Time Life Love Poem

Let’s suppose there’s an unbreakable bond
between us that transcends (supposing
still) space and time, okay?
A psychic connection
like that man who gets on a plane
or doesn’t. The plane crashes
after he hesitates to board:
a feeling out of nowhere, he puts his fingers
to his temples, squinting as if
receiving a transmission.

And then there’s the lady
burning her hand while three
thousand miles away her twin
feels a sharp pain. Let’s say
these kinds of bond exist
instinctively, or we are attuned
to these types of disturbances
in others, or vice versa,
another’s pleasure. Let’s suppose
and I remember
after a long visit we left each other
and listened to the same song
without any premeditation.

The other night I knew
you wanted to call me, and I felt that
twinge, that cosmic foam popping
between us. That pull.
And I called and was right:
you were in love with somebody else
again, and again I too was in love
with all this beyond us.

The woman at the airport security gate asked me if I was "all together." I asked her what she meant ("what do you mean?"), and she made a gesture indicating the person ahead of me: was I traveling with this person?

For a second I thought she meant it like the expression "pulling it together" or "keeping it together," like she knew I was going through a difficult time and was offering support.

tomorrow i leave wisconsin for chicago to have a new year with cole and melissa and molly and barnaby and other who's names i may not remember. it should be fun. it was a nice, mellow/low-key christmas. wisconsin is cold and snowy which is novel and short term so therefore exciting. the last couple days i've been getting in touch with my inner-painter so therefore i'm exhausted. enjoy the following megapixels, and heck, i don't know, have a happy new year.

brother ben made this blanket for niece beatrix

friend joel post village bar when the snow turned into rain and fog (spooky/pooky)father + brother at clearview

whell, it's the end of the semester yet again and whell, that's about it. i'm leaving san francisco for a month and half, the entire winter break, to visit my mother's house for christmas, will stop in chicago for new years, head to d.c. to my sister's for the beginning of january, hopefully stop by new york and also los angeles. it seems ambitious but i like to travel. it relaxes me, even more than playing the tuba. this semester has been another hum dinger and i'm going to take next semester off of teaching, though i will probably keep doing esl work and tutoring. maybe i will go into steamfitting or airplane repair. i sort of forget how to write in this blog but that's probably a good thing. i was perfectly content with having that st. vincent millay poem sit there for the next five years as the last, depressing post of somebody who got bored and abandoned their blog. maybe this will be the last blog post for this blog. recently i've gotten into some music software and it's been where my creative energies have been going, if you can call it creative. mostly i've been making bad techno music. it's pretty fun. once i figure out how to actually write a song, the next frontier, the music might get more interesting. is there a difference between writing a poem and a song? probably, but i figure that the drive needed to carry a poem out to completion is the same as the drive needed to carry a song out to completion. then again, making music on a computer is not exactly like opening a note book. it's confusing with all its bleep and blops and buttons. i've got to give it more time. anyway, it's a null day in san francisco. kind of cloudy, a little cold. sarah's coming by to drop off my hat and i work from three to nine.

The machine rattles and hums like it has a larger purpose in life, its function a part of the whole (the kitchen below, the restaurant's ventilation). Poetry was the first thing that anybody had told me I was good at, that I had a talent for and being in my last year of college having no idea what to do, I pursued it. People ask if I am still writing and I say of course, always. And this is true, but not as the center piece of my day.

I have to work, or rather, want to work in other capacities. The writers whose trajectories I find most appealing were all part-time in a sense: Wallace Stevens the insurance executive and George Oppen the labor organizer. Both had other lives that did not ever directly translate into poetry. Consummate outsiders, never fully beholden to either title, thereby creating a distance in which to write.

Free agents thus free to wander into any dream. The trouble with construction in the early morning is that it prevents free wandering into dreams. Seven thirty is when I first heard the jack hammers. They start early and work fluently until everyone else is awake, the language of breaking up concrete and tank tread.

Forrest asked, sincerely, do you like writing? I like the generation of words but don't like a work that translates into a kind of pyramid scheme: writing for relief, and this relief turning into something to sell. Pure innards, like pig intestines or a gutsy Academy Award winning performance, seem unsustainable in comparison to an on-going relationship with community. i.e. a dialogue with others, a role to play.

A bird landed on the fire escape and chirped in my direction. I looked for it; scanning the ledge and the rusty metal fire escape that climbs over the ledge, the bird frantically chirping over the rumble of machinery. As soon as I made eye contact, it flew away. Was it waiting to be seen? It seemed angry. Maybe it thought I was responsible for the noise and could put and end to it.

The sky is mostly clear, though the smell of construction wafts somewhere near. Unlike yesterday morning the noise is distant. It's possible they're just further down the street and instead, the peace is relative; a whole block or blocks of people experiencing what I did yesterday morning.

Bailout?

The True Encounter

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"-and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.

___-Edna St. Vincent Millay

An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by you mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.

I could wake up from the sound of a garbage truck, from the need to pee, a dream where I'm looking for the bathroom, an elbow touching mine. I could wake up from voices, a roommate or a couple walking by, a bright afternoon sun and the sudden feeling of sloth. I could wake up because I'm cold, wander through a house looking for blankets until Aric's dad hands me one. I could wake up in a tent, to rain, or wake up on a train going south, on my way to Los Angeles. I could wake up with drool on my pillow, with a boner or with a crick in my neck. I could wake up with the realization I've been sleeping on a wadded up t-shirt, dreaming that a biker had just stabbed me in a ballet studio. I could wake up with a dream in my head or a stereolab song, and listen to it on my way to work.

I could wake up from the a-tonal hum of a tea pot, in a panic, in a sweat of anxiety about teaching and work. I could wake up as a wire strung between fence posts, humming or laughing at a joke in a dream, goofing with friends. I could wake up in a foreign country, in a closet converted into a bedroom, look at the wall and not know where I am. I could wake up to my father trying to read a newspaper headline, or a bird trapped in the stove pipe. I could take a nap and wake up twice in a day, wake up sick, and wonder what it feels like to not feel sick, shake Tony and wake up from a dream. I could wake up to a friend's voice wishing me a good day, wake up to my own voice wishing him good luck.

earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama of dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.

as i write this i'm listening to the stereolab album "sound dust," one of many stereolab albums that are really easy to find used and for cheap. i hadn't listened to them actively since college but i bought their new album ("chemical cords") after reading an interestingly positive review and have since been working my way backwards through their albums.there's so much to listen to, each album a kind of experiment though each album sounds exactly like a stereolab album. please enjoy. this post is over.

Friday, November 14th

not knowing "what to talk about"

sitting on top a rock

_________________________a man and his child

_________________________shout at the water

_________________________two men
_________________________cuss on the park bench

_________________________eating potato chips
_________________________and making phone calls

_________________________there's not a bird in this park
_________________________that doesn't know

_________________________what to do

on wednesday (i've been away from the computer) i signed up for healthy san francisco, a city wide program that provides health insurance for those who cannot afford it, like me! it was the second time i had gone in to do this, as the first time was foiled by my most recent salary versus my salary over a span of three months, which if you include the fact that in between every semester i have to go on unemployment and the month long lag between my first day teaching and my first pay check, details, etc. means i was more than 300% above the federal poverty level which thereby disqualifies me from the program. whew. so factoring the three months, i'm about 250% above the federal poverty level bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in federal prison phillip glass einstein on the beach.

the lady who helped me sign up was named june, a vietnamese "boat person" so she told me, asking if i know who the boat people were answer the refugees who came over from vietnam during and after the war she hasn't seen her sister for twenty years. without any prompting she said i was "gentle" and commented a number of times on what "good boy" i was. i was comforted but this claim. in other news it's my thirty-ith birthday on saturday. on sunday afternoon i will have a low pressure cake eating tea time on the grass in dolores park. if you would like to join us/me please do. write me an email if you'd like to come. have a good "one."

wow. i mean, wow. first obama wins pennsylvania, then mccain gives a speech that comes out decent, obama comes on with his family, makes us think, joe biden, everybody's waving around and crying and then, on my way home, a massive crowd gathers on the corner and is still going, blocking the streets and spontaneously bursting into joy again and again. the police don't seem to mind and everybody's happy. wow. that's great. i mean, this is great. at times like these i wish i had a good quality digital camera. i'd describe the dude wearing the light display climbing ontop the van while the guy with a crutch leads a chant, or the dance circle that brakes out at the intersection of valencia and 19th. why here? who knows? people on their roofs are lighting off fireworks and throwing toilet paper rolls into the crowd below. a man turns an air raid siren as people take pictures, honk their horns and turn their cars around as they realize that the crowd isn't going anywhere. wave after wave of spontaneous celebration. a dude plays a trumpet badly but we love it. he's playing the star spangled banner and people, hipsters and everybody inbetween is singing the star spangled banner. a girl wearing a green incredible hulk fist is pumping it in the air at no one in particular. maybe at everyone in particular. san fran. cisco.

Attention Alone Accomplishes Little. Well, I've been working on manuscripts and that' s the one I'm still working on. It needs some revision. There are parts in the title poem that need work, the more essay like general address pieces that fail to carry their weight. Cutting or editing so that it stays personal would be best. Then there's the issues of addendum, the strangers and MP16 and Creeley could all fit but I'm not sure how or if it's necessary. And then there's edits to chair and dresser, working the unmet i into the cycle. It...d be a good note to end chair and dresser on but to go on from where it is might be superfluous. As it is, the structure of the manuscript i think is working supremely well. I got turned down for a month at the Vermont studios today. Eeet's a bummer. I'm riding on a train to Oakland using my ears more than my mind. It's a...cool world, raining. I'm going to Bill's to have an evening of it. I spoke to A and it might be weird to be lounging over there an it probably says a lot about myspace or an inability to create it. Caught up in individual poems, failing to move forward like Mt. Eerie's lyrics, which were a little stale. Talk is cheep. And then there's the other manuscript, not nearly as exciting or 'book length poem' like. I think somebody will be interested but I think that every year. Those early poems, I'm not sure if they translate over time. What is this blog for? "The quest for sincerity is like the quest for a perfect lawn." write the editors of Action Yes. Jon Leon is a poet I identify with.

_
i want to build


and raise new
the temples of Theseus and the stadiums
and where Perikles lived



but there's no money, too much spent
today. I had a guest
over _____and we sat together




-Friedrich Holderlin as Translated by Richard Sieburth

hi. it's sunday. been a while since i've written directly in the blog so thought i would write and say hello. it's overcast and has cooled off from the week and the weekend. maybe this means that the winter is coming or more accurately the rain. it would be good for us. i can't remember the last time it rained but after a month of rain i might write the opposite. had a strange dream last night where i had written a list of rules that i kept going over and somehow this transformed into singing one of these rules as a song while i was cleaning snow off the windshield of my old truck. The tune (long forgotten) was so nice i woke up crying warm tears that felt good. strange. otherwise, it's been a day of chatting, with my roommate, a nice conversation that lead into the characteristics of "our" generation, and met bill and erika for a late lunch. school has been steady. i lost thirty five dollars playing poker on friday night. got clobbered playing basketball on saturday morning, witnessed parts of a gigantic corporate sponsored soap box race and went to a bar-b-q with sarah. so, yeah. i'm good. how are you? here is an interview with tim and laetitia of stereolab that i thought was interesting, particularly the second part of the interview (this is a link to the first half), them talking about process and lyrics.

Thoughts: there were some but I can't remember what they were. Some kind of pseudo psychological philosophical political hybrid that would, at first glance inside my head seem to solve every lingering doubt I've ever had and snap into place the mysteries of the universe. Instead I'm sitting here in the Public Meeting Area on the corner of 2nd and Mission, no longer trying to remember and looking around the glass atrium, waiting for a student who I'm supposed to be tutoring for a class called Form Development, an industrial design class where the students are expected to make a fiber glass shell for something like a mouse or a flashlight highly polished and finished.

Tutoring for this class might consist of going over some notes but this student, who doesn't make it to class often or on time or even really attempt assignments and I'm guessing asked for a tutor to prolong the realization or maintain the illusion that yes, no I don't actually care about this subject but will half heartedly attempt OH HEY, SHE'S HERE...We talked about her project, abstractly, the steps she needs to take in the shop and took notes; pieces of foam, ways to second guess ourselves and others, styrene speed forms, running our fingers along contours and away from the smoldering hot iron of all that, but we're moving is what's important.

Moving through and in stepping back we might see the entire picture but for now we'll keep it close to the people coming through the doors; the metal table reflecting light; a group of office women and pairs of workers eating lunch, remembering what we're waiting for. What a tragedy! Matching bent nails with famous painters instead of asking questions, admitting that we really don't know or more simply that we do.

>Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:34:29 -0500
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>yeah. word. my voice over the email was different. i'm not sure why but i remember when i was writing it, i thought it was kind of weird. walt whitman said something like...do i contradict myself?...i contain multitudes!...(end) or something like that. fortunately, we all live in three dimentions...

The Molten Sounds of Company (an Essay)

I sat unable to control the bitterness that is the stopper that is the cycling clamp of jaw bone, the look away to avoid intervention of the melding machine. Numbed to avoid trauma and the epilepsy of fidgeting, the master gene...

Press up against the lines or stretch what there is to say if anything to the furthest possible point. Length marked by sheer supposition, nobody knows how to calculate regards such as praise, how much we need or can possibly give out before we ourselves begin to decompose into words we do not know. This is what I would most like to turn from: regret as an instance of past reflection; my hand occupied, folding a piece of paper my mind occupied looking for signs.

Maybe this is devotion, tightly, and out of guilt. The idea that we’ll “pay” for what we’ve done. Somehow. Prison or imprisoners. We may cling to one mind known well enough to invoke out of habit; regardless, like the bones in an old man’s wrist lifting some odd thing to some odd place and by and by we make our shape, we cauterize; we canonize our better instincts (without which, our independence).

As the roof collapses without reason, opinion held right in regard to others seems to matter little as the capital of total thought becomes far more important than its origin or direction. We could ask the time or position of the sun shining through the splintered wood but for now we’ll consider its light inevitable, a fact in the matter and the matter a fact or instance of recognition.

I consider one problem to be all problems or a cigarette, a next one. Things that make sense, or I’m “full” of ideas or shoot to “thrill.” In the end we get to be “The One,” we get the idea that we can or cannot understand growing older in the summer time or a certain kind of intelligence, one that speaks highly of its contemporaries. Or in other words, now that the world has been discovered, we have no other place to go.

Today the financial bailout failed because Congress voted against it. Some blame Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and her speech right before the votes were cast; for persuading a significant number of democrats and republicans to vote against the bill. Here is the speech. It's important. And pardon my french, but it's about time somebody said "No" the greedy fucks that have been misleading the country for the last eight years...those dudes are lost in a world of illusion (and need some help).