Thursday, January 24, 2013

make up


funny thing you think my debt
exists

* * *

i said wanna slow dance
right now
in the middle of this
bagel shop
over by the napkin holder
or dispenser
is it

* * *

what do you call
the look i give
you shake off
sometimes

* * *

officer i’m just getting
a cheesesteak, i’ll move
the car in a sec

* * *

we got the same
song stuck
in our head

* * *

love like work
a leash
see the cars
pass

* * *

i hope he doesn’t
take attendance

* * *

before the ocean
comes to get us

* * *

please fill out
this form

* * *

my mother dyes her hair
red every two weeks

* * *

the whole year
was a morning
i couldn’t get
enough coffee

* * *

why begin with
romanticism

* * *

i know it’s raining
i don’t care

* * *

you think charlie
parker’s upset
b/c he can’t sustain
a harmony, said
cornel west, let
me just jump out
here at the
corner

* * *

the moon does not run
on gasoline
gil ott used to sing

* * *

this is my job
you owe me 9 dollars

* * *

i have only
to live

* * *

you take a sip
of your dirty
martini

* * *

it’s a low key thing
not a party
but you can bring
a few people
if you want

* * *

just think: a country
full of human beings
sitting on couches
right now
making out
or not making out

* * *

the wind ripples
the windows
i’m awake

* * *

your sad blue
dress
i will take off
again

where

* * *

why do i have to keep
tying one
on

* * *

look at all the
birthdays

* * *

boss is out tomorrow
let’s do something

* * *

it’s the united states of wells
fargo

* * *

liam neeson fights
a wolf
to the death
w/ his bare
hands
in alaska

* * *

maybe we’ll make
another one
but this baby’s
dead

* * *

let me just jump out
here at the corner

* * *

like falling asleep
on your couch
as you read poems
to me against
my knees

* * *

i like your voice
how you read

* * *

certain sorts of faces
are climbing up
thru me

* * *

one
crow
caws

* * *

i’m drunk
and it’s freezing

* * *

new law: straight people
cannot get married

* * *

new law: no more
insurance companies

* * *

new law: throw em
under the bus


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

inaugural poem

i read the first line
and closed the tab

Thursday, January 17, 2013

dancing

A short film by Philly poet Hassen Saker:

Thursday, January 10, 2013

kazoo

cops in the apple store
working for “the city”
like you have to stay here
and be the place
no poem
so all mayors
must hang
as real ornaments
done to you
from trees parks
chalked up
all bodies make
a case for bracing
yourself, the city’s lights
settle in your girl’s
face who are fugitives
to grow us past mere
poetics
i am an ancestor too
who meant by “permanence”
(like a car)
food, shelter and sex
while performing abandonment
which is a door
in a cloud—open it
for the noose
made of bill gates
and watch bill move his mouth
over the toilet
40 public schools
into
one
your
assignment: write
an essay in which you crawl
toward subjectivity
as flat tires
gallop thru the wheezing
infrastructure


Saturday, January 5, 2013

new year resolutions


                                      (consume consume)

*

It was as if they were in a cage whose door might as well have been wide open, for they could not escape. Nothing outside the cage had any significance, for nothing else existed any more. They stayed in the cage, estranged from everything except the cage, without so much as a flicker of desire for anything outside the bars. It would have been peculiar—indeed impossible—to break out into a place with neither reality nor significance. Absolutely impossible. Inside the cage, in which they had been born and in which they would die, the only tolerable framework of experience was the real, which amounted to an irresistible instinct to act so that things should have significance. Only if things had significance could one breathe, and suffer. It was as though there was an understanding between things and the silent dead that it should be so, for the habit of acting so that things should be significant had become a human instinct, and a seemingly eternal one. Life was the important thing, and the real was part of the instinct that gave life some slight meaning. The instinct did not try to imagine what might lie beyond the real, because there was nothing beyond it. Nothing significant. The door stayed open and the cage became more and more painful in its reality, which was significant for countless reasons and in countless ways.

We have never left the age of the slave traders.

--Raoul Vaneigem (translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith)


*

                                      (Louis Faurer)


*

two thousand zero zero

I remember millennial
paranoia
if no one else does

how at twelve ten a m
after
we’d sung 1999
and everyone
had kissed everyone
once the skinny
dipping began
I walked
the gravel road
cars parked
in the dark
on every side
to my friend’s toyota
and turned the radio on
to hear
the world burn

nothing

and I was so
disappointed
to know that
everything
would go on
being so
contemporary
and awful

--Brandon Holmquest


*

                                      (consume consume)


*

                                      (consume consume)


*


                                      --CAConrad


*


                                      (street art utopia)


*

Ballad of the Poors

Someday (again) (soon) (I hope) the POORS
will delete our invisible shackles.

The POORS will stop filling our mouths
with cocks and peppermints and high fructose

corn syrup, and our brain cells will be light
again, like hummingbirds.

Someday the POORS, the ninety-nine percent, someday
we’ll all make breakfast for each other on a

Tuesday afternoon. The Christian POORS will love
the Gay POORS and all the colors of POORS

Will make Dyonisian love with each other until
there is no more whiteness anywhere but

Olive oil or Sandpaper or whatever and whatever
until color is just another adjective we barely

Even use. Someday the POORS will realize
that coffee tastes better to us, and toilet paper

Feels better to us, and movies are more
magical to us, and fucking feels ten times better

When you’re hungry and exhausted and afraid
of who might come in. Someday when Jesus is back

The Christians will all repent and be saved
and the Angels will spread their rainbow wings

Over even the most shameful Republican tapping
his foot in the dirtiest public restroom stall.

Someday when the POORS stop believing in money
they’ll recognize Jesus again in the language

itself/in the language of their children instead
of the language of their Oppressor.

Someday when the POORS stop believing in money
they’ll recognize again the voices of the Prophets

In spite of the hate-speech of the slack-jawed monkey
puppets sleeping the skyscrapers and sleeping in the cubicles!

Someday each POOR will reach out her fingers
and lead the Oppressors by their ties into the barbeque-

scented dusk of anti-ownership, and we’ll all get high
along the pure brown sandy beaches of Vieques
and Pittsburgh and everywhere and wherever.

--R/B Mertz


*



*

The poem will end
Okay--I didn't mean to be that melodramatic
I mean there are always road accidents
They won't leave the dance floor tonight
Even if I start reading Das Capital out loud
So there is love--and it collapses
Under the mercy of production
You stood there--angry and fragile
Out of childhood fear
And the Marxists' failures
Which is almost the saddest thing you know

--Maged Zaher


*

                                      (consume consume)

*

"I stood waiting" "for some minutes" "in this very" "alive darkness—"
"the air so vibrant," "the trees awake" "There were flowers," "mixed
grasses," "growing lower" "in the dark," "& I was relieved" "to be
near them" "after so much time" "where nothing grew" "Then" "I heard a

song" "faint & blurred," "a slow song" "I heard it" "as if through
walls" "As if" "there were a room" "next to where I stood" "& someone,"
"a man," "sang inside of it" "The tune was sad," "& attracting"
"I approached it—" "where its source seemed to be—" "& it moved away

from me" "just a" "short distance" "This happened twice" "Then I
understood" "I was to follow it:" "& so it led me—" "through deep
woods" "& clearings," "for" "a long while" "The voice sang" "the
same melody" "over" "& over" "mournful" "& intimate" "in a language"

"I didn't recognize—" "or didn't think I did:" "it was hard to" "hear
the words—" "Till at last we" "reached a meadow" "where the song"
"ceased to sound," "pale & empty" "with trees around it" "Then I
sank to" "the ground" "& fell asleep for" "a long time" "But when I

awoke" "of course" "it was dark"


--Alice Notley