More Collapse

In THE HANDBOOK OF POETIC LANGUAGE, Stan Apps discusses poetry as a format of writing that becomes "unsuccessful language" and "meaning is a commodity." In a downturn, money -- and not just the dollar -- loses all value in any communicative/exchangeable value it may have. In a downturn, money becomes poetic. What's interesting about this downturn -- compared with other, non-globalized whimpy whimpy downturns -- is that it won't be just the dollar, but all currencies. We won't only be dealing with a devaluation of one country's currency (Oh, how cute! Old fashioned US Dollars!) but of them all. Currency, as a idea backed by a standard (federal banks, money presses, etc) becomes poetic, or unsuccessful.

Another NY Times-hating moment

"All 2,982 names together, arrayed atop parapets stretching more than 1,500 feet around two great pools, will convey the vastness of the loss."

When the world gives you insincerity ringing in your ears...

...make earrings?

someone sent me a poem about rhymes and threatened to go to the police

I think poems should rhyme
I think poems should rhyme
This way, you can memorize
The word I've chosen here
And what nasty idea came into my head
Here and here, also there
Where the line ends, that's a rhyme
Not just end rhyme but bizarro rhyme
Breaking when you least expect
There to be a fracture
Interrupting the line there's rhyme
I believe you should like rhyme
If you don't die

Then you should like rhyme because
It's memorable and you can remember it well
It's a saving fact that poems have
A poem about feelings and absurd rhyming skills
Engineered first to make you laugh
Then making you falling
In love with Ruth Lilly's mustache
What do you rhyme with that? cereal tits?

I ate so much bread I became infected with rhyme
Someone put Be Delicious perfume on their vagina
And that become part of a rhyme too.
Some writers shout their rhymes because they need hearing
Others listen and observe the natural order of the universe
Which has rhyming programmed in it naturally.

For me, the best rhyme is a middle rhyme with not
Too much power taken from delivery.
If you have to incite your poetry crowd
There are too many people at your reading
And this means you need less rhyme.

I know other writers who collect odd words
And attempt to rhyme these words with old fashioned
Words, and they no longer exist! It's fantasy!
Words cannot rhyme with nothing that doesn't exist!

What doesn't rhyme is poetry and political
Messages. Those don't rhyme!
Poetry should never be political. it's just
Talk set to music or some reader's idea
Of what a rhyme should sound like
Not anyone having the slightest inkling
To know what these words sounds make.
So there are many other uses for your poem
Like not being a poem but instead a speech
That you give that confuses people
Because Beowulf was real and you’re not.

And that's the rhyming theory
Expressed easily for you fans of rhyme
Remember that rhyme is simple and you can
Warm up with practice and repetition. begin small
Try writing first a word and then a word that is similar.
That can be a rhyme.
A rhyme can fit into a line.
You don't have to be exact.

On my end, somewhat speculatively -- probably due to the cold medication -- I've been thinking a lot about collapsitarianism lately, and about the great "what if," if all this fails...if we're thrown into some strange proto-agrarian dystopia (dystopian in that the vast majority do not know how to produce), what next? The sequence is alarming, this kind of change isn't always good. It seems to me that the following is true: Stimulus is the preservation of government and business by both government and business. If these both fail to self-preserve, then you'll have your libertarianism, and a whole lot more.

But -- and here's the trickiness of it -- if both fail, and if money and all fiats fail, then this still doesn't sync with what most are talking about in these collapsitarian circles, namely, that we're screwed, that progress is down the shitter. In a sense, it's a tap of the "restart" button. We'll be faced with a massive re-thinking of value and other tenets we've taken for granted because money has allowed us to take them for granted. Debt and lending have thrown ideas of value and worth into a tailspin. What matters now is what you paid. What you'll pay, who'll pay you and how much. This is a great abstraction and it seems as though its time is up. So regardless of civil liberties guaranteed by a government nullified by empty coffers and emptier promises, as well as voided by collapse as a legislator of ANYTHING moralistic or economic or otherwise, rather what we'll be asking is what to do when money no longer fulfills a barter/commerce agreement.What do you have that will guarantee you a good, hot meal.

Teeth make your face stink

Controversial iota
Boy gone bad bacteria
I’m not from Atlanta I’m Colorblind
Googled stink tooth

GEEK stink & dogs of march walking
Guess which arrives first?
Big crater object
Australians claim the deadliest creatures proudly
Workshop fleas in Crab Catamount
Your teeth stink? Gaza STINKS!

I'm Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat it

is a book by Sam Pink, which sounds like a pseudonym, but is actually what results when James Tate, David Markson and Tyler Durden have a baby together.

What I really want to say, though, is that this book is one of those books that gets you thinking, "Shit, I'm not writing enough. I need to PUSH myself." And also, "I'm a wuss for thinking this. I should just write." And also, "I should collage violent acts into poems." Then you realize, "Oh, Pink aleady did that. Hilarious."

Warning: Pink's book contains no violence...

...and pushes the envelope so far (& successfully, I should add) that I've turned again to other work I've written that I've been "stuck" on.

I need to risk more, I think. Once I have a looksee over some "stuck" pieces, I'll let you know someday what exactly I mean by "risking more" and just what type of "risk" I'm talking about.

Now I'm going to read into this conceptually, and while I'm unsure that Pink would want this, if he doesn't like it he can go floss with my G-string on fire...

One thing that sticks out in my mind is Spicer's idea of serial work, and how Pink taps into this vein, writing what could easily have been two books (168 pages) that draws heavily on one theme. But where other attempts of others writers to write "twee" into socially unacceptable themes haven't worked, Pinks tract on violence works very well indeed. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the book's final poem about "beating a dead horse." Pink beats well, and to sustain this kind of hilarity for 168 pages without seeming too cute or clever is an accomplishment.

Modern Poetry

What if there were
an oven
inside of another oven
so that when you turned one on
you thought: hey, this oven is burning
and you could smell what an oven is cooking
which would be oven
inside of another oven
and you would get the wrong idea
which says that men can't cook
when the oven is so distinctly male
it hurts.
You then decide to sell the oven and eat out
more often, inviting guests over
when you're gone
so they starve with no oven.
only last minute deciding
to call the delivery number with the guy
showing up too late (flat tire or chain fell off,
I don't know) and not saving any guest

on the way home, you're really tired
and you pull a hamstring
slowing your return to an otherwise empty
house full of dead guests
not taking up too much room because they're skinny
from death.
The oven is gone
For 20 bucks they picked it up
Don't stop me
really being two ovens
and delivered it to where the work of two ovens
is required to not feed guests
but you don't have enough room in your place
tho now you do with skinnier guests
which is what you always wanted from friends
a gift that fits inside an oven
where men cook.

Rosa National Parks

You are taking the bus
Which is what carries you when you pay
To places you cannot get walking
And if you choose to refuse
Payment, the blue man group will sacrifice you

My heart runs like a broken tire after you:
Soon it will be set aflame and we know how that smells

Actually I look like my dad
Before a thousand hornets
Moved into my mouth with their house, stung my taste
And your mother gave a piece to a chain-smoker bird

I gave peace to that chain smoker
With the Iron Maiden rock genocide tour honesty
For father hornet
In hiding on the bus from the secret police of buses
In hiding we learn who our germs are.
In hiding in the gearshift you called female
Omigod, do you bite?

The National Tourism Board of Aruba is Listening to Your Needs

Aruba is a small island with beautiful faces.
There faces are made of expressions.
Growing angry in Aruba creates a new land.
Link hands to create a new government!
Our expressions have caused land to form
Great white arching body
And opening mouth shark farts
Tee time is near indigestion
Eating of organic fleshes increases golf game
Increases stride increases your stretching ability
To encase a shark in a small pool for observation
Of the type of early warning shark feed Aruba faces
New forms of beautiful expressionless adventures in an aquarium

Can you see your face recharged and reflected
In the joy brought during the whale watch
We spotted the rare hump with a mirror
The promising mandible held on so firmly
As if terrified by the joy of Aruba
A whale could see
Long far off, part of the admission. Distance is his strength
Forces out wide smiling reasons to come to our island.

Saloonday Bluhddy Saloonday

Supersaver special : buy one large coke for 1.56
And with five dollars get 3.44 back.

Cold. Brrr

Everybody around me is sick with cold
I am sick with a cold
Is this because I haven't been outside in years?

My mouth is sick with cold
It's Missile on me
Mouth, You're Not Going Out Month
That way you'll get sick
And I got this way from my extended family

I'm told I sound bold
Whenever I'm afflicted with cold
Everyone around me is sick
And contaminated my water
With various chemicals unfit for bodies

Gorillas are in my mouth now
Lounging in the mist of my sick
Moving my tongue and slapping
Madly against my molars
This just in from the cold jungles of my sick

Gran Flarfismo

I

El pelo y la selva de guantes terribles
Se pone feo al atardecer
Me cago en todas las noches
Donde no me cago, todo
Piel de gallina
Tu pelo huele a carro nuevo
Lleno de huevos

El gran gato pelo tosca
Trabaja el peluqueria
En el sur donde el pelo es más tenso
Por la falta de acondicionador
Es más pelo
Que el pelo con manicure gratis
Que el pelo con vaqueros


II

¿Que voy a hacer con mi pelo
Esta noche. Necesito que el pelo sea adicional
Para sorprender mis nietos. Y gratis.


III

Me gusta mover tu pelo?
Como la selva con el hombre encima
Tu pelo no sabe votar porque no tiene derechos
Debajo de la selva
Dejada sin pelo
Va en busca de su verdadero pelo
Ya que el pelo es joven y no merece
Crecer en una familia de babosos.

Tampoco es dueño
De nadie. Como el dueño de tu pelo
Ha hecho pedazos de pelo de un verdadero obra de arte

La selva es el olor
Más mágico y útil para el ser
Humano, tambien la
Virgen de la perfecta bicicleta.
Me gusta poner tu pelo encima de todos
Como un lente de proteína
Quiero chocolate primo.

3rd Wheel

In Spanish, to say someone is the fifth wheel, they're called the "violinist." This necessary figure -- she who provides the music by which "the two" dine, flirt, romanticize -- renders this "leftover" person's awkwardness useful in much more tactful terms than in English, where a third wheel turns the configuration into a trike.

New Blog

Where I chronicle my fainting spells
Where I leave behind unconsciousness
Where I tell you what Vaso-Vagal Syncope
Tends to make you afraid of.

Body Rock (Preface)

Rock your body
Make it the hardest it’s ever been
Right before you achieve maximum
Hardness, force it into shape.
Let it all out, go and enjoy your hard rock
Body pressing against all sides.

A body so hard with bursts
Energy will request your body visit energy seminars
Of hard bursting bodies yours is the most rocking
Rocking your body to avoid bursting
Is the way to achieve maximum solid

Hardness, let go to enjoy your hard rock
Body pressing against all sides
You have now achieved a hardness we only dream of
Rocking your body along to identify with The Rosy Crucifixion.
Many onlookers will pay attribution.
A body that covets attention
Can be yours.

Others might have tried, some with success
But a rock hard gruesome body is the lowest
Common denominator under the stress of heaviness
As long as you force yourself absolutely
Into a healthy routine
You’ll be bothered until you achieve the body
The source of all your dreams
About the body you will use
To reply with what’s yours

You can’t imagine results
Before you subject yourself to cruelty
There’s a new body there
Down by the creek constantly exercising

inside my eyes

I can’t escape my eyes
Darkness has seemed to overcome my looking
Everything in this room is foggy.

I am in a Steven Wonder song.
I am in a disco
Each person above my bed moves chairs
I feel I’m stuck in songs with a bed
Because there’s no real reason for me to be sick
Except something crawled wrong into my eyes.

I cannot delay inside my eyes
Whose own insides ask for delay
So many objects my eye’s insides see
FAST! I have a headache very big
Relying on enormous to fulfill that adjective
My headache is the most sincere expression
Of the feeling stuck in my eyes.

I feel like household industrial strength cleaners
Before it was made illegal
I had hope Wednesday would come sooner
Because my eyes escape that day.

Kitty

The kitty controls
every function.

Kitty

The cat has vomited before
I can move the suitcases.

Kitty

My cat and I both
getting our food
from boxes.