No news is good news. I am Jack's heavy eyelids. I am a summary of my actions. I am twelve to thirteen hours, work, money and words. Was there anything else? I don't write. I don't go out. I fix what I can, when I can, and, in my spare time at work, I wait. There was something else there, but perhaps it is gone. I am Jack's sense of time. My mother tells me to play with my balls, you know, to check for cancer. I play with my balls long enough to heal the whole world. I wake up, and Robert Downey Junior lectures me: "I'm from a group that says: 'Build many bicycles.'" I am Jack's thirsty lips and hard cock. No news is good news.
last night i dreamt
i was in south korea
and that north korea
had taken over you
are south korea and
i am north korea
and i am a dog
chewing hard on gravel
and rocks and the sand
lubricating my throat
doesn't let me swallow
the thought of you
and i and the friends and
guests and the rock band
playing and i somewhere
off to the side saying
feverishly and desperately
i do i do i do i do i do
You complete me in ways heretofore unimaginable,
you're the meat in my fleshy stew
and the stewardess to my every need
and the fuck to my every you
you're the alpha to my romeo
and the dot to my every line
you're the jerk to my every shudder
every shiver running through my spine
you're the warmth of a pillow comfortable
and the cold of a wintry breeze
you're a lick to every deliciosness
and the thank you to every please
you're the enemy of every grammarian
and the funnest lover of grass
and you fill all the world with a radiance
though it stares at your eyes, hips and ass
you are goddess to every animal
and a mistress to each bug and tree
you command the shadows and night and day
but, alas, you are not here with me
you complete me in ways heretofore unimaginable
in my stew you are meat and bone
but it's time now to wrap up this little song
for it's sad to be singing alone.
with every night
i dream deeper
and longer my
mechanical hand breaks
the elgin marbles
and needs repairs
on the table
the tools are spread out
next to the dark stains
of the time's times
levels lowered
tone sustained
Yesterday, I got three hours of sleep. Today the bitch of a receptionist let one of my students see my work invoice. Tonight, a guy on the bus told me he really wanted to tell me that I look a lot like Eric Bana did in Troy.
the street
looks the same
only the night changes
a five year old
fellates a
waterbottle
all the way to the
63rd avenue
loop
where is your
meticulous
care
all i see is residue
of change
memory
and a few old
teabags
used more than once
intangibility
time
taste
biting the hand
that will shake
the hand that
feeds me
i wonder
how the description
fits how the
facets match
turning and
turning in the
light refracting
this way
and that reflecting
light & lie
beautifully
how much bananas
how is chinaski
these days
rolling in his
grave biting
the sand
and the dogs and
the sunset and
despotism
starting somewhere
off and in
the middle
wishing
for a better
life
but still cringing
under the weight
of the purchase
I bite
bite
bite the hand
the crow speaks to me again tells me
who is going to quit next bail out
punchcard saladfork in hand
parachute and all
a little bird tells me that the
late chinaski is up to no good again
touring the supermarkets
with ginsberg et alii
telling the world that reading pommes
de terre (all sizes out loud is mau
vais ton as if tone had anything
to do with anything
clever wordplay why don't all the
greats stop whining about the f(ine
art and blow their brains out
instead
yeah old hunter s. knew what he was
talking about cradle to the grave
with the same stainlesssteel grin
knowing every phoneme in the world
being able to name everything sight
unsound sight unseen is still
not enough to tell the time
or the place or the silence
i paint
the madness of my days
with colours indelible
i use
white on white
black on black
in short
whatever is available
i think
how does one go
from a step assumed
in trust
to the thingamajig salesman
and the bd krawcas dance around
the man labelled vaLET
me stop and talk
to the shirt
stuck to my back
and the sudden recall
that i (all metre aside
might end up a snack
for the knife of a teenage hack
but it's not for me
to decide
10. Your DS has become a glorified alarm clock.
9. You wake up with the realization you just tried to teach English to someone...in a dream.
8. You can come to blows with a co-worker over grammatical usage.
7. You know what the present perfect progressive is, but you have no idea that nuclear war has wiped out all civilisation outside of your subterranean office.
6. You come to the conclusion that the guy from your dream should probably brush up on his verb tenses.
5. You know who Betty Azar is, you can administer the TOEFL, and you can explain how to pronounce B, P, and V and L and R differently.
4. You realise in horror how greatly colloquial English language has changed since you were in grade school and that almost all common slang is derived from erroneous grammatical constructions.
3. You carry a few red pens in your pocket and use them every chance you get, on just about everything.
2. Suppressing sexual and homicidal urges is now a part of professional courtesy.
1. You teach your students to proofread your work and forget to blog.
Unfortunately, it seems I need to take a raincheck on those magnificent seven, new poems that I promised you yesterday, ladies and gentlemen. It seems that, once again, my workload and mental exhaustion have caught up with me. Until Friday night, then!
Here are seven new poems, ladies and gentlemen. To indicate the amount of time that went into their production, I've included the number of drafts and line number changes for each of the pieces. Enjoy. There will be seven more tomorrow. ;)
• "how i spent my summer vacation" (5 drafts; 17 to 22 lines)
• "what it is" (3 drafts; 34 to 15 lines)
• "a harrowing thought" (2 drafts; 16 to 29 lines)
• "the birth of venus" (6 drafts; 31 to 21 lines)
• "apparition above the sink" (unfinished) (4 drafts; 52 to 18 lines)
• "stolen thoughts" (1 draft)
• "life on parquet" (6 drafts; 20 to 15 lines)
