Never Mind the Beasts

SNOBBISH SNOBBISHLY SNOBBISHNESS SNOBBISM SNOBBY SNOBLING SNOBOCRACY SNO-CAT SNOD
SNOFF SNOG … SNOW LILY SNOW LINE SNOW MIST SNOW MOUSE, SNOW MUSHROOM SNOW ORCHID

there is real. it is all real. very real. a little wriggle upon a yellow guitar made out of beeswax
I intend to eat swordfish and mushroom kebabs for tea tonight
pappymashy on a man’s feet
tender, swollen areas (bumps) at the sides and back of the neck

next come the Romans
sucking up spilled custard
yet promptly refreshed the king’s tumbler
on the bench behind him but rang his bell for the peon to come
fresh from pig-eating
the habit is catching
an isloated object
dring dring dring ing ing
next come the French
les Enfants Parabola
Madame Edwarda
nasty twang ain’t kind
forsaking the work requires great strength

Poorly paid Laborers Break Up Ships for Salvage

The deft seduction of art keeps us transfixed.

There’s always some visual pleasure to engage us.

A painter’s eye for color and a sculptors eye for form.

An uncool composition of light.

The lyrical morpheme. The skyline of a water-edged city. The play of shadow and light unknown to westerners.

An endless grid of silvery metal pipes. A wrap of yellow caution tape. Play “name that reference.”

The veined white marble is a dead-ringer. The Chinese wire women looked like a Pollock.

check it:

Contemporary Poetics Research Centre

i have been finding time to write from 4-5PM before teaching my evening classes. When I am supposed to be preparing for classes. Between the first and second half of my day.

a monster haunts us
with cut-resistant ballistic pads
carefully cut and sewn
with curves in mind

bright yellow
peppers
in the morning courtyard
old tyre caked against shed
and cooling trousers
on the white picket fence

someone has stolen
the pasta machine
hot potato wet tomato
if you hear what your body says then put yr mind
in the de-facto crunch machine

punch out the eyes punch out the eyes

we will not use old memory cards

between foxes and tragedies lies human emotions feeding on chickens
outcrop with empty car
wading into lake with caked bum
caught with trousers down
only permitted the full-on

Alien fruits

For magnesium light I lifted my pillow with gold teeth into the mythical moist night, co-mingled with minions and unpeeled onions, all my vigor squeezed into a single sneeze.

All my friends from the Great Empire have abandoned their stations, have put
their slinkies in the mud.

You are a supposed person rushing late into marginilization
and less brutal truths are clipped from the toenail.

Bungee jumping with five quid and take shower early when not teaching.

I’m sure you’re gonna be somebody, soon.

Stop anti-aging, stop messing with yr widgets.

O2 unlimited: i’m now in touch with Jim Goar.

I don’t know what this nation needs but my feet are too wide for all the hip shoes. Auspicious wanderings could be fruitful with a beer gut of another tomorrow. Bus 29 to Camden Town has a high percentage of pick pockets.

Every tomorrow is recycled from today and I’ve got a green wrath. It’s growing in the dapple-hued countryside of Milton Keynes.

So let us get going then, you and I, and we will rub our foggy bottoms on the all foggy windowpanes of London.

I’m down with the tags. A freed man drips genital fruit

Recycled from Today

identity is a serious personal issue
self-imposed deadlines
it shuts on its own darling
i’m sure you’re gonna be somebody, soon
do you understand what else there is?
stop anti-aging, stop messing with yr widgets, o2 unlimited
i’m now in touch with Jim Goar
I don’t know what this nation needs
bungee jumping with five quid
take shower early when not teaching
my feet are too wide for all the hip shoes
auspicious wanderings could be fruitful
beer gut of another tomorrow
i can’t stand the ladders
you would be dead now right
chewing on the old days whilst in the shower
bus 29 to Camden Town has a high percentage of pick pockets
all my friends from the Great Empire have abandoned their stations
have put their slinkies in the mud
every tomorrow is recycled from today and I’ve got a green wrath
it’s growing in the dapple-hued countryside of Milton Keynes
for magnesium light he lifted his pillow
gold teeth in the mythical moist night of jollies
co-mingle with minions and unpeeled onions
all that vigor squeezed into a single sneeze
you are a supposed person rushing late into marginilization
less brutal truths are clipped from the toenail
so we are going then, you and I, to rub
our foggy bottoms on the all foggy windowpanes of West London
you don’t have children do you?
I’m down with the tags
what is the origin of the underlogged?
a freed man drips genital fruit

Andrew Duncan’s Origins of the underground
Tom Atkins Folklore
Tom Atkins Horace
Soft Targets (featuring Brian Howe purchased from Bookarts Bookshop in East London)
Maggie O’Sullivan’s Body of Work
Mairead Byrne’s Talk Poetry

spent the very last of my american money in my last american bank account. also used that money for an imac. all gone now. that was my retirement money :-) all i need really. big computer screen for writing and reading poetry. building up books again. all gone now. Living week to week with a temp agency gig at the local college.

I went to a fantastic reading yesterday afternoon.

Sundays at the Oto (Japanese for sound) with TIM ATKINS, ISNAJ DUI + SOPHIE ROBINSON.

Tim Atkins was absolutely nothing short of spectacular. One of the best readings I have been to in a long long long time. He takes Horace and Petrarch into 21st century London. Funny. Surprising. Smart. And he reads so damn well!!! Check out his Horace and Folklore books. He also edits the literary journal onedit

Sophie Robinson did an interesting video art and performance. Bright origami birds on a seashore. Voice drone loops. Eerie.

Isnaj did some flute playing and did something with a strange little delicate machine. New age trance.

The post-avant scene is alive an kickin in London!!!

A bit over a month ago also went to a great reading. Sean Bonney. Also mind blowing.

So Sean Bonney
and
Tim Atkins

and many more to come

tis a pity i cannot attend the Opeened reading series now. I teach every evening and morning so can only attend the Sundays at the Oto series. But next semester I am going to request Thursdays free.

OK off to work . . .

Elit in Europe

Love the clean look and always excellent painting as cover of Jim Goar’s Past Simple.

Check out my poem and short reading here: Auspicious Wanderings

Thank you Jim Goar

In the techno-creep, broken glass, you know
what reason torments
fallen face in the surf
perpendicular foot on my memory
what you selling
oh comeo, oh obsidian
token sanity, it behooves you
to impound yr authenticity, crop
and leverage and spade
the hollowed ground.

bellies agog light shows
through weighted shoes
we’ve got lift in the stirred porridge
what tinkles while London growls
us northerners draw our mouths
in the surfeit nothing
else for teeth
in the gravitational jungle
listen and cheek
yr answers.

Enter people and their cars, poor louts, yr folly
extends itself in the maze-gaze. Ah-rum. Wind
breaks and air pops. Stop to start, back to front, was it equal
to your self? Eternity is a stage prop for what?

complexly
removed my flat body
on the most crowded
streets of London
no one reserves
what they have
sounds molt
to heal and I’m gunning
into the occult blue
bar on the tube
a sighing gum
popping ploy
change
for the
circle line
& mind the rap.

my celebrated companions there’s an ox on the bridge and it’s the headquarters for delicate customs. She sd what I can’t stand are the airbreaks in the air tunnel and I still must piss into the counter analog system. What’s a little opportunity to buy stoic fruit and manicured folk art. Sad fucking assists the desperate. I’m speaking into your sore toe, rasping in the formless and faithless mortality with inventive fictives. One of these days these faint stripes will bleed through yr afterlife, pulled by the lobes, to pour into airlines with a hirsuit hat and an overgrown vocab. Momentary messages and a little mindfuck with faux emotions. The man eating KFC on the tube is the spirit of innovation. I keep scratching at history but I still have to piss.

Size yrself up in the plained-out courtesy of British culture
I’m aware of the dimensions
washing paradigms out of my passport
this bond is professionally severed
she thundered into my unattended face
she has pinpointed the colour of eternity
red red red
no need to discuss the cancellation
of my afterlife since
I am in London with animal magic
and a revived slant of light
this city thinks I am real, this city
fingers its crotch with voyeuristic
stories what free galactic Portadownian
gaze carnivores my irony.

Unabolish my body
my soft wear
there are higher
drapes in the distance.

it’s happening Robert Sheppard

performing childhood is something else where light is a lonesome hymn
touching commits to memory

rhetorical proof in perpetual motion and love’s unbroken composition
approaching the furthest moon

salvation is among the borders of civilization and alas tonight the gaps are graced

migration to memory inside the praxis of living
a mongrel shakedown on the milk-stained carpet

first week in new flat in west London. paid the deposit. Just hooked up wireless internet a few hours ago. I start a new job on Monday teaching part time at Ealing and West London college (ESL). Hope it can turn from temp to more permenant work next year.

The last four months in London have been crazy. Four flats in four months. Two temp jobs and half the national average in terms of salary.

I think now I am finally starting to settle in. Still need to clean out the kitchen (the flat was full of a lot of junk) and get a desk and a computer (I sold my computer a few days ago).

Still a lot of stress and not quite out of literal survival mode. But I am in an English speaking country. Poetry readings are happening!!!

Reading this saturday at 7:30 PM at the poetry cafe in Covent Garden. Hope I can finally get back in the saddle after three years absence from live readings etc.

has something changed in my writing since South Korea and Poland?? Well, I will revisit work from five years ago in North Carolina (flarf plus sound based poetics plus plus . . .)

The muscle and music is coming back into my poetics. And more experimentation again. More letting go!!!

Some interesting use of short poetry and photography from Dylan Harris. Check out ALL HANDS

reloaded os x on my mac. simplified. writing again. doing remixes of readings i’ve attended so far in London. I don’t remember their words and my words. Words. whose words?????

alas, here we go . . .

I know, now, more than ever I need community to write well.

it’s coming back.

the play . .. ah god . . . how i’ve missed the play . . .

Scott Thurston (Openned Reading, London, The Foundery, July 17th 2008)

“take cover from my artificial intelligence”

“we cannot justify our deserts”

“shapeless static boundaries”

“our current past-life on a disused railway track”

“separate yr voices”

“beckon me form to time to air not even missiles”

“can they dent, in turn, a mold, a straight jacket”

“broken prism, still stop, a right to aim at, repeatedly”

“bouncers on a staircase”

“shape something with a structure of escape”

“you know your signal”

“reshape me, suddenly”

“stalking instance”

“what have i given up”

“invisible worm”

“impersonal flowering”

“an answer to death spoken across”

Nate Tarn (Swedenborg House London June 17th 2008)

“how to keep in favour with the sky in another pieced together country”
‘the eardrum inbeasted to savour even more so, now”
“my father never shot his wad”
“thin trial of glucose, thin trail . . . .”
“all is clear like a green ghost misting against my summerhood”
” we know how you must spread your blood, the last moment of yr scraps”
“gathering turns into the lull where the head rests away in the abyss”
“nails in a cage”
“midair collisions of the mind”
“yr shallow angles frighten no one”

Lee Harwood London 17th June 2008

“theory of colours and walking skeletons”
“the usual desire for the glue monster”
“in small rooms we sat around the fire”
“I know what you are thinking in this closed room”
“the exit contains the tomb”
“closeness obscures as old photos clearly understood face to face”
“yes I know you son”
“somehow this works, being together”
“we’re all amused on this Mexican dream bus with its sand dollars and beaded mirrors”
“we found ourselves in the mouth of a river, in a surprised undoing”
“the blankness of this, we know, is mercurial frontiers”
“you know that this parting is an opening out into the usual feet of time”
‘still blind to the past, the tilted and jilted past, that isn’t even there”

My brother is awake. At first he couldn’t speak and he put his hand on his heart and pointed to my mum.

now he is using words . . .

it looks like everything is going to be ok so far :-)

he is a fighter alright!!!!

my little brother Spencer was in a very bad car crash three days ago in utah. he is in a coma. brain swollen. collapsed lung. machines.

I can’t really focus on anything else at the moment . . .

It is really happening. or seems to. My first feed for over three years occurred last night in east london at the Foundery:

Sascha Akhtar
Sean Bonney
Frances Kruk
Scott Thurston
John Wilkinson

All great . . .. especially the performance of Sean Bonney and Frances Kruk. If you have not heard of the poetry of Sean Bonney and Frances Kruk then you are missing out. John Wilkinson was also amazing. And Sascha Akhtar takes the word soundings of Mr. James Joyce to a whole new level. And Scott Thurston and a nice performance of a man in a t-shirt who helps run the series.

There are lots of things happening in London with experimental/avant-garde poetics. I met a fine smattering of fine poets and the place was packed and the venue was perfect. Met a fine fellow poet named Rob Holloway. He told it is best for poets to live near old street/brick lane (east London) or South London. Across from the hip pub in east London there is a bookshop. And Rob Holloway told me they sell interesting experimental poetry. That could get me in trouble with my current salary of £700 a month.

But AH > > > > >> > paradise has returned.

Got word that there are at least another two great reading series in London. One run by Sascha Akhtar and another one somewhere near London bridge on the first Thursday of every month called Crossing the Line at The Leather Exchange. Hm . . .

and so . . .. here we go . . . . exactly what I have been missing in South Korea and Poland all these years. I may live, full tilt, once again. And get my rawness back. My play . . . ah the play is the thing that makes me happy . .. . I got a tad serious in Poland especially. Melancholy ruled in Poland.

Think I will also look at my two manuscript collection Resident Alien from my days in North Carolina with the Lucifer Poetics Group. Maybe rework it a bit and send one or both to Salt Publishing.

I gotta get some shit out there . . .

I gotta read some shit out there . . . .

I was floating floating dancing dazzling high as kite on an electric wire last night

openned readings . . .. thank you!!!

Openned Readings

A lot of tube time. Over three hours. I’ve seen some of the same people but we are not supposed to look at each other.

When I blow my nose black shit, a bit like newspaper ink, comes out in chunks on the tissue.

West London is much better than living near Manor House. West Ealing has organic food so I can get back to dreaming of being middle class.

Ealing has third generation Polish.

I found a nice wee man in a plastic shack that sells pasta on Ealing Broadway. Only £3.

My mind is better. If better is the word. A bit better. Now I must make time. Or at least the potential for working into nothing through words.

So yes. Here we go. Another flat share on Sunday for one month. Then in September my fourth move in four months.

So yes. Here we go. A can of Lech. At least I can speak my language.

The man in the plastic food shack is happy to sell his pasta. He asked me if I wanted cheese or special sauces. And he has the sauces: peppers and creamy peppers and creamy white pepper sauces.

I want to find my mind. But what is there to find?

How can a mind exist in time?

But the mind moves the body she sd and the mind moves something inside itself we call thoughts and thoughts are an action and can lead to a bodily action. But its all body in the end.

Body body body.

My left eye is twitching again. Something is about to take off. To be

taken off.

Shroud and cloud. Blurry vision. My left eye and my gums. it’s the heat and it’s coming to London, soon.

I am hitting my mid thirties but what does that mean?

We grow up with people and some of them have babies. Most of them seem to have a baby or two or three or sometimes seven if their Mormon or sometimes catholic or or or . . .

Do I want a baby?

What would I do with a baby?

So yes, it is time again, to begin again, and again and again and again.

it is good to teach English. And better still to teach English to people who want to learn. I want to see my language by listening.

I want to turn my mind inside out and see what falls.

I must attend this event next year!!!

report by Alison

Prodigal Drift

Lapid maze-fault: something calls my name, tomotoe
on the table I wish you could pick me up operatically
hot/cold with critical speculation. I’ve met gravity
at every turn and

in America

very basic lightning to take
a different direction in comparison
to the primness and residual
limits of Victorian England.

This is the ramshackle of a half-life, unraveling my social fabric, putative
doubles and slavish copies of continual obessessions. It includes
old and new media in tune with the medium rather than merely
doing a descriptive job. How often is a cat seen on a public beach?
Graphic work has sunk within me forever with the vitality
of indifference. Fight experience, exist stance, buffalo stance.
Existence is a sneeze, a seizure. The symbols they can
fill you, the symbols they can kill you. If there is nothing
worth regreting might as well pack it in.

EXPERIENCE IS EXPENSIVE!!

COFFEE HALL

sex drop
and damp dreams
in coffee hall
before a Mormon
baptism there
was silent chatter
and I was borderline
skit zo
while star wars
figures melted
on the light bulb

This is the scene, the seen, the redeveloped conditional, the hemoglobin of a healthy heartbeat.

Once upon, once the time was, the time

is a disappearing
point beneath
the pelvis
and I’m
painting
a portrait
with nothing
left
to lose.

In coffee hall I was pretend
smoking with twig in the spray
painted Council Park
and some girl named Candy
had the real one
and somewhere back
in Ireland my gills
turned to lungs
underneath the kitchen sink.

These scenetimes
are a flexible
rubber stuck in yr ear
the years slip and stumble
and we tread the treason
line, yr feeding me
lines and the reason
for time, time and the lie
is to crush and crumble
to keep the peeping
weightless
and these
scenes are a vector
of missed lips.

In north London
I’m engulfed
in scenes
& faithless to all countries, a bare
immigrant with scenetakes
on the nightspin.

I’m not over anything but I’m
still here.

Time is a chromo sin, a chromogoblin, one father
lives in Belfast and the other was a British soldier.

What is seen is
wrapped and mummified, blood-
binned, been had, been binned, ich
ike ek ek ek, we have no current
memory, a stash of specialist
rubbers, a special shadow slips
through the memorandums, an old
sweaty ash falling on all our heads, mechanically
flat our memories are orange-peeled
into a sweaty ashcan, an afternoon sky is
the source of our bone and skin.

An imprinted mammal the scene
snatches us into an anal anima
plura plura plura . . .

(more to come)

My friend and fellow poet Virgil Renfroe gave me this link to a very interesting poetry and sound art website. The soundstuff is really really interesting.

Check it out:

Dean Parkin

got a big room for the month of August. Half a foot on the ground. So my third move in London coming up in two weeks. Then in September I must move again because room is only for one month. So four flats in four months in London. Par for the course.

I am circles indeed!!!

Think I might take a huge risk and use all my savings for a celta (certificate for teaching english as a foreign language) and leave marketing and if i can’t eat then emergency ticket back to america to start all over again. But I can’t keep going with this marketing stuff.

yeah and someday someday i will write again. six weeks and no new work yet.

it will come back. just need two feet on the ground!!

here comes the boss damn dread that

ok punch in the time . . . feet will come soon

so maybe my feet will come back. maybe i can work in marketing for this language school and then create a mental space for my writing. I think other writers work business jobs and still are prolific with their poetry and art. started copying some of the language from a marketing report for the middle east. might be able to use some of that for a new poetry project. need a new direction for my project. don’t want my book manuscripts to repeat themselves in their intentions, styles, content etc.

it is still strange to wear dressy trousers everyday for work. But I don’t think i have become too corporate. there are so many hipsters in London. I feel half square with my clothing and hair etc. Damn if only i could have the patience to grow my hair medium long.

maybe . . .

circles abound.

moving for third time in London next month cause these flatmates are finishing their housing contract and going separate ways. so three moves in three months in london. just keep moving. don’t stand still. don’t breathe too long in place cause the air might get stale.

but i want a place for my big feet. i want to get halfway cozy. gemutlich. yeah. no nice figures on the mantle please. no hairy snowmen beside the hearth. yeah. but a desk, a chair, a big screen and a desktop computer to write and think and a bookshelf with books. yeah.

I am nomadic.

But need to be mentally nomadic and physically stable!!!

went to brick lane in london yesterday. it is an amazing place. my favourite place in london so far. lots of interesting galleries. it is where the new shit happens. fashion is hip and mind blowing. i also taught a class as a replacement teacher at the school and i felt like myself for the first time in quiie a while. want to get back to teaching at some point. not sure about the business world at all. numbers and marketing. i think i am not good at separating things. i mean my work and my writing and my life. it all feeds into each other and marketing just does nothing to excite me even a little. just gotta survive it for a while and see what happens. a lot of database cleaning right now and marketing letters/email campaign to education agents. tomorrow i have an interview for my national insurance number. hope i find the place in time and my work day goes well. still some hangups in london. can’t transfer my money from my polish bank account. not sure why yet. would have been better to have withdrawn the cash from poland before i left.

so yesterday was the first time since i have been in london where i felt a connection to the place. yes brick lane is the place to be for sure!!!! great market. great music. crazy fashion. socialist bookshop. lots of interesting galleries with contemporary art. gotta go back real soon. clubs don’t do it for me at all anymore. just live music. slowly i might get my brain back. fingers crossed. still hard adjustment especially with marketing job but gonna keep trying london and hope to write poetry again soon. been too long. just scraps of stuff and not even much of that.

It is pouring rain in London right now. Typical English weather i guess. I live in a Turkish neighborhood. I got my haircut the other day at a Turkish barber shop. No one spoke much English. It was interesting. He got a burning hot metal stick and put it close to my face. Supposed to be good for your skin I guess. Then he rubbed some pink liquid on my face.

Portadown cum
round again
sex drop and
damp dreams
in council housing
silent chatter
borderline skit zo
figures melting on lightbulbs

I’m painting a portrait with the pelvis as a disappearing point and masturbation is nothing left to lose.

I was pretend smoking with twig and some girl named Sweetie and then my gills turned to lungs underneath the kitchen sink.

Blow yr mind with the hemogoblin of a healthy heartbeat.

I am a flexible rubber stuck in yr ear.

Slip and stumble and tead the treason line, the reason
for crush and crumble is to keep the peeping
weightless, scenes are vector
of missed lips, engulfed
and faithless in North London
I’m bare, immigrant rapsody
on the nightspin.

I’m not over anything; I’m still here.

The chromo sins
don’t match, one father lives in Belfast and the other
was a British soldier.

I used to be Mormon
now I’m a bloodbin
an orange cake
wrapped and mummified

So I moved into a new flat in North London (near Manor House) last monday. Lost money by moving out of the other flat before the end of the month but the new flat is much better. Cool flatmates and nice and modern place and even internet in the front room. One flatmate is from Poland is married to a fella from Pakistan. She is seven months pregnant. Two of my other flatmates are from Lithuania.

First week on the new job was intense and very tiring. Lots of trainings and meetings and getting the new lingo of marketing etc. But the school is very cool. Independent and a high standard of excellence. A family type of atmosphere. I already miss teaching though. I even miss Poland right now. Strange.

So tonight I am hanging with a new friend from Germany named Sven. My first friend in London. Hope I can get a bit of a social life. I keep wondering what it would be like to move back to Poland though. Strange. really strange. I thought I was finished with Poland. I have no desire to return to live in Katowice though. Don’t miss that city.

Also joined the Irish and british poets list. Reading in two weeks in London with Nate Tarn and Lee Harwood. Yippie. Very cool. Just hope i can find the place and get there on time after work. Also need to get a national insurance number and survive until my first paycheck.

Live in a Turkish neighborhood. Got a haircut yesterday in a Turkish barber shop. The barber lit something on fire and put it on my skin. It burned a bit and felt good. Nice and warm. Then a hot towel and some pink liquid. Felt fresh and vibrant. Strange and interesting. I was hoping to find the world in London instead of traveling the world without a home. maybe I can make London my home. But this week was damn hard. Will try it for the summer. If not, then other options in the fall.

so leave in a few hours for a plane back to London. Belfast was great. Fantastic indie rock clubs. The area around Queens University is really nice. Cool vintage clothing shop and lots of cafes and rock clubs and beautiful botanic gardens and lots of cool hip Belfast hipsters roaming the streets. Surprising and refreshing after Poland. There are also cool hip areas in London of course, but haven’t had time to explore them yet.

Hoping to find a decent reading series in London as well. I mean alternative/experimental scene(s)

so here we go . . . going to see a new flat tomorrow morning. Could be much better than the place I am living in now. Could have internet and a decent shower and maybe a bit bigger room and perhaps cool Spanish flatmates.

scene speak: Newport
Pagnell: green green green
and old village pubs, country
food: Yorkshire pudding and roast
and carrots: loved and lost
and loved it all

maybe not, although, I don’t think so, my lapsed
travel zone, still winking star-studded
challenge, hear all, heralded, just grab the tab &
pull off the damage, gravel &
chips, travel fresh, pushed-in chin

maybe not, although, travel
flesh, pushed-in chin

I want all these virtual kisses in person in the flesh on the flesh as soon as possible, as soon as the old village pub closes for the night and we rub chins
with all the sleeping shamans, built-up, maybe not, although, I don’t think so
looks like it might all come together

dull ache in the nose, the truth

of something is a smoking tunnel, taking for granted, of course, absence, the empty bottle
thrown into

a body of water

you realise this instant, this instance, is a key-
hole, a tunnel with a squint of light, yes taken
for granted, studied
under, the moment as we once
knew it renounces
our earthly labour
before being
impounded, pounded
out into
performance

this virgin train offers first class comfort
hot chocolate and biscuits
and acid reflux

yes: under fire, the moment
burns

scene speak: north London

friendly bustles and ear popping tunnels
a friendly biscuit in a golden tin

wood, green, wood green, green wood, wood
midgets and giants and dusted pollen, and duties
wounds, wounds of a mistress, of a city, this
energy will eat or be
eaten, London is the world’s navel, the world’s
onion, the world’s housing
little maids
surrounded by hard light, London
wood green, north, on the line, out of
time the man on the cooling board
said be careful of the wire, said
Ireland, and Ireland
is in north London, in Halloway,
a stabbing here or there, I’m
always looking for you in second-hand
linguine shops, my back, watch
it, watch what comes back
in the clearing, in the dust
of the city, in the wood, in the
green, in the hard light, in
the north, again.

if I share my consciousness everyone
will rob me, if I share this dislocation
who will centre me, if I share this
post-immigrant
flim flam flum, this shared outnumbering
this shared hard light

these scene speaks are designed
in Georgian red brick with green and red doors.
East Belfast: Van Morrison: Georgie Best
my defect is a diamond.
the heart is a restraint, a dam to hold
back the blood, blood murals are forthcoming
Stevie is a Chihuahua and he stole
my toothbrush but I am inside
a post-bomb
haze thinking
sad scenes legless man
in a blue van
and sandbagged checkpoints: six-year-old boy
in the coal shed
with a lump on his head
six-year-old boy unlatching
the gate and walking three miles
to bus station telling driver take me
to my Granny’s
age 34 and back to where the
I began crossing consciousness: revel to reveal, sludge &
drudge & drift in the mind-craze word-mop, all things equal
this head doesn’t write well

Hail
to the Thief, shook
it and broke it, lost
it and clipped it
with minimal
style underselling
a vibratto that grates

happily this intonation
strikes the ear in passing

strikes reason
and gets more
radio airtime

I’ll stay on
foreever in
the storm-tossed
confrontation
that opens each scene

keenly Celtic & oral
with Scottish raindrops

tis himself
compromised
ready to breach

renounce the charm
the great novel
of familiarity

The Goose

at The Goose across from Wood Green Station
£1.50 a pint, Slovakians and Bulgerians and Polish and North
Londoners and a man in the corner climbing a ladder
of tongues

in the overheard compartments
of the mind
what has lifted
what has shifted
in the supreme footfall, in the swagger
of alternate tendencies: sparks
of the masculine dream dragon: can’t
get at them, these wordzones, muddled
tendrils grabbing my limbs

what you said what you said is a miner’s strike
on the piss man, need to get sucked
in to just juiced up: scenes are spoken
into: Charlie couldn’t hold it, that’s
bet UHR, looks like the channel switcher, switch
hitter, open blondes and open evenings with evening
jeans and evening dresses and Polish mindbombs

what did you wager? Your mammalian glands
on the lank, not primarily for safety still
need to come home to give birth, in the choked
out energy spurts of grace in mad cities, in the anti-
poetic underword scenes
accumulate on the primal verge.

I’m getting younger. Is this a double or a single? It’s not
a dull one is it? What else do you do? How do you do?
What can you wager? You should see
her last performance.

In my cartoon dreams with cartoon erection there is larvae flowing
down the moutainside of some remote thatched hut village
and a lumpy Polish giant to burn for the good of the economy,
the good of the nation, the complete abduction of senses.
Not a martyr’s dream but a mime
with the personal, the real is a mongrel shaking.

Out of waste: out of rubble: out of conversations with self
on Easyjet flights from Katowice to London to Belfast to London
I’ve lost the frontman, the stunt double, the greasy
L of the last good lube is still slithering, my pontification is asswine,
greased up my mind is swelling,
mad drills of the infinite mind how you like me now
mad cow, mad moutains and mole hills.

In the transgressions of memory a boy with a blond
mop and Jesus complex is stuck in the transmission
crackling behind the screen, behind the scenes:

all unattended
selves will be removed
by the police

what does it mean to sell out? it entails something about authenticity which is a big bag of bones. but being authentic is always a question in motion. like individuality it is under suspicion. and at the very least it is fucking hard work. to be authentic requires constant questing and questioning. i have a marketing job. i wore a white shirt, blue suit, and combed my hair in a nice tame way and took out my earring. did i lose something? “clothes and fashion are superficial. it is the inside that counts.” but clothes are signifiers and your signifiers can become you unless you realise it is a play. even then there is danger. wearing a suit in central london and working with the bigshots may, in time, change your personality. a personality may have some stable aspects, and many unstable or free-playing aspects based on context/environment. i want to see my pesonalities as many branches on the one tree, the one tree with a shitload of roots going everywhere and nowhere. i want to sit in the centre of the energy of the world and dig it. i want to get lost in order to lose self-consciousness. i want to light it up. get the words chattering in my head again. after three years of living in foreign countries i didn’t hear much in terms of inner dictation. my writing changed. i learned a lot. now it is time to get more playful and listen to all those damn fine voices in my head again. yeah. and really soak it all in.

so no selling out. a day job for less money is better than getting sucked into the corporate world. maybe i can go into the beast later. i can play. let’s play. ok better catch the tube to get the bus to get the plane to fly to belfast. back to london in 11 days.

off we go . . .

in new room. old place. a few cool bulgarians. now my mum is in belfast. flying back to belfast tomorrow. it is crazy globe trotting. come back to london in 11 days. will eventually get settled. met cool german named sven and went to about five london irish pubs full of irish londoners here since the 60’s. mostly old men. interesting. lots of polish people here in wood green. no internet in my new flat/room. my room is illegal. it is not meant to be rented. a storage space. but super cheap. for london. just a foot in the door. using super slow internet right now at a cafe. type everything at least three times. keyboard/internet problems. ten steps behind my typing. new job should be ok. small school. marketing a school is much better than marketing some shitty product . . . so in short . . . on the move . . . head still up . . . hectic as all hell . . . but i am damn determined to make a new life . . . so come on london . . . lets get it on . . .

I traveled from Milton Keynes to London all last week. After one busy extremely stressful week I have a job and a place to live. I will take the train tomorrow to London. I will live with six other guys in a cheap flat share in North London (Wood Green). The new job is in marketing and administration for a language school in North London. They will train me. Still a lot of stress ahead. Gotta breathe deep. New job with lots of new things to learn. The new flat is quite messy and old and the room is very small but it is very cheap for London (£240/month) so at least it is a start. I can survive until my first paycheck. The downside is that I won’t have any internet :-( I am going to try to get a pay as you go plan. Means I have to top it up a lot. £15 for 100 hours. Limited hours on the internet so will have to plan carefully.

So off I go . . . no idea what can happen . . . .

birds everywhere. at least twelve new songs. clock ticking. slugs nestled into mud puddles. Lush, in short.

i have applied to a mad amount of jobs, it is the system, my tick, oversaturate then choose via exhaustion or luck.

just want a bit of peace, a piece, small piece, of the pie without getting sucked in, labour, free economy, marketing and pr and . . . and . . . it’s ok to work in business, in that world, just so long as i have mental space, mental spaces, for my writing.

art is a re-arrangement, a reshuffling. i write to see, or i write instrumentally, and seeing requires mining and mining requires minding the gaps and the gaps contain blocked energies and . . . well . . . unblocking blocked energies can get downright messy.

I’m looking at language now, how, it creates, now how i can recreate and how now
in this world of false limits and limitless faults

how i can choose

hey we go . . . one hour . . . two trains . . . plane . . .london

well, Milton Keynes for a while . . . interview for a marketing gig in North London Tuesday. If I got the job, I would be the marketing fella for an English language school in North London. The other side. Not teaching. Not sure if I can get it. Not sure of anything except . . . goodbye Poland. It’s been good. It’s been terrible. It’s been a roller coaster. I have learned a lot. I need to be in an English speaking country for an extended period of time. Maybe grab some roots.

I met some amazing people in Poland (Ewa, Joe, Magda, Zofia, Jon, a fantastic student named Piotr, Ela etc.)

Krakow is a beautiful city. A lot of interesting things happening. I will visit Krakow again for sure!!!

Zurek is an amazing soup. Bigos is good in the winter. Polish beer was quite good.

I will miss some of my great students at Empik!!! I won’t miss Katowice!!!

time for a new life . . .

next entry will be from London (or London area)

dipping feet into dead holes:
polski pani
polski pani
zoo wee su zesh gee
oh wee ma me
pling plang ol la ba na na

the eye socket does not contain a rainbow
but the informer keeps on informing

coins on the table, flight delayed, & still trying to simplify my life
I’ve the restless disease with speedy boarding
one hold bag between all passages
literal survival mode pulls my gyspy strings
I hate to go so early into the verile light

cruel spring is on the way and my savage old identity is
in the making, three years of foreign lands, my action is mental,
don’t jump outta airplanes ‘cept in my mind
get natural, get funny, get off, get
your tail
in a hairspin, tis insanity hence sane

ached-up falliable nautical
hot-splotch rollerwheels &
squeels
& a dummy
tit to shut
the trap

got bucked &
got juiced
in the lands of the dead

freedom and forgetting
are twin cousins
on the back
of an elephant

certified face full of holes

fear less
than clear

can’t find my knees
on a flight to Belfast
to bury the dead
all kinds of physics at work
in the air

to trace the heat of fingers doesn’t always proceed
from body to body

there is a kind, they say, a kind
of wheel turning and a new song
on the wings

kids dropped his crayon on the airplane
my wife was x-rayed in crayons

toothcombing the mindbreaks
with a dead shoulder
thrown into the system

Throngs of people in the centre of katowice scuttling down the street. Legs don’t work right around here. My energies are dispersed and can’t keep ahead of the curve. Nothing is not enough. A saturation and then repulsion of selves. Reading and writing and being awake are a survival strategy. A pull toward the pit. Feeling all my work is a forgery. Why did I begin these travels? Why leave America? Have I discovered anything? I wanted to expand my writing practices. Not sure if I needed to go anywhere to expand my writing practices but I have learned what I don’t want. Location is torn apart and I need a centre to direct my energies. Anti-poetic. Embodied. sex/birth/and primordial themes. The primal verge!!!

three more hard days of teaching in Poland. Then a few days in krakow and then London. Trying to stay calm. No idea what kind of job I can get in London. But I must awaken again.

need to get some roots. hunker down and create. meet my basic needs and write write write . . .

it was a very hard, sad and beautiful funeral. it was nice to see my mum for a little while. It had been almost six years since I had seen my mum.

i fly back to Poland tomorrow. then london at the end of next week.

I am hoping to find a community of artists and poets in London. Need to get that original energy back again. Doors opening. Possibilities. . .

My Granny helped raise me when I was little. I will miss her terribly. I never got to say goodbye.

from my uncle Stan:

Georgina Phyllis Wilson (Gibson)
Monday 21st April 2008
My Mummy died this morning at approximately 6.25am, after a very long disturbed night. Thankfully after an additional injection she passed away peacefully in her sleep. She will be very very sorely missed by all her eight children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. I got extra close to Mummy this last few months and years, and her loss is particularly painful – but her many many years of pain are now gone.

In the daily minutiae picking up, picking out, packing up, freedom is a force multiplier still increasing in importance, where you going with your lazy eye in central Europe rollerblading on love’s highway got no action to declare wszystkiego naylepszego dream on, dream churned out in a post-bomb haze, what about ya, little legs twisted on the cement feels the kicks against the pricks, smile because it happened and don’t ask what the world needs.

Briefs me on the latest, on the lanky blur, on the secret of why we first took to our feet, Cro-Magnon, filet mignon, coming alive in the 1980’s with Madonna and hairspray, yes that’s it, a realistic statistic of the mice finding another way in the maze, flattop for the coming apocalypse, for the way we dip our feet in the dead holes, the eye socket does not contain
a rainbow.

From that moment on the body refused its movement and there was the feeling of everything left to do. What am I going to show you now? A protoclysmic eye? A terrestial invasion? Everything wise is broken. Non-instrumental potential.

you must sit
down

in this tunnel
and try
a new

breath

you must vacate
the storm’s
lecture

yr blood
edits
this page

soul’s are void of fingerprints
but leave

toothmarks on the pillow

we always remember
immmersed in water

a bobbing head among the waves

thank you for being
here

thank you for hanging
in the vortex
&
shaking dreams from
these rotting branches

Looks like it is back to America in May or June. It has been over five years since I have seen my family (mum dad and three brothers and three sisters). Arranging tickets. Salt lake City, Utah and living with my folks for the summer in a place called Spanish Fork (Utah). Earn some money doing some marketing or pr or editing or whatever

then off to London in September

want to stay in Europe

maybe change my passport from British to Irish

not an easy transition . . . hard to leave Poland in some ways . . . but gonna get back on my feet again someway somehow . . . still kicking

Spanish Fork. . . hm . . . nice strange sounding place . . .

or was it American Fork??????

The Secret of Why We First Took to Our Feet

the brain weaves a strange kind of music and our bodies
seem unable to forget
the memory of what it feels like
to be properly seen
all I have said is truly a conversation
with light as a shadow puppet
among the living
we can find breathing but we can’t find air
that defective space under which
all our selves co-mingle
springtime is a time
of limited air
and many contagions
beauty is outlawed
or injected as a drug
and all our never agains
make breathing hard
it’s in the air between
you and me baby
a special way
of fucking your self
you’ve come to understand
the mask as an image
the image as a house of cards
a collapsible organ
in the centre of the chest
——————————————————–
we meet eyes, with the backside of a spoon
we meet eyes, and others, with the backside
of a spoon, we meet eyes, and only, to give it a chance
with our eyes and the dust and the backside of a spoon
and the dust still tastes like dust
and my mother is no longer making sense

alright lalala, voice in the everglades, trumpeted
like a spoon with careful smudges
to be redeemed like a moon in Aries
one shoe in the gutter with our eyes
our eyes and the same old fish
in the gutter in the image in the dark

a vacation in the marginal spots
in the simple songs for the dead
with our eyes our eyes
and the backside of a spoon

all of this is tacky like a hysterical
handful of clippings and the eye, the eye
gets seen, gets seen
with the backside of a spoon
——————————————————–
We the delightful people full on last year’s perfume can’t erase our fat cheeks, the celestial appearance of erstwhile words are stood on their head, with swallowed phrases, sit up carefully, less a hospital, the life of the death, the delightful people, without a joint or a joiner

the scene is snowy with Easter on its way, the window scene contains a man, no three men, crowding around a park bench cupping and ush ushing their way into the backdrop of milky puddles

standing on our head in today’s capital city, the fat duck with serene dignity is from Belaya Rus, is the cult, meanders around with his wallet, with attitudes, with fidgets, slips on the necktie, flash out the card, all the words fall into it and this is the life of a rising self desperate to hide its underwear

is the new cult, meanders around, in City Rock café, the other man has a cold

before the pregnancy we revised our titles

the sun penetrates industrial clouds and we can’t get beyond our pubic hair, sit down
and call back the kitty, privacy is shaken out like a dead fish, how we got that way, so much sweeter on a day with hot spots, thanks for having me on here, I see what you hear standing on the cold shoulders dazzled into speech, foaming on the lips of my father I’m wheeled into surgery, yanked into native elements, an overgrown parenthesis

we are delightful people, the voice of losers working hard at the impossible

——————————————————–

on the radio news from the BBC Chinese state media admit protests spill into the mainland

I’ve got nothing to see, no TV

in the surrounding areas, with troops, in the capital, still so nervous about the ethnic

in the uprising, before it broke out, a sign of some confidence, here and there

in a jubilee non-existent haze crowds the word hoard, crowds the grave, crowds the eye

the crowd is a mainland, an non-existant haze at the centre of the eye, a surrounding

what is reconciled cannot be fathomed, we are extricated and unfrocked by the nape
of our necks, by the palpitating and pulped, by the unwritten prescriptions

on the news, in the radio: are you feeling the crunch?

the man from Belaya Rus has lit-up, the man from Belaya Rus is in the haze,

I’m passing thirty-three, passing the Christ year, two weeks after easter, the curve, the heat, the sweat, the old squeaky bed

——————————————————–
standing
as it does
we should
get off
and crawl

I’ve got no-see TV
washed in a no-see haze
a coin in the mouth of a fish
word-whore, hear, here
in a leethe-mask
washed in a no-see haze
a coin in the mouth of fish
——————————————————–
the man is not the meaning, the meeting, the spoon, the mainland, the self-strangulation, the metered, the meted, the wetted

to get all myself born I crawled through the TV, I want to be where you are, on all fours, in the muck, on all fours in the muck

The Secret of Why We First Took to Our Feet

the brain weaves a strange kind of music and our bodies
seem unable to forget
the memory of what it feels like
to be properly whole
all I have said is truly a conversation
with light as a shadow puppet
among the living
we can find breathing but we can’t find air
that defective space under which
all our selves co-mingle
springtime is a time
of limited air
and many contagions
beauty is outlawed
or injected as a drug
and all our never again
makes breathing hard
it’s in the air between
you and me baby
a special way
of fucking your self
you’ve come to understand
the mask as an image
the image as a house of cards
a collapsible organ
in the centre of the chest

it is pleasant to breathe after strangulation

it is pleasant to clink a wishbottle against yr yellowing teeth

it is pleasant to tie boredom to the bed and whip the shit out of it

it is pleasant to walk on cold ground with defective spaces in yr mind

it is pleasant to dance in the shark moonlight with a rat and two Polish sausages

it is pleasant to shit sticks and wipe snot from your wordtrap

it is pleasant to count the percentage of satisfactory intercourses

it is pleasant to cough up new wax, boogers, and phlegm

Kultura

It’s a milkshake dream. Chocolate chunks in a pool of milk. What will prevail upon the tongue when human time is disappearing from the universe? And so the large self is proud of no-nation. They are all little shits. I’m a chain. A chain around grotesque nipples. I myself did love, did leave a trivial self. A defaced coin in the pocket of a tramp.

when I was born
when I was born
my face was bruised
was bruised
with commands

what is forbidden is broken, a token
self resorted, a restored elf
in hiding, in hiding a forbidden self
is resorted, I live because I love
and in loving stay to bleed.

When the self is trampled, which is not the same as dead, there is a dance beneath the world tree. Lock arms and swing, grasp and let go. Shame is the beginning of wisdom. Shame is the body. Shame is the face sinking back into the face. And so dance, and in so doing, more than dance. And love. And. And live in an unknown country.

better get out
before
it’s too late
better open
the door
better bake a new loaf

better
invesistigate
your mind/body problem

better rethink
your country

better make sounds underwater
to find out what’s close to you

bent over, doubled over, doubled in, the death
sentence is where we’re going.

Images exist, near the eye. I exist
where the muscle contracts. Near
the eye where the muscle contracts.

What exists in the scenes, between the scenes, between
the lines, between the lies? What exists? What exists?

What micro and macro invasions
hold our eyes, the grave is plain white, plain white
bread flaked into a gurgling sink, a gurgling grave,
held open to the grave, held open to the sink.

Held open, and let in, what light, plain
white, death white, what light is let in.

she wouldn’t open
the door, I asked
her to open
the door, no one
is at the door she said
she said the door
is already open
but no one
is at the door
and all our cultural
credit is nits

We’re breaking down, breaking apart to break in. We’ve come for you. We’ve opened the door. The door is open. No one is at the door and no one will answer.

Who is taken across in the beautiful blur? Who pries open the intensity of the moment? No one is the blind light. Deforested, who sings?

The classification of experience is scened, scanned, humiliated. Classification is muddy writing. Or seen from the backside, we are eaten by light. Daylight reveals the deathmask.

Shame

Ladies and gentlemen, better wake up and hijack these images. Don’t wake up too old for experience. You’re beginning to believe in the past detached from the body. I have found ergo I am dead. A damned birth needs continual shock. An exaggeration of subtle truths. Here beneath the house of language a bat beats its wings in the shadows. Gifts of gods in exodus. Written though. A skeleton soaking in lamb’s wool.

A benign herd of words supports a backward relief system. A delicious meal on the shells of the dead. Daylight reveals more of the shrine. Only cold mud can cure the leech-suck. This is a musical theatre. Get aroused by the gaps in your ego. Gestures of broken heads. Hell is visible in the scene speak. Drunk on evasion the fish are swimming in the bucket. Be weary of elegance.

Drilled-in, and shaken. Are you listening? Drilled into the skull. Can you hear the operations? Skip the opera these lines pull blood to the retina. You are banished to the boonies. We are a metaphor within a marvelous body. We are the world’s most bitter conflicts.

Drunk more than a cupful and still drinking. How much you got? Sleeping on a fence
of spikes. Proud of no-nation. They are all little shits. Human-time is disappearing from the universe. One light at a time. Can’t shake all my Kultura. Sand wipes us out and silence sticks to the Pines.

myself did
love did
leave

a tribal self
a tribal elf

effaced
and given, to
you

when I was born
when I was born
my face was bruised
was bruised
with precepts

what is forbidden, what is broken, a broken
thing is contorted, a contorted self, an elf
in hiding, in hiding a broken self
is contorted

what needs checking is checking
itself, revision itself, itself
because what’s in store
now that we live
is because we love
and you, you
decide to stay
and bleed

What needs checking when the self is effaced? What is shame when the self is deflated?
Shame is civilized. Shame is cloaked. Shame exists in the making.

Decided to stay, strum more than a string, and love. And. And live in an unknown country.
better get out before
it’s too late
better open
the door
better bake
before it’s too late

better rethink
your mind/body problem

better rethink
your forgotten country

better make sounds underwater
to find out what’s close to you

better better
before it’s too late

bent over, doubled over, doubled in, the death
sentence is where we’re going.

images exist, near the eye. I exist
where the muscle contracts. Near
the eye where the muscle contracts.

What images exist beyond the screen, what exists
in the reporting, between the scenes, between
the lines, between the lies? What exists? What exists?

What micro and macro invasions
hold our eyes, the grave is plain white, plain white
bread flaked into a gurgling sink, a gurgling grave,
held open to the grave, held open to the sink.

Held open, and let in, what light, plain
white, death white, what light is let in.

she wouldn’t open
the door, I asked
her to open
the door, no one
is at the door she said
she said the door
is already open
but no one
is at the door
and all our
credit is blank

We’re breaking down, breaking down to break in. We’ve come for you. We’ve opened the door. The door is open. No one is at the door. And no one is let in.

Saturday morning Pre-CAE class. Great students.

Shame

I am full
of shame. All my work
is a forgery.

I don’t think
I’ve said
one important thing
in my entire life

I’m back in a body
crumbling
within the prism
of white supremacy.

Purity is for dummies.

*******************************************************************************************
Ladies and gentlemen, better wake up and hijak these images. Don’t wake up too old for experience. You’re beginning to believe in the past detached from the body. I have found ergo I am dead. It is miraculous here Bush with a tail that sweeps the globe. Dollar based Euro based hallucination. Our damned birth is a form of continual shock. You’re not told what you can’t know and mental exercises are an exaggeration of suble truths. Here beneath the house of language a bat beats its wings in the shadows and a living drone investigates. It’s a gray day you can’t refuse: gifts of gods themselves in exodus. What’s left is a continual deforestation. Written though. A skeleton soaking in lambswool. Under the pretense of shattering snores every window is opened.
*******************************************************************************************
Social manipulation is not forced on the people. Drilled-in, and shaken. Are you listening? Indefinite and insincere your days are numbered. Late-mate drilled and nailed to the wall. Can you hear the operations? Sensory input is laughed off the tongue. Skip the opera these lines pull blood to the retina. A wrong sense of play and you are banished to the boonies. We are a metaphor within a marvelous body. You are the world’s most bitter conflicts.

*******************************************************************************************
This is a benign herd of words that supports a backward relief system. A delicious meal on the shells of the dead. Daylight reveals more of the shrine. Climb into me: don’t recall and don’t imagine. This reality: only cold mud can cure the leech-suck. As we go down we go up.
*******************************************************************************************
For hours fat men unfold from their seats and pin the map. This is a musical theatre and it is not a question of established traditions. Get aroused by the gaps in your ego. Gestures of broken heads = you must be thinking. Hell is visible in the scene speak. Drunk on evasion the fish are swimming in the bucket. Be weary of elegance.
*******************************************************************************************
All these years wasted in shame. Drunk more than a cupful and still drinking. How much you got? Sleeping on a fence of spikes and then up to my knees in shit. Proud of no-nation. They are all little shits. Human-time is disappearing from the universe. One light at a time. Can’t shake it out via Kultura. Sand wipes us out and silence sticks to the Pines.

We’ve talked a little about the horsepenis and change and luck and the way things come down. There are cartoon voices and a jangle of keys at the station. The penis is abandoned or postponed for old age. Sop up the sperm of these swift cheap words. Through any window piss is raining from the sky. Sons and daughters ninety times out of a hundred piss on the streets with knapsacks and Polish mullets. It is easy to put a hole in the ground and make a great piss. What’s seen is sucked away and what remains is a big Katowice train station toilet. 1zl per entrance and exit. Is this a sad romance? Nothing is really uncovered. Stories directly from the drain. Perhaps doing that, or this, and pissing it all out and everything.

What do you think about a penis with eros seated on your shoulder? What you think about a vagina who says you’re still beautiful? Singer there may be more than one kind of a curse. I have a necklace of bloody teeth for this cure and a complex airport diagram with lights on the bathroom wall. What is the nature of this shutdown? A fermenation of white on dark. Shuttered lid schooled in the skull rubble through which we suck our thumb and don’t tinkle. This is not a result of resisting hell. A hillhigh mouth of grating teeth. We could have a glass of self-indentification with the night else draft a running collage of real zingers. Words spin on the down beat. You are now entering the moon’s white back.

Most Fridays only contain three or four hours of teaching and then the afternoon and evening are free. God it is nice. Here is a revision of an earlier poem. Still in the works, but moving in a better direction. Think the manuscript is changing. Prodigal Drift is no longer the right title.

Primal Verge

Detergents force out dirt and foam is the spirituality of luxury. The washing machine is a house of memory with a music hall of tumbling cycles. Whosoever cycles among the signals will grow ears. New clothes are old clothes in new bottles. Reckless rhetoric is a reflexive lyric.

Dirt is my lunch and my lunch
is written on the wall.

it is announcements like these that make me wish I were still in North Carolina with the Lucifer Poetics folk:

Announcing MIXTAPE (the Reading Series) #4

Mark you calendars now! Mixtape is a salon-style reading series, where invited poets will read “mixes” of work by writers other than themselves.

Host: Chris Vitiello
Where: 1106 Ninth St., Apartment A, Durham, NC
Date: Saturday February 23, at 8 p.m.
Readers: Chris Vitiello & Kate Pringle

After a hiatus of some months, MIXTAPE is back!

Chris Vitiello (http://attentionwithoutame.blogspot.com/) is riding high on the release of his new book (http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/books/vitiello/vitiello-audio.htm). I asked him if he’d care to break the MIXTAPE format and read from Irresponsibility instead, but he’s going to grace us with a regular MIXTAPE selection — still, feel free to regard this MIXTAPE in part as a stopgap book release party for Chris, and to shower him with gifts and accolades.

Kate Pringle (http://minoramerican.blogspot.com/) of minor/american fame (not to be confused with American Minor, “A 5 piece alt-country rock and roll band from Charleston, West Virginia”) will also give a reading, and should also be showered with gifts and accolades, just for ruling in a general sense. I’m sure Kate will be glad to see you all at a poetry party that she doesn’t have to clean up after for once!

Future MIXTAPES plan to feature a variety of post-reading attractions, including “play stations” for making visual art, sound, and words in a free, collaborative manner. This MIXTAPE, however, will take place within earshot of a sleeping infant, and will therefore be a bit quieter (although I’ve heard rumors that Iris might be hanging up art in the apartment to give art tours, which I really hope happens). In fact, all poets with babies should consider bringing their babies to this MIXTAPE, so that the babies can all meet one another, and that we might place the babies in arrangements both whimsical to the mind and pleasing to the eye, and photograph them in these arrangements.

Please spread the word to any parties you think might be interested– I look forward to seeing you all this weekend.

There’s a he and a she separated by slender wood. The graver engraves and the wood is
bitten into. Who carves and who is carved really doesn’t matter. Who bites and who is bitten depends on the occasion.

Please observe the sound of a broken flip-flop from your bedroom window. It is summer and a city peasant is waving for a lighter. His skin is doughed so crudely it’s hard to find his eyes. His yes is the sound of slavic clock: tak tak tak.

At the train station a final whistle cuts the air as each memory chugs away on forgotten tracks. Romantic rubbish is stuffed into recycle bins. I am carried away and pushed open by the lidless. I must mind my memories, mine the dark ripples. The meat of the body eats itself.

There’s a he and a she waving for a blue lighter through the bedroom window. It is summer and a distant train carries dough-faced passengers in the early morn. A slavic clock above a recycling bucket blinks on and off.

Please observe the slender wood as a final whistle cuts through the air. Lidless eyes are stuffed into dark ripples of skin. Ripples mix with old coal on the wet road. A train eats itself on the dark tracks.

There’s a he and a she separated by slender wood. The graver engraves and the wood is
bitten into. Who carves and who is carved really doesn’t matter. Who bites and who is bitten depends on the occasion.

Please observe the sound of a broken flip-flop from your bedroom window. It is summer and a city peasant is waving for a lighter. His skin is doughed so crudely it’s hard to find his eyes. His yes is a the sound of slavic clock: tak tak tak.

At the train station a final whistle cuts the air as each body chugs away on forgotten tracks. Romantic rubbish is stuffed into recycle bins. I am carried away and pushed open by the lidless. I must mind my memories, mine the dark ripples. The meat of the body eats itself.

There’s a he and a she separated
by slender wood: engraved and
bitten into.
One broken flip-flop clops
along the wooden floor.
Each footfall sinks
into sand. A final
whistle cuts
the air as each
memory chugs
away on forgotten
tracks. Romantic
rubbish is stuffed
into recycle bins.
To have been is to be
carried away and pushed
open by the lidless.
I must mind
my memories, mine
the dark ripples.
The meat
of the body eats
itself.

Scene Speak

Katowice centre has the highest percentage of limping people per capita. The table in this café keeps tipping. Hands won’t get warm. Ice cobra of the mind. Caution for the darkness that rumbles from the post-communist trams. Glops of kebab stick to the pavement. Fingers null. Old homes mold holes. Word my brain. Best to crank up the velocity when alone without water gas and air. Caffeine hovers and words squirt the windows. Advertisements are thrust into passing hands. More interesting arrangements are made in the making. Proud Polish smiles on V-day with couples and roses and other clichés. This is a staring culture suspicious until proven otherwise. Chocolate melts through the fingers. The cover story covers half the brain. Cream centre or saucy filling. Indent with the skull duly noted. This is the prime condition. Bells ring out the god delusion. Expectancy is a paper-thin silhouette. Lots of gibber in this joint. Poland is a giant sausage. An alien language goes swish swash szish swzisch. Reality is dug out. Including such things as authenticity doesn’t shine anyone’s shoes. About the eyes: let’s forget all about these ceilings. A paper heart is sealed in oxygen. Comments are relegated to the restored body. Gristles and groans. Another mask in the making. Imitation gum sticks to the molars. Hairy nostrils. Crabbed into bitter flavours the body rings for tailors. Robots emerge for the linguists. You’re too slow for the bakeload. Scene speak. Click. Dare to wade into beings. Beached bottles and rotten onions for cold fevers. Tune-in to tattered signals.

Maybe you had wooden fingers in a past life

Bloodlump

bit my tongue
on some thinned-out
Polish bread
and it’s a bloodlump
against
the invertebrate
movements
of the tongue

when with contempt the exposure of dust in the daylight: a fertile stasis above
the hills of a shelled-out city: the liver deposits
unconscious memory: from blood
simple that wish in the water: to think
it’s true asleep among the shadows: hieroglyphic indifference
with the little nibs
of forethought: time is the event: memory is a monkey
in shattered glass else a cool shoeshine: squeeze out
heat from a pile of salted bodies
ready for the fire: sharpen yr knaves: there’s a silent menace
in the carnivorous loaves:

the bones are baked with leaves: the body is being read: red being
pumped out and taken in: what is the destination
of vibration on water: chilled out
terror of acceptance: it’s not a simple jive
among the metaphors

have to tilt a little to the right but new glasses are back with a new lens . . .

Neighbors 1

no eternity without mythical speech
totem mud paints the brain
clay codings
seven to nine stiches suture the mind
a paradise of blemishes
music drawn like concepts
between meanings
visions in the mudpit

Neighbors 2

crazy oblivion terminates in the nude
bathing in pine needles
skin stripped from the bum
the most inquisitive children
on the sundial of the dead

all good people in the pit
with which the world spins
loneliness from one skull to the next
illuminated by the cruelty of transition
between countries

licking the salt off the armpit of a pregnant woman
tombstones and doors
bedrails invade the sky
nighttooth faxed to the underworld

Neighbors 3

wild dogs at Katowice train station
broken glasses
swollen nose
gingerbread latte and Vogue papierosy
god’s playground

In fact, there are only two things in the universe which are simple, and one of them is the universe taken as a whole; and the other is its language, because its language is its capacity for love. And the capacity of the universe for love is that for which man was born. Oh yes, I am an absolute predestinarian in that sense. I believe utterly in that it is man’s destiny to bring love to the universe, I mean, to fulfill the universe’s potential for love. It’s great, you know; in France — they keep things alive longer there — the word for magnet is “aimant” (lover). I just flipped when I heard that. Always, I mean, in all the ancient cosmologies, the planets were moved by love, or carried round. The First Mover was certainly love.

The third half

SHIT HAPPENS, that’s how
the writing on men’s toilet wall ends.
This is the worst –
to walk with such hunger
of at least minimal glow – to find
only this, the writing at night toilet,
that’s how it looks, pussycat
and that’s how it ends

Dogs make love on the pavement. I pretended a tenor
for fifteen minutes, till sudden lack
of tenor voice on the radio and the last movement
of my mouth was like fishy and I only pushed out
a cloud of silence. I squeeze a sheet of paper in my hand:
IF YOU FEEL MORTAL – CALL IN

Memory Clouds

. . . the most benign symptom (Roland Barthes)

memory clouds, as the say, feed
on mountains, endless
hover that dwells, or dwelled
elsewhere, and yeah
behold a punctured
tyre, nightfeet across
swollen floorboards, each
perception divides itself into
earth and air.

In the theatre
of crashing streets there is:

a ladder of bird feathers

children
mock smoking
with broken
twigs

a face
painted
in coal dust

Went to a club last Thursday with my friend Andrew. My friend is 30 and they wanted his id. He was visiting Poland and did not bring his id to the club. I have never shown id in a Polish club before. There was a bit of an argument with the bouncer but nothing serious. My friend spoke in Czech to cause less problems. But the bouncer snapped when he heard English. Called us English swine. Went mad. Other security guards held us and they punched us. I ducked a lot. Something smashed. A window perhaps. One of the other English teachers told the bouncer to take it easy and they punched him. Sore jaw. Keeps getting more sore every day. Cut on my nose. Just discovered a bump on my head. All my teeth still here.

I had a strange reaction. All defensive. Not one punch. I went into super calm mode.

Of course later I got very mad.

But maybe just as well I did nothing except try to move out of the way. A few of my students and some Polish teachers said the club (Spiz) is run by the Polish mafia.

Maybe the bouncer had a terrible time working in England. One big vicious cycle. From one country to the next foreigners get fucked one way or another!

My old flatmate from Dublin was attacked last year by a gang of Polish guys with a hate for British. He said they kept calling him an English bastard and he tried to tell them “But I’m not English I’m Irish.” They beat him until his jaw snapped. He ate through a straw for over a month.

I am sure the same shit happens to Polish people in England sometimes. But one difference is that at least in a public club they would have some rights. The police are mostly corrupt here.

So it could have been a lot worse. Jaw still works.

Not having much luck in Poland. A few more bad experiences and I am outta here.

Detergents force out dirt and foam makes something out of nothing. Foam is the spirituality of luxury.

The emperor’s new clothes are a reflexive lyric of the bodysoul.

The washing machine is a house of memory and clothes are washed in epistemological soap bubbles.

Lost socks for a new medium.

Music hall of tumbling cycles.

A reckless rhetoric of memory.

I have been thinking about old patterns. In marriage therapy towards the end of my marriage I realised I needed to be more assertive. To tell my wife no sometimes. To take on more “masculine” traits in terms of being decisive and a bit less open etc.

I believe in freedom. I hate jealousy.

it is something I have to get used to. I am not really passive in other areas of my life. Maybe too aware of gender etc. I don’t want to be the type of jealous controlling guy who thinks a girl is his property. I guess there is something in between that. Women want to feel wanted! It is normal! I also like to feel attractive to other people of course. And maybe some jealousy is an indication that you actually love someone?

Passion is important. Even if there some arguments and frustrations. Everything can’t always be neat and tidy. I suppose I want my outside world to be ordered and comfortable since my inner world is a bit crazy.

Gender roles are very strong in Poland. In clubs girls will often say no many times when a guy tries to dance with her. This keeps happening on the dance floor until the girl finally accepts his advances and then they kiss etc. I have seen it time and time again. I can’t do that because I have it in my head that when a girl says no she means no in terms of advances etc.

A lot of girls want or expect the guys to be aggressive. Maybe this is changing with the new generations???

hm . . .

I did not teach today. It helped. I cleared a space for thinking and writing and reading.

I am taking an 8 hour train to Gdansk tomorrow morning. I will need to find bananas before departing.

I read some of Clayton Eshleman’s Companion Spider on Google reader. It inspired me to order some books. I can’t order books like I used to because of limited funds and distance. But what the hell!!!

I ordered:

1) In the Pines
By Alice Notley

2) Peregrinary (New Polish Writing)
By Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-dycki (Author), Bill Johnston (Translator)

3) Companion Spider
by Clayton Eshleman

Delivery estimate right now is Apirl 30th 2008. The Polish book of poetry is a pre-order so maybe that is why. Hopefully they will change the shipping estimate on the other books.

My new manuscript Prodigal Drift is going well. I am still finding ways to use personal history and memory in my writing. Right now I think Prodigal Drift deals a lot with the complexity of memory. Here is a rough draft of a poem I began a few hours ago. It is far from finished (if such a thing exists):

Blind Bird Grows Feathers

Lucifer rode a star into the centre of the world. Memory is hollowed to channel intoxicating vapours breathed by words. Memory allows direct communication with gods. Precise flesh is subvocal and stars are made to chew.

Demonology began with smell, began with a mad uncle. Beard dripping chinese gravy. Violence in grand gestures. Give me a reason to believe. The mad uncle was not mad: the mad uncle was mad. A tiny spot of land for a lost people. If you have access to the blur then people feel heavy and we can’t afford anything other than the bouncing city and you can explode your bubble bombs in the bathtub or sink.

This is not the sound of a white-washed mouth. This is the sound of decaying flesh beneath the palm trees. Say a shadowrabbit played on the ceiling. Say my children’s fingers lack the bones to do the work. Shed your skin in the desert to do the work. Hurdle headlong beneath the wheel and die beneath the savage words. At length the exhaustion of the mind amid the ocean. The drifter will keep beating the boy.

Auspicious Wanderings

Auspicious Wanderings

a lemmon seed floats in my milk
auspicious wedding rings fall into drainpipes
shadows stick to the branches
cigarette butts smell like rotten peanuts
Irish flem leaves my throat
recovery is only partially responsible
I might dance
spermatic tissues block the heating vents
as an answer mercy swallows the cat’s tongue
the story of our masks is largely mute
misunderstanding is stasis
strangers take shelter in the commentary

performing childhood is something else
where light is a lonesome hymn
touching commits to memory
rhetorical proof in perpetual motion
love’s unbroken composition
approaching the furthest moon
salvation among the borders of civilisation
so tonight the gaps are graced

migration to memory
inside the praxis of living
a mongrel shake-down
on the milk-stained carpet

new issue of onedit is out today.

It features complete works by

Miles Champion
Khaled Hakim
Harry Gilonis
Stephen Rodefer
Eleni Sikelianos

It is at:

onedit

Katowice is the city of mud. The Polish just throw a shit load of dirt on snow maybe to save money on salt and when it melts it mixes with the coal grime and it is just one big mess. Slipping and sliding in mud all over the city . . .

http://www.youtube.com/p/D1597C2CAB3870FD

still recovering. zofia got me a new shirt. dig it.

got back to poland last night. fantastic new year’s eve party at Spencer Pub in Katowice. Lots and lots of wine and food and dancing. Now I have a serious hangover. it is 1:30PM. I am going back to bed :-)

home for the holidays. a bit of rain. much warmer than poland. the airport took all my liquids so gotta find some more. trying to clear my head. hope it works.

Godzeenie samples

Routine. Just the right amount. I always try to time when I can eat so I have enough energy to get through my classes. Working split shifts makes it hard. I know when I teach a six hour shift in the afternoon with quick breaks I don’t have time to eat anything. The morning shift can be easier. 3.5 hours in the morning then a piece of bread and cheese. Need to find a decent meal to get me through. Not easy. I try not to eat my main meal until 2PM so the food will stick with me longer. But by then I am low in energy and end up eating a kebab. Five kebabs last week, two cheeseburgers, one chicken burger, one chicken wrap and ham and cheese at 10PM. No time to really cook. Hm . . . today I am going to eat my main meal at 1:30PM and make it last till 9:30PM. Maybe a chicken sandwich. Mondays are awkward.