Medusa Oblongata

I feel sorry for this blog which has been abandoned for my shinier travel-blog. Therefore, I am resurrecting this blog with some new writing.

2009-01-03T07:09:00.004-06:00

Here are two prose poems I've been constantly revising since my first month here in Tianjin:

The water people have a little window and a dog. The cigarette people have a stool and an empty shop. The fishing people have buckets and folding stools and rim the canal. The fishing people are rarely women but there is a shop for lures and casters in a hidden neighborhood and this is run by a woman who knows everything. The fishing people go to her finally when their buckets are empty and she is smoking double-happinesses when she tells them which wriggle startles a bottom-feeder and which arouses its interest. The massage people have an entrance that is always occupied in neon. I don’t know what they do. I have suspicions.

***

There is a tilt-a-whirl for little emperors adjacent to the great wall. This is a great secret. The little emperors order themselves into its creaking confines and an illiterate carnie from an outlying province throws a lever and one wonders about oil and maintenance as his majesty is hurtled through space and the machine’s hydraulics groan like mechanical bulls in Austin watering holes. The bones of the skulls of the peasants of three dynasties crack into dia del los muertos grins within the mortar of the walls they were buried in and invaders mutter “jesus” and are appalled.

2008-07-14T16:29:00.001-05:00

Gulf Shores

Grains of the whitest momentary lapse. Across glass bottles lapped smooth into shapes no longer glass-bottle shaped, around the granular fiefs, the gravel fiefs, after myriads of cuban libres chased raw by gimlets and an awkward pause, we never planned.

2008-06-28T01:42:00.007-05:00

Dame Gothel Drugs the Masons and Convinces Them to Build a Tower

When Rapunzel was twelve years old, Dame Gothel shut her into a tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a little window.

Entrance is common
in a brothel or the village square, but this

is pure artifice and mortar
in a thicket where no one

wanders, save boars and the marsh-
bellied toads, and the fowls who eat those.

Your hands will smooth planes
where doors should be.

What artistry
to suffer over open spaces,

cement instinct and sever
the path that leads home! Rome

has empty sewers and we sell tickets.
Future vagrants and children will wonder

what the hell you were fumbling with
out here, when urban sprawl creeps

as far as the swamp, gas stations huddled
on its outskirts, kudzu mumbling

your greatness, but for now, finish up—
your muse is crying to be done

from an open window.

today is probably the luckiest day of my entire life

2008-06-24T10:17:00.003-05:00

I've been going on these crazy, six and a half mile walks in the mornings. I left to go on one this morning at the same time that Erin left the house to go to campus. My Itunes shuffle was in a good mood, and things were fine, even though it was humid after the storms last night. When I got back to our apartment I was very hot and very thirsty. That's when it happened. This is my best hypothesis:

1. We live in an ancient, student-slum kind of apartment. I love our apartment, don't get me wrong, but this detail is important to my theory. Older apartments have older locks and deadbolts. These tend to be stiff and difficult to open, and require a lot of key-jiggling.

2. Cheap metal, like the kind they use to make house-keys, probably heats up after being in the pocket of somebody going on a six mile walk.

3. Hot metal in an old, jiggly lock is what caused my key to break.

THE LUCKY PART? It broke AFTER unbolting the door, so I didn't have to sit on our doormat for three hours while Erin teaches. I used a piece of sticky-tak (the kind you use to hang posters) on the end of a paperclip to adhere to the piece of key still in the lock and then extract it. Today is very lucky. I think good things are going to happen for the rest of the day.

revision the old-fashioned way

2008-06-22T17:58:00.005-05:00

Today has been a good, productive day. I'm using moving to China as an excuse to emotionally release some old, clotting, ridiculous drafts I've been dragging around with me through several states. Most of these I've been shredding, but when the shredder overheated and automatically shut off for the third time, I got creative. I have to say, I do not advise this method, unless you have some lighter fluid. Newspaper is easy to burn, but I think that printer paper is wayyyyy more chemically treated and resilient than I was aware of. The best part is, I got some good pictures out of it too. I'm going to photoshop the crap out of these and use them for future fliers/collages.

Allen Ginsberg gets driving directions in the afterlife

2008-06-19T11:08:00.002-05:00

Tomtom, this is serious.
Tomtom, I've given you all
and now I'm nothing.
Tomtom we must get to the supermarket
before it closes.
Tomtom I have seen the best minds
of my generation lost on the turnpike.
Tomtom this is not the shortest route.
Tomtom I'm taking the bus now.
Tomtom I am putting
my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Highlights of the aftermath of my party where I gave stuff away for free because we are moving.

2008-06-18T08:22:00.000-05:00

1. fewer garden gnomes in the apartment.
2. new arrangements of furniture for the cats to pounce on things from.
3. moving something and finding a piece of paper with “I need a home” written on it.
4. less stuff.
5. increased desire to give away more stuff
6. most of the free notebooks were taken, which means that someone will write the next great American novel in one of them according to statistics.
7. new version of “drinking Jenga”
8. cats are demanding more frequent parties by psychically projecting the phrase “hands. hands. hands. pet. hands. hands. now. hands. hands. hands. pet. hands” into my head after being spoiled by everyone at the party.
9. liquor and food that otherwise would have gone to waste has now “gone back to nature”
10. Elliott Stevens singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President” because Jenga told him to.

these people do good things

2008-06-13T09:45:00.008-05:00

I woke up this morning and thought about what I would like to do on my birthday. More than anything else, I thought it would be good to make a post and promote the work of good friends of mine, especially the ones I haven’t seen in a long time. So, that is what this post is. It is my birthday promotion of good people’s work post. Here goes:

1) I met this guy when I was six years old in a rubber-band gun fight. He is my oldest friend. We’ve been friends for 25 years now. I have friends who aren’t even 25 years old. It makes me laugh to think that I’ve known Zach longer than these people have been alive. The picture to the right was taken when Zach and I were about 20 and had already known each other for 14 years. Zach is an amazing chef. I went to Lupa in New York when he was still chef there, and there were lines around the block. The Lupa staff were very nice, but the New Yorkers made me laugh. A lot of foodie people saw that I was friends with the chef, and eating with the chef, and when Zach went to the bathroom they came over and said things like “It’s great to see you again!” and “It’s been awhile. I’m glad that another regular is here.” I was living in Kansas at the time. I really hate New Yorkers most if not all of the time. I know it is an odd thing to feel that way. If anyone is in Las Vegas they should go to the restaurants where Zach works. I will see him in Kansas City next week when he is here for some meat thing.

2) Today is Arman’s birthday too. When I lived in Idaho we worked at the same bookstore. We had a joint birthday party once and it was insane. Arman makes some of the best music in the universe. I didn’t realize that some of the Deathcab for Cutie guys used to be in Arman’s old band until recently. I think Arman’s newest music sounds amazing. Everyone should become gigantic fans of both Eureka Farm (now defunct) and The Misadventures of Two (currently hot as an iron-poker and about to go “world-wide”).

One of my favorite Arman stories is the one he tells about how he was in a recording studio with Stone Gossard and there was a thesaurus and Stone Gossard said something like “Yeah, that’s the thesaurus Ed [Vedder] uses to write his songs.” I also like the Arman story about how he was recording the song where he shouts/chants “get me outta here!” and some girl at the radio station thought he was trapped in the room where he was recording. The get-me-outta-here song is maybe my favorite song on that Eureka Farm album. The picture to the right is of Arman and me at some party. There were a lot of parties in those days.

3) Dave Snyder is a friend of Arman’s and I met him at the same time as Arman. Dave is also in The Misadventures of Two. I think Dave is one of the best human beings. Dave is the most serious artist, in terms of work and focusing on craft, I have ever met. I learned a lot of good things from Dave, like what a good rapper Doc Octagon, aka, Cool Keith, is. Dave played bass clarinet with me while I read poems in a bar once in Pullman, WA. I think when I was reading and Dave was playing people started banging the butts of their pool cues on the floor of the level above us to indicate that they were angry and we should stop. We did not stop. That was one of the best moments of my life. I think Dave taught me that I should relax when I’m reading poems. I wrote a poem about a conversation Dave and I had once on a park bench where we talked about how we would both rather be really old, Cuban men smoking cigars at the ends of our lives than two young men, like we were, back then.

4) Michael Fairchild is another one of the best human beings and we have been through a lot. If we had been soldiers, we would say things like “yeah, we went through the shit together” all the time. Even though we were not soldiers, I think we went through the shit together. In High School, I was an Irish Bob Cratchitt and Mike was Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol. I used to sing with Mike sometimes. We have a side music project called Bluesmen for the Proletariat that I hope we start up again. Maybe I could send Mike sound clips of poems from China and he could enact sonic destruction on the clips. Mike is a musician and a writer and if anyone lives in Madison, Wisc., they should go and listen to him play. Everyone should support the career of Michael Fairchild because his work is very honest and his music makes people happy. One of the most important evenings of my life was at Mike’s wedding in the middle of the woods in Alaska next to an abandoned copper mine. Mike was wearing a kilt. When he and Jessica left, all of these friends of Mike’s (and there are a LOT of them, because he is a wonderful guy) sat around and had quiet moments in the prolonged twilight of Alaskan summer nights and watched ships along the river with their lights, and broke open crabs with their hands that some of Mike’s fishermen friends cooked and munched them quietly together until the taxis arrived to take us back to our hotels in Juneau. It was at that moment, years ago, the I felt the most at peace and thought to myself that it was good to be from the northwest and not from somewhere like New York. My love for the northwest at that moment was almost as strong as my love for Mike.

5) Josh Aiman is a painting force of nature. Currently, he is working in an outpost store on Kodiak Island, Alaska. I think he is maybe teaching art up there too. Josh drove across the country and visited me in Manhattan, KS once. We drove to The Garden of Eden in Lucas, KS and listened to R.L. Burnside albums on the way. Later that week Josh arrived at my apartment with my only apartment key in tow, in a car full of Crumb’s beauty-school students. I think the car was a Lexus. Last year Josh and some friends from Denver crashed at our place in Lawrence and went to a show. His friends kept calling him “King Hippie”. Josh is the king of many things. King of Tramps, for one. King of Tramps is a secret. Initiates are not ready for the power of King of Tramps. Here is a postcard Josh sent me once:

I am going to stop posting now, but will maybe post later with more things.

now THAT is a Ferris Wheel

2008-06-12T14:44:00.001-05:00

This was just completed in Tianjin. I'm going to ride it.

"eventness"

2008-06-12T09:21:00.002-05:00

I took part in a poetry reading last Friday and I think it went well. I had a wonderful time at the reading and met a lot of very nice people. Some of the things I read have left me with serious questions in my head about my writing, though. I read a mix of poems I’ve written in the past year that were composed without using any techniques that incorporate outside or found material, such as cut-up, flarf, etc. These were received well. I also read a series of poems I specifically composed for the reading that used a cut-up technique—sort of an equation, based on a modified version of a writing exercise Charles Bernstein created. Here’s the Bernstein exercise:

“Pick a book at random and use title as acrostic key phrase. For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that letter to end of line or sentence. Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word. (Cf.: Jackson Mac Low's Stanzas for Iris Lezak.) Variations include using author's name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or friend's name, picking different kinds of books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures.”

For my version of this process, I specifically chose books with language I am interested in. I did not use any books of poems as source material. The idea of that bothered me. It seemed more interesting to me to use “non-poetic” texts as source material. I also played fast and loose with using the EXACT first word/phrase on a page that began with a letter from the title. At the reading, I made mini-broadsides of these poems on thick, cardstock paper and gave them away for free. I like broadsides and giving things away for free.

Part of me feels like these poems came off very much as a parlor-trick, or a game. I don’t necessarily think that’s bad. Honestly, I was very enamored of the process of making the poems. I think that might be a problem, though. The poems themselves, maybe because of the acrostic that gets created, might be received in strange ways. I’m not sure. Erin and I talked about these poems on our drive home. She prefers other things I’ve written. I think I might prefer other things I’ve written. I’m still on the fence. One interesting thing we discussed was how she finds the flarf texts I’ve worked on more interesting than these poems. Maybe I don’t have a whole, cohesive thought to tie this post together. I would just like it if some people commented on things like arbitrary structures in poetry, using formulas and equations, cut-ups and flarf. I would like this because I’m interested in thinking about these things. All of these techniques are very new for me, in any of my composition processes. The idea of being the “slide poetry guy” or the “cut-up poetry guy” in a sort of circus way feels very strange, since I’ve been writing poems for a long time, but haven’t incorporated some of these things until very recently. An old friend of mine, Matt, also read at the poetry reading. He asked me if I was going to read an older poem of mine that he said he really likes. I didn’t have it at the reading, so I’ll post the poem here for Matt. Also, here are links to three of the cut-up poems I read: “rise in balloons and drift over”, “or, like a gull”, “the crowd”. Maybe reading these different types of poems will give people things to comment about. Robert J. Baumann is one of my only commenters. He deserves a medal or something. Maybe another chocolate rabbit. Here is the older poem of mine for Matt:

The Tradition

And who’s that poet come in off the streets, with a look unleal and lour—
your boots are muddy, you son of a bitch, get out of our ivory tower.
--Thomas McGrath

I.

I said goddamn Eric,
where’s the writer in here
and moved into the den
where they sat
drunk and talked tenure
instead of shop,
with coeds in period dresses
while Billy Holiday
kicked the gong slowly
on the Hi-Fi, and no one listened,
and everybody lied.

II.

She asked me to gnaw
and whisper it,
in syllables like sinkers
pulling down her lobes
and licking the velvet
of her inner ear.

My poem, she said,
and my petit mort
was spent so cheaply
that I learned to hate
American poetry
and its usage.

III.

Every time the transformer hums
in a storm, I hold my breath
and hope the bolt will come tonight
and surge through silicon
in my molded, plastic box
and my verse will wail
its death rattle
in fiber optics and light
or be fused by Hephaestus
into my mother board forever.

IV.

In my dream the houseboat
is lodged on a spit
off Port Gamble. It rains
and I leave my Danner boots
and my oilskin
glistening like eels and slip
naked, into the harbor.

I swim for leagues like a Silkie
past dolphins and Leviathans.
When I drag myself on shore
no one speaks my language.
I get fat with an Abyssinian maid.
In our rowboat we drink Thunderbird
and trade stories with the locals
in gesture and pantomime.
My poems become rolling papers
as she blows smoke-rings from the stern.

transportation

2008-06-07T22:26:00.002-05:00

These are two pictures of cars in Tianjin, the city I'll be living in. They were taken this week. I cannot put into words how much I would like one of these cars to ride around in while I am in China. I would want to take it back to the United States with me. I would try to convince Erin to let us live in one of these cars and drive around and write poems for people.

new process and plans to congregate

2008-06-04T10:19:00.007-05:00

My friend Louise and I have been talking all summer about trying to set up some kind of bi-weekly time and place where people could come and talk about writing, or read things, or listen to other people read things. I refuse to use the word "workshop" for what I'm talking about, because that sounds like school and the academy can stay up on that hill all summer long thank you very much. This would be something with snacks and maybe beer afterwards--not another reading, but maybe a place where people could e-mail something to everyone before the snacks and then everyone could talk about it. Lawrence is full of talented writers like Andy, Chloe, Rob, Gabe, Sasha, Cote, Elliott, Mark, Mickey, Dennis, Roboman, Natalie, Josh, Drew, Maria, Kari, Reehan, Nedra and hundreds of others I'm sure I've forgotten to mention.

I'm an old man and cocoon in my apartment until everything is nice and still. I don't like going out to write somewhere unless it feels "neutral" and not like I'm "on display." I think too many places in town feel like that. Also, I have horrible phone anxiety from my government job where I used to have to say things like "you have cancer in your medical records, but our office is denying you any money because it might get better", so I don't answer the phone and frequently stomp around when it rings, cursing it, and my wife also worked at the same job, so no, we don't like phones, which makes it difficult for anyone to get a hold of us or organize anything like this, or to meet new people. I would like for all of those things to happen, though. I'm putting my faith in the intranet SUPERHIGHWAY. When I used to have a radio-show in Idaho on this station, we had a promo where someone with a southern drawl would say "You can also reach us on the INTRA-net...SUPERHIGHWAY!" It was my favorite promo. I got in trouble once for playing the entire audio of the film of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas over the radio, which broke a lot of copyrights, I think, and i didn't want to interrupt the film with promos, so I just played the SUPERHIGHWAY one at the end, a bunch of times in a row.

Some of the writers I mentioned above also have amazing writer friends I've never met, but whose writing I enjoy on their blogs, like Stephen Lewis. I am too old and too much inside books, probably, for these younger people to want to hang out with me at something like the gathering I'm talking about... but. Wait, that's a lie. Actually, it's rhetoric. I don't think the writers whose blogs I read would feel that way at all, or be prejudiced about something silly like age. I think I just posted that to try and lure some of those good writers I don't know into considering visiting the thing Louise and I are trying to plan. I'm sorry good writers I don't know. I didn't mean it. I think it's probably okay, though, since most of you won't read thi..DAMN IT. I'm doing it again. Wow, I need to stop that.

This post has gone on too long. I need to work on my new poems for my reading on Friday (6/6/08) at Edesia's Cafe in Manhattan, KS. The reading is hosted by Little League. Little League should be supported by everyone. There are two fine writers--Sam Nelson and Matt Groneman, whom I'll be reading with. They should also be supported by everyone. The reading was Sam's idea and I think that Edesia is Sam's brother's coffeeshop. Everyone should support Edesia's. The Nelsons are like some kind of super-family, or like the Fantastic Four. Sam's parents own a gallery in Manhattan and frequently host amazing poetry readings there.

I want Matt to read his James Brown poem very much, but I think he said he doesn't have his kneepads any more. That's too bad. It's a very vigorous poem, and I think if people like Robert J. Baumann heard it they would fall in love with Matt instantly. I often think people like Robert J. Baumann would be better friends with the old me, the five years ago me, rather than the me now. That me used to read poems with a megaphone and get the audience to chant. I distrust the new me. I don't know what the new me is doing most of the time. Part of the reason I'm going to China is to kill the new me and maybe force my mind back into the old me's body. Something like that happens in the book The World of Null-A, which I just read for my summer class with James Gunn. Everyone should also support James Gunn. And Science Fiction in general. My Science Fiction stories are maybe very bad. I wonder if I can somehow fuse the new me with that old me? I think the old me would write better Science Fiction stories. I'm going to try.

thinking about the cranky buddhist

2008-06-03T06:52:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I wake up really early in the morning in the summers. That's what I did today. I don't even remember what I was looking at on the internet--I think maybe I was on Copper Canyon's webpage, and it made me think about one of my first poetry teachers, Sam Hamill. I studied with Sam when I was 17, and then we became friends when I would randomly show up at the press on many wandering trips around the Washington peninsula and up into Canada. That was such a long time ago, now. I haven't talked to Sam for years, and thinking about when I used to makes me feel embarrassed, because I had no idea what Copper Canyon Press was, or who Sam was, aside from him being my poetry teacher for a workshop.

Every time I showed up at the press after getting off some bus, or hitching a ride with a traveling friend, he always talked to me, and he always gave me free books. Most often I would actually stay in the bunkhouse of the youth hostel at Ft. Warden State Park and walk the few hundred feet from there to the press, which is also on the grounds of the park. Sam doesn't know this, but I would lie to him about why I was in town, saying something like "Oh...you know...I'm on my way up to the San Juans," when really, I usually rode a greyhound bus specifically over there from eastern Washington/Idaho to talk to him about poetry. I remember actually asking his advice once about whether or not I should leave the northwest and move to Kansas for the first time for a girl when I was 18. I wish I could remember what he said. What a strange question to ask Sam Hamill. My friend Kate once worked as an intern for the press. When we talked about him, for awhile I would call Sam "the crankiest Buddhist in North America." I didn't mean anything negative by it; Sam has this gravelly voice that sounds like he swallowed bleach or broken glass. Sometimes I think that makes him sound cranky to people.

In High School, an essay I wrote about one of Sam's poem's was chosen for the valedictorian speech. I don't know how that worked, exactly, because I was no valedictorian, but I wound up reading my essay and one of Sam's poems to a lot of them. This morning I found an interview Sam did for The Progressive shortly after the start of our most recent war. In it he mentioned the poem "The Bear" by Galway Kinnell. I hadn't read that Kinnell poem in a long time. Another poetry teacher of mine, and close friend, once gave me a print with the poem on it. I remember now that she actually gave me the print just a few months before she died of breast cancer. I didn't really like the poem at the time, but I do now. My friend's name was MaryAnn Waters. I'm going to go and find one of her poems and post it after I make coffee.

I hope there are still some there

2008-06-02T19:36:00.003-05:00

This is a video of the Hutongs (the ones that are left) in the city I'll be living in next year, in China. I will take pictures of Hutongs next year and post them if I can find them.

a picture of something that is not a bear

2008-06-02T03:18:00.002-05:00

I've had to be prodded in a lot of strange ways by doctors lately for my physical examinations in order to get my work visa for living in China next year. The strangest test I had to take was for color-blindness. People in the U.S. aren't tested for color-blindness very much any more. Most of our crosswalk signs and other markers are designed not to cause any problems for color-blind people. I think this is sort of a shame, and here's why; the pictures they use to test for colorblindness are really beautiful. Here are a few of my favorites:

Some changing around of things

2008-06-02T02:16:00.007-05:00

Originally I had this idea for my blog. It was supposed to be a space I would visit and that would encourage me to write more frequently, and to go back and read what I'd written and to think about what I'd written, and maybe learn something that way. I'm not sure if it worked out. I think you can close notebooks and put them in your pocket without saying anything, and that this is good, and that maybe there are actual notebooks (as opposed to the internet) for a reason. I found myself frequently feeling miserable, or wishing what I'd written hadn't been thrown out into the universe or any kind of public space. The way I felt reminded me of this tarot card I made when I decided to make my own deck of tarot cards. It had this picture of Harry Houdini hanging upside down in a straight jacket on it. Blogging to me felt exactly like that.

Aside from my own blog, if I read the blogs of others, that would sometimes make me feel miserable, or happy, or frustrated, or amused. In any case, there was a lot of feeling going on with a screen mediating the emotions between people and no benefit of body language, tone of voice, inflection or any other helpful markers. I made lots of quagmires for myself, but that's nothing new, nor is it particularly interesting. I originally set some strict rules for myself with my blog, about what I would post and not post. That is the wrong thing to do with a blog, I think. I don't know what one should do with a blog. Instead of worrying about it, or worrying about other blogs or thinking too much about blogs in general, I'm just going to be as honest in this space as I can. Wait...can I do that?

Part of me doesn't trust blogs. I trust the part of me that doesn't trust blogs. Part of me is fascinated with blogs and thinks the internet has it right; words are best when they touch thanatos, or Lorca's idea of duende. Pissing in the ocean and making shambalas is a good practice, right? Maybe it is if you aren't staring at yourself in a mirror the whole time and worrying about your hair. I tend to distrust the internet because it feels an awful lot like looking in the mirror behind your date's head to check your hair instead of really looking at them. I like to really look at things. Maybe the internet is the best place to really look at things and I'm missing the boat? I like the way that the internet destroys the commodification of things. I hate the way the internet encourages the commodification of things.

Above all, I've decided to relax when I encounter the internet, particularly blogs. I was camping once in Canada and there was a bear that had gotten into our cooler and I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but we just pretended it was no big deal, and relaxed and backed away slowly. I am going to pretend the internet is a bear from now on. I might post poems here, but I'm not going to force myself to only post poems. I might post pictures. I might post pictures of bears. It's summer and I need a new start.