December 2, 2005
coming through
Just kissing, the snow is settled in pitiful, balding clumps, the snow isn't something that starts, but remains, like a game of hide & seek, or the word your sister changed her name to, her elbows roadside drift straight to the dinnertable, tirebrowned. Snow suctioned between the blades of grass on the ground like soggy plasticwrap, pulled back from chickenbones--and it's a test result, a shooting range you have a blind date at, more than ever making sure you stand the right way at the right time, finding a place to shoot, barrel pointing away from facility: white flakes as promised result, they make me more domestically productive, perhaps because they remind me so much of home. Damp shirts hang from my door frames like knitted jungle vines, what strippers see backstage. Three loads of laundry, rhythmically folded or hung to synthesizers and electropop, happy as a dried polaroid beside an unoccupied electrical outlet. I finished the night by interior decorating and editing one of Jaxon's poems. It's rather odd (for me) to see that he actually listens to what I tell him in terms of "how to write" and applies it, draft to draft. I'm used to my desperate ideas and comments being lost among the usual plethora and frenzy of workshop--all those mouths and fingers in motion. Who to listen to? What to do? I would make a good teacher, if not only for the reason that I'm fascinated with intervals, rational and irrational numbers, contexts, nouns, the lost and found, free kittens and tom cats that have their price. Whatever, I still have a slight pile of damp clothes on the bed and it's beyond three in the morning and I sort of need to move them before I can sleep without worrying about walking around like a whore in wrinkled rags for the next couple of weeks. The dryer in this building blows (and not dry). I use my handheld for that, supercharged air weakening colours; sometimes I aim it at myself.
. . .& then I'm warm, niggah.
Posted by: caroline at December 2, 2005 4:04 AMI miss poetry. Let's write poetry together.
And I think I want to do a reading. Which terrifies me, as cravings go.
Posted by: ben at December 2, 2005 10:18 PMI miss poetry too. I partially think that's why I'm writing like this (I'm drunk on two bottles of sake. And also: I am stoned and listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah). Are you amazed at my absolute dexterity right now, considering my state? Absolutely, . . or at least I hope so, since I am, and if you weren't I would so be tripped out over the concept of perception, man. POV, like whoa. OK. So most of this comment up to now was tongue in cheek, but I am stoned and drunk. Off sake.
OK. Let's write poetry. Yes. A hundred dollars, success. and/or tactile, and not at all olfactory, failure. Meaning: currency exchange, the conversion rate.
when are you free? and also: let's organize a reading. without bake sales.
I am serious about all things. I feel the NEED to exist without narrative structure, only in pure lyricism and image.
Right now, I mean: presently, it's no longer what the character wants, or feels, but what the line extends from, and breaks into.
Posted by: caroline at December 3, 2005 2:16 AMI've pulled out my poetry gun, and I've set it to stunning. I've pulled out my poetry gun, and I'm armed to the teeth. I've pulled out my poetry gun and anaphora spills, like wine, like red wine on a white carpet. I've pulled out my poetry gun and I've opened my mouth and I've put it to my mouth because poetry is a sex metaphor, and I've blown myself away. I've pulled out my poetry gun and I've got it cocked, baby: all the way. Poems, like blisters, like exploding suns, like a pale wind on a transparent day.
Posted by: ben at December 3, 2005 11:20 PM**brilliant** as that was an IS: it doesn't answer my question now, does it? or: doe SIT? In any case, there are animals involved. And it's undeniably dirty.
In other words: what are you doing on Tuesday? Fancy a meeting, cafe, cheap coffee, unscrupulous cafe employees, opened books, pens, extravagants forays into the house of poems?
Posted by: ben at December 4, 2005 10:04 AMWednesday would be much better for me, since I have a portfolio due on Tuesday and thus the day will be frantically filled with last minute edits and long bus commutes and then I'll be totally drained in any and all possible ways. I'll probably go to bed at like nine-thirty on Tuesday. Does Wednesday work . . . .or do you .. uhh work? :)
Posted by: caroline at December 4, 2005 2:59 PM