August 2011
2 posts
“”Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself...”
– Steve Martin - Born Standing Up
June 2009
1 post
Dear God, I am Poor and Restless
And I will beat him with my fists like a dog;
Dig with my fingernails at his eyeballs.
This will be sweet relief.
This will be the end of me.
We men, we are sickening.
I will maintain my birthright;
Sleep soundly with pleasant dreams—
I do not question my motives.
The grass grows tall like a child.
The hills roll like hills.
Even I remember Eden,
Thought I know my father’s...
May 2009
7 posts
“If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.”
– Wyatt (Peter Fonda), Easy Rider
Speech Given at the Battle of Bunker Hill
Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
And if they are not white enough,
Do not shoot at all.
We will not kill those who are
Yellowed like jaundice;
Weak livers leaking.
Guns shaking with the cowardice
of the unwell.
We will take them in,
Belittle them with shouted malice.
Call ourselves honorable.
We will ride our horses west—
Gather us tracts of land.
Gather...
“EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the...”
– Joseph Beuys, I Am Searching for Field Character
“PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, Promote living art, anti-art,...”
– George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto
April 2009
21 posts
It Could've Gone the Other Way
“Well,” he said,
And he stepped out the door,
“The marigolds sure look nice
This time of year.”
He had his hands in his pockets.
He fumbled a pen restlessly.
He isn’t my neighbor, really.
I have known him for years,
Stumbling harmlessly
Towards the automobile,
And he is me.
“Do ya hear that? Are ya hearin’ it? Come on. You’re welcome to it,...”
– Luke (Paul Newman), Cool Hand Luke
“You can’t win. You know that, don’t you? It doesn’t matter if...”
– Randy (Darren Dalton), The Outsiders
Alliierte!
I grasp the gasping collapse of a jackbooted train. The street is for sale, the street is for sale cried the wild anarchy rain. Cried the black, cried the red.
Forever fascism fits into the memory list of a nation. Of the nationals. I am green, the cracking glass limits my trodden pace. We are sad like passing seconds. I am stained. We yell from within the mouths of masters, the street is...
Butch Cassidy Loved The Sundance Kid
The American Man is obsessed with the American West. The American Man: all dust and dungarees; gunfights and sentimental whores. All fast hands and some Kid or another.
Robert Redford once played the Sundance Kid on the silver screen; the fastest hands in the West. He and his partner in crime, Butch Cassidy, lost their touch and fled south to Bolivia to escape their would-be captors. When they...
“You know, you should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had...”
– Sheriff Ray Bledsoe (Jeff Corey), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Unsalted
Native lady,
Sell golden, glowing creamy edibles.
Pour bright yellow convenience.
Slick, smooth layers, placid.
Forget, forget the wind-shaped land!
Offer now knees, skirt.
Soft fringe dress, bursting.
Shapes pressing, immediate.
This will always be your harvest.
Run, young one!
You contain plastic!
This is the Monotonous Midwest
Smoke rises up,
Signals for the comically inept.
I am John Nash of the rural lifestyle.
Dirt tracks streak across the grey highway,
Remnants of a metal monster
Rising up in a child’s eye.
A silo rises up in the background,
Phallic in a fallow field.
Perhaps that would tell you something of America.
“I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists...”
– Claes Oldenburg, I Am for an Art
“Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you’re...”
– Benny (Tom Waits), Rumble Fish
“If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I...”
– Pier Paolo Pasolini
Over Coffee
I sit at the wooden table
Next to the cappuccino
Covered in white foam,
Schaum as you called it,
Your voice quivering
And breaking in its English
But confident, powerful,
In control in its Deutsch.
You’ve since stopped speaking
English to me at all,
And my voice quivering
And breaking in its Deutsch
And also in its English.
Nackt
As we were both naked
I remember
I looked at your hand and saw
You bent your finger under your palm,
Hiding that silver ring.
I thought,
“Monogamy is for fools.”
Later, you said,
“Wenn wir mehr zeit hätten,
Ware es einfach in dir verliebt zu sein.”
We lay naked on the blue bed
Under the high alt-bau ceiling,
And I said,
“Es ware.”
And in stuttering German,
“Wir haben alle die Zeit...
There Goes the Neighborhood
If I were to go outside in my underwear—
Tight tighty-whiteys on the crisp, green lawn—
And point with my fingers at the neighbor’s house
And make machine gun sounds with my mouth,
Spittle flying from between blubbering lips,
Would you still love me?
Or would you keep up appearances,
Open the curtains in the bedrooms as you made the beds,
Let light shine in with its yellow pool,
Quietly...
“I don’t believe in god, so I don’t have to make elaborately sounded...”
– Frank O’Hara, Personism: A Manifesto