Tuesday, November 20, 2012

old people vs. babies


go vote in the church
whenever your drunk
little heart desires

* * *

quiet sex

* * *

ultrasound
normal

* * *

i am making out
w/ a tree

* * *

basting

* * *

i’m so sick of all
the tax talks

* * *

there is a little boy on the bus
who won’t shut up
his name is ryan

* * *

go back to jersey, heidegger

* * *

we can just have peas from a can

* * *

i shook wilson goode’s hand today
it looked like bad porn
which is what we wanted

* * *

god is like walmart
he has everything

* * *

we can roll around in
the wet red clay
listening to otis redding
all day
drinking wawa coffee

* * *

you were born at 9:13pm
eating an avocado
in the twilight of a mediocre career

* * *

i am now eating a soggy tuna sandwich
and thinking about why my experiment
isn’t working

* * *

colin farrell is filming on the rooftop
across from my lunchroom window

* * *

there really are naked chicks

* * *

that asshole’s asshole
is going in a poem

* * *

so i’m having a child
the name north is off
the table

* * *

i can’t believe they killed him

* * *

life on earth = B-

* * *

you’re gonna flag
my shit

* * *

at 5th & miff

* * *

meeting yorty at lucky in 20


Friday, October 5, 2012

spoons

poached eggs on toast
& a peach
the sky falls
guys put
gold on bones
til a way of life
sticks
poetry for the last
time is not work
i have no insurance
you have no blimp
an army of bridal
showers
blankets the future
i would join the army too
if i were a lizard
but no
that’s not how it is
my heart waters like yours
claims nothing
& customers just
happen
like government
is the day inside us
memorial
day pops
it’s spleen de paris
look busy in the face
no blah the melody
a good job is
pellegrino
caps & shutters
your name in my
pocket
& the moon rolls
down the street
to spit on us
quick
let’s make out
quick
in front of these kids

Saturday, September 29, 2012

poem for satan

in the hatching of eggs
for example
the eggs of the potato bug
those of the canary
those of the barnyard hen
the eggs of ducks and geese
those of the mallard
the eggs of the parrot and the ostrich
the number of days in a week
in the making of an elephant
satan has a headache
when you open it
he collapses
and the horse rises from the ground
on its two front legs
a cow rises from the ground
with its two hind legs
and says MOOOOO as waves
of the sea roll in on shore
and the great botanist
of soil, moisture, and headaches
and day or night
by flowers that were open
and those that were closed
on the stalks of collapse
each watermelon has
each orange has
each ear of corn has
each stalk of wheat has
every bunch of bananas has
an unsharpened pencil
with which to write
the bible and give
you a headache

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

wormwood walkmouth

In the middle of spring I collaborated with CAConrad on a weeklong (Soma)tic exercise, after which we wrote a poem and then wrote over and through the poem while getting drunk on absinthe in my kitchen. Below you can read the exercise we created and both versions of the poem that followed. Go here to read more of Conrad's exercises.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

COYDUP


COYDUP's a zine made by poets Meg Ronan and Katy Bohinc to pass around at Occupations or wherever you please. Here's the idea--you print some up, fold them in half, go outside and offer them to people for free or leave them in public and private places for someone to find. Or make your own and do the same. One sheet of 8 and a half by 11 paper, double-sided, folded in half; MS word. Meg and Katy made the first two issues during Occupy DC and OWS last year, and the third issue--which you can click on below--for the national gathering in Philly earlier this summer. COYDUP will show you a good time. Issue 4 out soon.



Friday, August 3, 2012

joe paterno is our football coach


you just gave ten cents
to a local charity
improving children’s lives

* * *

you deserve it
their lives
water
coming out of
your penis

* * *

GIVE water

* * *

when you say nation
and mean it
there’s no nation

go figure

* * *

hard to explain this
to an 18-yr-old football
player who’s written nation
four times in his brief
opening paragraph

* * *

go figure
the i in team
rub some dirt
on it

* * *

the i in team
wants the words
as breezes

* * *

as breezes as civil service

* * *

as breezes as open season

* * *

who’s ready for a dead baby
joke?

* * *

nobody
because this poem’s title
is in your name

* * *

joe pa

* * *

there’s a picture of joe paterno
on my credit card
my first one
my only one

* * *

as a kid i followed the team
and wound up in its school
because of that—the blue & white
sharp
basic
no bullshit
uniform

and it was pennsylvania
almost
local

* * *

but the town was disneyland
for douche bag frat types
who majored in being
their fathers

* * *

not that i never
enjoyed myself
in happy valley

* * *

i even went to a few games
in 1998 & 1999 when
they choked real bad
end of the season

* * *

there’s a joy
in watching
a great team fall
apart
suddenly
something you learn easily
growing up in philly

* * *

penn state was never
my team
go figure

* * *

in fall 1999 i was writing my first poems

i met matthew kremer & sassy ross
poets
who are still my friends

13 years later

* * *

ken rumble & c.s. giscombe
poets
who were my first teachers

* * *


a sense of possibility
in language then
got me in this situation
(today)
largely
to have given up
on character & plot
for the possible
which is nothing
really

to be the tree
as you say tree

* * *

at penn state
go figure

* * *

you might say
i began to learn
the i in team

* * *

to learn the i in team
is something
like a long march
thru an institution

to invade a phrase
from rudi dutschke
a student
a teacher
who believed you change
society by working within
or re-creating existing
institutions & loci of power
over time

* * *

rudi was german but his team
was international
and socialist
that’s why he got shot
in the head
in 1968

* * *

the bullet
however
took 12 years
to kill him

a long march
during which
rudi kept
winning

* * *

the i in team
is a body

not a bullet

* * *

funny the washington
bullets are now called
the washington
wizards

* * *

wash
wash
wash

* * *

i’ve got serious doubts
about the efficacy of
a long march thru any
institution in the usa
a team whose many
& various paraphernalia
root deeply & everywhere
its secret class war
so plain as day
shirts on people

* * *

to speak for myself
a life in poetry’s been
more a slow shedding
of nation
its constant
paraphernalia

* * *

some days i can almost
speak as myself

* * *

have you seen my shirt?

* * *

seems there’s a team
in i
that too few know

* * *

makes it tough
to bank on this
“critical pedagogy”
as meaningful work

* * *

this summer
like last summer
i’ve got a job
teaching basic writing
to freshman football
players at temple university
so they can get it out of
the way
before the season
starts

* * *

you might say i'm a tool
for temple’s football program

* * *

pays $4800 for six weeks
before taxes

not bad
at all

* * *

off the bat
i tell my students
i don’t represent temple
or community college or
wherever i’m teaching
which is mostly true
since wherever
i’m teaching
you’ve hired
an independent contractor

* * *

“adjunct”

* * *

the university does
what it can
to prevent long
marches
thru it

* * *

most w/ real jobs
in such places
are not exactly radical
which is to say
not exactly just

* * *

FAKE PROGRESS
2012

like

FAKE PROGRESS
2008

like

FAKE PROGRESS
2004

etc
etc

* * *

you get the picture
more than you
know

* * *

support for adjunct unionization
efforts has been next to nil
at temple

* * *

next to nil
you take what
you can get

* * *

hello, nil

* * *

the university is run like wal-mart
i tell my students

and we talk about it

* * *

we read a little paulo freire
about two pages

* * *

i tell them stories
make them laugh

to try to explain it

* * *

(sigh)

* * *

(yawn)

* * *

can i go to the bathroom?

* * *
. . .
. . .
. . .

* * *

are we watching a movie today?

* * *

yes we are:

he got game
(spike lee)

* * *

soundtrack by chuck d:

it might feel good
it might sound a little somethin
but fuck the game
if it ain’t sayin nothing


* * *

homework: what is it
for your game to say something?

what do you want it to say?

* * *
. . .
. . .
. . .

* * *

uhhhhhh . . .

* * *

god . . .

* * *

what time is it?

* * *

okay

* * *

up again
old heart

* * *

that’s right
i quote emerson
to myself
in the morning
so i can keep
teaching these
remedial classes

* * *

and drink up the espresso

* * *

and think about this wonderful girl
i’ve been seeing
how good she makes me
feel

* * *

until my thought bleeds into the abstract
mess of old worry & feeling
staked to love & identity—a single stake
no intelligence
can account for
and so re-focus on work
off past in the spine

* * *

wait, what’s this about?

* * *

why are you rioting?

* * *

“because joe pa’s our football
coach and they fired him”

* * *

oh, right

* * *

joe pa was the winningest
coach in college football history
until the ncaa “vacated” all
his victories going back to 1998

now he’s the 5th winningest coach
of all time

* * *

now we know
if you’re a great football coach
and you help cover up your
assistant coach’s rapes
of young boys
the ncaa will vacate
some of your victories
after you die
of lung cancer

* * *

perhaps such details
aren’t necessary since
at present that’s all
common knowledge

but i wonder who’ll
remember
in say five years

who will remember
in 20 years

* * *

will this poem even exist in 20 years?

* * *

what about in 50
or 100 years?

* * *

will joe paterno
still be
our football coach?

* * *

next week
my football class
will be reading
“the meaning of success”
a chapter in michael messner’s book
power at play: sports and the problem of masculinity

* * *

messner criticizes the lombardian ethic
which places winning above all else
so that an athlete’s self-worth
depends always and only
on his latest performance

* * *

sort of like in the art world

* * *

“you’re only as good as your last game”

* * *

consider your own sense of failure
low self-esteem and problems
w/ intimacy

and how it may be linked to
the way you’ve constructed
your own identity in relation
to an imagined public—“the crowd”

* * *

some of my students won’t
want to hear about this
they won’t want to hear
that the lombardian ethic
which got them a full ride
is used to cash in on athletes
especially those from poor
backgrounds (like themselves)
who will most likely end up
seeing themselves as losers

* * *

joe paterno
advanced as he was
didn’t want to hear
about jerry sandusky
raping boys in the shower

* * *

raping women is common practice
among male athletes in college

you can blame the individual
every time & forget about it

you can vacate the rape
of a woman

of boys not so much

* * *

a guy from last year’s football class
is going to jail this year for
raping a woman

* * *

who roots for you in jail?

* * *

here we are
in a remedial class

which includes
the middle class
and all of their
fleeting victories

* * *

can we talk
about rape and $$$$$
and our football coach

* * *

this is no longer
a performance

* * *

you the i in team
may begin

Friday, July 6, 2012

la plata, la estación, una conversación

Three poems translated into Spanish by Carlos Soto-Román were just published in Gaceta de Estudios Latinoamericanos.

Monday, June 18, 2012

red sky

my body was a lake
people fished in
i watched
from a tree
dozed
as leaves
hard
to
believe
that’s my hand
trembling
when my son
goes to shake
it goodbye
not me
that i was people
son, let me tell you
true anonymity
is a mannequin
getting fucked
by a bum
in the lobby
of macy’s
the whole show
in which an object
any object
if he or she likes
being an object
eats holes—
have you ever been
a moth
swatted to dust
faked out
by “the light”
in search of form
as if form
were not restlessness
                fishes
are form
                teases
the sip
home
for example
                of diseases a lot
of trombone
can be said to
let the park be sadness
flat as sadness
          freedom
which is a hinge
this very line all
greased up
for you to step
any direction
your mouth pleases
in mug of world’s
best form
itself
lowing heart
down
heavy
in the dam
if i repeat
“the one true thing”
every time
“the one true thing”
sews a button
back on
your shirt
the button is tender
it lobbies
for its own
subversion
w/ out knowing
flat as sadness
i will teach you
how to come
from somewhere
here, put this name
tag on & go
play w/ the others

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

tag

what heals the damage
done to language ain’t
the question—leave
your poem on a bus
& get off
to talk at all, or
to crib our students,
i got options
i’m sick
throw up an estate
it’s real
it won’t cheat on
you or anyone, still
you worry you won’t get
the loan, take it personally. well,
the women i got over
i lived with, says a friend,
says to start over
       to destroy desire
you have to fight over
daily physical space for
a time, house of mind
only a limb from that—the mouth,
telling you off. speechless,
but w/ pride in the shame,
shared, each of you splits
into strips, a fiction rusting off
the end of a branch
nice to meet you. my decrepit
father attacks me in a dream
foaming at the mouth. this
is real—signs held up repeat
it: this is real, this is real as
on city hall’s first day of
school: wake up, wake up
from the cars you are—cars
are people, their attitudes
curl the spine, turn the eyes’
corners flat over the nerves.
optimus prime is not your
friend—go ahead & cross
the fucking street
it's not on the test
it’s yours—
if they ask you for credit
give them a branch
when they want you to get it
chew on some grass
         i know
         i know
city hall is the brain
of a shark, it fits
in a jar: real estate—
you could smash it
against a wall
or bury it
as a teacher
as a teacher, i say you’re all
teachers & are afraid to learn
we look at tusks
in a cabinet
for digging up roots
buffalo come back
on the nickels
like a told-you-so
i thought their bones
were from giant people
in a blue book. in a blue book,
be a native speaker for
once, have a face
& a body of nickels
your path to a bachelor’s
degree starts here
says an asshole
on a train about
to explode
the neighborhood is turning
the corner
says an asshole
made of drywall
in a casino of pennies
at the feet of the poets—
it’s years to do another life
calmer than newsweek
in a blue book. in a blue book,
say why this train you catch
is years to hum
piano up to door
this train you catch
its ears
for 700 pages
of fairy tales
all one horse
700 pages
all one horse
    one steed
of shakespeare water
teacher says please
stand up
like a state
please discuss inner
refreshment
please discuss baby
corn tonsils
for 700 pages
in a blue book
calmer than newsweek
it’s multiple choice:
who are bill & melinda
gates
who are the rolling
stones
of wall street
who are you to fill out
their bubbles
what smalltimer keeps
spraypainting RAT
in all the crosswalks
along 10th street
from cvs six blocks
to my corner—twice
at fernon RAT
spraypainted over
in black
by a vigilant neighbor
to no avail—RAT is re-applied
good as new
RAT
each block
RAT
the sure refrain
as you walk to cvs
RAT
& back
for toothpaste or toilet paper
less & less able
RAT
to distinguish between
RAT
the images in mind
of whoever RAT might refer to
RAT
& the author of RAT
& yourself:
                RAT
                RAT
                RAT
                RAT

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Saturday, May 5, 2012

momentum


* * *

momentum is something

* * *

i have sometimes

* * *

overrated

* * *

i just saw a payday
commercial
for the first time
in my life

* * *

all peanuts and caramel

* * *

underrated

* * *

candybar

* * *

that was in a bar
down the street
full of asterisks
i might report

* * *

the payoff
is time off
no fooling

* * *

it was a new place
called watkins
on 10th st
in south philly

* * *

i’ll give you that

* * *

i had dinner by myself
a burger
it was fantastic

* * *

not true—actually
it wasn’t that
good

* * *

i said nothing to no one
save the bartender
a nice quiet girl
we exchanged words
of business
and polite thanks

* * *

i watched a tv show called
30 Rock on mute
read the closed caption
laughed quietly to myself
a couple of times

* * *

tina fey
&
alec baldwin!

* * *

stars

* * *

happy hour 5-7
half off all pints
including brooklyn
black chocolate
stout

* * *

not bad!

* * *

also at one point
dude next to me
got up, said “now
you’ve got more
elbow room”

* * *

elbow room!

* * *

2.50 not bad
for all that
year 2012
philly usa

* * *

on a planet


* * *

on a planet?


* * *

on a planet


* * *

rule is say anything
it’s a poem
if your neighbor
feels it

* * *

do i have neighbors
sometimes
i wonder

* * *

what w/ all this
elbow
room

* * *

back now typing
in my apartment
btwn the asterisks
of sleep and work

* * *

who do i neighbor

* * *

i’ve seen neighbors
in other countries
not like here

* * *

we’re standoffish
and think highly
and often of real
estate, which is
killing us all

* * *

i’m in no hurry
to die

* * *

you?

* * *

hard to believe
we’re still here

* * *

given, say, what all
went down btwn us
last century
and the continued
proliferation of
nuclear weapons


* * *

not to mention global
warming and the rapid
depletion of natural
resources such as
water

* * *

really if you’re still
reading this
i’ve got to wonder

* * *

but can you defend
anything you do
really
in terms of time
which you know probably
very little
probably actually nothing
about?

* * *

we have all the time
in the world

* * *

and you are lazy
which
i love
in secret

while you work
at nothing
really

* * *

under my calm
a minutemen
song from the 1980s
pops to mind:

“paranoid chant”

* * *

the song begins

i try to work and i keep thinking of world war 3
i try to talk to girls and i keep thinking of world war 3


* * *

cold war
punk rock

* * *

the singer d. boon
died in a car accident
while the band was
on tour

* * *

mike watt, the bass player
shows up on my facebook
page sometimes under
“people you may know”

* * *

should i send him a “friend request”?

* * *

“you like to ruminate”
a teacher told me once
suggesting that i take
too long to respond
too long to articulate
my thinking

* * *

i ruminate

i chew the cud
like a cow
and watch you
stare into the mouth
for a neighbor

while i imagine myself
transforming into
my father

* * *

comes a time
to shit out
the burger

* * *

who are my friends if
not neighbors

* * *

i miss ted berrigan
whom i’ve never met
nor will on this planet

* * *

and i don’t believe in
planets
after life here

* * *

too bad for you
i imagine my mother
saying to me

* * *

let’s try to move on
from religion
shall we

* * *

this is for you

* * *

it doesn’t matter
what fucking century
it is

* * *

friend

* * *

honesty is hard work
it lets you down

* * *

i’m still not sure
what i’m trying
to prove

* * *

sometimes writing
isn’t the way

* * *

sometimes sex all day
isn’t the way

* * *

sometimes getting drunk
all week isn’t the way

* * *

sometimes drinking coffee
all day isn’t the way

* * *

the poet anne boyer
posts on facebook
“we need communes”

* * *

8 people like this

* * *

i guess i like it too

* * *

she’s in kansas

* * *

i think i’d rather be
alone in a room
w/ anne boyer’s poems
than in a commune
w/ a bunch of poets
or radical leftists

* * *

right now suddenly
i feel love
for everything
and could cry
if i knew i didn’t
have to keep
writing

* * *

i know you can’t
feel that right now
anyway

* * *

it’s the land

* * *

it’s the land
we are out of touch
with

* * *

with

* * *

if there's no land
there's no history
and time is money
not motion thru
space

* * *

john cage’s “lecture on nothing”
just
popped to mind

* * *

its rhythm
its pacing

* * *

you should read it
if you haven’t
aloud some time
to some one
you care very deeply
about

* * *

or aloud to an empty
room

* * *

you’ll be glad
you did

* * *

that’s about all
the advice
i have to offer
today

* * *

you are a ball of
romance, go on

* * *

take the skinheads bowling
take them bowling

* * *

from here on out
larry anderson
is calling balls
and strikes

* * *

you must be fucking blind
he says
during the commercial

* * *

it is time
for a pitching
change

* * *

the umpire watches
me calm down

* * *

it’s okay, larry, have
another drink
don’t forget
your sense of
humor

* * *

it’s only a game

* * *

you’re winning
on the radio
between pitches

* * *

don’t worry

i’m not saying
that life is baseball
or whatever

even though it is

* * *

strike one

* * *

strike two

* * *

strike three

* * *

i’m going for a walk

Friday, April 20, 2012

speaker of the house

woke up spooked, outside
a womb. what womb? for
a walk, valu-plus, walk it off
outta business, this paper
cup life a ghost in building.
what do you say to someone
who’s working when you’re
not. you just get your gum
and go on. in passing, put a
hoodie on, the speaker no
longer recognizes you. who’s
the speaker? wasn’t it the
speaker flew to philly to speak
to the wharton school of
business but got spooked
en route and canceled when
he caught word a public would
show—people, who live there—
here, work, fight, love. stand
in the street, waiting. spokes
in a wheel, spinning—no house.
love is no house, never recognized
the speaker anyway. anyway,
get a job, get a job on a jet back
to job, says a dude on a jet in the
wind, as a job is a cloud in a hoodie.

Monday, April 9, 2012

citypaper


My good friend Chad Willenborg and I used to try to win the citypaper writing contest every year. Then they stopped having it for a while (no poetry, at least). Then they started it back up again and this year Chad, a fiction writer, persuaded me to send in some poems. We both won. We celebrated last Thursday at Dirty Frank's where we used to bitch about losing 8, 9, 10 years ago.

If you're in Philly, the 4/5 issue will be in newsboxes for a few more days. Or you can go read Willenborg's story, "Blackout" (an excerpt from his novel) here. You can find my poem on the citypaper site, too, but the formatting is messed up, so just scroll down this blog to Feb 11, boom, winner. Some nice chance overlap between the story and poem.

* * * * * * *

PS - a facsimile of the paper. Click and flip to page 18:

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

please do not lean against doors

if it stops
& they open
you fall out

you fall out
& they open
if it stops

if it stops
if it stops
if it stops

a conversation

Alina Pleskova interviewed me in person--the old-fashioned way, w/ a tape recorder--about how I got into poetry in the first place, ended up running a reading series, and why I write the way I write. You can read it in Apiary.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

a few reviews, all at once

Recently, Toby Altman reviewed Old News in Apiary Magazine. So did Daniel Bouchard in Zoland Poetry, Gina Myers in The Rumpus, and Joshua Ware on his blog. Thanks, folks.

Also, here is a blurb--which is more like a poem--that Eric Baus wrote for the SPD page. Eric composes his blurbs and introductions almost entirely of the writer's words. Wish I wrote it myself:

OLD NEWS is a real city. Many persons on the pavements. A picture teacher. A brief history of Spirit-matter. A brief history of a lost dog. Total Assets: a flash card with the word friend on it. Professional History: picking through the garbage with Gabriel García Márquez. Often it is permitted to return to a factory. A car goes by and it doesn't explode. What's it say to all these dead people? White House for rent, 2 bdrms 1 bath.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

leap day

dan yorty makes music out of old news. we recorded this last june in dan's apartment in south philly.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

age of the forklift

it’s me, tom, talk
as fog not cheap & dead
that tree was a phone
cracked as winter’s up
a little girl’s eyes
          zooming
after fade of motor
cycle              makes you
wonder, says her mother
have good days, says the
baker, faded            have
good days           out the
door, down the street
i’m lost as that, good
as fog not eyes & bodies
yawn a school—
it’s me, tom, school
as fog not eyes & bodies
after fade of motor
again i get
beat up & move school
to school thru race
riot as if body were
speech—it is, & that was
the 90s, in shadow, much
as body’s a path from a bruise
like a trumpet—it’s been    it’s been
          this afterlife
we got hung up on
& sat outside to see
& couldn’t          you yawned
the hallway groaned the strings
are eyes shot out a trumpet
like care could
happen in a house that
counts for you—look at all these kids
i give myself what they
gave me over & over—the institutions,
i mean & the kicks to the head
                  there’s my name
                  it’s a black hole
                  i shovel things in
an if notes       a blues in a crumb
clip       the money where your
home was            cement where
the mouth is          our violent need
to shovel out description
                              for the hum
                              under the ash

Sunday, January 8, 2012

ANYWAY



I’d go to Spain just for that. The whole image (from this website) gives me all that’s great in the world at the moment, in a moment. “In the world.” Funny it’s hard to feel “in the world” sometimes. Can you get chased out?

“The history of our time calls to mind those Walt Disney characters who rush madly over the edge of a cliff without seeing it: the power of their imagination keeps them suspended in mid-air, but as soon as they look down and see where they are, they fall.

“Contemporary thought . . . can no longer rest on its own delusions. What used to hold it up, today brings it down. It rushes full tilt in front of the reality that will crush it: the reality that is lived every day.”

That’s from The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem, written about 50 years ago, in French. On some scales, not long ago. Situationist.

Last April the poet Kit Robinson came to Philly, and I got to read with him at Fergie’s. We both happened to read poems titled “The Station.” His, from a book called The Crave, goes like this:

As you were
stuck in one place
the 70s

You thought to write
perchance to cut
a stencil

Against the time
a steady state
rhyming

With a groove
“Call Me”
the sounds of cars at night

Insubstantial
against the space
of an empty lot

Shot full of holes
the smoke
sign of the placeholder

You were just waiting
outside a factory
in-plant maintenance

Surrenders its secrets
on the off chance
guards the rails

Too many untouched to remember


Reading the poem, I can’t help but think of New Jersey. It’s the 5th stanza mostly: “Insubstantial/against the space/of an empty lot”. NJ: that steady, stationary state of dull, cloned highways and parking lots that are empty even when full. The emptiness of a reality that is lived every day in many states. Jobs, jobs, jobs. The poem runs on a concern with creating the steady state of, say, a song that would resist that reality. That last lone line gets me—untouched rails, untouched people. Train after train, call not going thru, trace of the broken down. I return to the ambiguity of “in-plant maintenance” a few lines prior, of what all’s in that—its possible subjectivity.

Here, let’s consider the following quotations as a pair of rails:

“Poetry is language on a holiday. Free to go where it will. But it is not jobless. The job of poetry is to continue, despite everything that is pitted against it.” – Kit Robinson, from poetics statement on Elective Affinities

“The Occupy movement is a holiday. There is nothing frivolous about that. Holidays are not escapes; at their best, they deepen our experiences of things. Consider the rituals of this holiday . . .” – Jeff Sharlet, from “By the Mob’s Early Light: The Ritual Significance of Occupy Wall Street” (Bookforum, Jan/Dec 2012)

Some holiday in Chicago:


Some holiday in Philadelphia:

Mic Check at Philadelphia City Council

Lately holidays like these in cities the world over—disruptions that got us thinking about the possibility of an actual public and the imagination and collaboration that would require of so many people. In the examples above, the ritual of the people’s mic (aka ‘the human mic’) stands out—an aggressive, sometimes affective tactic which, in other contexts, such as a general assembly, can create profound empathy and cooperation that fosters a culture of listening. On one hand it can be used to shut down dialogue (a good thing only when what’s being shut down is the false, ceaseless political discourse controlled by the rich); and on the other hand it can intensify communication within a group.

As Sharlet points out, at GAs “you find yourself repeating things you don’t agree with. And you watch the inevitable cranks and complainers who are forced to repeat the crowd’s pleas for them to let the meeting proceed. You become intimately aware of language, parceled out in short phrases; you reconsider which of your own words are really necessary.” The slowness and tedium of the people’s mic are elements of its strength, if only because it can help us see just how conditioned we are by convenience culture, by capitalism.



The poet Janaka Stucky took a screen shot of that image and it spread quickly over the internet via facebook. Another wonderful disruption, it struck me as so utterly perfect when I first saw it, an experience similar to first seeing the image of the giant bird on wall in Spain (above). But I also thought immediately of friends and enemies who’ve scoffed at or dismissed the occupy movement, and I laughed.

A friend re-posted the image on facebook right after me and right away someone responded defensively, idiotically, along the lines of: Are you suggesting there is some great corporate CONSPIRACY against us? This doesn’t PROVE anything . . .

You are the conspiracy, fucko, and the proof.

I didn’t say that. Actually, I didn’t reply at all because, at the time, a Tom Waits song was playing in the juke box in my head, sadly merrily, and I was enjoying it all too much, the ironies, the associations.

TIME TIME TIME TIME

“The fight for Eros is the political fight,” I’ve kept reminding myself since hearing Angela Davis speak in October. I wish there were a recording of her entire talk that night at Irvine Auditorium at Penn (a beautiful auditorium, by the way—it was my first time) so that I could revisit the whole inspiring thing. Anyway, she closed by quoting Herbert Marcuse, her former teacher: “The fight for Eros is the political fight.” And later she marched down to Occupy Philly and spoke again, for a much shorter time, and quoted, again, the poet Audre Lorde, as she has many times in many places—to sustain the holiday:

"Differences must not be merely tolerated but seen as a fund of polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic" (from Lorde’s essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”).

The full gist:


Let’s say this movement, in the U.S. at least, is about education (or learning—that might be a better word), and that all concerns are tied to it. This would include ways to talk and hear (ways of being), but also seeing how systems—especially education systems—teach us to chase ourselves out of the world. And so the movement would need to continually disrupt those systems, in new ways, with an eye always toward replacing (not just “reforming”) them. Invention is absolutely necessary here (consider Slavoj Žižek’s words at OWS, for example, and here).

Ted Greenwald’s memoir, CLEARVIEW/LIE, has me reflecting on what a city public education does to you, how it shapes your mind. School was where I learned to not learn, to not create, to shut down, be afraid, give up, hate people. Greenwald doesn’t rip into it, but he shows, in playful ways, the subtle and profound impact a public education can have (for him, it was Queens in the 50s) as his story bounces back and forth in time. Note how he squeezes in Paris 68, which reappears throughout the book:

Since the beginning of time there are Four Seasons. Our four is The School Year.

School, school yard hang out with friends, listen to radio stories, dinner, homework, bed. It’s a week night and school’s tomorrow. Halloween, Christmas, pea shooters, yoyos. Then, it’s summer.

The Filipino yoyo experts at Lamston’s did great yoyo tricks. But my favorite thing, they carve small native village scenes in the sides of the deluxe models, with rhinestones imbedded.

The diurnal course, more, courses accompany me to college, where in my second year, taking a leave of absence, go to the Meadows on a Tuesday night. Dumbfounded. What are all these people doing here,
it’s a school night.

The ghostly patterns burn into my screen.

In 1968 in Paris, at the beginning of May feel a vaguish undefinable uneasiness. Finally, figure out, paper and final time. The School Year afterburn.

Summers are great, too short. Plant stuff, play war, build tree forts, drink many-colored sodas, smoke, fish, swim. Too short.


And later in the book:

Like it or not, maybe it’s all those war movies, the war seeps into my mind . . .

At any rate, lookit

In public school, it’s very great to be in the cockpit of the American Dream. Right there the mist-enveloped pop culture crossroads crucible, in there with a devil.

Sign on the dotted line

Anyway

The dewy self is revealed, not some decorated or value-added form, call it
entertainment, once complete, personality and all, drains and makes void, something repeatable and infinitely reproducible.

Think about it, with a calendar advent of
entertainment, if one definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different outcome, entertainment is insanity’s perfect vehicle.

Get your ass in said ve-hicle.

The faint and built up fear, the same thing wants to be fresh never, is. Even if its song is an infinity cover.

Writ from inside out.

Being always
outta here, stronger and stronger. School and its directions, to my lights, start to complement what attracts my attention outside of school.

The talking to myself, underbreath cursing, is a lifelong soundtrack accompanies myself working doing something requires you gotta concentrate. Driving, after I get my license in high school, talk to the road, other cars, other drivers, the radio.

If watching TV (now and then) talk to shows, the plot, the characters the dialogue.

Same in movies, I’m not the only one with the running commentary.

Working, similar, to keep going often let my eye run over some page of something I’m reading, stop where it will use the words (however) to move on with.

Greenwald's creative adaptability is fascinating and remarkable to me—the method he found to respond to (talk from, create out of) the insanity of the “infinitely reproducible,” the monotony of pop culture/school. The tic, or habit (ritual?) in the interest of sanity leads to new forms. (It’s interesting how this sheds light on his poetry, which maybe I’ll write about elsewhere.) What I identify with here is the restlessness, from which the book’s refrain of “anyway” was likely born.

I use “anyway” constantly in conversation—as a way to move on, to keep going or to get to a point; also to level off something I just said, to reduce or dismiss its significance; or to abandon a point altogether. For me, “anyway” is often a sigh, a sign of resignation: only so much can be communicated, I give up, not worth it. You can hear it when I talk. Now where’d I learn that? Those dim hallways of those dim, dull buildings I spent all those years in?

What of my words come out that hallway of my throat?

Anyway, I’ll finish up here with a pair of animated histories to think about.