Facet Fragment by amanda deutch after Bonnie Finberg's "Amsterdam" and "Please Relax"

examine the holes for angels
moving between tongues
art of surgery upon light
noisy clucking screen
so between cracks
see color
a lush street
covered in sun

Facet by Amanda Deutch after Bonnie Finberg’s “Amsterdam” and “Please Relax…”

Facet

examine the holes for angels
moving between tongues
art of surgery upon light
noisy clucking screen
so between cracks
see color
a lush street
covered in sun.
On the phone
someone reminds me of Zappa,
“Don’t go near the yellow snow.
Don’t go where the huskies go…”
But there is no yellow snow
only fresh white powder.
I plop down and make an angel
the snow so deep I sink right in.
Plie myself with espresso and
read Bernadette Mayer who happens
to be writing about snow.
I am getting closer to a rhythm of days
finding angels in the holes.
Outside, a woman yells at me
for getting snow on the sidewalk she just shoveled.
I shuffle on to get a sandwich and lemon soda.

Amsterdam (new) by Bonny Finberg

I examine my coat for holes,
angles moving toward the symmetry of age,
a crack between tenses.
The Dutch for lack of chins,
round homely Van Loons,
employ their art instead of surgery,
a gauze of light, a color scheme, a screen.
Van Gogh's wheat fields at Arles, at Cuivers,
besieged by cows,
by thunderclouds, the Reaper,
the tongues of Babel just a temporary measure.

Please relax, thank you by Bonny Finberg after Michelle Noteboom's "Untitled Landscape."

AFTER UNTITLED LANDSCAPE by MICHELLE NOTEBOOM

You former wastrel, just find the can for once looking in the wrong direction falling like a star here it’s all going like like fiberglass You You you the nitwit the gegenschein pinned the mooncalf tail of sky on autumn 

Maybe focus more on the body, there’s a substance 

that’ll stop the outline filtering forward from the depths of fallacy 

In this blurred sepia image you can’t teach a century to unlock sturm und drang 

tumblers and cylinders reflecting on the shift in the infrastructure, 

the oh-so-subtle activities and folds you itch to take apart employed inward yet again are 

kinds of origami 

but your gloved hands 

lull the galaxy.

Stake Your Turf, by JKD

After Memphis and déshabille-toi by Lisa Pasold & Schoenberg in Pieces by Johnathan Wonham (click their titles to read thier poems)

Thinking, exist, break going down to perform, low bow
which does not fire but yowl, outside triangulation
Strangu- can leave and not perform that satchel scale
which does not carry on, stitched to thinking flight
on Beale Street and again, and to gain “it’s not exactly
speech” (screech to a halt, squeal scalded arpeggio)
which dares not, ground to a—you or ya’ll yawled, say
yew, stretch up to, reach that, state your name or, say:
“demographic of departure”, a flight of stairs, 12-string,
downtown, grit or grind of the bar, sleep on it, stale, yawn
out that yarn, that tale, that good ol’ boy tune, think, stay.

Slippery Phenomena by JKD (new)

.
.
breakage
is this thin
as night
.

Memphis (new) by lisa pasold

Blind Willie McTell

goes down

the alley

and thinking

godDamn

I'm back as a dog

on Beale Street

again and wanting

that 12-string.

Schoenberg in Pieces by JW

After a fragment by JKD and Schoenberg Variations by JW.

Does that bread not exist? Perform one bow
which cannot exist. Which does not fire.

One that can perform bows triangulated
can exist outside. One which leaves and bows
does not not perform that.

The sachel which does not exist
cannot perform the bow that does exist.

Which carrion cannot perform stitched?
Not one. And which stitched cases cannot bow?
Not one stitched case cannot perform bows.

Does reaping that which exists stitched
not perform that which cannot bow?

Does one exist which takes no bows?

Perform. One cannot take flight.

A fragment by JKD

after Sue Chenette

Bread bow fire
triangulated outside leaves
the sachel
the space
carrions and cases
reaping stitched
flight

New: Schoenberg Variations by JW

"One cannot perform that which does not exist"

Does that not exist? Perform one which cannot
exist. Which does not. One that can perform
that can exist. One which does not not perform
that which does not exist cannot perform one

that does exist. Which cannot perform? Not one.
Not one cannot perform. Does that which exists
not perform that which cannot? Does one exist
which does that? Perform. One cannot not exist.

Kneeling

by Sue Chenette after gv, AD, JKD, & BBB


What do I know?
/////
Kneeling in these pages
/////
minstrelsy of crossings
/////
bred bun bow fire
/////
half triangulated
/////
while outside
/////
wind-shuffled leaves
/////

disconnected

by gv after AD,JKD & BBB

know what?

I am in my pages

kneeling of being

crossing minute situations

my knees buzz

^^^^^^^^

Buzz Rustle Shift by AD after JKD's Connected

You know what?
I am getting marks in my pages
kneeling towards a freedom
of being
crossing over situations,
not speaking of minutes
on my knees, listening
to a buzz.

Connected by JKD

After AD's untitled after BBB's Selected Letters

I am getting you from time
marks not to speak of minutes
ahead of night
scars
covered sentences dream
crossover
into tomorrow
half kneeling, half seconded
freedom
sails triangulated
museums, women, things
said into her
pages
cards
personalized impotence: a situation
she said to
or a sentence
in a nightmare
the most important part of
is being
you know what?
listened
listen
to

Untitled by AD after BBB's Selected Letters

ahead of time
she has no minutes to speak of
half covered night
dream a sentence that
would cross over into tomorrow
working complete
half knee
freedom
painting on cards,
a woman in the museum,
triangles of sails
said into her phone
“am I getting you from something?”

marks my page
on the card
her phone
personal situation
she said to her phone
a sentence
a dream

“I think the most important part of being is. You know what? You listen.”

In Alabaster Books, the clerk and I...

In Alabaster Books
the clerk and I,
we read Sophie Calle
ask two blind men
what their definition
of beauty is.
It is a day of marvelous
insight
from blue veiled nuns
washing along the subway platform
to tears rivering down my
cheeks
I ride subways all day long
uptown
downtown
each turn
I am along for the ride
and it takes me places I never expected.

-- 9/2010

New: Bulb by Amanda Deutch ( partially reworded from Sunday's NY Times Book Review)

Bulb

Show
between
a space--
it's strong
like
**sea
in a way
no language
can tell.

New: 53rd and Lex by Amanda Deutch

53rd and Lexington

Nuns flood the crowded subway platform
on 53rd and Lex.
"Follow the blue veils," one shouts.
I am trying to photograph them
as they blush and raise
their hands to their faces.

“SELECTED LETTERS 1910-1944” AND A POSTCARD PANTOUM (New) by BBB

Last night lying on straw, a dream so beautiful:
his last letter to Gretchen, who urged him to leave.
In the dream, a sentence he couldn’t read
because a kerchief half-covered her knee,

he wrote Gretchen, who urged him to leave.
Tomorrow, he said, they would cross into Spain
(but the kerchief half-covered her knee)
if no one denounced them, if the guide came.

Tomorrow they’ll cross into Spain,
freedom, America, a white triangle of sail,
if no one denounced them, if the guide came.
Marking the page, a postcard, a painting:

a freeway, America, white triangle of sail.
“Well, this doesn’t do much for me”—
the painting on the card that marks my page—
the woman in the museum said into her phone.

“Well, this doesn’t do much for me—
am I getting you from something?”
in the museum she said to her phone.
Extend my sincere gratitude to Doctor P.

“Am I getting you from something?”
My personal situation is no better,
but my sincere gratitude to Doctor P.
When the letter reached her, he was dead.

My personal situation is no better.
Tell Teddy I’m working on the manuscript.
When the letter reached her, he was dead.
Complete uncertainty what the next month will bring.

Tell Teddy I’m working on the manuscript.
Last night lying on straw, a dream so beautiful.
Complete uncertainty what the next month will bring.
In his dream, a sentence he couldn’t read.

The Execution, by Brandon Shimoda

after "The radiant point" by Megan M. Garr


The passing blazes
Does not fast

Enough. Look up

The wind
Along the lines

Might get
To everyone more than just
As concentrated

Storm and Prussian
Blue, vermilion and white
Equally near to shadow—


The sound
Approaching

Onslaught—



Every event is this
Every night this night. Burnt earth and even vermilion—
Every arm incorrigibly composed
Upon the solar
Gesture, every gesture violence gray, moving
The radiant dome, the stars
Do exit

Swallowed
Into muscle—


Every history
Is this
Hand perhaps
It opens out
The flesh sings wide at the new
Architecture, holding
The execution
Together



What can I do with such small
Children on my hands?

THE MAID'S ROOM by christine herzer [new]

after FOR GV, from JD

For GV, from JD

after GV

A sort-of-leaving, sort-of ending
Begins with the promise of return

To those who will hold down fort, compile

Compose, contradict the flowing out

Or down of whirled-whorled streams

Puncturing the air with wordsensemusic

Sirens calling return, sweet-song-soliloquy

Praise of here, and here, and here

This each stone to stain red stabbed phoneme

Into place, and built block upward flowing city

Which must be hemmed into shape and

Calls and coos and lures like bait back

Into the savage ideas textual splicing spaces

Cemented to Paris-francofying artcentering

Walks along familiar defamiliarized defying

Grammar, desyntaxed unstitching original

Inspired splaying wordformating frags

Sentence-streakings nonstop alphabet

Friend: irreplaceable soundmaking contact

To be missed, to be seen again.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>

4 JD

(new) by gv

A whirlwind moves off southeasterly

carrying along fragments, phonemes, po-emes

blocks of text ramifying

sentence-streakings

enjambed ideas stained into wordwoof

nonstop force forthing along alphabet, streets,

galleries, roads, waterways, rhythmings, soundclusters, friends.

Moves off to other turns at life and art and

everything-in-between-which-is-to-say-poetry.

Will swirl back a day or another it is expected, hoped.

Like a sort-of-era sort-of-ending.

∞∞∞∞∞

Today (shortlisted) new by Amanda Deutch

Today (shortlisted)

The Queen of Coney Island on a bike, sea breezes, Swollen eyes, no shadows, advil, Shalom toys on a box, a huge sandwich from the deli, Aleve, the shore hotel down, two iced teas, reflection in a broken mirror from years gone by, An interview, skee-ball, Lavender telepathy,
That can’t be her real name.

Bunny's Landscape by David Caddy

after Michelle Noteboom's Untitled Landscape

1

Drift in the counter direction and it feels like hail
sweeping over the hills and pounding on your door

when you wastrel, you cannot look down shafts of
wormholes and don’t see the marauding earwigs

centipedes and dung beetles congregating by your step
and foot stool. Look at those events, births and deaths,

luncheons, not as inconsequential to your employment,
to your devotion to history, to three dimensional

coordinates, line and volume, the fallacies of
Cartesian logic and universal growth, rather

as subtle gestures and impulses for oncoming
meteors, cooling stars extra solar activity.

2

Knee and crag stresses jerk sounds from howling dog

to starling call, yapping percussion and trumpet.

The pheasant possesses the ground upon which it runs

as the altocumulous inhabits the mackerel beds.

Seeking a word to make change I choose voice

the alterotica of accent and localised sensation.

Listen those meandering protons touch more than grass

scattering at mid-latitudes in geomagnetic storms.

My lover’s brassy voice looks within and looks around

my body to find arteries, nerves and receptive pores.

She perforates my restless aura regardless of time

absolutely makes me tongue tied at dinner parties.

3

Here in this factory with so many men,

stealing moments, a bike pump, some oil.

The bells! The market! The drove! It’s Monday!

Rooting around my beard to find a chisel.

Cecil keeps his pencil behind his ear.

I must burst the bubble in my spirit level.

If you look twice at me I will give you

one finger. No one takes away my fidelity.

Alert to the tactile, brass on wrist,

yet full of mustn’t’s, don’t’s, do, do, do.

Touch me. Touch me without fear.

I will walk towards you if I must.

The radiant point, by Megan M. Garr

After Untitled by David Caddy

Look up.
The wind picks up
more than just the sound of

the subtle, approaching onslaught—
count the silicate ablaze.

Every event is this event.
Every night this night
in arms, her desire, that stars exit their solar gestures,
your bare feet on timber boards, the sleeping
child, the phone rings.

This is history but not history,
you have been here,
are here again.

Look out
in any direction and
get your bearings in the storm of them.
Their parallel, perfect speed, their perfect disappearance.

Perhaps the hand opens out.
Wouldn’t that be something.

Untitled by David Caddy

After Untitled Landscape by Michelle Noteboom

Drift in the counter direction and it feels like hail
sweeping over the hills and pounding on your door

when you wastrel, you cannot look down shafts of
wormholes and don’t see the marauding earwigs

centipedes and dung beetles congregating by your step
and foot stool. Look at those events, births and deaths,

luncheons, not as inconsequential to your employment,
to your devotion to history, to three dimensional

coordinates, line and volume, the fallacies of
Cartesian logic and universal growth, rather

as subtle gestures and impulses for oncoming
meteors, cooling stars extra solar activity.

The Hour of Ecanus, by JKD

After Laura Mullen's Piece Work and Tony Jolley's Sleeve & Air, and My Father's Son

Deep in the bone
wings
black mist
dimly alight
just a memory
not the forearm I remember
nor flesh
stripped back to that barest
use, the word
spacing unteneted
correct grazing
the air out at each deep marked edge
this effort
set
stark stripped to joint
near the present event

dream’s static
appears out of scapula
to find afloat
on air
the feel of time
rooting
vines sprouts veins
cover her body
in a downy velour
here, green
like early feathers
over her
surfacing
the whirring machine
fabric dusted
lack
of masks
of flight

phrases’ slip
speaking each to each
set into leaving
bereaved
soon
roots, identity
earth
drop away
a glancing as if words
licked into arcs
lyric
space or expunged records
withered
into was, and where
arctic and anthropomorphic
dispersing
recollection in the bone

New: Sleeve and Air by Tony Jolley

Nothing there.
Mostly sleeve and air.
Not much flesh on the bone;
Not the forearm I remember -
Strong enough to push a house over;
Now stripped back to that barest of bones
Too lean even to be Cassius
For want of a hungrier look.
Nothing there
Only sleeve and air.

New: My Father's Son by Tony Jolley

I am my father's son.
I am my daughter's dad.
He seems set to be leaving me soon.
Though he still has the heart to stay,
His body, it seems, just won't obey.
She's disowned me,
Disemboweled me,
Silently,
Surreptitiously,
By Deed Poll bureaucracy:
Disavowed her birth,
Her roots,
Her identity:
My earth.
I am still my father's son,
My daughter's dad
Till the end may come.

Apparition, translated from the english by sean s

after Apparition by JKD

I feel « the mist of what I see in world of piled sentences » places, which we see without knowing by what we see « bypassed, passthrough » and in all directions reduced, equal, fallen, solid, sullen, full of senses. The unknown prod, shape astray and untrue: Skin. How we can't see, the counterpoint of our pain from fire, our here, the same encompassing unkilled current arrives again to howl and again. I am not or empty, weaved inside out in my copy, unreal and what creates me. Seize it, turn it inside out again, tear its clothes off! That was me, again ideal. However you close here, reclose, the only recluse is rain. « This conversation adrift on the water. » The othernot voice, assumed and alone inside the graph of absence, always stepping back. Again, shaking when I might remember. I might have been only this: a branch from the piled world, irrepeatable fabric woven of hesitation, love under the weight of threat: the sound of a voice: syllapilon.

Piece Work (new-ish)

It's not exactly speech, coming back here, but good and tactile. (Lisa Pasold / JKD)
The voice is mine, professed. (JKD)

Only to resuse materials given
Deep in the wings the musty black dimly lit where we each to each just a memory there
The word reuse not recognized
The failure to recognize
Spacing I can’t correct
The characters gazing off into the air or out but not at each other and never exactly off-stage never deep into the wings as if to acknowledge that marked edge of this effort
“I can’t correct” or set
Some words marks made near the present event
Set
Down would have wanted more than anything else to be honest but the static of dream and wish and memory and the desire to appear in a flattering
Only these clothes in each the feel it time and effort someone bent over
Hear the whirring machine as you slip it on wear the clacking machine the hot room fabric dust a brief lunch break and lack lack lack lack
To let the mask as the phrase goes slip
Staring off and speaking each their piece the pieces of their our their our

New "Flaming June-July" by Jennifer K Dick

After Liane Lang’s video, Leighton House Museum Flaming July show ongoing to Aug 15, 2010.


*

This impersonalized come into howl or would-flail. She windmills, wild-eyed as after the surfaces of before. Time ticks. Crumbled old flare on the mantel, trapped in photos, in this somber bedding too heavy to lift. She’s sadness. The creaking, boarded-up, hoisted. Says “sack” or “abandoned”, asks “What is?” Trapped dreams ticking. Time is no escape hatch. The iron bedposts to the frame gilds the shed of lives. Crossbeams pull to dust, the old potato-emptied skin ricochets between-space. Caught. If only she’d given in, round a stroke-stole chime. All objects singing backwards. Boards black, attached in the corner under a salt-cellar stair—day and night, guilt and grating. She is her voice, retracted into arms air-signalling language. Tongue never noticed. Scraped canister. Leighton’s ghost clocks tick, tick. Shade or shadow. Old gilded mirror and framed lies salvaged or stored. Bolster the banisters. Time twined into her.


*

Then to awake on a boy’s palm. Lifeline. What can a table or spirit measure? Tails, or heads unsure. Split bedside. What’s to weather? To be? The hill glows—bright stump of a face or a southern seacoast hot against her. Blink a few times, back into her curled body wrapped as an orange now growing, glowing, closer. Life turns to azure, as fire must flinch or be a bird high-up, remain where a ribbon of cloth dreams, is caught sleeping alight. Keep spring from his red throat, calling out to paths seeping still. She is only a mirage caught in a fire, licks at the boy’s ankles. Eyes, thigh, heels. He does not toss into air. Woman in a long field formed from a dream where he ducks out of view. An old sorceress in an mandarine hat, trace or treeline. Then blue stairwells. An echo, where she turns.


*
Medusa’s raft round her, enfolded. Everything is blown. What sets sail? Stone, hearth underfoot. Listening? To list into. Bed of crumpled duvets. Wartime-crushed voice too muted to tap, traipse, crawl back out of the rucksack-earth growling upward. Trenched. Structure of a shadow where shades vie for rescue. Time has poured sandbags too far. Cornflower blue, beige, wheat fields shorn short as summer. Stamp-hues fading. Things like asking for the beginning point, departure. Roam, say, flight. Dams too often, too few to seep into. A passage she recalls, or is called towards. Sound familiar as Charon’s ferry. Doll taken away, back, porcelain-powder, wax, glaze given up. Tectonic plates vying for surface structure. Posted, there, the girl who would (could) answer. Thames’ tides, and broken dikes. Collapsed markers on a fade. Feeling of night. A glow.

**(click museum name for address, show name for more info & Liane's name for her site).

déshabille-toi! by Lisa Pasold

after Apparition by JKD

Alright the bar doesn't mean just because I was born here. I wish you didn't drink yet here I am with another beer in my hand. It's not exactly speech, coming back here, but good and tactile. god I love to drink, even with the usual wary, tender uncertainty of appearance in a phrasal universe. Yes, all those big words, for you in this parking lot, in this same small town you're haunting. I'm stripped of bearings, again, you ghost you. Syllabic but grounded with sensory inebriation. Where is this touch with its false demarcation? Your opposite of red, your skipping stones, your electric conviction to be judged wanting. Blank as that reproduction of me in-between image, imagined, veiled. Yes, I know the voice outside the window singing off-key Broadway songs, yes, I know, that voice is mine, professed, unmoored. And you, not arriving anywhere near the demographic of departure. The drinking might have been just a phase, if you'd had more time. A phrase, unverifiable. Most literal. So how come I now know all the words to this lyric?

Apparition (new, after listening to Oppen) by JKD

*

I feel « the uncertainty of appearance in a phrase universe » places, light « looking through it, » I am « passed » and stripped of bearings, grounded to sensory inebriation. Where is this touch to lead, this false demarcation? Skin. Our darkness the opposite of red. Which burns, here, when reaching over left on electric comes to howl and to howl and to… I am not. Or blank as that reproduction of me between. An image, imagined, an imago. Take it back, unveil it, déshabille-toi! The voice is mine, professed. Rain is only sound inside the enclosed here. « There are no moorings in conversation ». Voice other than, credited, solitary within the not arriving demographic of departure. That is, shaking when I may be remembering. I might have been just a phase. A phrase, unverifiable. Tactile as is wary, tender and dangerous. Speech. Syllabic.

No One by JW

After N/O/1 by GV

No one
is giving anything away.

No one
has enough for anyone
but themselves.

Everybody
wants something for nothing.

Of course
everybody
wants something for nothing -

especially
if the something
is a valuable something.

But what if the nothing
is valuable too?

N/O/1

after Jen & Jon by geovance

OH NO! NO-ONE? OH.

NO O? NO 1? OH.

NO-ONE WON? WON NO-1. OH.

NO WON. NOW ON. ON WON (ham). OH.

JON WON? NO, JEN.

NO 1 1.

HO.

onononononononononononononononow1

EauNo-one, by JKD

After Johnathan Wonham's NOON


ooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(eau eau eau eau eau eau eau eau)
nnnnnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNo
oooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnNNNeeeee

NEW: noon by JW

NEW: ugh by JW

New: poem by Rufo Q

a mouth of sperm and guinness and the edges of the atlas temper honesty with need; would I had your legs, horatio, would I did but I don't, we didn't, the angels we thought were all around us aren't; by the traintrack I saw a mule and a donkey turn to face what must have been the sun; it was so damn cloudy I couldn't, really couldn't for the life of me tell.

hygiene by sean s

after JKD's The Materiality of Language

I
pull

a
part

wo
ords

like
u

s
re

wo
ords

like
wo

ords
its

mutual
pulled

a
way

forom
at

aterial
al

ways
pulled.

The Materiality of Language, by JKD

after J Wonham's A language apart


A language of quarks

how we say words

pulled apart

like us

A Language Apart by JW

After Sean Standish's "To say how we use a language pulls us and our words apart like quarks"

A language apart, to pull us like quarks and say how we use our words.
A language to pull us apart, like quarks. We say our words and use how
we like our quarky language. Words pull us apart. To say how, and use a
language, we say to words: "pulls us and our quarks apart". How like a used

language our pulled-apart quarks: words, to say how we like. And us, a use
apart, a quark-like use - our words and language, to say how we pull us
apart - to say how we, quark-like, use a language. Our words pull us and,
like quarks, we pull apart. A language says how to, and our words use us.

leakage outtowards, by JKD

After Sean S's Pantalooz and George Vance's Oh.

I caught this drinking problem from the bartender say
(weigh)
say
(sigh)

I caught this thinking problem from the carburettor then rev
(why)
revvvvv
(ply-

-ing me home again), It is this stumfumbling in the back of radiowaves
I
caught this I
might say

“walk into a bar”
might yammer on ’bout “knock, knock” then
clipped caught caper-copper feelin’ the fandango of this

caught up in the I got, yellow snapper, snipped up in the snipe-wipe your hands clean of my, I gotta say, this paper sallow shape of the porcelain base, gotta know it, chipped, chipper
swept clear clean of myself then
outta fuel
vaporized I
fumed

Oh.

By geova, After Sean S’s pantalooz

dear wacky

yellow plastic’s

so full

so much

viewers get lost

in a second

like trousers across the globe

too flippin fast

who walks into a horse bar?

why? he says

doc’s doing my family

wait

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

pantalooz by sean s

Oh dear.  My hair's hairs unwashed.
Why I can't just DO a thing
I must addition cost.

Your portmandoollarloondoubleaux
O wacky neotropes
O Shakespeherian

Zoo spending has increased a yellow
fog on our checkbooks and plastic
Our plasbooks, our maze, the mayzoo, zoonpants pantlaps, pantflaps, zoopants
arghsonovaon our wheres, ou wheres we do not know.
          ^
Congratulations, it's a clown!
Hey-o!
I am
excited and yoghurt no, and yoghurt, yes!
so much.  so full.

so much.  so full.  so much.
Viewers, Middle America, fellow tax evaders, this race is tighter than Charo's pants.
You'd get lost down there (I have (this was not paren
parenthetical, but this is, mea culpa)

forget to come upThat's for air.
That's no moon!  That's a space station in pinstripes.

Let's get forrealz for a second.
The fact is that we're still stuck with Kan
the last 2000 yrs have been nothing but an oscillation
(let's see 20, 18 19, y3s) a stiff wind,
we are returning between two poles.
Yes, the north and the south!  And now they are flipping like pants. trousers!
across thte entire globe.  the globe, yo.
pretty soon they will be flipping too flippin fast to see them, that's how fast
this race is.

Knock knock.
Who's there, there.
A hoarse walks into a bar.
A horse walks into a bar who?
The bartender says, Why the long face?, and he says, I caught this drinking problem from

my doctor and it's destroying my family.  No goddammit, wait a second

on the road Meeting three quarks for muster mike by sean s

)after Justine el-Khazen's not a word

To say How we use a language
pulls us and our words apart like quarks.

A drench morn
The wind becomes aeroplanes in the trees.
All that waving take me

on empty Sunday walls llsh

The Threes green is still yellow.
Elbows on the counter and watching the waitress barista's ass.

A rainy empty Sunday morning walks into the crepery. Y
I need to do those dthings I'm supposed to

do everyday.
Lisht are not supposed to live that long. Flaring Flare with check
marks, scribbles and Strike-throughs.

My jojürnal has lost its virginity thank the fuckit.
The Sunday keeps pushing out pedestriansa umbrellsta
papers twirling.
All numbers made of three, elementary
partiecles. Moody slow aeorplanes. Typing drugged through the even

somethine    sleepy    in my torso is

tossing

Untitled Riff by JW

after JH's Untitled

lust and
a ring
i realise
(washing
dishes
in the sink)

a ring
and a
circumstance
and a
lust and a
circumstance

lust
circumstance
washing
sink

i sink
the dishes
and leave

In Limbo, If Pleasantly by Robert M Keefe

The bag lady with the paper bag full of paperbacks stands indecisive at the coffee shop counter. I know that feeling.

SwedeX + 5 by Robert M Keefe

After Untitled by JH

washing the organ of speech i realize
kitchen-refuse and affection
leave a curl in the discount-rate

(key: tallrik - talorgan, kättja - köksavfall, omständighet - onatur, ring - ringla, diskho - diskonto)

Not a word by Justine el-Khazen

After Alone, they are a-maze (by JKD), Everyone's having children now by Jonathan Regier, and Everyday Includes Today by Lisa Pasold.


Magnets are the maps,
world smoothed over:
things that settle beyond the GPS.

An aeroplane arrives,
and it’s all over.

Mourning and noon agree blankly.
Night and the numbers:
10, 9, 7, 8.

Blood of the children,
black and level.
Vines map the body
in thick braids and ladders
of blood,
of blood

(children included).

A bridegroom opens the door.

Alone, they are a-maze (by JKD)

After Everyone's having children now by Jonathan Regier, and Everyday Includes Today by Lisa Pasold.

A bridegroom throws open the doors:
playing in the soil, mourning noon and night,
The madcap flatterer’s leafing through the butterflies.
A cup, a paper doily, the fix-it maman
cannot quite re-stitch the happy couple back together.
You listen in closely, you can hear the whispers:
Where has she gone? And, hence, to Mexico!
We clink our glasses with everyone’s children—
or vines. And then it is we begin to agree blankly:
Finland is a fine place to be if you are finicky. Or nimble.
He will drink his exquisite coffee though the dogs bark
and not say a word about the magnets
soaking in their blood, or the hemlock she’s just plucked.
Sympathies? Whichever happens to come before 8am.
I say it will all be fine again. The world smoothed over.
Just wait or shake it a little bit.
Scraps of blown papers settle beyond the GPS.
But at 9 o'clock, when you think it’s all over, I hear him say:
I suppose I should have tagged her. An aeroplane arrives.
Will you sit a little while longer before you shimmer?

every day includes today by lisa pasold

after Everyone's having children now... by JR

At 8 o'clock it is a maze;
At 9 o'clock, an aeroplane arrives;
At 10 o'clock all is possible; wash your grubby little hands.
There is everything to soil.
It is a few minutes after 10 o'clock.
Visit 'burn all your regrets' at
abonfireinyourbackyard.com
At 7 o'clock, none of this has happened.
At midnight, you are basking in the reflected glory
of being able to say no, I have nothing to declare, it is gone
entirely now and I am leaving on that jet plane
with my small fluffy dog.
At ten minutes after midnight, your taxi is waiting in Mexico.
Everything is possible.
The dog is barking.
Flames lick at your fingers.

I've an urge to talk to you by JW

After Laura Mullen's "I've an urge to say I miss you, but I don't know who I'm talking to." from the Bride Journal video post on her blog afterIwasdead


"I've an urge to talk to you", you say. "But Miss I, I don't know who I'm
talking to Miss... but, I've an urge too". You say: "I, I don't know who I'm
missing". I urge you to say who I am. Aye, I have to know. But don't talk
to talk. To urge. I say: "I've missed you, but I don't know who I am."

"I don't know who I am, but I've missed you", I say. To talk. To urge.
But have I? I don't know. Aye, I urge you to talk: to say who I'm missing.
"I don't know who you're missing." But I say: "I, I've an urge to talk to
I-don't-know-who Miss." And you say: "Aye, I, I've an urge to talk too."

Coffee breaks banned in Italy? by JKD

After Jennifer Huxta, Jonathan Regier, Beverley Bie Brahic, George Vance & Rufo Quintavalle’s poems about coffee.

Put contemplation on the burner, simmer. My legs, I say, then soil like a door throwing itself upon the bridegroom, chocolate covered grubbies, I say, toasted magnetic. These fields foreshorn level, eyeglasses UP, then wait. Wonton. Remember the 50s images, the test subjects, pilots, recordings, mushroom or lava lamp? Pass me the… I will drink my children, or to. Trinkets and car-salesman with beat-up cabriolets or the four-door can’t hold it open Cadillac. Give me a polish, stir, caffeinate, get it to take out or up. Fine, the paper says, the paper explains, the paper announces: Smartphone simulations systematically can’t get enough of other explanations, opinions, news. Morning tipping a hat to TV dinners, bailing on M*A*S*H. Is the fact that Hollywood makes so many war films an endorsement? What was she practicing? I would join the CIA, FBI, ATF, PTA, IRA, WHO, FDA, LBGA, ABA drooling swindled with her AK47 something like a pistol, she was, or pissed-off piston. Too many shots. Should limit oneself to a cup in the morning, a cup at noon. What did you think I was talking about? Out of tune, time, sixteen dead fawns don’t make a musical. I was the sound of…. Or off. Remain. Stay? Tunnel. Out past the deep, the buoys, the borderlands, the reputable. Split or spilt. I like it black, no sugar. That’s what I would say if I were Ret at the counter of a 5 and dime in a beige trench with a pair of Matrix glasses I could pull on then do it all in Horatio slo-mo “noooo, suuuggaar” waiting for the Miami boats to roar up in HD colorized fantasy island at my back. Cut to credits. No subtitles. Raw. A flash, he writes, hanging only a flower. The sea, the scapegoat. A designer farmer in an organic bushhut serves up the BLT, holding himself down, Stockholm syndrome. Life is just as surreptitiously slanted as those olive trees, 9euros90 each. Didn’t I tell you I have always wanted. This is a ringed circus. A meditation circle. Step inside, just be sure to hide any the trace of the frontier. Book positioned on the shelf, cover closed, leather-bound. An artefact. The last one left in a post-post-post moderncontemprary third millennium digital wasteland. You board the shuttle, and the door swhooshes closed. This leaves me a lot to think about, but is there still a nespresso left? Hand me that purple capsule.

Only Captains by JW

After JKD's comment (quoting Sean Standish): Like captains only with sex in them

Them only like captains with sex in
them sex-captains. Them only likin'
sex with captains like them. Only in
sex them like captains, only with

them like. Only captains with sex in,
only them like sex. Captains in with
captains, only them likin' sex with
only sex in, with them captains like.

Untitled by JH

washing dishes i realize
lust and circumstance
leave a ring in the sink

Everyone’s having children now . . . by JR

after all the talk of coffee from brahic, vance, rq


Everyone’s having children now My legs, I say my legs,
Are not vines to be - - Wash your grubby little hands
Playing in the soil, morning noon and night,
Morning like a bridegroom throwing open the doors

I will drink my coffee, children, until Leave the butterflies
Alone They are exquisite wonderful They go to Mexico
Piling over the mountains Scraps of blown around paper with daddy’s
GPS in their magnetic blood

---------I’ll drink my coffee, children, black as soil
---------Until I sympathize with you or whichever comes first
---------Get to your level

FIRST AND LAST by Beverley Bie Brahic

afterRQ’s WCW out-take, Coffee, a man, Culling, Allongiation, Sevintina

Disreputable ha! Coffee, a man
Would be lonesome enough expertisers now say
That the carbonical pricefulness
Was shop-lifted, crazes piled up
In his closet. Remember M*A*S*H
& TV dinners? Don’t let the men in.

An ice-cream parlor at 2:30 in the morning
I am sixteen going on seventeen
And out of tune. And “The Great Rock
And Roll Swindle” with its dead fawn,
Similarital systematics. Remainstay tunellated toward this one
and this one me is only
A disreputable farmhand. Ha!

after RQ's WCW out-take

george vance

Disreputable ha!

it’s this not your head

coffeebutter flies but

a flash hanging only in a flower

or that other day a farmhand

sits kicking, gambols

his child, him

to the would-be lonesome

split road hands

ha

NEW: coffee, a man

this is taken from the top left corner of the seventieth page of the New Directions paperback, Imaginations by William Carlos Williams.

coffee, a man would be lonesome enough
his child gambols
him; it's this or that
other day. But
butterflies

not your head
roads - only
in a flower
a flash only
to the split
hands hanging
ha, ha!
sits kicking

a disreputable farmhand

(New) Culling, Culled by JKD

After George Oppen: an exercise in "culling" during class listening to his reading (off the Pennsound site) of Of Being Numerous, from his Collected Poems.


We belonged
to life and its death
speaking obscured
by a parthenon: glassed city
we encountered

populus' fluid ages
dwelling
stooped and gated
in a paroxysm bewildered

growing older people infinitely unaging
against the singlular bonds of this one earthly form
failing

to shuffle, crowd, speak
wave to myself
among those small doors, people
spotted by a curb crossing
a green slab between blocked apartments

fixture of a world
constructed--the rain falls, and the walls remain
things change and are unchanged
my own face over and over generations
fortunate to find
everything, the dead end
losing its solidity when we apply it to ourselves

it is distant--
.................distance of blasted roads,
carved out concave construction

bowl of the bored-into city
in which I, androgynous, seek

to exist on a Saturday afternoon
during a pre-holiday shopping spree
what brand glows bright
can I distinguish?

my own madness of living
in the many, hoped,
...........................hoping is estranged
as the self from the roped self
strung up the verge of

the executioner's block he is
me the axe in hand a second
living past the other
me on the block ended

we do not go on
the seasons seeded influx I exhale
toward this and this one me is only

.

Allongiation

NEW by g vance

Alertment:

Expertisers now say that the carbonical pricefulness

in coming monthlyalities will dependentate mostly

on whether coalescent–dependentative industrialistical

nationalities like the Unificated Estatements and Australiania

will doubledoublefy their effortances to introducturate

similarital systematics. Remainstay tunellated.

^^^^^^^^

Seventina 6 by JW

It was shop-lifted crazes piled up in his closet
amongst scavenged porn, fly-tipped on building sites.
It was a knotted Durex, slowly burnishing to gold
that we knew how to locate, on which branch.
And when we hunkered on his bed with the monoplayer on
it was the irreconcilable void between the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive"
and "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle" with its dead fawn.

Sevintina V, by JKD

(the 5th in what a proposed 11-post project of 7 line '70s discosextains. After the 4 preceding this one: chime in!)

Remember M*A*S*H and TV dinners?
Sat-night-Dad post Lawrence Welk driving us half-asleep
in the brown van to pick up Mom from Mercy Hospital.
I liked to go inside to watch cell samples spin in centrifuges.
I liked the warm applesauce under tin foil, peeling it back,
or bread rising, kneaded, rising again as we sang
“I am sixteen going on seventeen”, 6 and out of tune.

Seventina 4 by amanda deutch

It’s a Set-Up, Gena Rowlands

Don’t let the men in these

movies ***** push ** push ***** push you around

Scream at you

Because you wear sunglasses.

Wake up because it's night.

She thinks it's funny to eat ice cream

in an ice cream parlor at 2:30 in the morning. That’s all.

3/14/2004

(After watching Minnie and Moskowitz)

Seventina III

(see JKD & Sean S entries' comments for more info on this Seventies Project)

my hippy mother's rainbow-tie-dyed friends in communal bellbottoms, cinematic Hair, long long long inhaled conversations re. digging latrines, Buckminster Fuller
putting the YES back into Polyester. but who was Idi Amin, i thought 'Idiot Amen' (he was a despot so it made sense.) Kool-Aid politics and Hamburger Helper at home
with Sonny & Cher vs Donny & Marie face-off in kindergarten.

Discosextain II (or Seventina II) by JKD

after Sean S Seventina I

*
Pre-espresso, taking lubes, heroine-chic post-acidhead we were
The 70s going for the Disco glam, the sequins, lounging out in a
post-hippy haze, listening to K-Tel record’s Top One Hundred:
Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder
Groovin’ to the Bee-Gees on Solid Gold Saturday afternoons.
In white polyester bellbottoms, Sat Night Fever style, thinkin’
If Barney Miller isn’t Bewitched, then perhaps we are Bob Marley?


NOTE: Sean S & I call on everyone for this miniproject: 11 7-line minipoems/stanzas all about the 70s. See comments for more.

seventina 1 by sean s

O Abba, hear me. A decade of fever and grease
echoed forth by wars of love onto lost Ilian wavelets,
the hammy Attican cry of a thousand hoodlums and actors.
Xanadu spilling, gowned in Olivia Newton-John and ELO,
across skin, an appeal to Ovid on Saturday night (that is, weekly),
while the OSI sends cyborgs to fight the Soviets
but never the Vietnamese.

Deny by JW

Cut up created from a dozen or so recent Rewords poems.

After an anonymous 16th century optical riddle by Jonathan Regier

A sun in eclipse, although with the coin of the moon not
Fully spun atop her, the blazing sun in half-eclipse, in semi-eclipse,
Through the crosswise pattern of fingers held up, likewise through

Put what I don't have in the sink. I'll wash it with what I do have.

Put the plates on the plates and the bowls on the bowls.

Swivel by Amanda Deutch (Newish)

Swivel

Type explosion
Mixplosion
*******“girls girls”

live girls
*********(do the dead ones dance too?)

imageways
the taking of 1,2,3

**re locate of your own

beer-stout, ipa
***********and
gardenias


--2004

In tunnels by RQ

after Myopic Lines by JKD

They turned against me

in tunnels and pressed

my face into gravelly pools;

I breathed and the pellets

grazed my brain,

whittling my hippocamp

to the shape of a chestnut;

they turn against me I thought

were of my kin, kicking my ankles

each time I try to rise.

Myopic Lines by JKD (New)

After 3 lines by American poet, editor & critic Hank Lazer from his poem 78 in the book Days (Lavendar Ink, 2002)

« they took turns longing
against the narratives »
tuning forks and pitch
they turned against me
in tunnels, white dusted
emergence lounged against
star-studded fissures
walls hemming us in
stitched to walls hindering
us they took tales down
scratching that which
we could not mouth to
I the corner of the cell
or you would purchase rings
on another continent in
light bright yellow they
squint in the shadows
picking at sores taking
down the final words of
each passing each to
which handle now I take
my turn dusting the dark
off into the night the light
of curve surfaceward
impossible reaching story

Underearthed by JKD

After Amy Hollowell’s Part Song on Late Curve & Blue Mirror Song

my uneven hand branches
into the dirt we love
like radishes bright
red blush in the midnight soil
scavenging hunger thirst
bodies symmetrical breaking

Part 4: Song on the Late Curve, by Amy Hollowell

after AD’s Part 1 and Part 3 and AH’s Part 2


And on the late curve of afternoon
we are symmetrical, my love,
part good, part not,
two in one uneven pile at the window
outside and in
with snow, wine and song.

Part 3: shape shape mirror human song, by Amanda Deutch, after Amy Hollowell's Part 2

We are one
Part part
blue
mirrors of a
afternoons
hands atop hands
atop hands
atop
uneven song of love, my dirt
eyes, lips, voice, bone, branches
curve

into one
shape
singing
'we.'

Part 2: A Blue Mirror Song, by Amy Hollowell

after Part 1: a new year’s eve poem by Amanda Deutch

We are one shape
singing a blue mirror song
into afternoon with eyes, lips, voice, bone
my uneven hand atop the curve and branches,
that human dirt I love.

New: Part 1: a new year’s eve poem by Amanda Deutch

Part 1: a new year’s eve poem

I am in love with dirt

wine bottle
bought in Brooklyn Heights
with dirt
in the late afternoon…
snow coats
the hand.
branches curve
outside my window
snowmen atop cars
shovels scrape

When I was 13, I was obsessed
with Audrey Hepburn
and that song.

in the bone
in the bone

no shape
Mooooon River aaannnnd…… me.
scrape
pile filings
blue moon
two moons
one voice
a human voice

a good drawer,
I used to draw
lips, horses, eyes.
human beings
are not symmetrical.
We are uneven.

shpilkes from two espressos
I am singing
Moon River into the mirror
on New Year’s Eve.

a human voice