Saturday, July 30, 2011
Lost in the Mail
Joe I am knitting this with bones
the blood spools
at my feet.
You do not know what you gave me
a lifetime
in one week.
It doesn't take much
to win a woman like me
left too long in shadows
of chupacabra night.
It takes more than most men
can comprehend
with their liar roses
and smooth telephone voices
dressed up for seduction riddle.
You are the man I never could have
dreamed or designed
with my broken
Baptist ghost girl hands.
I send you a letter each day
without a stamp or address.
I'm still here.
I'm still there.
In that tub
offering my throat
to the
sky.
the blood spools
at my feet.
You do not know what you gave me
a lifetime
in one week.
It doesn't take much
to win a woman like me
left too long in shadows
of chupacabra night.
It takes more than most men
can comprehend
with their liar roses
and smooth telephone voices
dressed up for seduction riddle.
You are the man I never could have
dreamed or designed
with my broken
Baptist ghost girl hands.
I send you a letter each day
without a stamp or address.
I'm still here.
I'm still there.
In that tub
offering my throat
to the
sky.
Carved in Stone
Our names would be carved in stone, I said.
What am I doing.
What am I throwing away.
You cannot discard a tombstone.
I remember the sun of that day.
I watched you sleep on my mattress
as I wrote the letter telling you what
you did not want to hear.
Darling I love you but if I stay
one of us will die.
No man loved me no man will love me
as you have loved me
these seven years.
You do not label me as whore
even in the brutal whore face
of this, my mad mutable heart
crying for something more tangible.
Last night I cried thinking of another man
lost to me for the rest of my life
and you reached for my hand.
Christ. Christ. Christ.
What do I do
with this bounty.
What am I doing.
What am I throwing away.
You cannot discard a tombstone.
I remember the sun of that day.
I watched you sleep on my mattress
as I wrote the letter telling you what
you did not want to hear.
Darling I love you but if I stay
one of us will die.
No man loved me no man will love me
as you have loved me
these seven years.
You do not label me as whore
even in the brutal whore face
of this, my mad mutable heart
crying for something more tangible.
Last night I cried thinking of another man
lost to me for the rest of my life
and you reached for my hand.
Christ. Christ. Christ.
What do I do
with this bounty.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
My Next Tattoo
thou art that / tat tvam asi
on my right forearm in my favorite alphabet, Sinhalese
on my right forearm in my favorite alphabet, Sinhalese
තෝ
රූපය
අරක
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Today's Scope: Multiple Translations (Aquarius)
Everyone forms a part in its film, now there drastic lion is Sun in its house 7 of others. Unfortunately you can of someone tiredly grow; behavior concerned of long themselves for sincerity and truth, but it could feel as if you at this moment shortchanged in its relations. It will much less exhaust, if you accept circumstances, which others probably state to all, which can do it. It is to a high degree favourable, when you have today, in place of, to wish for more.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Six and a Half Packs a Day
Scotty and Greg were in high school and they were at the stove but the whole house was dark and I was a kid and it must have been the Seventies. Shag carpet. Greg said he smoked six and a half packs of cigarettes a day. That did not seem plausible even to my kindergarten mind.
"John Belushi only smoked two. Dan Aykroyd said it was the cigarettes that killed him, not the speedball," I said.
"Fuckin' Dan Aykroyd," Greg muttered.
"John Belushi only smoked two. Dan Aykroyd said it was the cigarettes that killed him, not the speedball," I said.
"Fuckin' Dan Aykroyd," Greg muttered.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Free William S. Burroughs
I had one peso left. I walked into a cantina and ordered a beer. There was no draft beer and bottle beer cost a peso. Thee was a group of young Mexicans at the end of the bar, and I got to talking to them. One of them showed me a Secret Service badge. Probably a phony, I decided. There's a phony cop in every Mexican bar. I found myself drinking a tequila. The last thing I remembered was the sharp taste of the lemon I sucked with the glass of tequila.
(from Junky)
(from Junky)
Free Ezra Pound
The Garret
Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova,
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
Ezra Pound
Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova,
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
Ezra Pound
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Mysti Rainwater
I GooGLe myself from time to time. As a thing of factly (Babel Fish is my new favorite toy...things are found in translation as often as they are lost)...I GooGLed myself just now and found a woman named Mysti Rainwater. She lives a vibrant life in Arizona. Her life sounds vibrant to me because she has a job I think I would enjoy, a job with purpose and decent pay, a job that is more than a job, a job that is a calling, a service to others. I could not be a nurse. I thought about that once for about two seconds. I am squeamish. I am lazy. I could be a therapist. I could be a psychologist. I've been seeing psychiatrists, counselors, psychologists and therapists (and preachers) since I was nine years old (my hair was falling out and I was mean to my sister for no good reason). What a dream job. You get to sit on your ass and feel sorry for people. I could do that shit all day long without even trying. "Here's a book that might help you on your journey," I would say to a young girl struggling with self-esteem issues because her daddy abandoned her for a hot barmaid in New Orleans and boys didn't feel like kissing her and she didn't get invited to many slumber parties or sock hops. I would hand the young girl a pristine copy of Nova's Gone Potty, Bullshit Rodeo, Arsenal of Spitwads, eBuLLieNT voMiT or Sloppy Mouth.
The thing is I don't have time or money for school. As it is I am in $25K in debt for changing my major six or seven times (I have sixty accredited hours which does not mean s-h-i-t) and attending a private university for two semesters. So I sit on my ass and blog, write poems and novels, read books and drink lemon ice water, dreaming of Fiji and Paris and Rome and Lima and San Francisco. This is not my calling. This is my time killer.
The thing is I don't have time or money for school. As it is I am in $25K in debt for changing my major six or seven times (I have sixty accredited hours which does not mean s-h-i-t) and attending a private university for two semesters. So I sit on my ass and blog, write poems and novels, read books and drink lemon ice water, dreaming of Fiji and Paris and Rome and Lima and San Francisco. This is not my calling. This is my time killer.
Better Than Decent Review of Bullshit Rodeo
You're reading and enjoying a book by an author whose work is still fairly new to you. The author references other writers with whom you are much more familiar. It's a comforting and gratifying feeling - shared tastes and influences; you feel a greater closeness to the writer whose book is in your hands.
I experienced this when immersing myself in the small Texan towns vividly conjured up by Bullshit Rodeo, a novel published last year by Misti Rainwater-Lites. Somewhere along the way, there is mention of reading and re-reading Charles Bukowski's Women, a novel whose protagonist is Henry Chinaski, the alter-ego used in four of Bukowski's novels as well as countless short stories and narrative poems.
Bukowski's style seems widely considered to be composed of elements of extreme honesty and realism. So many of his devoted fans find it difficult to tell where Chinaski ends and the real Bukowski begins. While the two do overlap, there are some crucial differences, not least around the matter of isolation. The loner Chinaski keeps the world firmly at arm's length. His creator was a prolific correspondent, answering much of the vast quantity of mail sent to him.
I find myself asking the same question about the Misti Rainwater character captured in the pages of Bullshit Rodeo, a work whose action switches back and forth between Texas and California, where the protagonist heads in pursuit of unrequited love for another writer.
The Misti in these pages recounts a largely unhappy childhood and adolescence of not fitting into a world of church, school, football games and suffocating family life. The narrator recalls numerous false starts - a rashly entered marriage, an abandoned college degree, an abortive stint in the army, unloved and unsuitable jobs, giving up her first child for adoption. The breadline never seems to be far below Misti, her long-suffering second husband and her only child, a boy for whom she struggles to act as the warm, encouraging mother she knows she should be.
The backdrop to these miseries are sketched quite effectively. But this is done not so much with naturalistic descriptions of landscapes or interiors (these details are generally quite sparse) but by listing the cultural artifacts of the settings. Not least of these artifacts is food. For me, I associate non-metropolitan, non-cosmopolitan America with a diet of sweet, fatty, bland foods with bright colours and childish names. Misti's Texas is made of buttery microwave popcorn, sprinkled donuts, fried chicken, Chick-o-Stick and McDonald's. This is contrasted with a more sophisticated life of health food, cultural pursuits and affluent ease in the California for which she hankers:
"Somewhere else that is not here women eat yoga bars and text message their lovers and discuss designer shoes with their girlfriends over cranberry salads".
I wonder, then, how much of the author really is in these pages. Is this a Chinaski-style caricature, created for the sake of sustaining mood, interest and intensity? Or is the Misti of Bullshit Rodeo a faithfully accurate rendering of the writer, making this purely an autobiography rather than a novel? If the latter, it might be too tough to empathise at times. By no means will everyone find it possible to sympathise with the narrator's on-off withdrawal from the responsibilities of parenthood.
Either way, the story takes hilarious turns, not least in its treatments of bleakly unappealing cyber-sex. There is laughter in the dark. Raw, raucous laughter.
I enjoyed this immensely - and the book has done much to accelerate the pace at which I am coming to believe that there is some great writing being done outside the industrial system of the mainstream publishing houses and booksellers. That Misti Rainwater-Lites has had to go down the self-publishing route so far is an indictment of the conservatism of the marketing-led book trade and not any indication of a lack of quality about what she does.
~This is My England
I experienced this when immersing myself in the small Texan towns vividly conjured up by Bullshit Rodeo, a novel published last year by Misti Rainwater-Lites. Somewhere along the way, there is mention of reading and re-reading Charles Bukowski's Women, a novel whose protagonist is Henry Chinaski, the alter-ego used in four of Bukowski's novels as well as countless short stories and narrative poems.
Bukowski's style seems widely considered to be composed of elements of extreme honesty and realism. So many of his devoted fans find it difficult to tell where Chinaski ends and the real Bukowski begins. While the two do overlap, there are some crucial differences, not least around the matter of isolation. The loner Chinaski keeps the world firmly at arm's length. His creator was a prolific correspondent, answering much of the vast quantity of mail sent to him.
I find myself asking the same question about the Misti Rainwater character captured in the pages of Bullshit Rodeo, a work whose action switches back and forth between Texas and California, where the protagonist heads in pursuit of unrequited love for another writer.
The Misti in these pages recounts a largely unhappy childhood and adolescence of not fitting into a world of church, school, football games and suffocating family life. The narrator recalls numerous false starts - a rashly entered marriage, an abandoned college degree, an abortive stint in the army, unloved and unsuitable jobs, giving up her first child for adoption. The breadline never seems to be far below Misti, her long-suffering second husband and her only child, a boy for whom she struggles to act as the warm, encouraging mother she knows she should be.
The backdrop to these miseries are sketched quite effectively. But this is done not so much with naturalistic descriptions of landscapes or interiors (these details are generally quite sparse) but by listing the cultural artifacts of the settings. Not least of these artifacts is food. For me, I associate non-metropolitan, non-cosmopolitan America with a diet of sweet, fatty, bland foods with bright colours and childish names. Misti's Texas is made of buttery microwave popcorn, sprinkled donuts, fried chicken, Chick-o-Stick and McDonald's. This is contrasted with a more sophisticated life of health food, cultural pursuits and affluent ease in the California for which she hankers:
"Somewhere else that is not here women eat yoga bars and text message their lovers and discuss designer shoes with their girlfriends over cranberry salads".
I wonder, then, how much of the author really is in these pages. Is this a Chinaski-style caricature, created for the sake of sustaining mood, interest and intensity? Or is the Misti of Bullshit Rodeo a faithfully accurate rendering of the writer, making this purely an autobiography rather than a novel? If the latter, it might be too tough to empathise at times. By no means will everyone find it possible to sympathise with the narrator's on-off withdrawal from the responsibilities of parenthood.
Either way, the story takes hilarious turns, not least in its treatments of bleakly unappealing cyber-sex. There is laughter in the dark. Raw, raucous laughter.
I enjoyed this immensely - and the book has done much to accelerate the pace at which I am coming to believe that there is some great writing being done outside the industrial system of the mainstream publishing houses and booksellers. That Misti Rainwater-Lites has had to go down the self-publishing route so far is an indictment of the conservatism of the marketing-led book trade and not any indication of a lack of quality about what she does.
~This is My England
Free Ted Hughes Poem
Horoscope
You wanted to study
Your stars - the guards
Of your prison yard, their zodiac. The planets
Muttered their Babylonish power-sprach -
Like a witchdoctor's bones. You were right to fear
How loud the bones might roar,
How clear an ear might hear
What the bones whispered
Even embedded as they were in the hot body.
Only you had no need to calculate
Degrees for your ascendant disruptor
In Aries. It meant nothing certain - no more
According to the Babylonian book
Than a scarred face. How much deeper
Under the skin could any magician peep?
You only had to look
Into the nearest face of a metaphor
Picked out of your wardrobe or off your plate
Or out of the sun or the moon or the yew tree
To see your father, your mother, or me
Bringing you your whole Fate.
(from Birthday Letters)
You wanted to study
Your stars - the guards
Of your prison yard, their zodiac. The planets
Muttered their Babylonish power-sprach -
Like a witchdoctor's bones. You were right to fear
How loud the bones might roar,
How clear an ear might hear
What the bones whispered
Even embedded as they were in the hot body.
Only you had no need to calculate
Degrees for your ascendant disruptor
In Aries. It meant nothing certain - no more
According to the Babylonian book
Than a scarred face. How much deeper
Under the skin could any magician peep?
You only had to look
Into the nearest face of a metaphor
Picked out of your wardrobe or off your plate
Or out of the sun or the moon or the yew tree
To see your father, your mother, or me
Bringing you your whole Fate.
(from Birthday Letters)
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Raw
He says it's done but it isn't. I eat the fat and the burnt pieces. In the kitchen I shudder when he walks up from behind. "This kitchen is too small," I snap. My mother's second husband always inspired revulsion in me, revulsion and fear. Dave was six-foot-five. The last time he whipped me with his belt I was fourteen. Daddy was six-foot-seven. The last time he spanked me with his belt I was six.
The husband hears me say,"Goddamn it, don't drop these puzzles pieces on the floor! The floor is filthy!" He tells our son to bring the puzzle into his bedroom where he is reading a book by some astronaut. I hide in my room with my digital pictures. This is important work, editing photographs for my flickr account. The world does not turn without these contributions. And the poems. Yes. As always. Poems to write. Such light I shine shine shine. Hide it under a bushel I will not.
Later I hear him cursing in the kitchen and crying out,"Why? Why? Why?" I have done something wrong in the kitchen. I have been doing things wrong in the kitchen since the summer of 2004 when he let me share his single bed, the springs sticking up, in the room he rented from the social butterfly who thought she was sexy but wasn't. I tried to boil big ears of corn once. He condescended he patronized but in a gentle way. I am so inept. I saw my psychiatrist yesterday. The last word I said to him was "inadequate." He asked,"Motherhood has overwhelmed you, hasn't it?" And I replied,"Yes. It has. These have been the hardest three years of my life. I am inadequate."
Earlier I checked the mail. Walked through the door with the ripped package in my hand. The "Sylvia" dvd I ordered. "Mommy is going to learn how to clean the oven," I said to my son. I was really talking to my husband. Unhappy spouses do that. They put on a show in front of the kids.
The husband hears me say,"Goddamn it, don't drop these puzzles pieces on the floor! The floor is filthy!" He tells our son to bring the puzzle into his bedroom where he is reading a book by some astronaut. I hide in my room with my digital pictures. This is important work, editing photographs for my flickr account. The world does not turn without these contributions. And the poems. Yes. As always. Poems to write. Such light I shine shine shine. Hide it under a bushel I will not.
Later I hear him cursing in the kitchen and crying out,"Why? Why? Why?" I have done something wrong in the kitchen. I have been doing things wrong in the kitchen since the summer of 2004 when he let me share his single bed, the springs sticking up, in the room he rented from the social butterfly who thought she was sexy but wasn't. I tried to boil big ears of corn once. He condescended he patronized but in a gentle way. I am so inept. I saw my psychiatrist yesterday. The last word I said to him was "inadequate." He asked,"Motherhood has overwhelmed you, hasn't it?" And I replied,"Yes. It has. These have been the hardest three years of my life. I am inadequate."
Earlier I checked the mail. Walked through the door with the ripped package in my hand. The "Sylvia" dvd I ordered. "Mommy is going to learn how to clean the oven," I said to my son. I was really talking to my husband. Unhappy spouses do that. They put on a show in front of the kids.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Land Peoples Can Survive
The Predigermann says the fact that it is the end of the time and the river Mississipi is it a dry goin
the interest is highly and the stock exchanges descend down and you received only attacked if you city
I live back in the wood, see you a woman and the children and the dogs and I
I received a shotgun rifle and a four-wheel drive and a land boy can survive land peoples can survive
I can a field all day long plow I can Wels from the dawn to dawn me got caught we to form our own whisky and our own smoke also not is too many things, these old boys not do
can we to build good old tomatoes and wine even made on and in Land boy can outlive land peoples can to survive because you us verhungern be able not out and you diagonally leave us to run Cuz we' re raised it old boys on shotgun and we say that beauty and we said Madam and if you are not into that
give we not a curse we came of the west Virginiakohlenbergwerken and the rocky mountains and those and western sky and we know a dollar enthäuten; we can a GET rotting line run let and a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive I had a good friend in New York town center it designated me never by my name, straight Hinterwäldler my grandfather taught to me, how one lives away of the country and seins, a businessman informed it to be it maintained, over me illustrations of the Broadway nights to send and I it somewhat made wine send however it of a man with a Switchblademesser killed for 43 dollar lost my friend its life the identification love, to of something beech nut in to spit the Gecken examine and shoot you it with my old 45 causing you a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive
You cannot know a cause us out verhungern and you us Cuz we not run to let leave; RH raised it old boys on shotgun and we say that beauty and we said Madam and if you are not into that give we not a curse we are of north California and of SüdAlabam and small cities know a dollar completely around this country and we enthäuten; we can let run a GET rotting line and a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive
the interest is highly and the stock exchanges descend down and you received only attacked if you city
I live back in the wood, see you a woman and the children and the dogs and I
I received a shotgun rifle and a four-wheel drive and a land boy can survive land peoples can survive
I can a field all day long plow I can Wels from the dawn to dawn me got caught we to form our own whisky and our own smoke also not is too many things, these old boys not do
can we to build good old tomatoes and wine even made on and in Land boy can outlive land peoples can to survive because you us verhungern be able not out and you diagonally leave us to run Cuz we' re raised it old boys on shotgun and we say that beauty and we said Madam and if you are not into that
give we not a curse we came of the west Virginiakohlenbergwerken and the rocky mountains and those and western sky and we know a dollar enthäuten; we can a GET rotting line run let and a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive I had a good friend in New York town center it designated me never by my name, straight Hinterwäldler my grandfather taught to me, how one lives away of the country and seins, a businessman informed it to be it maintained, over me illustrations of the Broadway nights to send and I it somewhat made wine send however it of a man with a Switchblademesser killed for 43 dollar lost my friend its life the identification love, to of something beech nut in to spit the Gecken examine and shoot you it with my old 45 causing you a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive
You cannot know a cause us out verhungern and you us Cuz we not run to let leave; RH raised it old boys on shotgun and we say that beauty and we said Madam and if you are not into that give we not a curse we are of north California and of SüdAlabam and small cities know a dollar completely around this country and we enthäuten; we can let run a GET rotting line and a land boy can outlive land peoples can survive
She'll They Eat Alive
Before it left William on their 12 daily North American journey with their new husband, Kate got a thing straight much: it can pack for, thank you. After a cord of the glare appearance this week, we're convinces. From Montreal to Alberta, she's let jaws at each attack, which in illustration-embracing knee length coverings fall, into which fascinators, in the Stiletten and even in a pair of murderers thin jeans one dressed. Into straight of one week the duchess formed an indelible marking on Canadian kind. But it is ready to take on Los Angeles? On Friday the pairs go to the celebrity center, country of micro minis; in front; it Bag and diamond verkrustete domestic animal additives. How does it go swimming with the Rachel to Zoe addressed shark fish? If their perfect Canadian dress order is any announcement, she' ll they eat alive
West Virginia Coal Mine
There is a filthy invisible angel whore of a woman drowning in dirt. She has stopped functioning. The soup of the day is suffocation. Texas cricket coyote cow night is coming on coming down caving in and the towels are sour in piles. Daddy is the sun rumored but not believed. These worms so thick and purposeful. These are Mother. No breath in any direction. Send down a bird.
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