires)–
elections–
distance–
[the] dream (A- or otherwise)–
medals–
the ____ of one–
____ strong–
fliers–
literature–
[paul] wolf[ensohn] [blitzer]
‘you sending the wolf?’
‘Oh– you feel better– motherfucker?’
‘Shit negro– that’s all you had to say.’
There was a debate in the poet circle that [we]’re responsible for the war. Curiously this is a desire too. However a stretch for the poetic imagination – or otherwise engaged consciousness – the poet’s desire for a space in society to be more than fanciful abstraction – a heart ache in prosody – it is the control of language that makes commodities of destruction in short supply. Price figures – a return on investment – only if you collect every soul. What is the return on the written word?
Ancient societies believed their language was sacred and that writing it down would kill the word. Word is telling me that I’ve written 620 words (now 623). Being a writer is bloody work.
Alcohol as interlocutor presents a simple challenge: how honest should we be with each other?
‘You’re Jewish?’ Yes. ‘Look, I don’t mean any disrespect, but believe me when I say some of my dearest friends are Jewish.’ It’s ok, I get that a lot. ‘What?’ Sounding like a Jewish father from Brooklyn. ‘Have you been to D.C.?’ You mean the Holocaust museum. ‘Yeah, did you love it?’ No. I’m not sure that’s something you can love. ‘Well that’s not what I meant’ Of course not. ‘But how moving, I took my oldest daughter and she cried by the end of it.’
This presents a certain challenge in regard to memorials. What is to be their intended effect? I don’t think that tears are the end all and be all of a memorial. If A desire to lubricate our eyes exists, then history is full of wasted tears thanks to repetition.
I really didn’t like it. ‘Why?’ It’s like the Disneyland of Holocaust memorials. ‘That’s terrible.’ I know, but go to Yad Vashem. ‘Why? Well I mean why do you like it more.’ It’s not a question of like, it’s a question of breath. I’ve never felt, even when drowning in the ocean, that this was the first breath in my life, until I walked through Yad Vashem, and had to learn to breathe again.
Paul Klee gave Benjamin a painting called Angelus Novus
Benjamin went on to write about this angel: ‘A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.’
Benjamin went on to say ‘To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.’ Maybe marketing is about creating a moment of danger between need and desire. The hapless instant when what you have isn’t enough and that which is desired is all there really is. The materialism of historic desire can be then understood as that which makes man most emptiness when destruction is the only satisfactory response bridging the gap between desire and need.
When J-‘s father was alive he would call me his white son. I had then as I do now my own father. I took comfort in knowing that I was a white son to a black father. In Last of the Mohicans Chingachook says ‘where are they taking my white son?’ when Hawkeye is being lead away. Where is my black father today? I’ve never had the desire to be black or even a white son to a black man. However, there was a certain comfort in knowing that the chasm between black and white could be bridged by fathers and son. I’ll extrapolate this to include mothers and daughters. Finally let’s just say people. This too is in my imperfect past.
I’ve slaughtered 1244 words now, twice that which came before. Writing is a bloody preoccupation.
When I was 19 and working in a law office I began to do drugs with a Jewish lawyer from Canada that had a penchant for speed which he called super lawyer juice. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t even enjoyable. He wasn’t all that sane. One day while driving to get a burrito he started the car and the radio came on. ‘You know you’re getting older by how much talk radio you listen too.’ I was glad to be young.
The dictionary defines Commute as ‘to give in exchange for another.’ Solitude for the road. Time for money. Imagination for servitude. During commutes I started listening to talk shows. This was how I exchanged the road for people. I didn’t know it then and I deny it now but it’s not always my preferred state of being – alone. This he probably didn’t know. Just as well he might’ve tried harder to keep in touch when I was done with such a dangerous pace of life.
‘The dead only know one thing, it’s better to be alive.’ Of the lines from Full Metal Jacket (unofficially the official film of the marine core) this one sticks out to me. There’s a lime pit full of corpses executed. Eddie Adams snapped this photograph
During the Vietname war. He won the Pulitzer for this image and it became a firebrand during the 60’s. He never hung this it in his office. As a matter of fact he wanted to forget it. Kerouac said I spent half my life writing On The Road and the other half living it down. No one took anything he wrote quite as seriously as On The Road because it didn’t have the same spiritually charged experience for them. It’s dangerous to come out swinging.
Of that which is forgotten about images, the prisoner being executed had just blown up a building filled with the executioners family. This is a desire for biblical justice. Hamurabi would be proud.
My grandmother had a twin. Besides the memory of a twin that she was too young to remember and only exists through the stories her parents told her while they were alive she has a scar that serves as an umbilical cord. Hades would be proud. A man claiming to be a doctor came to immunize the two of them. He injected something in their backs, close to the spine. My grandmother survived her twin died. My grandfather hunted this man down and shot him in the middle of the village square. This went unnoticed by authorities. Hamurabi is proud. I’m here because of chance.
Desire works itself into everything. Everything can be placed in two buckets: needs and desires. When needs are commodified into variant grades then they become desires. We desire a better toaster, more stylish than the one we have. We desire a faster car when there’s no reason for having such because there are restrictions on the speed at which we can travel. The need to move from point A to point B is a natural phenomenon. We require the freedom, however limited and imperfect to extend beyond the confines of our locality. We’ve given ourselves the ability to do this imperfectly. The degree to which this imperfection is refined and marketed is the extent of human desire’s ability to sustain a marketplace comprised of false needs. The history of such needs crafted through carefully selected words. Market tests must be conducted in order to establish linguist predispositions of the human desire. That which we fundamentally need can be turned into an expensive commodity by exemplifying the cost savings of our desire, should we act on it today, we’ll get a second one free, in four easy payments of 99 99 99 99 99 9 9 9.
9 is the last digit of a base 10 counting system. In the beginning was the 0. 1 is the first occurrence of anything or materiality in the necessary tools we use to create multiplicity in the world. What can be multiplied can ultimately be sold and counting is perpetuated.
Genesis begins with the act of creation. John begins with the logos. These are both places of departure. A desire for reinvention. Euphemisms – to restate how something began and then like Adam we create our world through language. Through language desires are understood as historical materialism. Back in the bar this all seems inconsequential when slurring becomes an involuntary act. This too seems inconsequential because Billy Joel is on the juke box and we’re all staggering through own libidos singing only the good die young.
2022.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Monday, April 02, 2007
1
In place of wind speed I’ve
become an object of myself in order to carry you to completion
to break the skin of the road
2
I grapple with tying
the four corners of
the Earth around
your fear
‘leave your finger there until we’re done…
in a saying to myself,
a half conversation
what not to do
is doing itself,
3
END DETOUR
4
the pluralism of highways – open hand gesture: (finger-freaking-love-bitting-ass-licking-shit-stabbing-motherfucking-useless-man) – double strung-out lanes – order of convention – cineplexes – “son, u iz in
5
we’ve created confession
around our conversation
6
Maybe its as simple as Willie Nelson and his lonesome dove where we last saw the ghost riders in the sky, yeah Johnny ‘n me riding the million mile gesture in styrofoam cups, the ash pot deluxe, we dramatics dream impossible directions, a troika of desire in me the devil and mr. Johnson always make three, or maybe its Dylan – 61 to see if there’s another 9 to make 10 heavens of 7 – jesus saves crumbles station-wagon bumpers, bright full stop in Redding: read the nothing sounds in between clouds to create the means of imagination: for the two selves that recognize each other, a mirror chrome gas tank smiling back – your eyes are always on the back of my head looking forward where I can see their gravity – the calcified church steeple barn door stands on patriotic terms, we’ll only have 20 minutes to go, the way of the dead on the side of the road, we’re mending the absence to fill the world.
VII
[I’ve seen myself pass me by :: a weary smoked glass specter]
sssssssaying something snake-like
bite through to the back of my own lip
chewing miles
burning sign posts in each drag
every mile for you
[from you :: toward you
as much you in the road ::as a road to you]
hung me from the crosses like Ape-ing rebels
NO
we roam to find home
alone :: is a passenger for himself
6
as darkly drawn curtains
as around the hem of a star
as a bejeweled saturnine
as worshippers living in code
as where the west has no name
as spoken coldly at dawn
as midday sun as rational
as an approval as an ablution
as parts of speech called body
as language remains the chief
as objective art form at dusk
as the dreariest days are failing
7
Dear ______,
I’m calling this a pilgrimage in absentia—
sincerely,
I
[When in doubt please forward replies to true believers]
8
The road’s a postcard affair
we call our best intentions
mailed it yesterday.
9
Back at the rest stop
I tried to spot a bird
at rest in the tree atop
the hill back there
where I stopped and
saw the rest of this
playing out not quite
how I had intended
Hemingway to Dietrich
"What do you want to do for a life's work? Break hearts for a dime? You can break mine for a nickle and I'll bring the nickle."
-Hemingway
-Hemingway
Sunday, April 01, 2007
This is customer service...
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make
sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Sunday, April 1st.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make
sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Sunday, April 1st.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
Noise from the void
For those fans of psychadellic acid-tribal-house music out there... there'll be a very special noise from the void on Tuesday night. Noise from the Void is hosted by Jeno, one of the pioneers of the Wicked Full Moon party that reigned supreme for five years and has been reborn, off and on (like last night), throughout the years. This comes from a bulleting he posted... if you can, turn on, tune in and drop out!
This is from a bulletin Jeno posted:
This week's noisefromthevoid show falls a day after the full moon, and will therefore be a triumphant tribute to it's enduring magic, mystery and power..
I'll be digging out some old classics for y'all including plenty of dirty tripped out psychedelic acid house - a perfect selection for an unforgettable ride in to heart of the void..
And as we are right on top of the wickedfullmoon anniversary - I wanna say thanks to Markie, Garth, Alan, Trish (RIP), Malachy, Emma, Miles, Ernie Munson, dj Noel, dj Tracy, CB and the bus posse, Cosmic Jason, Craig Valentine, Gina P, and the many other folks who all helped create and/or sustain the full moon party with their energy and contributions over the 5 glorious years it reigned. Nuff said.. : )
This is from a bulletin Jeno posted:
This week's noisefromthevoid show falls a day after the full moon, and will therefore be a triumphant tribute to it's enduring magic, mystery and power..
I'll be digging out some old classics for y'all including plenty of dirty tripped out psychedelic acid house - a perfect selection for an unforgettable ride in to heart of the void..
And as we are right on top of the wickedfullmoon anniversary - I wanna say thanks to Markie, Garth, Alan, Trish (RIP), Malachy, Emma, Miles, Ernie Munson, dj Noel, dj Tracy, CB and the bus posse, Cosmic Jason, Craig Valentine, Gina P, and the many other folks who all helped create and/or sustain the full moon party with their energy and contributions over the 5 glorious years it reigned. Nuff said.. : )
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Elad's in town...
So Elad is in town and I've found cause to snap a few photos of places I've been... so here they are... it's good having a reason to be out of my hovel... a break from my hermit like living style of the last few months...
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Beware the Ides of March
And if only our friend Julius had listened, who knows what he might've accomplished with a longer lease on life. As some know, and maybe some don't, today is the MML anniversary of Julius Caesar's death... happy death day JC!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
7 Plays in 7 Days
[Because of Suzan Lori-Parks]
7 Plays in 7 Days
by Len Shneyder
Wednesday 3.07.07
BEYOND
Silver Surfer – Cosmic Entity and Super Hero
The Beyonder – Cosmic Entity and Opportunist
(The stage is dark, very dark, the only light comes from above in the form of constellations. The floor of the stage reflects the constellations as if the entire stage has become the night sky, or the cosmos as it might be carried in some galactic being’s pocket. Silver Surfer and Beyonder enter from opposite sides of the stage at the same time. They walk very slowly. Each appears to be roughly in his mid 20’s. Silver Surfer, not surprisingly carries a silver surfboard. The Beyonder is dressed very poorly like a Floridian tourist in Havana during the 1940s complete with calf high black socks, shorts, a tasteless Hawaiian shirt and carries a pina colada in his left hand and is smoking a big fat Romeo & Julieta cigar in his right. They approach one another, slowly. Silver Surfer is walking slowly, with comic book like drama. The Beyonder doesn’t seem to care and is looking about him as if he’s lost something unimportant like an ash tray.)
SILVER SURFER
Insofar as origins…
BEYONDER
During the creation of space something was misnamed and called emptiness.
SILVER SURFER
Insofar as multipliers…
BEYONDER
It’s dangerous to be one’s own accomplice.
SILVER SURFER
Insofar as danger…
BEYONDER
While creation was defined something was left unnamed and this too was called intrinsic.
Silver Surfer
Insofar as…
BEYONDER
Look, I don’t mind, it’s a stretch but I don’t mind.
SILVER SURFER
Insofar…
BEYONDER
(Throws his drink in SILVER SURFER’S face.)
Let’s not go down this road.
END
Thursday 3.08.07
CHESS
Setting: Hell
Emperor Hirohito (In full Samurai regalia)
Harry S. Truman (in a sear sucker with straw hat)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (Wearing a tutu)
A host of men and women dressed as chess pieces, white behind Hirohito, black behind Truman.
(The two historical figures are sitting across from each other, table is covered in ornate Saki glasses and bad Canadian Whiskey. They’ve been drinking since the 60’s and there’s no letting up. Neither one of them is drunk and they both have to piss constantly, but there isn’t a urinal in sight for at least 4 levels of hell. The floor is a collection of 40+ years of broken saki glasses, cigarette buts, confetti, old newspapers, every issue of playboy ever published, the entire score to The Ring week bladders before the invention of depends. After the delivery of the 1st line they get up and take 3 steps to the right of their chairs, any chess piece can sit down and continue speaking for them, even though they are silent, the audience still knows that it's Hirohito and Truman's lines. The audience knows this as they’re telepathically connected inside of Hirohito and Truman’s minds. The whole time, in the back, Roosevelt is dancing to Gershwin, badly but without crutches.)
HIROHITO
We knew it was going to happen.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
We knew it too.
HIROHITO
You wanted it to happen!
HARRY S. TRUMAN
No more than you.
HIROHITO
See what you’ve done?!
HARRY S. TRUMAN
Much of what’s been done is you
HIROHITO
The issue isn’t me, it’s you
HARRY S. TRUMAN
HIROHITO
HARRY S. TRUMAN
I couldn’t agree more.
HIROHITO
Then you agree it’s your fault.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
No more than yours.
HIROHITO
These denials are useless!
HARRY S. TRUMAN
As are the accusations.
HIROHITO
We didn’t start this.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
Your denial is accusatory.
HIROHITO
But I’ve said it wasn’t us!
HARRY S. TRUMAN
Your responsibility is absent
HIROHITO
This is going nowhere!
HARRY S. TRUMAN
You’ve said nothing new.
END
Friday 3.09.07
SHAVING
He – male bearded
She – Female waxed
(A couple is lying in bed, they just finished having sex. There’s an ashtray between them and HE is smoking. It’s summer and the windows are open. The heat makes the smoke linger and dangle like so many lines of lazy ocean waves in the air. She is slightly annoyed to be swimming in a sea of Phillip Morris and is visibly shortening her post coital bliss.)
SHE
Mmmmmm.
HE
Yeah
SHE
So you think you could-
HE
What?
SHE
Shave?
HE
Why?
SHE
Maybe I’d like to kiss you.
HE
So kiss me.
SHE
Maybe I’d like to kiss you without the beard.
HE
Nah, I don’t think so.
SHE
Listen, last week you said you wanted to role play.
HE
So.
SHE
So I went out and waxed my twat so I could be your cheerleader.
HE
And?
SHE
Well maybe I’d like you to be my little boy. And for a moment let’s pretend it all grew back in and I can be an older woman.
HE
I’m not into that.
SHE
WHAT?!
HE
Yeah, doesn’t appeal.
SHE
How about some give and take here.
HE
I did, I gave you the money to get waxed, what more do you want?
SHE
A little compromise would be nice.
HE
It’s too dangerous.
SHE
You’re joking right? Compromise? Dangerous?!
HE
Well think about it, we’d have one crack at it, and then…
SHE
Then what?!
HE
Stubble: I need the beard.
SHE
What does stubble have to do with anything?
HE
If you could grow a beard you’d understand.
SHE
Understand you’re afraid of compromise?
HE
No, what it’s like to kiss your dad. The beard’s Switzerland, and you’re Lolita where you need to be.
END
Saturday 3.10.07
Moving Day
Jake – Early 20s
Molly – Mid 20s
Karen – Mid 20s
Bill – Mid 20s
Dealer – Mid 40s
20 or 30 random people dressed like bums
(There’s the latter half of a UHaul protruding from the left side of the stage filled with boxes. Jake is standing is leaning against the side of the truck. Molly Karen and Bill are very slowly taking a box and from the truck at random intervals, walking across the stage and placing them somewhere in the wings. There’s a Signpost behind and above the truck which reads HAIGHT ST, the cross st. isn’t visible.)
DEALER
Buds, buds, green buds…
JAKE
Yo, how much?
DEALER
Twenty a gram.
JAKE
Le’me see.
DEALER
(hands JAKE a sack)
Sure.
JAKE
This ain’t worth no 20!
DEALER
How much you want to give me for it?
JAKE
I’ll give you five.
DEALER
(ponders)
Ok, deal.
JAKE
(Rolls one on the spot after DEALER leaves and begins to smoke.)
Who said this was a fucked up neighborhood? Don’t look too bad to me, I mean shit, what a deal?! A twomp for a nickel! Moving security my ass… “Jake go watch the truck, Jake, don’t let the truck out of your sight. Jake. Jake. Jake.”
(As he enjoys his cannabis, a host of bums sneak around from behind the truck and begin to empty it of boxes passing them down a line every time the characters are off stage and placing boxes in the wings.)
END
Sunday 3.11.07
Giving Up The Ghost
Man – Mid 50’s
(A man dressed in his mid 50’s is wearing white. The entire stage is white and bathed in cool white light. The surfaces are all painted white, but a flat white so there’s no glare anywhere. He begins by lying on the ground in the middle of the stage, sleeping on a white pillow with a white thin sheet. He wakes slowly and sits up. He takes a long look around rubbing his eyes. The sheet begins to lift off him, seemingly of it’s own volition. He doesn’t notice it at first. Soon he has a puzzled look on his face as he comes to the realization that he is not in his bed. As the sheet lifts further off him he sees a projection of his ghostly self in the sheet. Shocked he reaches for the sheet and catches a corner and begins to struggle with it. He forces the sheet into his pajama pockets, down his pajama pants, he tries tying it around his wrist, anything not to let the sheet get away from him, which is moving this way and that, up stage, down stage, house right house left, off stage, back onto the stage, higher lower. This continues until the man reaches complete exhaustion and collapses dead, on stage.)
END
Monday 3.11.07
The Episode Of The Cosa Nostra’s Tiramisu
Diego – Early 20’s Venezuelan born in the states.
Carter – Early 20’s suburbanite
Old Man – mid to late 60s with giant hands made of leather.
(There’s the façade of a café and tables and chairs on the stage. It’s night time, the café is open and filled with silhouettes insides. The tables outside are empty, or full. Carter and Diego are on the corner of the stage, looking over their shoulders and smoking a pipe. Once they’re done they move toward the tables. Carter sits down and Diego goes inside.)
CARTER
What took you s long?
DIEGO
(Walks out with 2 cappuccinos)
Huh? What?
CARTER
Huh, what? I said what took you so long…
DIEGO
(Walks back in)
Oh, um, there’s more.
CARTER
(Calling after him)
What more?
DIEGO
(Coming back out with a large Tiramisu)
See.
CARTER
See what?! Where’d you get the money? We only had enough for the Caps.
DIEGO
Money? oh, um, we didn’t pay.
CARTER
What do you mean we didn’t pay? Did you offer to pay?
DIEGO
Um, yeah, I did, but he wouldn’t take my money.
CARTER
What do you mean he wouldn’t take your money?
DIEGO
He just wouldn’t take it.
CARTER
Oh I see, did he think you were cute?
DIEGO
No it wasn’t like that, he’s old.
CARTER
Who’s old?
DIEGO
The Barista.
CARTER
So an old man could’ve thought you were cute. You get hit on by men all the time.
DIEGO
It wasn’t like that.
CARTER
So what was it like oh stoned one? Did you just take the cake and walk out assuming it was Plymouth rock?
DIEGO
Dude, I handed him money, he said no, shook his head, well he didn’t say no, he just shook his head. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a fat wad of bills and puts a 10 in the drawer.
CARTER
How fat?
DIEGO
Scary fat.
CARTER
Ok, so then what?
DIEGO
He hands me the Tiramisu and smiled, but I couldn’t carry it cause I had the cappuccinos so I left it and came back to get it.
CARTER
It doesn’t make any sense.
DIEGO
I know.
(At that moment the old man walks out of the café door, saunters up to them. He’s wearing a short sleeve short, old man polyester pants but has a heavy gold ring on his finger, a heavy gold chain and matching bracelet. He comes up to them with two spoons, shakes each of their hands and saunters off stage while he dawns a Fedora. As he’s walking away the theme to the godfather begins to play.)
CARTER
Wonder what’s gonna happen now.
(Gunshots ring out, fade to black)
END
Tuesday 3.12.07
AGENT ORANGE
Two Allen Ginsberg impersonators in their early 70s
(The two impersonators, complete with glasses, wearing suits with orange ties and carrying a small daisy walk down the aisles of the theatre through the audience and mount the stage from either side. On the stage are two podiums that are lit from above with a single spot. One podium is yellow, the other podium is red. Either Ginsberg can begin reading. The poem is a modified [lifted] version of Ginsberg’s poem “Who Bomb”. The reading goes in a round and then eventually they start randomly spitting lines without any formal meter or circular rhythm. This goes on while the house lights, which should be down when this starts, slowly start going up and turning to orange until the entire house is bathed in a bright, agent, orange. At this point, and with both speakers slowly loosing their voice, the temperature of the house is raised until it becomes uncomfortable, not terribly hot, just uncomfortable. This continues, degree by degree until the Ginsbergs begin to undress one article of clothing at a time. This continues until the audience leaves and or collapses from heat exhaustion. The Ginsbergs eventually pass out and die on stage from heat induced strokes. The lines are to be repeated as many times as necessary for desired audience and actor effects to happen, or until someone spontaneously combusts.)
GINSBERG 1
People roast!
History toast!
People roast!
History toast!
People roast!
History toast!
He say carry a gun!
Sacrifice is fun!
He say carry a gun!
Sacrifice is fun!
He say carry a gun!
Sacrifice is fun!
He say carry a gun!
Sacrifice is fun!
He say carry a gun!
Sacrifice is fun!
Burnt to the floor!
Let’s even the score!
Burnt to the floor!
Let’s even the score!
Burnt to the floor!
Let’s even the score!
Burnt to the floor!
Let’s even the score!
GINSBERG 2
How did they burn?
Why did they burn?
How did they burn?
Why did they burn?
How did they burn?
Why did they burn?
How was it done?
Why was it done?
How was it done?
Why was it done?
How was it done?
Where was it done?
Who made a buck?
Where was it done?
Who made a buck?
Where was it done?
Who was it for?
Where did it start?
Who was it for?
Where did it start?
Who was it for?
Where did it start?
Who was it for?
Where did it start?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
300
It's coming, tomorrow... and the speculation and reviews are flooding in. The film made the A-list on Rotten Tomatoes, 60%, hoping this will climb. Just today, on NPR, heard a discussion how folks are already saying that this film is a metaphor for the invasion of Ira(qn). The Iranian community is up in arms as the Persians are the bad guys, the feminists are on the rampage proclaiming its a hyperviolent display of machismo and testosterone... alright... I can't bloody wait! Leonidus = Lion Leonid = Look of the line... my beard is scruffy.
The alarm bell
I don't mean to sound the fire alarm to get out of class, cry wolf or raise the siren two say two if by land or one if by sea, but we had another one yesterday and I do think, looking back on it now, that I might've felt it. You have to understand my building is old, the passing 5 bus rattles it something fierce at times... and I've come to know that vibration quite well... here, look for yourself...
so I'm not crazy, but I am becoming paranoid... now's a good time to cash in those frequent flier miles.
so I'm not crazy, but I am becoming paranoid... now's a good time to cash in those frequent flier miles.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Chronicles of Telecommuting: III
My advice for anyone attempting to work from home is to get to know your iTunes, intimately. Maybe get to know is the wrong word, as surely you know your music library, but I gaurantee you there are bits and pieces of that library that will surprise even you. I've taken to creating folders for music that I like as I listen to it... so far there are only two: sad songs and electronica. Both folders will eventually be compilations once they've accumulated enough odds and ends. A word of caution: DO NOT SURF AMAZON AT HOME!!! If you thought that Amazon was a nice distraction while you waste your day at the office, well kiddies, at home, its down right dangerous. As a matter of fact, set it up as an untrusted site, disable your one-click, block in a host file or at the router. Just don't do it, seriously. Sure, you may think that you have to have those 10 new CDs as every single piece of music in your 80 gig baracuda hard drive is totally old, boring and been played a million times, but honestly, is that the case? Have a come-to-jesus moment with your iTunes library and say to yourself, yes, this is good, and make it so. And then order from CD Baby instead!!!
Noteworthy picks from the library for today:
Chicago Sound Track - Cell Block Tango - just a fantastic piece of musical writing...
My Elastic Eye - Chemical Brothers - kinda spooky, like robert plant with a 303
Vibratonik - Moodswings - oddly haunting
My Drug Buddy - Evan Dando & Juliana Hatfield - bloody good songwriting!
Noteworthy picks from the library for today:
Chicago Sound Track - Cell Block Tango - just a fantastic piece of musical writing...
My Elastic Eye - Chemical Brothers - kinda spooky, like robert plant with a 303
Vibratonik - Moodswings - oddly haunting
My Drug Buddy - Evan Dando & Juliana Hatfield - bloody good songwriting!
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