match stick box

lady gaga prose poem

2010-10-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

fan letter to lady gaga

after Terrance Hayes

dear lady,

there has been so much discussion about whether you have a cock or cunt. frankly, i like to think you have a psychic dick. disco stick, i guess. you must have one, since you sing about it, right. i sang along to one of your songs today in my car. at the end of it i wept like a lost child. it made me think of sad things, but in a good way. ~~i heard yet another music video of yours isn’t allowed to play before 8pm. after 8pm is officially my favorite part of the day.~~ lights, sequins, piano, & sunglasses. you are so fabulous. do you think people hate us because of fear or jealousy.

do you think about the fag in ohio who has to hide your cd under his mattress. let’s say his name is chad. he wants to move to new york, where you got your start. ~~my mother told me a joke on the telephone. how do i get you to cry. she said poker face. get it. chad thought it was funny. i rolled my eyes.~~ chad thinks you have a cunt. if he let himself think you have a disco stick, his head would explode. no man is an island i tell him.

this morning i turned into a robot. this was before i cried in the car. my face rusted. chad says it happens to him, too, but doesn’t know why. did i mention he turned into a robot, also, just he ain’t aware of it. he definitely turned robot before i turned robot. when we dance it sounds like cookware banging together on a beat. pots & pans & woks. the media hates us because we aren’t human. something about the fact we can’t procreate, yada against god’s will. they assume we’re made. it’s the electricity that scares them. when i finally convince chad that you have a dick, fragments of metal will hit all the other islands. ~~the sharper pieces of shrapnel will slice & slash innocent bystanders.~~ for now, i let him think you have a cunt. i let him believe he’s still human.

brenda hillman's prosody class

2010-09-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

Taking a class on received forms. I'm not producing killer stuff, but it's worth getting some feed back.

iambic pentameter

anapestic & iambic ballads

ghazal

petrarchan sonnet

lady gaga telephonic lexicon

2010-03-13T12:58:00.000-08:00

Here are a few notes I’ve made watching Lady Gaga’s newest music video, Telephone. It's not in any particular order, nor do I claim to make a cohesive argument. These are just a few ruminative observations of things I feel Gaga is challenging, or, at the very least, engaging in her newest video.

glasses - Lady Gaga is known in an iconographic sense for her usage of sunglasses, along with other accoutrement. In her videos, she assumes the power of the gaze through her employment of glasses, possibly mostly by way concealment of the direction of the gaze, which endows her with panopticonic faculty.

cigarettes - In the video, the sunglasses used in the prison yard are fully tinted and partly comprised of cigarettes. This notion of the gaze having power is expressively meaningful in this scene, for cigarettes have utilitarian significance in prison as means of currency. If we are to see, materialistically, that the gaze is a form of an exchanging of power, the cigarettes act metaphorically demonstrating Gaga’s status among her fellow prisoners and her relationship to the viewer.

videophone - (This idea of the gaze is carried over from Beyonce’s song Videophone, on which Gaga also collaborated. In that video, the gaze is inverted a different way, where the canons of cameras, which are in place of men’s faces, are traded imagistically for guns that Beyonce and Gaga wield for the tail end of the video.)

pulp - Pulp and comic mediums are locations for social commentary on so-called deviance. The heightening of social (read: sexual) roles into a campy hyper-awareness is the engine of the pulp medium. There too is blaxploitation here.

gay - In Gaga’s videos, there is always the presence of gay male bodies: backup dancers, party-goers, objects of affection, furniture &c. The gay male body is absent for the first five minutes of the video. Or is it?

prison - The depiction of women in prison is an interesting paradox for normative representation. It is a location where women’s bodies are simultaneously hyper-masculinized and hyper-sexualized. This video participates in that paradox. Throughout Gaga’s stint in prison, we see women in bikinis with long flowing hair and women with their hair slicked back lifting weights. We get the polarities of sexual expression located in a spectrum of female bodies. That is to say, there is a push to gay-male-homosexualize the female body to alleviate the absence of the straight male.

surveillance - In surveillance footage, which is exhibited in the video, one can see but cannot hear. On the telephone, the subject of the video, one can hear but cannot see. The form of the music video inherently reconciles these problems with seeing and listening. Perhaps the music video can reconcile the fracturing of sexual identities. Of racial identities. This is also related to the notion of Foucault’s panopticon.

objectification - Lady Gaga and Beyonce resist being objects of visual pleasure (see: Laura Mulvey). They embrace their sexual appeal but characterize it into drag-queen-like proportions, essentially imitating the feminine and the sexual.

dialogue – At the beginning of the video, the ward says, “Told you she didn’t have a dick,” to which the other replies, “That’s too bad.” They jokingly lament the absence of a gay body while contemplating the sex of Lady Gaga. This fixation on Gaga’s sex perhaps may be analogous with media and America’s discomfort with deviant sexualities and female ownership of sexual beingness.

dialogue 2 – Beyonce tells Gaga that “Trust is like a broken mirror, you can fix it if it’s broke.” Gaga complete’s the adage: “But you can still see the crack in that motherfucker’s reflection.” They go on to call each other “baby” and “mama”. In Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage, the acknowledgement of selfhood is only understood once a child is held up to a mirror by its mother, thus realizing that it is not the same as the mother, that the mother is representative of the other. In this reinvention of the metaphor, Gaga and Beyonce’s selves are problematized; they oscillate between mother and daughter (perhaps reifying each other’s identities) and the metaphorical mirror is broken, always reflecting a shattered version of the ego.

diet coke – The video is littered with product placement. There is an inevitability to this; it is futile to resist the machine of commercialism. In the video, product placement is hyperbolized and even parodied in the “Cook-n-Kill” sequence.

icon - I've used this word before. Here, Beyonce takes iconic images of Betty Page, Pam Grier, Britney, and Madonna, to name a few. There is proliferation and accretion of identifiable female icons presented in this video, by two notable female icons themselves, and shows an awareness of a participation in a tradition of being a female superstar that challenges notions of the passive object.

emperor's-new-clothes kind of moment

2010-01-20T13:47:00.000-08:00

I was forwarded this article, written by Mike Young for HTML GIANT, by a few different classmates, on the some of the most common moves by contemporary poets. I guess it has been circulating for quite a while and I've managed to inadvertently avoid it until now. Anyways, here are some analogies I've come up with that summarize my response to it:

It's like that being naked in front of your homeroom dream.

It's like someone has found the magician's handbook.

It's like that scene in I Heart Huckabees where Jude Law's character hears the recordings of himself telling the same joke over and over again. [Unfortunately, I could only find the clip in Italian. On second thought, perhaps it's a good thing. Jude Law's American accent is rubbish.]

But, really, I find it funny mostly. It is comforting to know no poet is that original. Also, some of the items on the list are just things that occur when we use language.

Regardless, it's a good thing to be aware of what we instinctively do, repeatedly. I don't think we're meant to take the article as being judgmental, just a little self-ridicule-y. I actually wrote a poem recently that operates almost entirely on items 1b and 30, but I'm sure in a large way fulfills many of the other items. See if you can identify more:

takebacks

it left my house
i mean it left my mouth
as if it were late
to an appointment and couldn’t
waste any time getting there.

i didn’t mean to say i love you.
i was meaning to say i hate you, instead
i showed you with my actions.

it’s called parapraxis—freudian
slip, colloquially—so
when i said good-bye, i meant please
don’t ever leave me.

i was alone in my mouth
and something was missing my lips.
i was alone in my bed
and i gave myself a paroxysm.

i looked at myself in the mirror
and then at a photo of you and saw
a parallel, i mean a parallax (it lacks
paratactic syntax; i also mean parallel
structure), what i mean,
succinctly, is that you were further
than i wanted you to be.

i wanted to be you
for at least the duration
of us fucking so i could make sure
it felt as you pretended. i mean
as i intended.

you left my house and my mouth
was full of snow. it was cold
and uncomfortable, and when
my tongue was fully numbed
i said i hate you instead of what i really meant,
spitting pretty snow flecks at your face.

I was also impressed and surprised by the variety of sources Mike Young used for his examples in the article. He called out some pretty big names, and curiously some of the lesser known, but emerging, contemporary poets. It points out that we're all in this together.

Since I brought up I Heart Huckabees, here's a scene I think is perfectly germane and we can all enjoy--in English!

sharp as a

2010-01-07T02:36:00.000-08:00

The Knife is keen in their musical engineering. They seem aware--more aware, to me, than many other music engineers, at least on a deliberate/conscious level--that music is not comprised solely by tone and rhythm. That there is a matrix of sonic phenomena that creates a musical experience for listeners. That there, too, is texture (in more musical terms, 'timbre') that not only operates on the plane of aesthetic aural pleasure, but also on an emotional and associative plane. Further, that they participate in a tradition of music making and, that though there are limitations of deviation from that tradition, that there are also destinations on the fringe of these traditions, which are seldom visited and/or mingled. Since I've already used the word "matrix," let me borrow a phrase from the film: "You have to see it to understand." Or in this case, listen to it. Here a new song, for which I thank my Facebook newsfeed, I stumbled upon.

Colouring of Pigeons by The Knife

Once upon a time, I made a music video using footage from Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour, a silent film on which I wrote my senior thesis. For reasons still mysterious to me, The Knife's Silent Shout made me think of that film.

two is the magic number. 'nine' is just what we call it.

2010-01-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

So this is my endorsement for the film, Nine, but it is also a love letter to two of my favorite actresses.

I should start by divulging that I’m a pretty obnoxious Fellini fan. Admittedly, it probably stems from some hero worship I harbor for D.A. Miller; however, that’s immaterial.

I had reservations and doubts about Nine before viewing it. I thought it was going to be an egregiously mishandled pop-music-video-esque celeb-orgy that desecrates Frederico Fellini’s masterpiece, 8 ½. Instead, I found Rob Marshall's film to be a provocative take on Fellini’s story and film (which was first adapted to the stage) that paid prudent and calculated homage to its originative sources: actors, cinematography, autobiographical referentiality, etc. Daniel Day Lewis, though deficient of Marcello Mastroianni’s je ne sais quoi, was satisfactorily charming and brooding.

The fact that it was a musical didn’t bother me. On the contrary, I enjoy musicals and I felt that the film did a great job at maintaining its movie-musical-ness. I recall in a lecture with D.A. Miller, him mentioning that Fellini’s films—the psychological internalities they afford, the quirky histrionics of his imagination, the (albeit, diegetically motivated) musical performances that often occur, and so on—lend themselves to being adapted into musicals. For instance, the musical and subsequent movie musical, Sweet Charity, is based on the Fellini film, Le Notti di Cabiria (my personal favorite; later you may see why).

The rest of the cast, as expected and including Fergie, sparkles. Fergie is actually quite spectacular as Saraghina. Hear here:

The diamond among jewels—hardly any rough here—is Marion Cotillard. Not surprisingly, she plays Luisa, the wife of Guido Contini, the tragically flawed protagonist of the film. Both characters are thinly coded versions of Frederico Fellini and his wife, Giulietta Masina, which is true for both 8 ½ and Nine. I say that it isn’t surprising Marion Cotillard plays this character because I found her performance in La Vie en Rose very reminiscent of Masina’s performance in Le Notti di Cabiria, and nearly matched its virtuosity. Curiously, the character of Luisa isn’t much like the actual Masina. Though you should take this remark as only purely rhetorical, Cotillard’s Luisa is closer to Anouk Aimee’s performance in 8 ½ than it is to the actual Giulietta Masina. I just find it fitting Cotillard plays a character, in Nine, that is based on an actress who Cotillard resembles, performance-wise, in La Vie en Rose.

I urge you to delight in the similarities. I do. By “similarities” I mean “pathos,” of course.

*spoiler alert*

In this scene from Le Notti Di Cabiria, Cabiria realizes, too late, that her lover is a con man who has wooed her with the intention of stealing her money and throwing her off of a cliff. They are at a cliff. Dun dun dun. I don't have subtitles for you. Sorry.

This scene from La Vie en Rose takes place after Edith Piaf has been waiting all evening for her lover to arrive. In it, she recovers from a delusional episode. I can't embed this scene, forgive me.

[Another chance for you to click]

Both scenes unfold with similar emotional arcs. If you didn't cry, I seriously doubt your capacity to feel. Their performances in these two scenes aren't the only likenesses I saw. I find them both so deeply comic and tragic, in the most honest and earnest ways, in their respective films.

The lesson here is watch Nine. Watch all of Cotillard and Masina's films.

theorizing thievery; of, composition as exploitation

2010-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

I was given this assignment by my poetry workshop facilitator, Graham Foust, this past semester as our final project. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it, but I thought it was indubitably neat and has helped generate some writing over the dull winter months. He states:

The title of this exercise has in mind archaic definitions of theory ("to map") and exploit ("to mine"). Consider it a very tightly focused version of one of the MFA Program's learning outcomes. If we want you to be able to "articulate the correspondences between [your] own writing and the corpus of literature and though which primarily informs [your] own aesthetics," let's at least entertain the idea that we can begin to "correspond" with other writers at the level of grammar and syntax by investigating and recuperating Eliot's all-too-often quoted (and almost always misquoted) maxim. How--and what--can we learn from theft?

The T.S. Eliot quote to which he refers is, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

In Graham's exercise we started by extracting the grammar and syntax of a sentence, structurally, and built our own statements with perhaps little deviations from the schema. We then moved on to some poems: one given and one of our liking. The following is my purloined booty.

The first one is from a William E. Stafford poem, Passing Remark.

Who Knows or Cares?

During meals I favor savory flavor.
During sex I like to be on my back.

During movies I often audibly and physically react.
And during concerts I prefer to dance and sing along.

My lover, a svelte gentle boy from the Midwest,
asks, “Are you aware how impossibly different we are?”

Concertedly I furrow my reactive brow and burrow into his gaze—
the lovely vulnerable sweetly prefer we play along in the game of curious irrelevance.

The next two are the poems of my choosing. The first from a book of poetry called Slow Air, by Robin Robertson. The second from Nick Flynn's Some Ether. I deliberately chose poems that I am very fond of not knowing why. I'm not sure if it was a prudent decision, but I'm not more than half displeased with what I concocted. Thoughts are appreciated.

Robin Robertson poem:

Exposure

Rain, you said, is silence turned up high.
It has been raining now for days.
Even when it stops
there is still the sound
of rainwater, labouring
to find some way into the ground.

We lie in grim embrace: these
two halves trying to be whole, straining
for this break in the static,
in the white noise
that was rain falling
all day and all through the sheeted night.

Silence is rain with the sound turned down,
and I stare out now on a clear view
of something left out on the line:
a life, snagged there—
drenched, shrunken,
unrecognisably mine.

My Extraction:

Eventual

An apology, she says, isn’t a backing down but a displaying of courage.
There’s been a cold front here.
For the past few days
everyone I know around
has been arming themselves
in fabric shields against the icy pound.

My mother calls me: a distant
cry that is an arm reaching out
through the receiver, holding
onto the last bit
of cold hope
that the voice on the other end will pause to finally listen.

Backing down is a type of courage and apology,
and in the frigidity the color leaves
my prickled fingers:
the numbness is oncoming—
quiet, invisible,
unavoidably in tow.

Nick Flynn poem:

Bag of Mice

I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,
& in the bag were six baby mice. The bag
opened into darkness,
smoldering
from the top down. The mice,
huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag
across a shorn field. I stood over it
& as the burning reached each carbon letter
of what you'd written
your voice released into the night
like a song, & the mice
grew wilder.

My Extraction:

The Morning We Ended Things

I found your voice box
tattered like a flag put through battle
&, though dampened, still vibrating. The box
carries in it all the hopeless
screaming
from the night prior. The screams,
half tonal, half texture, rang and battered
into the apartment walls. I was in there, too,
& as the room filled with our anger
at what we can no longer recognize
the ceiling began to cave in
as if it were a pillow
muffling laughter.

year in review - less poppy portion

2009-12-31T16:51:00.000-08:00

Top Five Independent-ish Films

PreciousThis film is special. It achieves in being uplifting, but more impressively, does so while not shying from the grittiness of reality or disneyifying itself. Precious is a coming of age story rooted in depicting the true-ness of a hard-knocked life through a neo-realistic lens. I have no doubt this fictional portrait of a life will become a valued cultural artifact that exposes our society's failures in education, parenting and government assistance; and exalts the triumph of spirit, love and superb acting.

(500) Days of SummerIf there is a formula for a good 'indy' movie, (500) Days of Summer is the proof. In mathematical terms, if there is a proof for a good 'indy' movie, (500) Days of Summer is the theorem. I don't not mean it pejoratively, but I sort of do, but it sort of doesn't mean this movie isn't very good. More soundly, this movie is very good. You will find yourself charmed (read: manipulated) by the actors, the writing, the facile cinematic choices and cheesy hope for the protagonist. There is very little hope for independent films these days, but at least there is hope for that guy.

A Single ManNot a perfect film, but beautiful effort. I mean beautiful in a purely aesthetic way. Had A Single Man succeed in being the intellectual art film it poses as, had it successfully emulated the sources it drew upon (Fellini, Hitchcock, Almodovar, even Woolf), perhaps we would have a masterpiece. As it is, it is a gorgeous, well-acted, well-shot, tasteful effort with poor writing. Scenes are undeniably edible.

September IssueThe ONLY documentary I liked this year.

Away We GoSam Mendes obviously let Dave Eggers being him over the head with his hipster stick, and we should be thankful. Elegant understated performances by young but seasoned comic talents navigate us through the film's heartful and (self-consciously) artful scenes. A good screenplay is still a good screenplay even when it comes from a annoyingly proficient source. Mendes has a talent for making great actors shimmer and decent actors blossom. Uber scheingarten.

Top Six Books (Fiction and Non-Fiction) That I re-/Read this Year

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DidionI'm a boy who likes a good cry. I watch Grey's Anatomy and read elegies. I got what I bargained for with Didion's apogee. A virtuoso of personal essay, this book hemorrhages affect while it gropes, along with the reader, for solace.

Call me By Your Name by Andre AcimanI have yet to read another piece of literature that more accurately depicts the agony of desire. The blurb on the the back cover from Nicole Krauss articulates my sentiments more clearly:

If you are prepared to take a hard punch in your gut, and like brave, acute, elated, naked, brutal, tender, humane, and beautiful prose, then you've come to the right place. If you can't handle the violence of regret the novel will awaken in you, or the agony of remembering wanting someone more than you wanted anything in your life, or exquisite suffering that comes with the gain, and loss, of something that neared perfect understanding, then don't read this book. Ditto if you like your literature censored. Otherwise, open the cover and let Aciman pull the pin from the grenade.

This is your Brain on Music by Daniel J. LevitinThis book inaugurated my fascination with the brain. Scientific non-fiction at its best.

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah LehrerYoung but assured scientific voice. This book gives hope to both science and art by acknowledging the imaginary boundaries that supposedly separate the two. Along with This is Your Brain on Music, this book privileges access, for the reader, to a field of study that under normal circumstances, one would need a PhD.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick FlynnEverything I like about creative non-fiction. There is poetry among the derelictness.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
There are times when you are confronted with such genius that you doubt your value as a participant in culture. There are times when you are slapped in the face by such insanely architectured fiction that you feel icky. There are plenty of other things to make you feel icky here, also.

Top Six Books of Poetry That I re-/Read this Year

Chronic by DA PowellLyrical, mature and eloquent. The book is current, located and honest. Haunting is also a word that fits; as well as, pretty, raw and romantic.

Wind in a Box by Terrance HayesThe book shifts from form to form, but consistently engages the notion of identity. There is a definite narrative of a life that anchors the book, however un-pinpointable that anchor is.

Fire to Fire by Mark DotyThese poems are dusted jewels. Each one tinged with deliberate caress. With deliberate shine.

Elegy on a Toy Piano by Dean YoungNo one does Dean Young like Dean Young does Dean Young. No book is more Dean Young than Elegy on a Toy Piano. Keen, whip-smart and whipping. There's pathos there too among all the shifts; in fact, the shifts activate it.

Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’HaraNew York School poetry at it's best. If I could let a book of poetry write my personal ad, I would choose this book.

The Father by Sharon Olds
There's an eerie erotic complexity that shapes our world and our relationship to it. Olds might be the best person at seeing this.

year in review - pop portion

2009-12-31T14:54:00.000-08:00

Top Five Men

Matthew Goode

Will Kemp
Alessandro Nivola
Simon Baker
Matthew Macfadyen

Top Five Movies

Star Trek
Avatar
Watchmen
It’s Complicated
Sherlock Holmes

Top Five Songs

Glee’s Don’t Stop Believing

	Glee Cast - Don't Stop Believin' .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Adam Lambert’s rendition of Tracks of my Tears

	Adam Lambert .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi

	Lady Gaga - Paparazzi .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Britney’s 3

	britney spears - 1 2 3 one two three.mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

The Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition

	The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

pehli baar mohabbat ki hai remixed by dj umer khan

2009-12-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

I heard this song while I was scarfing, quite seriously, some chicken curry and baingan bharta. Enjoy.

	DJ Umer Khan [Songs.PK] - Pehli Baar Mohabbat - www.Songs.PK .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

poem; or, truths about having a sister

2009-12-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

that you cried at her wedding reception while you gave your toast the way good brothers are supposed to cry at their sister’s wedding. that you cried the way bad brothers who want to be better brothers cry at their sister’s wedding.

that you would have waited for your baby teeth to fall out on their own had she not knocked a few out during races in the backyard.

that you gave her a scar on her finger fighting over which one of you would cut the apple.

that you never think to thank her until she asks. that that’s what brothers do.

that you are a better writer because of her. that the way she ripped into your middle school essays which made you literally rip them up then rewrite them and hide the second, third and fourth drafts from her, but turn in the best middle school essay you have ever written. that she believes in you and that’s why.

that you were nested in the same womb, listening to the same heart beat for nine months, the same experience five years apart.

that you both have inherited nagging.

that she resembles your younger brother more than she does you.

that she is, too, a gemini, and when you get along you are the same person. when you do not it is the end of days.

that you share gray-area truths, like both hating and loving a father. possessing a fear your brother born in the states never knew. and straight out dark truths about ghosts and wars and suicide attempts and hating your bodies and vomit and the infidelity of parents and men who are flawed who are uncles whom you despise and the love that ferries you through it all.

that she has more handbags than you do. that she steals your clothes.

that when she wants you to be proud of her it takes you by surprise, because you seek her validation as if it is the sound of your mother’s heart beat. that her pride is a version of your mother’s beating heart.

that she wants you to write a poem about her. you’ve tried and there was this: the poems display her in a light that isn't flattering. that it doesn’t address what she really wants you to do, compliment her. but they show her importance to you. that they end up being about more. more than her. but because of her.

pop and poetry pt. i

2009-11-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

This is the first post in a series where I’ll attempt in the smallest of ways to bridge the distance between those of us who are enthusiasts of poetry with those of us who are either passively or actively disinterested in the whole rigmarole.

One of the arguments about poetry, and even poets wrestle with this, is determining whether it has a function outside of itself. Sure, there are plenty of ways of going about answering this, and it has definitely generated plenums of scholarly literature. For me, one of the greatest functions poetry offers is its ability to enable and/or facilitate the creation of other forms of art, and in tonight’s post, we will look at LADY GAGA (I put her name in caps for emphasis and as a homage to the greatness that is her legacy to come).

As I was wikipedia-ing the other night, as one does to avoid doing actual schoolwork at the computer, I was listening to Lady Gaga’s auxiliary tracks on the re-release of her breakout/breakthrough CD The Fame, entitle The Fame Monster. It’s an interesting read about a young unattractive quirky singer/songwriter who passes on Julliard to sing in underground New York cabarets, gets signed on to various record labels as a writer then becomes an international phenomenon within a year of releasing her own debut album. But all that exposition has little immediate concern: what struck me were her influences.

She cites, of course, glam rock as one of her main influences. You can see that in her styling, fashion, and over-the-top spectacular performances. Musically, you can definitely hear it in her recent ballad about convincing her father to get surgery, “Speechless”. Here is a side-by-side comparison of a Shudder to Think song, “Ballad of Maxwell Demon”, with “Speechless”. I believe they’re in the same key, share similar melodic moves, and stylistically glamorize Victorian fashion with science-fictional surrealism.

The influence, however, that really took me aback was that of Rainer Maria Rilke, an early 20th Century German poet. Rilke is interesting to me in his usage of Apollo, Hermes and—most prominently—Orpheus as reoccurring figures in his poetry. It would make sense that Gaga and her art would resonate with Rilke’s; after all, Orpheus was an integral figure to musicians and poets. She states in an interview on a German talk show:

Well, Rilke for me has been sort of my bible. Actually I have a Rilke tattoo on my arm. I got this in Osaka, Japan. “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”

I find this connection inspiring on many levels. For one, it gives artistic credence to an emerging pop icon whose talent I feel is continuously discredited solely by virtue of her success. Secondly, it contemporizes and makes relevant poetry to a generation of listeners of music and spectators of popular culture. Thirdly, the quotation is a sage, motivational prescription. I would die.

thanking in prose

2009-11-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

At both of the dining tables to which I was privileged to have been invited this past Thanksgiving, toward the beginning of the meals, the usual suggestion was made of sharing for what each one of us was most thankful. Naturally, there was a collective grumble from the more pragmatic dinner guests. I too shrank away from participating in this activity, though not because I am resistant against such opportunities that serve as un-trafficked avenues for maudlin confessions that inevitably devolve into primetime-TV-esque saccharinities of friendship and love—quite the contrary, I welcome and enable them—but at the moment, I could only think about my recent job loss and, in turn, the confrontation with reality that is my failed adulthood. This hardly put me in the mood to entertain such holidayisms, so I diffused the activity at each dinner with my prudence and humor. I’m resolved to keep that act of diffusion vague to get into the meat, the reason for this blog post.

It wasn’t until later, a day later perhaps, that I realized that I was thankful for many things. My mother of course is one of them. What that poor woman has to put up with with me I can never gesture toward understanding. My friends and the network of support I’ve managed to fashion myself here in the Bay Area, however inconsistent the support seems to be. I am thankful for it. I am thankful that I attended Berkeley as it gets proven to me daily that the quality of my education there has put me ahead of a large percentage of the waking world, and that it is an asset that feels like a curse but is mostly an asset. I am thankful that I lost 30 pounds and managed to keep it off. I am thankful for modern medicine; more specifically, I am thankful for Propecia. I am even thankful that I am gay and that I am Asian and that I am brown. If I weren’t I don’t think I’d be as strong as a person, as eloquent, as educated, as fashionable, as tasteful, as cultured, or as special of a person. And I am thankful that there are enough politically driven people out there to fight for my rights so that I can focus on art, which brings me to a new thing this year, for which I am thankful, because I’m always thankful for these aforementioned things.

I am thankful to have poetry in my life. I am happy, and couldn’t be happier (the accuracy of this bromide deems it unavoidable), that I have decided to subscribe to a life of reading and writing poetry. I feel lucky to have fallen down the rabbit hole of this art form that most individuals only experience partially through the miscellany of audio and visual culture, or overtly and obsequiously at weddings and funerals, and that I get to—because I allow myself to—take it in in all of its awesome distillations. Even now, I am thinking in poetry.

the embrace - mark doty

2009-09-21T02:35:00.001-07:00

Often, I will drive to work in the morning, while my brain is still waking and my emotions residing on the surface of my skin, a song will come on the radio compelling me to well up. I am that emotional. This poem achieves the same amount of effusiveness without the assistance of hypnogogia or fatigue.

The Embrace

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out--at work maybe?--
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

barking, barking, barking

2009-09-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

See-line woman
Empty his pockets
And wreck his days
Make him love her
And she’ll fly away

- Nina Simone

infinity doesn’t have a vanishing
point like i originally thought it’s more like a wall
that starts at the floor, at the bottom of
my feet, the tip
of my toes and then shoots
up super-fast like lighting or a superhero
past my face taking a little oxygen with it
on its way to never coming back down, leaving
me a little blind and breathless.
it feels like an impossibly stubborn
wreath of seaweed wrapped around the ankle
of a version of myself who’s a crappier swimmer, snorkeling
he will naturally begin to panic “calm down, me,
please. it is only seaweed. perhaps if you let yourself sink
a little, it may loosen its maddening grip, then
you can just float to the top, me.”
but all i hear underwater is the sizzle of fire-coral,
the swishing of sharktail and my eyeballs turning the face
of my goggles white-white

collide

2009-09-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

worlds don’t collide the way we think they do most of the time

they are right on top of each other parallel not the way lines

are parallel the way things can be palimpsested the specks of dust

on a window pane and the blurry objects behind it, but the pane

dust and blur are all the same it may be the way dyslexics see

the phonebook or a dictionary text just bleeding in, on, around,

[more prepositions] each other bleed of each other, even the way

memories are stored a matrix of pathways in the brain that intersect

and re-intersect in bolts of blue recognition and epiphany

the worlds are so much more and so much less than what we perceive

for instance: space is like time, a constructed illusion relative

and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, something omniscient would

say we are in all possible worlds, which is impossible impossible

to understand we are too small to realize everything is within

fall out (a work in progress)

2009-08-17T04:16:00.001-07:00

I've been sitting on this poem for a few weeks now. I'm trying to get into the habit of writing longer pieces. I figured phases and variations might be a way to do that. This poem, so far, is in four parts. Help me revise!

fall out

*
nuked i

I have an irrational fear
of being too close
to working microwaves.
After just being
set usually into the next
room I run or further
enough away to not
hear the disturbing hum
of particle excitement.

I pushed inside you, one
night when we were both so lit
and our feelings sat on top
our skins. You were telling me
how scared you were I’d leave
you in a confessional
tone. You went
on to say you loved me.
I agreed I loved you as
I agreed to love you back.

Water tends unattended
to evaporate. Microwaved
molecules break apart
from each other reconfiguring
onto the walls of the appliance’s
insulated shell. Inside
the mug there might only
be trace amounts. White residue:
from minerals of the tap.

*
nuked ii

when you mouth a name into his
ear that is your own, does it take
his breath away? does it move
you too? or is it a gesture: the finger
moving into the button just pushed?

there is a vacuum
of air caused by the boom
of a hydrogen bomb. sound can’t travel
where there is none
so at the face of the combusting shell
you won’t hear the bang
turn you into pink mist.

though you’ll notice ticking
mistaking warning
for a pulse.

*
nicked i

It cut right, a tiny
lesion on the surface
of epidermis, below
the lip and a carmine
bead transformed
the mouth into an eye
which wept red.

On the pink
skin the nicked lip
quickened the blood
coming, a red
ball leaking air in
reverse, as it bled.
Therein, it did not quit.

I filled with not
the fear I would
scar, that moment I
would have thought, instead
I dreaded as it thinned (not
thickened) it would never
end and I would bleed to death.

*
nicked ii

the spot splat pink
clinking on the blank
white rim around
the basin. suddenly less
dark red ink than it was
when it left my lips,
a factory of polka-dotted tears
of toilet paper.

the fogginess was lifting
off the mirror.

lizard

2009-07-14T14:10:00.001-07:00

[This is a poem I read for To Have and To Hold. It underwent a number of changes even up to five minutes prior to reciting it. Like any of any poet's poems, it's still a work in progress, but I am honored to have been approached to write specifically for this event and that a version of lizard contributed to the event's success.]

neuroscientists call it our reptilian brain, sitting inside
of our cortex it is smaller and primitive a croc
scaly, slithery, leather-skinned lounging lizard-like,
keeping time and moving us dancers rely on it, they
call on its memory it is the mother of our kinesthetic impulses
steps to a rhythm, our flight and fall, the beat of our heart or tapping
of our foot, the tick-tock of our souls the metronome to
the movement of ourselves within ourselves without it
we cannot avoid injury or win at boxing matches walk into our lover’s arms
or down an aisle to an andante tempo of a promenade
it is infallible if only we would listen closer to the sussurus
hissing between its forked tongue into our ears
from inside the inside of our head to the rest of the brain
this lizard computes in alternating numbers, say zeros and ones
but the dancer and musician knows it thinks differently, unlike a robot
but in soaring lines perhaps flashing colors or a story about itself

there is a hot rock, it crashed from a planet that resembles the Russian tundra
and it is in the center of a desert now California is a Gila monster
who spends its respite summer idling hot—hot and cold-blooded,
it needs the rock to stay alive the rock is the right parts cool and warm for now
California wants to move from off of the rock and into danger
a Katrina or a tsunami it wants to shatter itself orgasm is the best way
to put it precipitate into the Ocean and from the foam rise
like a fiery bird California wants to birth and mother itself
into a better Gila from broken pieces become better, better because it was broken
but the rock is committed to its own inertia growing colder into the winter
the lizard will die if it does not move off of the rock
in the delirium of heat the Gila dreams itself a dissociative disorder

California is an angel its disparate parts the parts of that angel
she is fractured but all there there is a golden halo and a lake of tears,
from both sadness and joy, beneath it
there are dry patches of land that is its body and the valleys
of green that carve it out there is a heart, a stomach, a brain and a reptile-brain
there are shoulder-blades that slice into the sky like a bird with fire for feathers
and a faulty heel that will some day crumble into the whispering Ocean
like the crack of thunder the angel, California, will beat
its wings to the music only she can hear—the BPM of birth, love, rebirth,
the heartbeat of a monster, the unshakeable imperfection of the cerebellum
deeply submerged beneath a riverbed—flying out toward space, screaming
at the stars ‘move out of the way’ a bat out of hell imitating a banshee,
she is a serpent with cotton-like wings, thunderously battering the air around her
applauding the break the break of a state into an island

to have and to hold

2009-07-05T03:11:00.000-07:00

[from facebook]

Host:	RAWdance
Type:	Music/arts - Performance
Network:	Global

Date:	12 July 2009
Time:	14:00 - 16:00
Location:	Union Square Park
Town/City:	San Francisco, CA

Email:

raw@rawdance.org

When did love become a threat?

Mixing displays of public affection with visceral, athletic dancing, RAWdance reminds that you can never tell anyone who to love or how to love. The company will be joined by poets Robert Andrew Perez & Cristobal McKinney.

Chuin Phang & Andrew Ng, contributors to Do the Love Thing, will be on-site to take pictures for the web photography project featuring images of couples and families who believe in spreading the message of love, tolerance, and marriage equality. Check out dothelovething.org and come with your loved ones ready to take part.

Sunday, July 12th
Two shows : 2pm & 3pm
Union Square Park, SF

Performed by: Alexis Miller, Chad Dawson, Diana Broker, Dudley Flores, Gretchen Garnett, Jessica Stephenson, Laura Sharp, Mayuko Ayabe, Nikki Pinchott, Ryan T. Smith, Sonja Dale & Wendy Rein.

www.rawdance.org

origami

2009-07-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

I am meeting
the corners of the square
sheet making
on a diagonal
a valley

now I’m closer
and steps ahead

flat, fat right
triangle and invisible
almost at times so thin
a syllable in epic
the width of string

now valley opening
lips whispering fire

vapor of our under-the-breath
confessions creased into
an ear, a letter penned
in vanishing ink
a page forgetting turning
bright white, light
was beaming beneath it

the edges line up
so imperfectly

it’s a piece of paper
meant for disappearing
acts not writing.

a call for poets

2009-05-29T00:37:00.001-07:00

A good friend of mine, Ryan T. Smith, the artistic director and one of the choreographers for the contemporary dance group RAW, based in San Francisco, is organizing a protest in Union Square responding to passing and subsequent decisions regarding Proposition 8. He asked if I wanted to participate and if I knew any poets who would like to contribute spoken word or any other type of artistic expression to the demonstration.

So, if you’re in the Bay Area July 12th and interested in participating, we would love to work with you. Here’s what Ryan originally sent me, though I’m sure there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of how we can integrate our work; in any case, it should give you a sense of what page he’s on:

so we're down for union square, finally starting to pull our shit together, and would love you to do something for the event. i'm not sure how it would make sense to organize things. right now i'm wondering if we may want to actually integrate readings into the piece, not necessarily dancing to them but using them as intros before sections. or maybe they are totally separate....

do you want to get other poets involved or fly solo on this? talk to me. get your brainstorm on. what ya thinking? my hesitation with opening it up is always a) the quality of the work and b) the dependability of the person. so that'd be up to your history with other folks.

if you have any work already done tat you'd be interested in. i could use inspiration these days.

we are discussing asking a photographer friend of mine who is already doing a project in response to prop 8. but wendy's not sure about how she feels about his work or the addition. we'll decide to approach him or not this weekend.

if you're still down, get me a few sentence bio ASAP. going to get a press release for Monday morning so it comes before the outcome tues. am.. the release will basically say that either way, it goes we are ready and eager to respond.

okay end of business mode.
hugs.
r

I hope to hear back from some of you. Aside from the fact that contemporary dance demonstrations are always in dire need of good text, this will be an amazing and beautiful avenue for queer and allied artists to voice their feelings on this heated and critical issue.

Ryan needs responses by Sunday, June 7th, for a press release, so if you're at all interested and sure you can commit to this project email/text/call/im/harrass me by 12:00a that day. If you won't be sure by then, it's no travesty, just get to us later; the press work will just be deficient information.

one art - elizabeth bishop

2009-05-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

A good friend lent me a copy of a superb anthology of poetry, Strong Measures, when I had expressed to him some interest in reading and composing more classic poetic forms. As of late, I’ve found this particular book particularly invaluable. Though I’ve specifically been focusing most of my recent creative efforts in the writing of pantoums, I found a vianelle by Elizabeth Bishop eloquently haunting. Like the pantoum, the vianelle is defined by a series of repetitions of either lines or words. That is to say, the form is intrinsically designed to be haunting; I acknowledge how I have been manipulated. In this piece, the repeated lines are reiterated with subtle changes that enhance their emotional impact, though the images are pedestrian in nature. The poem moves from household objects to, eventually, globally expansive concepts but never adopts the tone of grandiosity. The repetitions assist it in staying focused in an almost clinical manner. Though amidst its clinical and aloof tone, the poem elicits a pointed emotional response. The speaker requires this tone to engage the poem's loaded subject matter, the subject of loss.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

a relevant vintage youtube video

2009-05-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

It was a pervasive but fleeting fad, once upon a time, to produce parodies of the Brokeback Mountain trailer as it applied to films or TV shows with similar plots to that of the BBM--though with less direct outcomes--using the underscoring and voice-over of the original trailer as a template. I found the youtube phenomenon astute and illuminative of how films inadvertently code homoerotic/homosexual tensions for an ignorant audience. This clip I found especially germane given my last post.

star trek and anal sex: jj abrams' take on the black hole

2009-05-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, it is finals season for those still in school. Soon, I will reenter their company, but until then, I'll continue to stew in my envy. Though I probably hated and cursed writing papers and doing all-nighters—the memory is far too distant for me to muster a pure recollection—what I distinctly remember is the sense of relief and accomplishment when I completed an essay, usually just in the knick of time. This rush of nostalgia and jealousy, along with a debilitating fear of how much my grey matter has atrophied since graduating in 2006, has motivated me to [half-heartedly] attempt to write an essay in my free time. this is what I have so far:

Star Trek and Anal Sex: JJ Abrams’ Take on the Black Hole

Homosociality, or—in these days—“bromance,” goes into warp-speed in the recently re-imagined story, JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, a prequel of the original Starship Enterprise. In this version, it is difficult to tell whether it is a common tale of male-male camaraderie saturated with blatant pulp and understated subtext of homosexual iconography, or a pornographic, sexually charged homoerotic intergalactic Brokeback Mountain thinly veiled as a run-of-the-mill origin story. Frankly, I think the point is that there isn’t a difference, nor would it matter if one existed. This buddy movie, like all buddy movies, like all queer psychoanalytic theorists have come to know, posits the male buddy characters in an unrealized sexual romance that is continually skirted around, cited and transferred throughout the film. JJ Abrams, in this—time will eventually tell—2009 masterpiece, takes a quantum leap forward with this notion, going where no man (or film) has gone before.

The protagonist of the film, Jim, or James Tiberius Kirk, is introduced as a troubled child lacking discipline because of an absent (read: dead) father. In his first scene, he has hijacked what appears to be his stepfather’s convertible, blasting the Beastie Boys’ hit, Sabotage, whizzing through the landscape of the seemingly endless cornfields of Iowa. Though Abrams may not be prescient enough to predict that Iowa would be the first in a string of states to legalize gay marriage since California’s Proposition 8 debacle, this scene creates a relevant and elucidatory backdrop for my queer reading. On his joyride, Jim drives past a boy, taller than he but we are to assume that they are classmates or neighbors in close age range, taunting him […]

It’s rough, I know. Like my poetry, there’s much to flush out and inject. Since I rarely make outlines, I often use the space of the introduction to parse out my preliminary thoughts. I intend to navigate the reader through a series of portraits and interactions the film presents with interpellation and temporal intercourse at the crux of it all. I will employ the term "interpellation" as both, simply, the act of naming, and in its Althusserian mode, the hailing an individual into a station. It’s exciting to try to regenerate that portion of the brain I’ve neglected for so long. If anyone out there reads this, I need the encouragement!

a reunion of sorts (event invitation for old and new friends)

2009-05-13T19:24:00.001-07:00

So it has been about three years since most of us have graduated. I think it is about time we all get together for a nostalgic hurrah at ye ol’ watering hole. On Thursday, the 21st day of May, this year of 2009, Julia Goetzen will be visiting the Bay Area for a four day sojourn, the longest since abandoning the yay for Southern California. I discovered this when Peter, after having heard from Omer, told me over a (somebody else’s) Crixa Cakes, in Berkeley. I guess that’s the path of information flow these days.

Anyways, after brainstorming possible get-together ideas with Julie, we’ve decided to kick off her visit with a celebratory reunion of sorts at Beckett’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, in Berkeley. Coincidentally, an awesome band will be playing that night, Whiskey Hill. They play blues, funk, Motown and Jazz. A good friend I know, from UC Berkeley's Gospel Choir, is the saxophonist for the band. They’re tres legit.

Hopefully you guys can make it. Here’s the info:

[from facebook event]

A Reunion of Sorts

...because four years weren't enough.

Host:	Robert and Julie
Type:	Party - Bar Night/Pub Crawl
Network:	Global

Start Time:	21 May 2009 at 21:00
End Time:	22 May 2009 at 01:00
Location:	Beckett's Irish Pub & Restaurant
Street:	2271 Shattuck Avenue
Town/City:	Berkeley, CA
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Phone:	5105413730
Email:	zarkazstic@gmail.com

ave verum corpiss

2009-05-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

Name this photograph:

[This is all from Karl's Choral Music Webpage.]

This translation is meant merely to provide an understanding of the meaning of
the Latin lyrics, and is definitely NOT meant as a replacement set of lyrics!
(Note that some English 'translated' lyric versions do exist; however, in order
to fit the rhythm of the melody, and to provide 'more easily understood' lyrics,
they have a tendency to mangle the meaning of many of the Latin verses.)

Note that while I do know some Latin (and have access to Latin
references for those words I don't understand!), I do not claim to be a master
Latin scholar. In addition, some of the Latin words and phrases have meanings
which it is difficult to directly convey in English - in these cases, I have
done my best to paraphrase, retaining as much of the contextual meaning as
possible. Therefore, while I have made every attempt to capture the meaning of
the Latin as closely as possible, there may be some errors, and some sections
may be open to different interpretations.

Note also that Latin has a
different syntax to English, and so some of the translation is not strictly
line-for-line.

Ave, verum corpus
natum de Maria Virgine,
Vere passum
immolatum
in
Cruce pro homine,
Cujus latus perforatum
unda*
fluxit (et)* sanguine,
Esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.

Hail,true body
born of the Virgin Mary,
Who truly suffered,
sacrificed
on the Cross
for man,
Whose pierced side overflowed
with water* and blood,
Be for
us a foretaste**
In the test of
death.

* Several people have commented on this, so I
thought that I might elaborate. The phrase in the original Latin hymn is "Cujus
latus perforatum fluxit aqua et sanguine", whose approximate translation I have
used here. However, in the available editions of both the Byrd and the Mozart
score, the word 'aqua' ('water') is omitted and the word 'unda' ('whence')
inserted. The 'et' (and) is also omitted in the Byrd text, but not in the
Mozart, which makes for rather awkward Latin (and one which I had much trouble
translating accurately). The origins (and purpose) of this change is unclear; I
hope to research this matter futher at a later date.

** Referring to the
eucharist in the Roman Catholic tradition, in which the sacrament was often
referred to as being a "foretaste of heaven".

If you have any comments
or suggestions about this translation, or about this site in general, please
e-mail me at algernon@arach.net.au.

mozart's quickie - ave verum corpus

2009-05-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I will be singing with two ensembles of which I am part, UC Men's Chorale and the Alumni Chorus of UC Berkeley, for the donor/retirement dinner for Robert Cole, the departing musical director of CAL Performances. I am much grateful for the opportunity to sing for him again (once before for CAL Performances' centennial). Cole, who will also conduct, chose Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus as his swan song. He heralds it as one of the greatest and most beautiful pieces of music written. I agree, and I would find it hard-pressed to encounter anyone who group up listening to western music to not find it so after listening. Below is a recording; of course, digital recordings contain very little of the live performance's aura, but this can give you an idea.

Among many features of this piece, I find its length most remarkable. The oscillation between the quiet moments and its swells, the archs of its phrases and the moments of scalar transcendence are all scored fluidly within a minute-and-a-half.

fact/sf audition workshop

2009-05-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

[from facebook invitation]

Audition Workshop

FACT/SF, brain child of dancer and choreographer Charles Slender, seeks dancers for the 2009/2010 season.

Host:	FACT/SF
Type:	Music/arts - Audition
Network:	Global

Date:	30 May 2009
Time:	12:00 - 17:00
Location:	CounterPULSE
Street:	1310 Mission Street
Town/City:	San Francisco, CA
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Email:

factsf@gmail.com

FACT/SF opposes the idea that dancers should pay to audition, but we do require all attendees to RSVP their intent to participate by writing to factsf@gmail.com. Participants must also bring a résumé and be prepared for five hours of technique, improvisation, partnering, and repertory. Hired dancers will be paid for both rehearsals and performances throughout the season, which begins August 1st, 2009. Though our specific schedule for the year has yet to be finalized, dancers should expect to attend company class and rehearsals approximately 3 times per week, 20 weeks per year.

Described as “witty…and razor sharp” (Independent Weekly), Slender works to incorporate the classical with the contemporary in choreography that blurs the line between dance and theater. FACT/SF productions are rigorously crafted, physically demanding and asks dancers to both feel intensely and think critically. Before creating FACT/SF in 2008, Charles Slender toured internationally as a member of Tatiana Baganova’s Provincial Dances Theatr e, and created commissions for both universities and professional dance companies throughout Russia. Charles has also presented work and taught master classes in Hong Kong and the US. He is an honors graduate from UC Berkeley, and looks forward to mucking things up.

Please visit http://www.blogger.com/www.factsf.org to learn more about the company prior to auditioning.

t.m.w.e. #3 - swine flu over the cuckoo's nest

2009-05-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

This exercise assigns the poet to write a poem where he or she brags. Addonizio and Laux suggest starting with a list of things at which I may be good. The further along in the writing process I got, the more the poem started to sound like a slam. I committed to that sound and it was like riding a bike; it had been at least four years since I'd written a slam poem. On an obliquely related note, I've recently grown disgruntled by the lack of traffic on my blog; albeit, I haven't been trying very hard to generate it. So, as a cyber-social experiment, I threw in some currently popular Google search phrases to see if it may have an effect on this post's popularity. Admittedly, this admission may skew results. This will probably be one of the few times I'll create site links in a poem.

swine flu over the cuckoo’s nest

it is the ‘oh’ i will manifest
take a read, deny or attest to the best
poet blogger, i jest, lest you dig
what was just confessed;
the cat has run out of the brag.
this is a slam that doesn’t take the cake
it takes the bakery, rollin’ out dough and siftin’ out the fakery.
it is the sneezy sick snaz of a slam
poem that sneaks in some glam
for the moment, like adam lambert
or rock like daughtry of american idol idolatry,
idly i’ll try to win your clicks, so quickly
pick me, squeeze my juice and drink
my shit so good it stink, from toilet bowl
to kitchen sink, i’m gonna run like water
to the brink, tickled pink, then disappear like missing link.
i’m the gay marriage storm arriving to do harm,
get beyonce to ring the alarm and create buzz
like a killer bee swarm, consider yourself warned.
i’m gonna wreck like britney, spear
like aborigine, clown like circus, and just
when you think i had enough, you’ll see me
break from a cocoon, rising,
like the moon, like the hole of a cartoon
ending, that i’ll pick up and emerge from and
blow up like vesuvius cum, but taste
like gumdrops--covet me kookaburra--like cocoa,
chocolate, hot, need me like coke, coke addict,
feenin’ like whitney, the diva not the mountain,
i’m the fountain of youth, my words new forever,
my words stay for always more clever, better
than yours, got you on all fours, whore, literally floored,
huffin’, nailed you into a coffin, dead cause
i coughed in your face, this is a slam and a murder case,
kill like phil spector then ghost like a spector, start war
over beauty like hector, teach you lessons like lecture,
feel on my tectures, stack lines with architectural
integrity, its gritty, my dirt, my spit, my squirt, my shit,
i blurt, i slit, i skirt, i hit the nail on the head
i’m hurt, i’m fit, i’m curt, i’m long like wind
i’m bucky done gun, dmc run, a girl who just wants to have fun
the good son, mcauley culkin calls me a monster, mon
djs spin me like spiral, md’s can’t cure me like viral, disagree i’ll
fire yall, i’m trump, i’m oprah winfrey, there’s no stopping
the juggernaut, the every thing you’re not, the beast,
the disease, the tsunami’s coming, flee, the i-got-your-crazy crazy,
the no other possibility, the who else is it gonna be but me.

i had a tapeworm - michael ryan

2009-05-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

I read this poem for the first time a few months ago. Then, I knew very little about Michael Ryan, with the exception that he was teaching at the University of California, Irvine, where I quite wanted to receive my MFA. Though things didn't pan out in that direction, I'm glad I recognized the name and gave this poem a few reads. The tone immediately resonated with me. I am drawn to its beat-ish qualities, its prosaic style and confessional tone. Its assonant-driven sound reads like a slam poem, playing on tension between public declaration and intimate subject matter. The poem moves from out spaces like the Y to the inmost tunnels of the speaker's body, from a public pool into a secret inside a secret. On a personal level, I appreciate how the speaker addresses a complex nest of emotions that surround affairs from a temporal distance and within such a short poem: tender remembrance, guilt and regret, jealousy of whom the ones with whom we cheat are with and their other possible lovers, severe contemplation of the past, the haunting of a beautiful mistake. The tapeworm is within the speaker and eats at him, though his true fear isn't the decimation of his insides, but the betrayal of exposure and the unforgiving nature of age over memory.

I Had A Tapeworm

I had a tapeworm, and imagined it
flat—paper-flat—like a strip of caps,
pallid red, a quarter-inch wide
with bulbous BB bullfrog eyes
peeking out of my asshole as I lolled
in a crowded fetid basement swimming pool
(the kind that used to be in inner-city Ys:
windowless; steamy; concrete-block moldings
chalky-cracked), and you whom I’ve neither
seen nor heard of for thirty years
were saying I’d give everyone in the pool
my tapeworm, which you knew had eaten
my insides and now had threaded through
both my intestines and was trying to get out.
Where were we? Everyone was old, old—
gray, infirm; flaccid and thin
or fat and bald, all ill flesh drooping—
the women in rubber-flowered bathing caps
and black one-piece suits as if we were all
on an outing from a nursing home.
I couldn’t see myself to see how old I was,
but you were thirty, at the peak of your beauty,
as when you knelt naked on the motel room bed
brushing out your thick dark waist-length hair
after cheating on the lover you were cheating
on your husband with, who was at that moment
waiting for you in another motel room
from which you had slipped to meet me secretly:
a secret inside a secret, buried, encased,
as if if we dug deep enough into it
we’d find what we were trying
to get or stop.

music > choreography (a review) pt. 2: second half > first half

2009-05-05T16:03:00.000-07:00

Equal Footing, post-intermission, appeared more polished than its earlier half. Annie Rosenthal Parr’s “Window” greeted the audience from their 15-minute dance break, and immediately I felt apprehensive. There were two large white projection screens set high up, behind the dance space; I thought to myself, “Oh, great, a multimedia piece. That’s never been done.” Just when I was ready to mentally check myself out, I noticed a crackly, varnished, antique piano implanted with a small laptop-sized LCD screen. From afar, I could see that the screen was displaying music-playing software that I later learned assisted the pianists in distorting the timbre of the piano’s tones. The pianist, Sheldon B. Smith, provided a unique synergism between the analogical and digital I haven’t yet seen among a sea of poorly executed multimedia compositions. I had seen a piece a few years ago, "Random Generator," that Smith had danced and choreographed at CounterPulse, and I distinctly remember applauding the humor and simplicity of the work. With that said, though his back was to us, I could sense a humor in his playing that told me this piece wasn’t striving to be more than it was. The choreography was streamlined and eloquent. It wasn’t too difficult for the dancers, and some of them appeared quite natural with the physical vocabulary of the choreography. Overall, "Window" was the triumph of execution over hackneyed premise.

The final work of the night, “Softly In My Ear,” choreographed by Joe Goode, was—as anticipated—a crowd pleaser. Goode has a keen eye to making dance theater accessible to any audience with his usage of style and text. Maura Tang (also a dancer in this piece and two others) costumed the dancers expertly, blending casual fashion with movement-centered sensibilities, and in true Goode manner by using muted primary colors and khaki basics. Again, the music not only grounded the piece, but elevated the performance. Live dance music has a particular way of informing a performance, and the virtuosity of Joan Jeanrenaud, of Kronos Quartet notoriety, supplied a dazzling amount of breathing, organic pulse. The dancing in this piece, like the one prior, was also much cleaner than the first two. Though dancers embraced the satirical tone of the piece, much of the text delivery was miscalculated. There is a fine line between parody and replication. If the camp and kitsch aren’t carried out with deliberateness, the comedy falls flat and the audience only reads the copy, not the critique. Nonetheless, it was a bright and weightless pleasantry to end an evening peppered with flagrant faux pas.

t.m.w.e. #2 - the i-five

2009-05-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

This is another twenty-minute writing exercise from The Poet's Companion. The assignment asks the aspiring poet to write about a trip taken often, contemplating a major question asked at the beginning or toward the end of the poem. I should observe road signs, mentioning at least two, that are symbolic, and list--at some point--physical things.

the i-five

is a highway, the one i take
to make my way home
from my home away
from home, where i contemplate
all the mistakes i’ve made, this is
the highway i take
to clear my mind, though
it doesn’t work
that way, along the desert innards
of a lush state, the lane,
a snake dissecting California,
my brain, already cleaved, i drive
into my hemispherectomy, my car
is a blade i’ve smashed once before, it
incises the insides of my mind
of state, where i’ve made
most mistakes, the same
road signs over again, tiring
like a familiar song,
traveling northbound, horizon,
leftward, ocean, to the left,
westward, i am tired
when i drive this, take this stretch,
the notochord to which i am
an impulse inside of an impulse,
passing thru Buttonwillow, my last
chance to stop for miles, rest
stop not for a while, Coalinga in
a hundred miles or so, where i cried,
at the Denny’s there,
begging not to be left
for a mistake made, the drive
is an arid apology, it is dust
swept into the air by my tires
i inhale, the salt of jerky
stays in my mouth, washed down
with sports and energy
drinks, motor oil stays in my nose
and that dirt in my chest, i may
fall asleep and crash on this drive,
though i am heading home alive
like the freeway
with animate cars,
bodies in them with brains
in the bodies, from space, outer-
space, mistaken
for ants in a single-file
line the shape of the i-5 snaking
up. is this drive the rock,
hardly round, that i labor
to roll northerly, only to let it
pass through my bloody palms
toward the southern dip again?
i see the dots in no order
perforating the clearness
of the black tar over me.

music > choreography (a review) pt. one

2009-04-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

This year’s Berkeley Dance Project, presented by the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, was inaptly titled Equal Footing, in that it was a peripatetic series of uneven assemblages of dancers from wildly different calibers. But, as an indignant performer of that night told me after I shared with her my feelings about the lack of across-the-board kinesthetic aptitude, it wasn’t about technique. She is right. It isn’t about all of them being on the same level in terms of dancing, and—as an undergraduate production—that would have been near impossible. So, I will suspend my insistence on technical precision and look beyond the clumsiness to locate why the showcase still left me underwhelmed.

The first piece, “MinEvent,” staged by Patricia Lent, was a composition of five dances choreographed by Merce Cunningham. My response to the piece, prima facia, was that it was cringe-worthy to say the least. It felt dated and underdeveloped. I don’t have a problem with abstraction or repetition and I by no means require a narratological through-line to enjoy a dance, so it was difficult for me to ascertain why I was so resistant to this piece. A friend who accompanied me to the show that night hit the nail on its catachretic head when he said that it felt like being at the museum. And for me, it was the difference between the Smithsonian and a warehouse of replicas. If a piece assumes itself as a compendium of works by a dance auteur known for razor-sharp precision, doesn’t the piece have to be immaculate? Each section of this dance seemed labored and over-concentrated. With a sequence of hyper-technical, seemingly simple combinations, the phrasing has to be effortless and precise. It just wasn’t. The costuming added to the dated-ness of the piece, and frankly, many of the dancers looked uncomfortable. So if the dancing wasn’t great and the piece was theme-less and abstract, there just wasn’t anything for the audience to hold on to. I will say, however, that the music provided by David Coll was the main event in “MinEvent.” The atmosphere created by the tonally surprising force of the underscoring provided a solid wave that carried this drudgery toward the finish line. It literally reverberated throughout the entire space, vibrating panels of metal at specific and poignant frequencies.

The second performance, choreographed by the director of Equal Footing, Lisa Wymore, was well-placed, like a sorbet to wash the bad taste out of our mouths from the unpalatable previous piece. “Ain’t gonna be…” was facile and concrete. Drawing from stories and images from accounts of the great dustbowl, Wymore took a very literal approach to choreographing. It was about wind, so the dancers danced as if pushed by great zephyrs. It was about struggle, so the dancers adopted strained looks on their faces and danced as if they were having great difficulty. Again, the music was the best part of this piece (and the latter two—I might as well save my proverbial breath). Though the genres of music (folk and hymnal) too were easy choreographic choices, I appreciated how it was generated by the bodies of the dancers via voice or corporeal percussion. The employment as body as musical instrument illuminated the reality that the travesties of the dustbowl weren’t only economically or agriculturally impacting, but that this accost by nature was physiologically distressing. Erik Lee's solo in the piece was the highlight; he exhibited commitment, ferocity, musicality and full release. All in all, this was a lot easier to digest than the former. I don’t understand, however, why Wymore decided to include herself in the piece as the wind generator and square-dance caller. Seemed a bit self-indulgent. Perhaps she was playing with the stereotype that choreographers have insufferable god complexes.

gmail signature

2009-04-24T14:48:00.001-07:00

Work at EQ3, per usual, was uneventful today. Unfortunately, the computer in the showroom downstairs, at which I am damned, is forbidden to access any websites that aren't EQ3 related--stock lists, online catalogue, etc.--or Gmail. To entertain myself, I revised my Gmail signature about 15 odd times. I workshopped some of the versions with those who were logged into Gchat. I'm pretty happy with the final product.

--
robert andrew perez
51zero.541.373zero . zarkazstic@gmail.com
robertandrewperez.blogspot.com

mfa . creative writing
st. mary's college . moraga, ca

ba . english literature . creative writing
lgbt studies . theater & performance studies
university of california, berkeley

oakland unified school district . substitute teacher
eq3 furniture and design . sales associate

'humor is also a way of saying something serious'
-- t.s. eliot
--

My friend Julie described it as a 'miniature resume,' while another friend Sean says its very 'e.e. cummings.' Both descriptors I find flattering. What do you think?

i left out a rule below:

2009-04-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

...it should be snowing but it isn't.

[attach]
my window sweats. The mist
outside may freeze. It will
feel and look like snow
for anyone underneath it.
Only when it thaws should we know
the truth, that it is

a blank white page, bleached
of grand professions falling
to the ground as a soft powder.

twenty-minute writing exercise #1 - ars's poetica

2009-04-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

So, in preparation for graduate school, I’ve started to dust-off some old poetry books and readers I’ve slid underneath my bed or hidden between old issues of GQ and Details. To my providential delight, I came across a copy of The Poet’s Companion, by Kim Adonnizio and Dorianne Laux, a book that was given to me by an ex-boyfriend the first Christmas we spent together. It’s a quite ingenious beginner’s manual for those serious about writing poetry. In it, there’s a chapter entitled "Twenty-Minute Writing Exercises."

For the first one, the rules are simple: write an ars poetica (about writing), it’s cold outside, identify the time of day, use “we,” and use the word “florid” or any word in an unconventional manner provided by a friend or obtained haphazardly. My good friend Julie Goetzen suggested the word “triumphantly.” The ex-boyfriend’s initials are A, R and S. I dedicate this exercise to him.

(Please keep in mind that this did literally take 20 minutes. I usually need at least a few days to edit down my gratuitous effusiveness and nostalgia.)

ARS's poetica

“To Robert - The best poet I know, and the greatest boyfriend in the world”
-ARS, Christmas ’04, written inside the cover of
The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of
Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux,
from which I took this writing exercise.
I acknowledge that one or both of those statements aren’t
remotely true or, at least, are grossly overstated.

Though we can’t see
our breathing, exhales
floating up out of nostrils
or the mouth into the atmosphere,
we know it is cold
outside of this apartment.
We know that
the other is breathing.
The darkness outside
is the same as it is in.
We read with our fingers the dots
and dashes of our bodies--

the nipples . moles . pimples .
follicles . the scars . like Braille

like a tree with initials
jaggedly chipped into it
meaning something like for eternity.

We write words on each other’s backs.
A Zen sand-garden, the triumphant strokes
of a moment. This is how I write

poetry. The poems I write
are written across your skin,
disappearing;
I read the verse
back to myself
with my palm flat
against you and memorize.
Your breath is in every measure.

what is it called?

2009-04-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

I've recently rediscovered Edna St. Vincent Millay and how wonderfully effusive terseness could be. Within a few lines, she can quite literally bring a tear to my eye. This poem, which I stumbled upon during a 15 minute lunch break from my part-time furniture selling job, solicited a drop or two before heading back to the register:

Quite affective, right? The syntax clean but layered. The imagery sharp yet rich and not overdone. But what struck me most was the form. I created a contest on facebook by uploading this image mobile-y:

Yes, it is just kind of weird. To me, the form suggests a tone of something between elegiac and romantic. In any case, I tried my hand at--what I will call--this Millayan nonetspettolet. Okay, that doesn't quite roll off of the tongue. What better subject than another apology poem to my mother?

To Mommy
It’s an impossible task to have a son,
Give a finite answer of what is asked,
To count and repay all that is summed.
This, all, she does in all the salt
That’s in her sweat, until her body’s last
Beat of heart or her milk to malt.
All my successes were of her done.
Then let me try to answer it:
Your love and doing is infinite.

Okay, it's rough, but I have to say, writing one is cathartic.

stricken and egg (a review)

2009-04-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Spectatorship of the world premiere of FACT/SF’s site specific work, Stricken, is analogous to witnessing the birth of a genius: a visceral, awkward and violent apocalypse of rough virtuosity. In a quaint industrial space in the cuts of SOMA, The Garage’s RAW (resident artists in workshop) program made a prudent decision in collaborating with Charles Slender’s young contemporary dance theater project. Admittedly, I am familiar with Slender’s previous choreography, even having been in a short jazz piece of his when we were both undergraduates at Cal, and am good friends with him. Don’t let this admission color my review: I am a compulsive truth teller. Though fresh, FACT/SF’s conceptive mother has matured in a way that has enabled him to bare a piece that is menacingly precise and beautiful. If this is his San Francisco debut, Slender is going to be a big deal.

The first, palpably unsettling leg of Stricken posits the audience in an interactive configuration, demolishing the fourth wall. We’ve seen this, okay. He’s blurring lines of theatrical demarcation. Oh, but so much more is happening. Not all audience members are created equal. Some are relatively safe from interaction, on chairs that are on risers. Or are they? The head-bucketed dancers blindly navigate themselves behind and around even them. The rest of the audience is in a circle on what would be considered the tradition space of performance. Half of the circle is facing a mirror and two light sources (sometimes on and sometimes off). All the while, the audience on the risers watch those in the circle. We are confronted with our own mechanisms of dispersing awkwardness. We see each other cross our legs, uncross them. We whisper to each other and notice a shrug. There’s a forced smile, an involuntary one. We are all watching each other not watching each other watch the dancers who cannot see. It seems like eternity. We then encounter text: a series of numbers with an inaccessible sequence, to us it is random. To the dancers, its part of the choreography; they know which numbers to say when. They eventually all join in unison.

At this point, the four dancers break into smaller scenarios. Some outside smoking and en frottage, seen through a barred dirty-paned window or the sliver of a doorway ajar. Some groping through the dark grasping for light. One dancer, head finally de-bucketed, enjoying some narcissism. Awkward scenario follows awkward scenario. How long will was this going to go on? How long was the water going to be running? This was an experiment of breaking points.

Subsequently, the choreography becomes more synthetic. A pop song, a sexy one, by the Dandy Warhols, a band predicated on kitsch and pop and the choreography of Slender’s at this point followed suit. The technique is facile, at this point, and you feel a sense of relief around you. Finally, the audience has something less maddening to hold on to. However, the dance evolves/devolves into a hypersexual entity. The fun and the sexiness of the choreography start to proliferate into disturbing heights. Perhaps (this may be just me) Slender is making fun of his jazzy roots. In any case, the gyrations and hyperextensions catalyze yet another series of gut-wrenching awkward set-ups. The water is still running.

The dancers revisit their buckets. Two play stop and go. The power dynamics of master and slave parallel that of choreographer and dancer. Spectator and subject. Gender seems less important here than attitude. On a related note, the garments of the dancers play a key undertone in both unifying and characterizing each player. Eric Pennella worked his magic again for Slender, having designed previously for him at Berkeley.

As the piece progresses, the choreography gets more technical and complicated. The dancers execute it with unlabored ferocity. The water is still running.

Toward the end, we are slowly being abandoned by the dancers. Throughout, the dancers appear to abandon one another from time to time. Some are left in the dark longer, underneath their bucket. Alone outside or in the bathroom. The piece culminates to the abandonment of the only male dancer. He stares at himself in the mirror, contemplating something. He screams into the water that has collected into the sink. It is unclear if it is a gesture of embarrassment, frustration, anger or simply unfettered hysteria. The audience is just relieved the water had stopped running. But as we hear the last blubs of the water going down the drain, and we give a short chuckle at its silly noise and the door closes behind the last dancer, we realize that the disturbing-ness of the last 30+ minutes has seeped into our skin. We are, by our selves, startled.

Charles Slender has revitalized a genre that has become pedestrian in the art scene, for me. Yes, challenge the notions of normal and abject. Yes, complicate and problematize gender. Yes, create striking and technical contemporary dance. Yes, be kitsch and be avant-garde and be theatrical. Yes, explore sexual boundaries. Yes, dive into the innate hysteria we fear and possess. But do all of that with some frontal cortex. Create a through-line in your work that marries these objectives and synthesize something novel and intelligent. It isn’t enough anymore to draw lines on your body or rip up a picture of a supermodel. We have moved beyond sex-shock and nudity. We have had our fill of beautiful lines. Give us a third dimension. Sure, Charlie, we’ll take four, if you have it.

someone else's poem: someone else's broken heart

2009-04-21T00:03:00.001-07:00

Ebb

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

scrabble

2009-04-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

it’s best to play on a level
surface. not all versions of the game
have the grooves
that hold in
place the tiles.

it’s best to play with people you trust.
when you reach into the grey
bag to grab your first 7, do
you caress the tile with your thumb?
your index
finger the carvings
to read the letters without seeing them?
all you feel are [ i ]s.

you are cheating.

the [ ] ones have all
the possibilities (26)
but you have to know them.
there are secrets: master
the two letter dictionary:
do am to in wo ow no za
there are others. [ s ] is the key.
careful what you pluralize.
[ q ] doesn’t always need [ u ].
you will never understand that.

placing those tiles onto the board
is a reckless commitment.
if you try to see the word
coming like a train first
it might be better

than letting it hit you on the table-
top. learn to read downwards
and sideways the words. skip

turns. don’t use a tile because you feel
you need to. the long-term
effects of tile usage can lead to
brain-damage. it will make you say
things you regret later on.
you can forget
your friends and lose your job

over the words you choose.
bends. zodiac. zap. pines.
mind what you pluralize.

you are thinking
the best ones are chemical
compound words.
xanthene, yellow not green,
phenoxybenzamine.
the words are sterile. there’s no
emotion or aura there.
scrabble takes it

all away from you. [ k ] (5).
[ x ] (10). its too tempting. u
don’t even care if it doesn’t land
on a colored square.
[ i ] (1) [ c ] (3)
[ u ] (1)
slipping away.
you’ve gotten so used

to reading upside down
you’re having trouble deciphering
what’s in front of you
pu edisthgir
pink [ * ]
where it started, you
made your first

mistake. what was
the word, again?
we both can’t
recall it.
subtract the remaining

point

values of the tiles
in your mouth
left over from
the final score.

pâté de foie gras

2009-04-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

how do you discover yourself
without cutting yourself open? at times
i want to peer into my skin. infrared
heat of my organs still glowing invisible.

even if i withstood the pain of driving
the knife-blade down the center
of my body as if to gut myself, fish
for the clues of who i am by of what

i am comprised, what would i find?
an anatomical heart. raw muscle. a wet fist
clenched. coils of flesh tubing—and in it
juices—slick red and pink and marbled

with blue veins. i want to pull out the mystery
and scarf it around my neck like a noose until
i too am blue with epiphany. would i find
more gold, the source of it, the earth’s rock-

core, carbon-rich mantle churning charcoal
into crystal diamond, hope-blue, specked with
mineral, all black and red-hot, millions of years,
the dust of dead giants or just my liver?

pestolince

2009-04-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

the other day i went to trader joe’s with the intent to purchase the ingredients necessary to make my own pesto, improvising along with what i new and i got sprouted wheat pasta too to go with my homemade italian green sauce so then i made it in the blender my mother bought me when i moved into this apartment and i’ve only been using it for protein shakes and frozen daiquiris and margaritas and never anything savory, so naturally i was excited for this new culinary adventure upon which i was embarking, which i had to do in the afternoon because i had gotten complaints about blending things at night from my neighbors, the old bats, and when i made my pesto i think i put too much oil and not enough pine-nuts and i personally feel like it needed more parm’ but it was still good and i poured it over my special pasta and ate it for lunch at work very quickly because i was running late and it felt like the wheat was blooming in me and there were waves of grain like the idyllic portrait that foreigners or children have of america, growing inside me, violently like an arms race. oh, what i have done with my blender!

it will break

2009-04-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

“A well-placed period can be like a spike to the heart.”
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

at the end, the poem—this
piece—being written, of
the line. it will

break, as poems do
usually and often, the way
they are written

are meant to break. i
will crack it [open
wide] open with

my bare hands—
pen, type
and text—

a.) part out into frag-
ile particle matter,
dust. b.) la-

(like glass, the
dawn [whether or
not, you are awake

to see it], young
hearts or guitar-
strings by fingernails)

ment the end. the
poem—this pi-
ece, the matters

(c.) like a voice)
be-ing writ-ten
of of-ten.

hemophiliac

2009-04-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

the rent is due on the first;
there is a grace

period.
then some

bills: cell phone, cable, car
insurance, student
loans, fines, tickets,
groceries, the accidents that were

my fault and my broken promise/s,
and more fines.

i was late this month. i will defer
again. in my dream
someone dies and i am okay
with it. i wake
crying, remembering smiling
in my dream, into a reality.
i feel clammy and flip the duvet
onto its colder side. i won’t be able to fall asleep again.

this is how my mother sleeps. she imagines herself dead,
she tells me, i will regret it so much, she tells me, when she is gone.
she is right: still i dream her dead. she can’t sleep because she’s afraid
that i might die while her eyes are closed. maybe she could save me if she doesn’t fall

asleep, she tells me.

i offer her a materialist reading: her flesh
is lacerated and these pisos are falling out of the split.
she takes a needle and a strand her own hair to sew it shut.
i pick up the coins from the floor she had spilt to put them back inside her skin,
but she has already finished threading.