I feel most glamorous when I walk
through Target. Look at the sheeple,
now look at me. I've got a
pinstripe blazer. I "do poetry."
I listen to Gwen and Lindsay
but only for the irony. I understand
the Xbox 360 and Lost in Translation
on more levels than you ever do.
And all I'm coming in here to buy
is a marked-down jar of J. Crew.
There is a tinge of innocence by Incandescent, literature
Literature
There is a tinge of innocence
There is a tinge of innocence
in how her voice, tagged with surprise,
lilts at hellos passed from behind,
unsolicited, she guessed —
even in detached moraines
where natural streaks hide under tans;
even this deluded town,
this sprawling, plaintive, noxious plow.
We were coming down Avinguda del Marqués de Comilla, all of us Americans, or at least the forty or so of us that were planning on getting decently plastered. Rachael had been one of the few halfway interesting people I hadn't gotten a chance to chat with during dinner, and given how hollow most of the conversation had been, it seemed perfectly appropriate to be talking about coming to terms with country music. I spent nine years growing up in Arizona, and while she trumped me with her seventeen in rural Tennessee, we both knew all too well the existence of Billy Ray. Good conversations always start with something absolutely banal in common li
First, there is life—
behind, philosophy sits, demure,
suggesting a colour for today's rationale,
smiling and looking neat and trim.
Helpful but hollow and ready, when needed,
to be shuffled aside. Rigid and brittle
as anything tested and true,
a system for the ages— but see,
these steps I take belong to me
and, as they falter, are mine alone.
And I refuse to be led by the hand
by fallen angels of order
when what I desire is precisely what neither
reason nor discord can skin and pin down—
and I won't allow it, anyhow.
This conscience refuses a promise to act
on more than its own accord:
it works best under p
Proxima estacio: Mercat Nou by Incandescent, literature
Literature
Proxima estacio: Mercat Nou
Once I let myself believe that what
I saw didn't have to be any less
than what I perceived - then
I begin to wonder what I mean to say
when I talk to myself. Right now
I'm taking pictures, not to preserve
any pretense of objectivity,
not to stand in for my own memory,
but to remind myself that nothing I see
is unique to what I see. And in this, too,
lies a moment of improfundity: a refusal
to make more of this than what it is. I'm at
the last station in the city
on the línia vermella, above ground,
where it looks like there used to be something else,
where the graffiti doesn't yet cover up
that it was once Mercado Nuevo; maybe
Rise up in arms, ye galley slaves,
against the tyrant public voice
that drones all night as, televised,
it speaks discreetly as you sleep,
and irritates your dreaming eyes.
Arise, awake, become aware
that all you see is à la mode;
bring out the lamps and clang the bells.
For who would think society
would self-correct when it does wrong?
And who but you would wonder if,
despite good faith, we came to think
as if we were in one large group
to share with ease our single creed,
would you, the new unblinded few,
have any choice but to believe?
Take to the streets, and leave the roads
to all the people you despise.
Leave us with o
"What else do they eat there, Tori?" Aminirlu asked, wide-eyed with sleepless wonder, lying in the hammock in her pyjamas, the room only lit by moonlight.
"Let's see... oh yes, I almost forgot about black pudding!" Kotorcei said with a laugh from his cot below.
"Black pudding?! They eat black pudding? But how could they possibly catch it?"
"Yes, they eat it, but it is made from parts of farm-animals! They thought it quite amusing that the same thing is a pest here."
"Amazing, this Engelondo sounds so different from our beloved Chiradoun!" Aminirlu exclaimed with a yawn. "Oh, my, I will be so tired to chore with Mother to-morrow. I shall s
Why a word? This is no particular thing.
It can't be defined in an objective way.
The unstated dangles by half-open mouths,
a yawn like a cat stretching blithely at noon
as silence leans back on an unbalanced stool --
let it fall. The moment suggests it should be so.
If I see that your eyes project pictures behind
the irises, protean circles and spires
of curious leadings in lines of blank swaths
of colour, then I should say nothing.
But I
now find my lips quaver with verbiage amiss
and I fail to a sentence, or rather, this kiss.
La tarda:
Come, to where the gentry played
gut-stringed guitars and serenaded
country girls in fine wool coats:
on quiet afternoons, the notes
would drift as softly as the leaves
that on an autumn day's reprieve
from high-life bothers, pulled the lovers'
lustful gazes from each other
to the sea out past the harbour;
Heaven could not be much farther
than a glimpse from here to there
across the balcony they shared,
these socialites in modern dreams
of their conception, pursing seams
impractical between their lips,
that fire pretention from the hip,
and, with their fondness for the tiles
in vivid blues and garish styles
that w
Speak to me as you are to yourself;
in your mind as your body flows,
calling itself back home
crouched up upon you, womb-like
as if I touched your inner child
in the sandbox: your greasy ball-bearing emotions
are in the palm of my hand,
grit and hardandsoft textures underneath
where I work away this fabric
of worked-out compromises and
renegotiations and assessments
drawn to minimize surprise reactions,
woven throughout surface words:
speak them out and I will turn below,
my hands resting but not stopping
on your shoulders are no manila envelopes;
in the creases they hold shadows between
the lines to read which meant you, too
I feel most glamorous when I walk
through Target. Look at the sheeple,
now look at me. I've got a
pinstripe blazer. I "do poetry."
I listen to Gwen and Lindsay
but only for the irony. I understand
the Xbox 360 and Lost in Translation
on more levels than you ever do.
And all I'm coming in here to buy
is a marked-down jar of J. Crew.
Current Residence: a couple of hours inland from San Francisco. Actually, not really anywhere near that city anymore Favourite genre of music: ambient and other interesting electronic, various folk musics, Romantic-era classical
Favourite Writers
Sharon Mesmer
Favourite Games
self-analysis
Favourite Gaming Platform
a carpeted floor
Tools of the Trade
intuition and a pair of walking shoes
Other Interests
music writing lit biking linguistics politics food philosophy theology photography
Mainstream poetry : mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com
You know how with ordinary poetry you feel like you've failed unless you fully pull apart all the shades and meanings the author has embedded within? With flarf you feel lucky when you find anything inside that makes much sense at all. Like Dada, but less artistic.
Yes, it's supposed to be bad. So is MST3K. I know we already have that site that chronicles bad teen angst poetry by oh-so-ironic and self-deprecating current hipster poets, but it makes me so happy to find something that's more like camp, only less cool.
It's so wonderful when you find something that, probably purely accidentall
Hello all -
If you are in the San Francisco area, it is my duty to inform you that I'll be a featured performer type person at a monthly reading at the Gallery Café, 1200 Mason (at Washington) in SF, on February 5; the event starts at 7 pm. Yeah!
I promise I'm much less mysterious and cagey in person :)
- I.
I'm living in San Francisco now. I have a job. It's not bad. The city kicks ass, more so than anywhere else I've lived and can remember. What colorful people!
I've gone back to hating poetry. Not really writing much, haven't been spending much time online at home. Experiencing has been much more interesting than creating as of late.
My job sometimes entails writing marketing copy, though.