José Begonia

You've known the lay
Of California

From Baja,
To Mt. Preston in Del Norte.

To know about the Hot Springs
And your premeditated and ruthless

Feigned fight
Against the sweet
Selection of you,
And of his erectness.

The Ponderosas
Were as quiet
—in the dark—
As they ever are,

Playing on the wind.

And the Ponderosa after,
Where you maintained
For him, the merit
Of the hot-lamp Roast Beef,

To calm his still frayed nerves
For having taken you
To Ponderosa
In the first place.

But he was a Christian
And you, a virgin.

And the overwhelming steam
Blushing your faces
And looking up or down
And into each others'.

My Too Late Love, for the Mexican

Some people live in Mexico
and some maintain,
the low plateau,
and that their chests

though hairy,
and not so flat,

have flown over
our world's seas;
and carefully.

And in sandals
and last years'
striped t-shirt trend
t-shirts

have missed opportunities.

And have sat
in the darkrooms
of this world,
lit up red or yellow

waiting
for their ill-exposed print
to just—develop
already

in the too long spent
D-76.

And they know—
some of them know—
the way around
resort-towns,

and also
how to get in.

And how,
though they don't
yet have a well paying job,
to look prepared

in the dive bars of Los Angeles
or the Christmas parties
of a million Law offices
from here to Timbuktu.

And they remember you
—or some do—
after your too short vacation
to Cozumel that winter.

You're grandparents,
having long departed
this Earth,
leaving you a

not inconsiderable sum.
You, their son's son.

And to imagine them
in wicker
in winter
while shooting Tequila

outside Señor Frog's.
The winter slogs
you're missing—
somehow an homage
to their memory.

Iras Malsupren

Ne uzi alian lingvon
aŭ haltas en la teatroj
nokte, kun la grandaj
hometaĉoj.




[Going Downward

Not to use another language
or stopping in the theaters
nightly, with the huge
evil men.]

Kiel Estebla Ĝi

La maldolĉa
disigno
por la tut'
sur la pupuito
en via ĉambro

kaj la plej basa put'.
kaj la futuro
estas voblatas
sur la punkto

de mia gorĝ'.




[How Can It Be

The bitter
design
for everything
on the desk
in your room

and the deepest well.
and the future
is wobbling
on the point

of my throat.]

Ending

Abilitating violence
across the world and nightly
from your scarcely
floating yellow raft
upon the sea.

Your ability
to digest solids
while on a diet of water.
You couldn't possibly.

Your generously offered
tears. Surrendered
and asunder
displacing water.

[The images replay]

The images replay
something new
in the recessed caverns of
your hardwood paneled living room.

[They say you want it differently]

They say you want it differently
and for the sake of difference they
decide or don't that they could stay inside

[They say you want it differently]

from: "the Theme to Desperation"

The following photograph is a production shot from the set of the new film "the Theme to Desperation." In it, I star as a middling, and disobedient son living off his parent's money while attending the local large state university. A string of supernatural mishaps slowly eat away at the protagonist's sense of self, and discourage and optimistic world-view. Relationships with his contemporaries disintegrate to a (sometimes) state of monosyllabic grunts. An unseen, but often heard about MacGuffin offers him salvation through the work of a infamous physicist, who is also a national pariah due to his much-reported-upon pedophilia. The film climaxes as the protagonist with MacGuffin (still hid in a black leather attaché) in tow, encounters his wrathful father on the steps of a druidic stone altar deep in the woods outside Montpelier. ¶ This shot was taken while filming a scene roughly in the middle of the film. The protagonist squats desperately in his apartment after shattering a highball glass in his hand.

the Thoughts and Speech of Men

"Auto-reply: Away"

Today, Today, you couldn't

stay.

the Battle of Tenupe

The Chiss drop ships landed perforce
on Tenupian plains as source
for pause among Killiks and Unu.

The Colony: in retrograde
regrouped, and set forth plans they'd laid
to absent Chiss ships, and then pursue.

A megamaser from on high
with lightning-fast speed vaporized
the still spry limbs of an ancient tree.

With Mogo branches smoldering
and Colony flanks enclosing
some wary Chiss on a sodden berm

were overwhelmed when through their shields
kolosoloks and Solo sealed,
the fate of many Chiss confirmed.

Though clearly not to be out-fought
the Phalanx let fly their onslaught
of insecticide to make debris.

For Patrick

Your pea-coat
is seasons old

and that Signet
Classics rag
you hold

is typeset
right to
the edge

—right to
the edge.

and your hair
is straight
and dry

and that cut
upon your thigh
sustained

in brown pants
while plans
we've laid

in He-Man shirts
and thin
sweatshirts

for having a
cup of coffee.

If they rebuilt
the Sears
Tower larger,

by proportion,
more space
would be

unusable.

la Eraro

Mi certe ke viaj ŝuoj
kostas multaj pro vi.

Kaj la blank' ĉapelon
sur via kapo,

via dolĉa eta kapo.
Kiam vi tute ne miskomprenas

la gravo de mia vort'
la tute angla mesaĝo
en mia vort'.

Kaj la glaso de via
okulvitroj est' tro dolĉa ankaŭ.





[the Error

I'm certain that your shoes
cost you a lot

and the white hat
on your head

your sweet, small head.
When you don't misconstrue

the importance of my word(s)
the very English message
in my word(s).

And the glass in your
glasses is very sweet also.]

Sur Alto

Ho si rejnis
sur la monto

kun si brilas
en sia brilas domo

la fino de
la naudekoj

estas via
provinco.




[On High]

[Oh, s/he reigns]
[on the mountain]

[and s/he shines]
[in her/his shining house]

[The end of]
[the nineties]

[is your]
[providence]

Hodiaŭ Malsan'

Hodiaŭ Malsan',
kiel violenta'


aeron bategas,
eskapi, de infan'.




[Today is sick]

[Today is sick]
[like violent]

[air is thrashed,]
[to escape, by an baby]

the Office (U.S.)

John K.
in your classic
holiday scarf
redefined

the love you've pined
over the seasons

playful
and yes or no,

though actual
in your fictionalized
reality
has held the door

for me,
Beasley,
in the Office
(U.S.)

[The snow]

The snow
prepares for you

in thick
velvet sheets

stretching
away.

In Connecticut in Autumn

Sarah Proctor's
father bought here

a tennis bracelet
and slaughter, often.

Not Having Self Respect

Taking
the rain
away
and placating

you anyway.

Intransigence

Sibilance
or horror
can express

the weakness
of your character:

your meek
demeanor.

The Celebrant

The Heirophant
in autumn:

an important
pagan time

and pagan brine.

Robert

Tractor race
or apple cakes

under a spread
azure sky.

In the Orient

When golden hair,
like magic flowing from the mountains

hangs there
obscuring your eyes,
a mist descends
like paint thinned

on a canvas
screen.

You're Hurting Me

This is the storm.
These are the waves.

These are the roads
that our enemies pave.

Sugarwater

No volt or ohm
could be redress

for what you
purport to have.

an Ornithology

Having a good thing,
like scarlet birds

about a meadow.
A stiff vibrato.

the Occult

The candle's flame
can't claim
to be your missive.

the Viaduct

You and me
or you and me.

[Coffee, and cream]

Coffee, and cream,
and amaretto,

and Mateo,
and meteors.

[It's okay for you to be a slave to assonance]

It's okay for you to be a slave to assonance.
You see the way the world resigns
and choose to follow in it's steps.

[Impossible]

Impossible,
you plainly read

and like your muscled
rippled steed

confirming
this way or that.

the Life of Women

The life of Women
is intimate, and warm.
and boring.

the Overcompensation

On the platform
of the tram

your pants are lilly-livered
and tan.

Saturnine

October is here
for Mothers and Sons
and whoever wearing
violence; it becomes.

[To root oneself]

To root oneself
in Chinese soil
and grow.

and roiling
around the floor.

Saturnine

It's October again
for Mothers and sons,
and whoever wearing
Violence, it becomes.

[Oh bitterness]

Oh bitterness
you watch a horse.
and I
wouldn't be surprised

if you didn't answer
the asked question?

Molested.

A white pressed
jungle rest-bed?

[I cannot]

I cannot
make this palatable,
I'm sorry.

and I won't lie
when you're distracted with it
I'll escape
with a lock, cut from your head.

Keeping a locket
under featherbeds.

[I just want to feel your touch]

I just want to feel your touch
gently.

and hard.

and running down
your stippled skin
i am
a cautious hand.

a Lucite Spyglass

This weekend, I identify with things in the air
like Polaris, or the muted clouds.

My empathy, now in intestate,
and bearing the brunt of a placid state
ingratiating solar dust.

Apprise

In your mouth i sense your lapse,
like a migrating trout or asp,

whose upstream trek is hard to climb,
and sees his own penultimate demise.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The morning finds
with no surprise
no surprise.

And straining through the view I'll try
to prise a vista
with my human eyes.

Straight Through

Waiting with
a bated anticipation for
symbols

—an act now gone,
with it's erect and stifling terror

when
as if a blunted glitter,
seems suddenly then
not so long.

These isolate
and shaded centers

are like a lonely goldenrod

Being Responsible (tentative)

These veins run blood
and cinnabar
in Victorian fleets
of automata
slipping ceaselessly into your golden sunsets.

and it's pooling in a bruise
is red

like magnets drawn
to ferrous chests
and double breasted
suits.

Children are dead
children are dead
Happy days are here again.

The laceration I sustained
while cycling from your stupid home

has, over time, resolved into a scar
on my protruding ankle bone.

[Oh even though]

Oh even though
you go, quite slow
—ly and you snow
is holy snow

your tender form
is wholly low.

The carbon char
around the hole
is what you leave
and what you sow.

So surfacing
the main plateau
from underneath
the tidal flow

sprouts a flowering
black pilcrow

if just to show
another show
another space
it will outgrow.

Just now, you know
it's all aglow
and like a Scandinavian floe
whose ice has turned about

in woe, we know
that we should grow
and we should be throughout.

[Everyone has ugly thighs]

Everyone has ugly thighs
and ugly calves
and no surprise.

[there is a calm to my sweaty]

there is a calm to my sweaty
drunken fumbling
always coming.

Cobalt Lone

Severed Autumn's
browns and greens
were splintering
the auburn trees
of siren leaves upon the vines

The option of
a cup of tea
or practicing
it bitterly
precipitating asian dyes.

The Beginning of the Year

Lets you and I
just sit a while
and try to wile
away the hours until

the foreshadowed event's
accords
descends upon us
a riled horse

acantering
agallop.

Under sodden blankets
the weighty force,
like a stainless steel
recourse

practicing excision
in Portland Maine.

Will Young in Linen Pants

In your maroon oxford shirt
and linen pants

your represent all that is good in this world, and plain

And you
could've been a Roman legionary
with you handsome
and squared off toes
if you weren't
anglophone.

And your patina
though superficial
is diachronic
and far-reaching.

[Oh afternoon]

Oh afternoon
of sitting doom
after hungry
baseful boon

like a Vomiturium
the evening looms

there in a smokey
parlor game
the fractures set
and vector lain

through the wobbling
stumbling stall
labyrinthine
topping sprawl

finding the fairest way
to main.

A new endeavor

For a photographic component to Kosure, please visit our sister-site http://www.kosurephoto.blogspot.com

A work in progress

"Afternoon"

Just quietly
let me away
and calmly stay
your spraining spray.

The embattled
give and take
is like a razorclam
or hidden skate

and the sunset virtues
that often try
upon the mountainside
as day declines

are your blunted crimson glitters
afternoon Martini bitters.

Being Careful

I was
so glad to kiss him by the train
now main
recompense is to complain.

All silences
and liquors an
immuting drain.
A tepid bane

whose frantic indecision
would come to nothing on a plane.

On the End of New Rock

New Rock, sometimes referred to as Post Rock is a musical genre pioneered in the early to mid-nineties. It is typified by an in-classical use of classic rock instruments and instrumentation. Often realized through an electronic, or heavily effect-driven guitar New Rock espoused an almost Futurist disdain for the current state of rock. It's solution to it's contemporary problem of grunge, and brit-pop was to eschew the lyrical content of said forms. As a side-effect of New Rock's songs spindled and careened out of control length wise. Bands like Sigur Ros, and their Disaster Rock counterpart Godspeed! would frequently have track lengths of over ten minutes. Taking a cue from then contemporary Jam Bands often songs were not set in stone, and multiple live versions would increase a songs length interminably. Track lengths fed the dual result of softening New Rock's near Manifesto-driven nature by associating it with happy-go -lucky stoner-rock, and by assuming audiences cared to listen to a thirty-five minute song, increasing their intellectual elitism.
As the nineties wore on, New Rock grew increasingly derivative. By the time Mogwai released the near-perfect New Rock album Happy Songs for Happy People in 2003, the long-droning crescendo, and resolution formula was so well known the album hit a sour note. With little room to grow New Rock bands began reaching into different Post Punk styles searching for a way to reinvigorate the genre. By the time of Mogwai's 2006 release Mr. Beast New Rock was already in a state of decline. Frustrated by the genre's inability to evolve, groups began moving away into Art Rock, or disintegrated into Electro-Pop or Prog-Rock. Tracks like Acid Food, and I Choose Horses brought in such disparate elements as Country to become as unrecognizable as New Rock as anything else. The final nail in New Rock's coffin however would come from the unassuming Canadian octet Do Make Say Think. What had been a sweetheart of the genre in 2007 released the enjoyable, but disappointing You, You're a History in Rust . Do Make Say Think, in attempting to recreate ultimately destroyed. The divergent instrumentation of its forebears had disintegrated into passable but uninspired Canadian Indie Rock. Songs like A With Living have transparently classical lyrical structure, complete with verse and refrain.
New Rock was nice while it lasted. Like so many revolutionary genres what made it new and exciting was its limiting parameters. Unfortunately those limitations proved too great and led to it's own downfall. What we have now is not bad. As with most types of evolution, changes are usually for the greater good. The Art-Rock we have now though decidedly not New Rock, has not destroyed it. Instead New Rock lives on inside it, if in a reminiscent state only.

From: Zombies

I pulled the truck around a copse of four or five trees to see a mostly deserted cityscape. Nancy stopped laughing. The streets were unfamiliar to me, I’d never really been this far north. The sun was out, and everything was lit up brightly, but it still looked grey. There was a semi-circular drive coming up to a parking lot before a baseball diamond and chain link dugouts. Beyond, large divided roads intersected the one road I could see heading straight west, unfortunately it looked like there were lots of abandoned cars on it. In between the buildings streets and signs were zombies. They were stooping, or shuffling slowly. They moved plaintively and looked pained, or bored, or anxious. There were some in the outfield, some crossing the roads farther west.
Two of them, in the ATM vestibule of a bank nearby began banging on the glass when they noticed us. Strength left my arms when I saw how their frenzy was still sedate, and I almost let go of the wheel in the middle of a turn.
“I hope they’re sitting down back there.” I said, gassing the truck, and preparing the clutch to shift up a gear. The truck, or the trailer made a horrible scraping sound when we went over the curb and back onto the road, drawing attention of a small knot of zombies in the bleachers. The starting hobbling toward us, some dragging what looked like feet, broken at the ankle.
“Oh God.” Nancy said as her hand shot to her mouth, her breathing quickened. “I can’t take this.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “look at how slow they are.” I glanced over at her, to see that her face’d turned pale. Her lips were clutched in her right fist and her left hand clenched onto the hammer. “We could out-walk them.” I said, leaning back into my chair. I swung the truck onto Springer, a street I’d never heard of before, and began to weave around the abandoned cars, and crumpled bicycles that littered the road.
As Springer became more tangled, getting around the wrecks became more of a problem. It was nearly impossible to maneuver the huge streamline, and the truck didn’t like the back and forth. At one point, during an ill fated three point turn, one of them got too close to the window and Nancy started crying. I began to hear banging coming through the back of the Streamline. I swore under my breath and dropped the truck into drive and plowed into a car with the gas on the floor. There was a great rending sound, and soft tinkling of broken glass audible over Nancy’s quiet sobs, but the little Volkswagen gave way, and swung out of our path and into the shoulder.
“Alright.” I said.
Nancy shook her head, forcing in short quick breaths.
“We’re okay.” I said, looking over at her, grabbing her hand and patting it into her lap. I looked back at the road and had to swerve to miss a zombie who was standing in the middle of the road. My breath got caught short, and a lump began to grow in my throat. “We’re okay Nancy.” She shook her head.

About The Nationalist

The Nationalist was intended to be a strongly metaphorical morality tale. Whether fortunate or not--I leave the reader to decide--it was thereby accursed with the same drawbacks (as I feel many first novels are) of narcissism, and overt sentimentality. Camden Greenburg is his own man, with uniquely his own eccentricities.  He is also me, in some fundamental and primary ways.
Still the novel focuses and expounds upon some basically human concerns such as governance, populism, and the absolute effect that culture can exert on society. Setting the novel in a decidedly contemporary 'near future' acts both as commentary on our specific predicament as agents in culture, but also metaphorically as near-parable. Essentially: the ideas in The Nationalist are good, and significantly well rooted in culture to fairly be chosen as the subject of a short novel, if delivered somewhat heavy-handidly
Reading The Nationalist now reminds me of a very specific time in my life. I'm thankful for that hint of nostalgia though, because in remembering better, more idealistic times in my life, the novel reflexively hints at their return.

"Today."

I wake up and stumble to the bathroom and halfway through my shower I decide that I can't leave the house today because I'm in so weak a state. I linger in the shower because the white noise of the water on the belgian tile and my skin makes it easy to forget myself. My head hurts. I shut off the water and make it--I don't know how--over the lip where the glass door meets the ground. I look into the mirror any my nose-hair is surprisingly long but I don't have any scissors or a razor in the bathroom. I've got a day and a half of growth on my face and neck. I think 'I'm hungover.' I can't remember any of last night at all. I don't care. I don't care.
I decide that I am hungover. I fix myself a drink and get back in bed naked and wet. I turn on the television to have some noise. I notice my telephone on the bedside and pick it up to call Rita to tell her that I'm not going to be in today but can't find the strength, and I couldn't deal with her shit anyway and so I send her a text message and shut my phone off and throw it across the room without aim. It plunks into something in a screech of static that drowns out the television for a moment and I start to cry.
Between heartfelt sobs I finish the drink in a few hungry gulps, gagging a few times, but I get it down and slam the glass on the bedside with a gasping sigh.
The television cycles itself through the channels but doesn't find anything. Sit-com reruns are on. Old Charlie Rose, for some reason. A fashion magnate.
I get up, mostly to refill my glass. The kitchen is cold, and I'm reminded of my nakedness. Thankfully theres an old Dartmouth sweatshirt rolled into a navy and lavender ball near the sink but when I pick it up and put it on its inexplicably cold and wet and provides nothing.  My flaccid penis flaps around in a manicured bed of velvety black pubic hair at my crotch as I stand up and walk to the liquor cabinet in the living room, after getting the ice cubes into the glass. I suddenly have to pee very bad. I pick a bottle at random from the already open chestnut cabinet and fill the glass halfway. It's amber.
I set the glass on the counter near the sink and plop down on the toilet and break down into heavy sobs in the release of urination. When I'm finished I'm completely empty and go back to the drink.
The bedroom's dark when I get back--not how I left it--but I leave them off anyway. I set down my drink on the bureau and take off the college sweater and drop it on the ground by my side. In between dashes to the drink for a sip I find and slip on a white pair of underwear.
I sit back down, or roll into a ball on the bed or chuch over the the desk and hunch in the leather high-back. As the television cycles I finish my drink and put some thought to what exactly is bothering me so much today. Some of the nausea and all of the throbbing subside and the roof of my mouth begins to throb as I edge my way into drunk. My eyelids tend toward being closed and my limbs grow heavy and I close my eyelids and try to, but can't fall back asleep. The television stops cycling and I open my eyes to a silent image of a small pale white boy covering his ears, eyes closed, shaking his head. The sun is rising. Almost as soon as I open my eyes the speakers click on with a droning, ear-splitting siren.

A Poem for Everybody About My Life

A wind can blow
and does

and so

you know I know
that this has sown
discordant chords.
My whole is low.

and rapt and blown
around the horn
a peninsula of doubt

erodes to show
that nothings shown
to be kept in my strength's redoubt.

from: "The Problem with Rosalind Krauss: Avant Gardism and Trite Ideologies"

"The grid both hides and (inherently) exhibits the naturally human spiritual dilemma by covering it with an opacity that refers, but really only seems to refer, to hard mathematics thereby multiplying the opacity by showing our own inability to represent it, and our stupidity in trying."

New Books

Non-Fiction:

How to Kill Yourself and Everyone Else

Some Unfinished Poetry

It seems I've found,
although abound that,

Illustrative means compound

the steepled pinching of your brass shorn rooves.

My straining serenade
echoing around
to no acclaim

and gentle brew
in whistling kettles.

_

The sub-response
of rusted pots
is tentative, and so ersatz.

To live well then,
and live within

_

Every time I see a head
I want to kill you freshly

Facial hair, a shirt, a pair
or rounded shapes, you rush me,

I'm getting by, but brusquely

and all my movements are to date
good typographical design

metered by a strange embrace
earnest still, but cutting.

J. S. Leifheit

Every time I see a redhead
I want to kill you freshly

Facial hair, a shirt, a pair
of rounded shapes, you rush me,

I'm getting by, but brusquely

and all my movements are to date
good typographical design

metered by a strange embrace
earnest still, but cutting.

The Pressure Pattern's Millibars

The clear delineations
between scar tissues
and lesions.

are converging like a myth
upon a comfortable bazaar.

The yellowed and bespeckled nature
of your oxidizing paper

still bound by your
gilded arms.

Hey, Moisturize! (notation)

(couplets)

3A _ _ |
4B_ | _ |

4C_ | _ |
4B_ | _ |

6A_ | _ _ | _
4D_ | _ | ?

4x_ | _ |
4E_ | _ |

8 /E _ | _ _ _ | _ _
2 /E | |

5x_ | _ | |
4F | _ | _

6x | _ _ | _ |
3F _ | _ ?

The Man-Hero

In
a temperate climate
sit down.

Perpetual alignment
a biased stricture

Your humid clippers
on the hedges

your meager waist
and your Sambuca.

A Morse code report

a list.

For Camden.

I get a haircut that leaves me nearly bald and crying in the plaza outside Auto de Fey. I spy across the street the plop art in front of the Harrison Building, and it starts to drizzle slightly, as if on cue. My new haircut slowly gets wet as a I make my way back to the car thats parked somewhere here on O. By the time I find it my head is a sopping mess. Wiping at my forehead tentatively produces something dark, like the color (that I didn't have put into my hair because I'm still young, Mom never went grey) is leeching out, and running down my face in streaks. I try to get worked up about it but can only muster a heavy sigh. I get into my car with a regular speed and my hands are covered in this diluted black rain water. When I flip down the visor (which I had a mirror installed into before purchasing it) and inspect my forehead there's nothing there. Just bangs that are way too short plastered to my forehead, and my face looking back at me.

I start up the sedan and pulling out of the parking spot and into the weak stream of traffic flowing by I think of Adam who still exists, I assume somewhere in the wasteland that is Maryland. As I make my way down 4th back to K I'm surprised by the lack of traffic on the roads. I thought it was the weekend but not I'm not so sure. Instead of taking a right onto K I continue south to Constitution trying to decide If I'm headed to the office or the Capitol. I end up at the gate to the parking garage underneath the Hill and after a frantic few moments (which lead me to believe that something sinister is going on) they let me through and I park on the south end near the elevators because the garage is nearly empty too.

The florescents that light up the concrete emptiness are bright and the pale concrete is almost hard to look at. The elevator spits me out in the private lobby, and I nod the the security guard who looks at me questioningly. I realize that I'm still quite wet from the rain. I pass him unsympathetically and pass into the public lobby, under the dome, which is comfortingly still abuzz with tourists. There isn't anybody attractive that I can see. I check.

I break into a jog when someone notices me, and calls my name in a loud Boston accent. "Senator, Senator." I'm through the front doors and down halfway down the steps and running across the lawn before he even gets close to me. I'm welcomed by the surprisingly warm rain and the relatively empty vista. The rain is coming in small drops with little force but the surface of the Capitol's reflecting pool is a nearly white trapezoid of psuedomotion.

Hey, Moisturize!

To truncate,
to moisturize

the verdant field
of your insides.

A lathe to liberate
some weakened thing.

A rusted cone
upon a berm

a sample of conditioner
upturned.

A bolt of plain black
cotton poly

Tonight, a statue park
a folly.

[An elephant]

An elephant
has a sweet sweet taste besides

the riverbanks
and soaked in lye

a litmus strip
of paper reads

the luscious dollop wavering
recedes.

The roundness of
a nipple crest

the whorl of hair
upon a chest or else

or otherwise another
group of things together

less—somehow—
than their sum in leather.

A Bad Week

Your body hangs inane inside
a loose tank top
barely alive.

You've missed spots and I
don't know if you're aware
your patchy hair

sounds a warning siren there.
A slick and shave'd
your clammy skin

cautious bumps, the hairs' blunt ends
And slaloming
I think you'll find the ride

a plasma torch and other
middling states of matter
apparatus.


Indelibly you bob and wave
your linking rings,
your road: dirt-paved.

Tonight, and Today

My gentle lips are wrapped around
the tailpipe of your car, aloud.

The green hill, far away
is a hiccup in the still.

And like the bastard love-child
of whatever interaction,

stillborn in the world
the gist of it is curved.

Now

I'm prepared
now
for this nascent disease
I've been harboring
all this time.

Every pang
in the side,

like every
blood-cloudied
secretion.

All permutations
you've allowed

a holding pattern
bearing down.

Solitary Holiday

I.

Touching is
and awful thing
and like a screen
tries to obstain.

A shiver holds
between the folds,
the manic
caustic center.

An epic tale
that you've allowed,
with tendered waists
and venting sounds

is all that strength
can still maintain.


II.

I see now, that you
were an FAS baby
--your face is awfully long

Your hair,
your slutty dress
has not effect on me.
--I'm gay.

Your like an
invisible mistake
snake.

With nowhere to go
but around.

Your guitar
your leather loafers

your mother of pearl
and rhinestone
toe buckle?


III.

When I come home
upon a wave

my visage
pallidly malaised,

your consensus
like a front,

I am so creativley
dazed.

An arabesque:
the future laid

or else
my squalor.

Us, Outside. A bryn

I know,
when you stole my car
and drove away.
when you stayed.

That when your voice
hits a three note chord
and echoes.

There is so much
hair in my face
so much nightly disgrace.

But I know.

I know that when I
can be still and quiet
like a Zelda in the woods,

the mottled sun
will shine green
on both of us.

And through the trees
he vaguely sees
a child running away,
like a chased thing.

You're Superchunk!

You're Superchunk!
I know your name

I sat next to you
on a plane.

You've stringy hair
the way you wear
your silly hippy mane
is fair.

Your gait has an
incautious ease,
an accidental swagger,
please.

You're going to live
in the mountains now
in some western state
and how.

You'll camp, and
eat bugs and dirt.

Meth

Bubble frump,
little hump.

your stupid junk is bared.

For the sweet sake of
Transparency;
reflexively
it stared.

Your grenadine and silkscreens all
a replicated funk.
A little drunk.

A cautionary tale.
A lump.

Last night you said
some awful things,
and I was not prepared

painted on your skin
a sin
your customary outerwear.

You're Superchunk!

You're Superchunk
I know your name

I sat next to you
on a plane.

You've stringy hair
the way you wear
your silly hippy mane
is fair.

Your gait has an
incautious ease.
an accidental swagger
please.

You're going to live
in the mountians now
in some western state
and how

You'll camp and
eat bugs and grass.

[Saint Josephine expired today]

Saint Josephine expired today,
she shriveled up and died away.

A paragon of gentle caution
mired by a prime display.

A complex set of wired devices
her parietal phlebitis.

And though natural; on display
laid upon the floor to pray.

Simplex, simplex eager rage,
a charismatic lust,

--God in the machining thrust?
--a crimson heart inside her bust.

In Soil

If you love winning
and cellular phones
and drones

Let out a l'chaim
we'll collide

we'll dance together
eat pie.

and the slide
is alive
we'll divide
the spoils
in soil.

Even one
millirad
is to much radiation.

Your starships
in orbit
over some pathetic world

are running low
on power
and whatever
currency
you monkeys use,
--pebbles...

--Today
desperation's
gain a foothold

where every road
that rounds a bend,

comes back to
itself again.

A tranquil bird
in solipsistic glee,
likened to me
irreparably,
to drown the sea.

So when the creature
in your young and
supple neck
your beauty mark
you make me sick
will burst forth in
a bloody fit,

like a vendetta'd thing.

It's sopping wings,
can't help me, please.
and falling to the ground
--your knees.

You writhe tonight
and rise,
to writhe
and bloody hooves,
a slice of pie.

[You're eighteen]

You're eighteen
and sexy
even though

you plexiglas
and evenflo

are relics of
a bygone time.

The tape that binds
your luscious hair

the way you and
your clothes despair

are siren calls
of a bygone time.

The hut you keep
and live within,

the way you keep
your secrets in,

the way you are
a little pin,

a little prick
to let it in.

The way you wear
a jaunty cap,

the way you and
your hope collapse,

the way your form
is like an asp,

the way your teeth
are prone to gnash.


The way you are
my precious mouth

a tapered thing
and pointing south.

[A weight drawn tight]

The weight drawn tight
the pendulum
of everyday with gentle on
to plumb the depths
of an unknown sea

[I'm so glad that you are dead]

I'm so glad that you are dead.
I could have shot you in the face,
if time had not conspired
to keep me from you in your final hour.

The Illness Lair

The hot
is like the world
it's not

a silver streak
but's bracing.

This afternoon
the subplot's
brought

a sickly lass
upon a cot,

though what disease
she's really got,

is false, or vain
or else ill got.

And here
we sit,
or there,
or there,

and her disease
is everywhere

and we both know
a pear's a pear

stuck here
turgid
the Illness Lair.

Without reprieve,
and in despair.

Sick! Sick!

[The children]

The children
are swimming
alone
in the evening.

The water is lithe
it is cold
it is pleading.

The appellate court
will soon purport

that apathy
is no retort

or sympathy
at the airport

or cherry torte
the swirling Oort.

And when they hand
the verdict down

the gallery
will frown and drown

in that we can
not love or hate

and that this state
will not abate.

[Sapping power]

Sapping power
from a tower,
shallow reserves.

and in the afternoon
I swoon

faint

a tree
wheels me

enduring
the summer
sun

caves evade
me then.

an Ode to Rosalind E. Krauss

Oh accidental,
sour axle
hold us to the ground

your main export
is detrimental
to our chief propound.

Cat in the Attic

There's something
in the ceiling,
moving

I can hear
footfalls
from here.

[When I was a boy]

When I was a boy
I wasn't.

and paganism
was so
much easier

in the black
black church.

So so.

[Sapping power]

Sapping power
from a tower
how tedious the words
and shallow

in the afternoon
I swoon

faint,
in the sun.

A breeze
wheels me

enduring
a cup
of coffee,

caves evade.

[Last night]

Last night
it was raining

and a window
rattle
represented
everything
I was afraid of;

unseen threats,
that we wouldn't
escape
the city alive,

and when streetlights
flickered too

I remembered you

your face
close to mine.

The parlor and desk,
by the window

could not protect me.
and still can't.

A siren lifted me
from reverie
intoning a warning

that promised daylight
was still far off
—was still, and far off—

and it's constituent clamor
of rising

was neither good
nor evil

but imminent
and inescapable.

Outside people
walked unhurried
but faces down,

rainslicked and
low

the night went slow.

[A uniform reaction]

A uniform reaction
—abject in me—
is only reasonable

whether or not
to cut
military funding
rushing

Ability

—is found in me
like air in outer space
is there

and my two hands
cannot maintain
or tow a line.

While cooking she said:
"Just peel this,
please."

and stand by me
while I sauté.

[There is a rushing in my mouth]

There is a rushing in my mouth
of blood
squirt in
and dribble out.

and down my neck
and in my hair
this blood
this blood is everywhere.

A Microplane

A microplane
it will remain
a violate thing
and raw

and using one
though quite refined
to denigrate
and to provide

a succor, or
a spicy thing;
ablative friend
a microplane

Progress (edit)

A daily silent meditation, for me
means nothing—who I was is Who I am
and from the vantage of my early morning
the sun is hot and is a long long road
a thing I know to hoe.

An honest remembrance in the morning
is like mourning, sunshines a bombazine pall
where both dead and alive seen play'd side by side
like two penises, or a penis
and a vagina.

These planes will align in a complex time
of organs operating in concert
as if a strobing beam—white—trained
on planes is but a spotlight
as in a play, is plain.

To see in you and compliment, you
on anything: like the stupid summer.
How tedious the words and shallow
and can make skin pallid, sallow
a visage in the firmament.

But space is the place where the velvet sky isn't
and the screaming vacuum's indifferent
where the chess pieces starts are both real and canards
incalculable distance flattens
it's hard.

And, knowing, will fit an insatiable pit
just like uncooked rice, it expands.
Though its bright, it is dark, and to hope
on a lark, that connections maintain
in a band

An Elegy to our Ennui

Oh Tallow
oh Magma, waxy, shallow
your virtue is liquid
and soaked in a towel

when the total effacement
--a similar casement--
shows less than a cursory glance
to our placement

a stream of molasses
our worryment passes
it's air concealment is smug
it is passive.

Brids Belie More

Outside my window, birds are a virus.
In a suddenly cold repartee
their chirps make my sleeping a deathbed.
The cold isn't ice, it's malaise.

[A daily silent meditation, for me]

A daily silent meditation, for me
means nothing, who I was is who I am.
From the vantage of my early morning
the sun is hot, and is a long long road
a thing I know to hoe

these planes will align when a complex time
of organs operating in concert
as if a strobing beam--white--trained
on planes, is but a spotlight
as in a play, is plain.

To see in you and compliment, you
on anything, like the stupid summer,
how tedious the words, and shallow
and can make skin pallid, sallow
a visage in the firmament

and knowing, will fit an insatiable pit
--just like uncooked rice, it expands.
Though it's bright it is dark, and to hope
on a lark that connections maintain
in a band.

In a Sea

Am I
able bodied
in a sea?

Do I float upon the waves
heat paves?

Round my head:
--in an orbit
hair
nothing there

O! When a soft
cascade of freedom
like a felt upon the sky
with an aptitude and pleasure
in a car
will pass me by

I will diffuse
and then reside

in a sea
in the sky.

Like a japanese man, who
even now
holds consequence in his hands?

And wrapped around his neck, carefully

An ascot scarf handkerchief
a small shawl, wound tightly?

and a body of water
whose confident effervescence
confronts us no more or less
is ebullient
I don't know why.

[You can be careful with complacency]

You can be careful with complacency
because natural laws exist
like here,
in our addled state:
the horizion is a line
of a sort.
and the sun; the sun

And the halfpipe knows the distance between both sides.
and the quarterpipe
sings.

and i can see through that shirt
to whatever you're wearing
underneath it.

A Ghost?

watching
my progress up or down a hill.

is really neither.
(whose progress
can claim assurity?)

and in the dark,
a lithium,

a bit of sparkle
can always seem
immediate, illusory.

[A summer poem]

You, there
or two lines
planted firmly in the ground

our tousled features
both blown by a wind
playful and yielding.

Please, Symmetry

Visible light
has many types
its cohesion is lame

A region's
strong choate response
will operate the same;

the unseen weight
of armature
will be as heavy as
accrued: the rain,
or snow.
And built
an obfuscating mask--

the Telegraph
or other means
bisect it while connecting

both sides
as if both sides alone
belied the whole abject thing.

Progressive Regression: The Faustian Trope and Anti-Modernism

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is but one node in the overarching idea of Faust. Indeed the general theme has been replayed in many different cultures, and times during the course of history with differing intentions. I cite this now only to demonstrate that its basic themes and narrative elements may show more than a cursory resemblance to the overall experience of humans in culture, and that it may be, in fact, an integral aspect. In this essay, I am mostly concerned with the impetus for Faust’s archetypical character arc and its ramifications as a function of humanity in my own work.
Marlowe’s Faust may be used as a fair representation for the essential Faust. Faust, a learned man, has been to university, and gleaned a functioning knowledge of all its sciences, Philosophy, Medicine, Law, and Divinity. In the first scene Faust recounts his satisfaction with each hierarchically. On the topic of Aristotle’s “Sweet Analytics,” Faust has the following questions to ask; “Is to dispute well logic's chiefest end? Affords this art no greater miracle?”. “Then read no more” he says, “thou has attained the end”. Sufficiently dismissing philosophy he moves on to Medicine, on which he has to say; “The end of physic is our body's health:” “Could'st thou make men to live eternally, Or being dead, raise them to life again, Then this profession were to be esteemed.” With that he bids “Physic farewell” and turns to “Justinian” and Law. Here he calls it “a pretty case of paltry legacies”. The final realm, Divinity fares no better. “The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. … Ay, we must die, an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this: Che sera, sera, What will be shall be!” and with that bids “Divinity adieu!” Faustus’ nostalgia for the present represents itself insofar as he cannot access the present. Marlowe’s Faustus, as indeed most iterations of Faust, is used as the principle functionary in a morality tale, whose main goal is to teach a lesson. As such the genesis of Faustus’ dissatisfaction with contemporary (and increasingly modern scientific) modes of understanding is (as it so often is in morality tales) hubris, a fact not lost in the text. Indeed Faustus goes on to say; “These metaphysics of magicians, And necromantic books are heavenly”. This is in and of itself a contradiction in terms, and a clear nod to the fact that Faustus’ insatiability, here raised to literary proportions is not to be taken as literal, but instead as an exaggeration of Faustus’ attempts to understand himself, and the world he finds himself in, in real time.
Faust’s dissatisfaction with these contemporary, (and ever evolving) modes of comprehension leads him back, to magic, and the supernatural. This nostalgia for the present often leads to a regression is search of progress.
The Do It Yourself (DIY) movement is a good example of this. Akin to ideas of green design, the DIY movement has propagated itself on ideas of self sufficiency, and sustainability. Harkening back, (in some instances) to a simpler time before machine reproduction, DIY exemplifies a regression to older ideas such as a sensibility of craft, and making what you need. Unfortunately, these ideas are sometimes in conflict with themselves in practice. A good example of this is the recycling bin chair from MAKE magazine. The article gave instructions for the creation of a high-back chair made from a repurposed garbage can sized recycling bin. To make the chair one would need the recycling bin, (a very specific one at that, which barely anyone has) wire snips, used for cutting aluminum flashing, and a rivet gun and rivets. It is easy here to see how any ideological gains in the reuse/recycle category are a wash after acquiring the materials for the project (that almost no one could make from their constituent parts). Recognizing these shortcomings, a PFI movement (Pay For It) has begun. Much like Faust the PFI movement represents an inability to access the present given the progressive mode of DIY. Also, much like Faust PFI represents a regression, in the search for progress, to more base modes of understanding, both as a form of protest, and as an attempt to ground oneself in an experiential understanding of now by any means necessary, to regain the present.
My work in Writing belies a greater connection with Faust, in that it represents dissatisfaction with contemporary modes of understanding fiction, mainly the idea general narrative continuity. It differs however in that it does not achieve a choate moral through the use of literary excess, but instead idealizes a regression into a generalized state of ennui through depictions of banality. This effect is heightened by the use of a very untruthful narrator.
One of my recent projects is a set of four vignettes inspirited by the structure of fabric woven with double cloth blocks. The two “blocks” are two vignettes told by two different characters weaving in and out. Arbitrarily radical changes in time of day, verbally referenced multiple times in each section, weave both “blocks” together. The first block tells the story of a girl encountering her mother’s boyfriend masturbating, told by both the daughter, and boyfriend. The second block is the story of the death/murder of the girl’s father, when she was an infant, as told both by the father, and the girl’s aunt. The untruthful narrator makes a strong appearance in the second ‘block’, by illustrating two drastically differing realities of one ‘actual’ occurrence.
The stories employ a lethargic, and egregious use of ill-got, psychedelic references to magical-realism. This scatological, and isophrenic collection furthers the unknowing ideal in the un-reliable narrator. Eventually both stories regress in upon themselves to a point where the confusion of both the narrative structure, and unreliable narrators confounds their understanding as mediated by contemporary ideas of fictional continuity and does not create an fictive-reality as expected, through those ideals. This lack of traditional narrative continuance forces the reader to take each occurrence at face value without knowing its absolute truth-value, or understanding it as it actually is, an actual fictive zero. (A similar experience to Zen Buddhist Koans.)

Frank was there. She felt some comfort in knowing that someone was home. He wasn’t wearing anything, except for a sheet that was wrapped around him, though his peepee was clearly visible, and he was rubbing it furiously.

* * *

It was colder in the back room, which was the death-knell of an erection, and he had to fist himself furiously to keep from going soft. The sofa was still covered in parts with the sheet, which itself was still grasping at wisps of his body heat from before, but it was mostly cold, and another impediment to maintaining an erection. All in all Frank’s erection suffered many setbacks, and the resultant orgasm was less then exemplary.

Here two short excerpts demonstrate the switching between points of view, and narrative style. Also shown is a creeping dissatisfaction typical of the nostalgia for the present exemplified in the Faustian trope. What may at first seem to be following an avant-gardist tendency, is in fact much different. Avant-Gardism covers old modes of fiction with a façade of regression. This, like Faust, turns in on itself in an effort to re-ingratiate itself with the present.
Avant-Gardism can be seen as analogous to the DIY movement. They both, in attempting to take strides in the direction of progress failed to give culture what they promised. Early modern Avant-Garde movements, as well as a more contemporary recursion of Avant-Gardism in the sixties, seventies and eighties sought to do away with the delineation between high and low art. They sought to bring art out of the salon, and the gallery by espousing a regressive tendency. They turned to supposed universal forms, such as the grid, the unconscious, or base materialism, and base humanity. The idea of Avant-Gardism, eventually co-opted by Greenburgian formalism evolved to become the dominant world-view. Here my work follows Faust playing the PFI, to modernism’s DIY.
Though having evolved previously to modernism, Faust as a scheme for exploring modes of understanding can clearly be seen as an anti-modern drive. Though both Greenburgian Modernism as an evolution of earlier Avant-Gardism (DIY) and the Faustian trope (PFI) both seem to be regressive, there is a specific delineation to be made. Modernism, in its attempt to level the playing field, so to say, was about moving forward by looking back. Here assumed universals, like the mathematics supposedly represented by the modernists favored grid, were appropriated to tell a story of progress. Modernism’s regression is only a thin veneer of universality. In the Faustian trope regression is used, rather than as a theme, as a means to an end. Faust is an advocate of using morally ambiguous means to set limits on understanding, to make experience quantifiable. The progress inherent in the Faustian trope does not exist, or exists secondarily, and is not the methods aim.

[A taste not unlike acetylene]

A taste
not unlike acetylene
for, to exacerbate
a Federalist modus
now too far gone
for efficacy, and technolust.

Not having been an internist.

I can see inside of me
something visceral and strange
not having been an internist
and classified it just the same.

No censer or alembic held
extrapolation for
the terse intractability
of Tactility's discourse,

And when we sailed upon
and you to far gone to comply
our prow a scalpel for the waves

“It supersedes.”
Absences abides

What recollection drew from me
a fetid and bedraggled sigh?
My innards like a clockwork sphere.
I've seen the world, it is maligned.

Pilgrimism, or the exploration of a murder. (edit)

Some things, we can, concluded
when it reached the other shore
and arriving, not imprudent
there, but barely. To implore

wether Death itself could offer
honestly, a little more
or just leave them all suspended
over briars and the floor

[with a jelly-like precision
Hecate chlorine sulphur]

A murder, or exploration

Some things, we can, concluded
when it reached the other shore
to arrive intact though prudent
on the complicated moors

Theres a blackness that surrounds us
over briars and the floor
with a jelly-like precision
Hecate chlorine sulphur.

Nobodys at the end of the hall

A sometimes complication
self contained and never there
waiting for its own excision
plaintively atop the stair,

its a faint but fair existance
deigned and built upon subsistance

and a silent delaware.

Oh come away with something
when you come to see me soon

you know my room

and I cannot become your foil
though we've tried. A million times
in that freon evening

You and I.

I go often, to the bank, you know
and Lo, like things, diffusion

shuffles me around and still
short adequate conclusion

we end the day alone, again
our bower small, unlit

and in the dark we recognized
our selves, and then we quit.

simply put
cohesion

though a
silent, vaulted room

pertains to no one
but myself

and versimilitude

"Tyler died in 1862 in a Richmond, Va., hotel room."

"Tyler died 1381. English revolutionary who led the Peasants' Revolt against Richard II's poll tax in June 1381."

"Tyler died in her arms of malnutrition. "

"Tyler’s death was simpler, yet somehow more agonizing."

"Tyler's father, Todd, still has difficulty accepting that Tyler died the way he did."

"Tyler died, sinking unnoted like a stone in the sea."

"The week before Tyler died, he told his mother, "If I die first, I want to be cremated and my ashes spread in Puerto Vallarta (in Mexico)."

"After Tyler died, the investigation revealed. that he had had a significant pattern of suspicious injuries throughout his life."

An Amalgam

To tarry, Oh gradation
under an uninterred sky

Be around!

Unaided sepulchre
set in place

and sickly sweet smoke crowds the room

Or a tendency toward motion
a shot in the dark.

A Shriveled thing Unravels.

Oh Cacophony, Cacophony,
Oh nosolgic wind
Oh stop, and stop,
and stop.

Oh waves of commerce,
lapping at our shores
Oh myriad radio-waves
overwhelming ground,

Be arranged,
Be familiar with.