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Saturday, December 04, 2004
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Saturday, September 18, 2004
This is my serious arty blog. I'm not currently doing anything serious or arty. I'm mostly playing here http://radishking.blogspot.com/ for the time being.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
From now on, this blog is going to get serious.
I'm not kidding. No more messing around. This blog is going to be arty and about art and artful and self-contained and well behaved and studious and respectful. This blog is not going to interrupt or spill plum sauce on its knickers or even say the word knickers or press its nose against the window because it looks funny from the outside or use the word blogging as a verb or laugh with its mouth wide open. This blog will not upset the umpire or throw peanut shells on the mascot or drink too much beer. This blog will not try to talk a 7 year old out of an Ichiro bobble head doll on family night. This blog will practice every single day, even Saturday nights and not go directly to Mozart but play scales first until its fingers bleed. This blog will always carry a hankie. This blog will form a mission statement and stick to it. This blog will not fashion Voodoo dolls out of wax as a last ditch attempt to land a job or wear high heels to shop for pumpkins. This blog is ready to settle down and drive right. Subvert the dominant paradigm Monday, September 13, 2004
Friday, September 10, 2004
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
J'ai rêvé tellement fort de toi / J'ai tellement marché tellement parlé
 I'm working on a painting inspired by Carolyn Forché's epic Gnostic abecedarian hymn On Earth. This painting is titled Blue Hour, after Forché's book of the same name, and what the French call l'heure bleue, that period between darkness and day, an hour associated with pure hovering. I awoke shivering this morning. Autumn slammed into in existence here yesterday bringing clouds, cool evening temperatures, unruly savage gardens, wood smoke from neighboring chimneys, bloated, listing pumpkins, new shoes and pencils for school and Elisabeth’s Beatles lunchbox. Rehearsals start in less than a week. The trees up and down the boulevard are dressed in gold lamé like fancy tarts. Quite fetching. I’ve unpacked my sweaters and I’m considering foraging wood for the fireplace. It's the season of building and lighting fires, something at which I’ve become expert. I’ve been cleaning and clearing all week, nesting instincts in high gear. Today feels like a writing day. I think I’ll bake some baguettes, see what shakes out when I'm kneading the dough. I can't begin to account for how many poems make themselves known when I'm baking bread. Mm. Maybe I'll organize a Writing/Baking workshop. Like bread, good poetry takes proof, kneading and patience. I wish I could describe this successfully, make a poem out of this, describe how this took my breath away this morning: the flicker diving and swooping from the telephone pole suddenly spreading its wings to reveal a brilliant flash of scarlet against a slate gray sky. Sunday, September 05, 2004
Cleaning House
It is 11:30 a.m. and I can see the moon out my window. Paris the Genius Cat is curled on the monitor for warmth, but he’s a crappy weather gauge. The sun insists on making an appearance. Bah. I spent the entire morning organizing my poetry files into some kind of order. I had been zipping back and forth between 2 huge folders, New Poems and Finished Poems. My New Poems file had a lot of Word docs containing only titles, notes for poems that never got written, grocery lists, recipes, phone numbers, obscene doodles, my current resume, some poems that had been published and some poems that were never going to get off the ground. It was an unruly and ill-behaved folder. I deleted a lot of these. It was painful to see them go slithering off. I created a Useless Poems folder for another half of them. These are poems that are never going to be published but that I’m not quite ready to delete; love poems, occasional poems, rants, filthy poems, generally-bad-ideas-that-seemed-like-good-ideas-at-the-time poems. I didn’t let them get too far, but they’re welcome to bicker among themselves in their new home. I mowed 1/3rd of my front yard (looks like a discount haircut) with the used-but-new-to-me push lawn mower that I picked up for FREE in someone’s yard last weekend. By the way, if you ever pick up a push lawn mower with a FREE sign attached to it and try to force it into the front seat of your tiny clown car, please DO NOT PICK IT UP BY THE RUSTY BLADE PART. I was lucky not to have lost all the fingers on my right hand though it’s just my bow hand and I think I could manage to continue to play with some duct tape and a bit of physical therapy. Besides, I was not dressed for tragedy or a trip to the emergency room with a bunch of strangers though most likely I would have attempted to drive myself with my bloody stump swaddled in Diva Espresso napkins and errant pieces of sheet music. Fortunately, I escaped with a slight pinch and the lingering embarrassment of the mower tumbling out of my car as I danced around yelping and swearing. After this, I managed to get the thing into the passenger seat, and then I turned and waved, jauntily, I think, considering my close call with amputation, to the house from which I was taking the FREE lawn mower. I felt them inside, peeking out the curtains, giggling. Tomorrow: Bumbershoot and The Pixies. Wild Animal Update 1. Squeaky Fromme, or, as I like to call her, Squeaky Fromage (which would be unripe Stilton or maybe one of those Great Lakes cheeses) is nowhere to be found these days. I like to think that her mother rescued her and they're living happily in a tree or under a tree or in a squirrel safe house somewhere or where ever it is that baby squirrels live when they're not cowering under a 57 Chevy purring. 2. The cricket came back. But this time he was inside, on my comforter, staring at me. He looked menacing and somewhat obscene. Is it the very same cricket? Or is it his brother or his cousin or his insurance agent or his parole officer? I can't tell them apart. I put him outside because I don't like to squish bugs that communicate telepathically. Actually, I don't like to squish bugs at all and I'm not normally bug sqeamish. Though when I was very young I did spray a giant ant hill with lime green paint. Friday, September 03, 2004
woman draping a beaded dress over a fresnel lens in a lighthouse on tillamook rock brass beehive only the ship’s dog survived Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Do squirrels purr?
Yesterday my son rescued a baby squirrel from under the front of his car. The squirrel had not been run over or injured in any way as far as we can tell. He appears to be about 5 to 6 weeks old. I think he’s lost his mum. My son put on leather gloves and walked around with the little thing cupped in his hands, eventually finding a spot for it under one of the evergreens in the back yard. The squirrel wasn’t happy about being carried and made a screamy noise and tried to bite, though it doesn’t have any teeth. My son said that when he went out to check on the baby later, it was standing on its hind legs purring. Maybe this is what happens when you let cats raise your child, as I did mine. Maybe they really do purr. I don’t know. I’ve never held a squirrel or wanted to. This morning the rains came, violently, and at 6 a.m. my son was getting dressed to go check on his baby. He was sure he’d heard the thing crying under the car again. But nope, the squirrel is nowhere to be found. We hope his mum came along, scolded him for wandering away and has taken him home. Of course, I found all sorts of squirrel rescue info here. And of course, my son has named the squirrel (Squeaky Fromme), not necessarily a good thing (the naming I mean. The name is good, but the act of naming forges an attachment.) I found a big cricket on my bedroom window yesterday, just hanging on staring at me. I asked him, politely, to leave. I know they’re supposed to be a symbol of good luck but I worry that in fact, he is a symbol of a Biblical plague...the plague of crickets. I imagine billions of them congregating under my house, waving their antennae around and discussing my future with weird clicking and ratcheting noises as they grow their armies. Finally, 2 blackberry bushes (not really bushes, more like delicate fruit-bearing branches) have appeared, most likely from alien-dropped spores, in my back yard. One near the fence, one near the house. I gathered a scant handful of berries which were sweet and bright, and imagined myself dressed in a Heidi-ish dirndl with my hair in braids and thick white stockings and my cheeks all appley fal-da-re-fal-da-rahing through the yard with a basket and gathering enough berries for a bowl next summer, but I know I’m going to have to rip those suckers out before spring or they’ll swallow the fence, grow over the house and devour a few largish dogs and perhaps a neighborhood child or two. Tuesday, August 31, 2004
A Letter in Which She Tells the Whole Truth
Dear darling neurologist, what is the cost of the procedure? We can proceed safely. Please bite down and hold the rails as we descend. when he strokes my fur using his whole palm and he lets me crouch low in the grass After, we picnic on the banks of the Wenatchee with cake, bacon, tangerines and wine. The Scientologists on a blanket near us celebrate one another’s birthdays. We play capture the flag. shimmer in the cat latitudes sun through the marram cardinal shiver-stroke I am learning to tie a larkshead knot at the end of the discipline. I am learning lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline. some little princess part of me cannot stop staring at the glitter The window is open. A man enters as I sleep, walks across my bed, the peach- striped duvet, and I don’t wake. Or he stands in my yard or sits in a car parked a block away. if this is what you intended, then yes, you have achieved breathless Sunday, August 29, 2004
Friday, August 27, 2004
If you're a born lion, don't bother trying to act tame.
Ani DiFranco I posted all kinds of stuff here yesterday (since deleted) about working on a gigantic canvas and neglecting to open a window and therefore getting a bit giddy and listening to the Pixies and dancing around the house dressed in mostly a bed sheet with several paint brushes tucked into my hair and maybe something about the nature of editing and how I decided to revise a poem in Tarantella scant moments (or so) before my darling editor was ready to send it to the printer and just before I left the house (after removing the bed sheet and donning real clothes, of course.) I feel a little shabby about sending the revised poem so late in the process, but it goes with me knocking the wine over and staining the green and white table cloth last night during dinner. I was glad to get home relatively early so I could get back in my toga and paint a while longer and enjoy the little rain squall with the windows open. I am happy, today, to have awakened to clouds and my head a bit less stuffed with turpentine fumes. I think I’ll make a big pot of marinara and see what falls out of my brain onto the canvas. I know most of you reading this (that is if anyone actually is reading this, and I doubt anyone is but it doesn't matter because I like to write for my own entertainment, it's even better than watching Saturday morning cartoons which suck these days but they're still cartoons and they're still shown on Saturday mornings), don't own a television, in fact, have never once watched a television program in your entire lives, especially not network programming. Unlike me, you spend your time in intellectual pursuits or athletic endeavors or helping the needy. That's why I've compiled a small list of television commercials I hate for those of you who don't have the time to review them on your own.
Television commercials I hate: MaxiPads. A woman approaches another woman and says are you surprised I’m talking to you in the MaxiPad aisle? Then she hints that the woman she has accosted in the store might not smell very good. For one thing, there isn’t a MaxiPad aisle where I shop. For another, if a woman approached me in the MaxiPad aisle and asked me if I worried about not smelling fresh, I’d act crazy and then run away. Or slap her. And then run away. Mr. Clean. This woman is so excited to be cleaning with Mr. Clean swipes that she actually scribbles on her own wall with a crayon and purposely makes scuff marks on her floor so she can have more to clean. Sure. Yoplait. This commercial has been taken off the air, but for a while Yoplait was offering money for breast cancer research if people sent in the lids of used yogurt containers. Their tag line was "help us lick breast cancer." Any ad that features women wearing ponchos. WTF? The Thank You ad. I don't even know what product this ad is selling. But people act like jerks, (in one ad, a woman touches an overweight woman's stomach in the produce aisle and says you must be having a boy. What's with women being accosted in stores? No wonder I've become agoraphobic.) Then the jerky person says thank you and the person toward whom they were being jerky gets very excited and misty-eyed over being thanked. Uh huh. Navels that sing. M&M candy bars. In this commercial a little boy unwraps a bunch of chocolate bars and leaves the wrappers scattered around his dog, then blames the dog for eating the chocolate. CHOCOLATE KILLS DOGS. I'm sure billions of pre-literate children around the world (a disclaimer about dogs and chocolate is flashed on the bottom of the screen in pale white letters for one eighth of a second) are feeding their puppies candy bars at this very moment. It breaks my heart. Thursday, August 26, 2004
Pucker Up A Found Love Poem Sally Swift Love Doll The vagina/anus area vibrates, controlled by a BP100 power pak which requires 4 AA batteries. Hands and feet separately molded to make them more realistic. Houston Love Doll Vibrating and sucking jelly mouth. Soft pink vagina and anus made of a stretchy material called senso. Lifelike molded breasts. Less than 5 feet tall. Embedded vibrating bullet for extra sensations in the vagina and anus. Manual squeeze bulb. Devon’s Pleasure Doll Life-size doll with space age vibrating and rotating vagina. Sensuous blonde horse hair. The Aria Love Doll Lifelike ultra-soft realistic doll with futurotic vagina, anus, nipples and custom-fit noduled mouth. Near-seamless skin. Movable arms with soft hands and painted fingernails. Two removable bullets for maximum stimulation. Vagina and anus are stretchy. Sensually scented. Letha Weapon Latex Doll Heavy-duty latex construction with anus, vagina, and mouth opening. Soft brown hair, polished fingernails and toes, and huge tits. Sold with two vibrating bullets, air pump, and repair kit. Jill Love Doll Quality mannequin head with open mouth which sucks and vibrates. Her vagina is removable for easy cleaning, made from super-soft senso material for a tight fit. Hustler Virtual Girl Ultra-realistic molded cyberskin squatting love doll with 3 entry points. Her face and hair are permanently made up. Pubic hair and fingernails. Soft, squeezy boobs. Warning: she can only be used in the squatting position. Dream Girls: Greek Girl Head tilted sideways. Separate pouch-type vaginal and anal passages. Mouth is formed from hard rubber which can only accommodate a penis less than 1.25 inches wide. Saturday, August 21, 2004
Danses Sacrées et Profanes Fool, fool, fool, fool, fool. She might be pregnant—bloated face, thighs, hips, hands, mouth. Love is a stupid fucking feathery thing that should be shot down with rock salt. What she strokes to comfort herself. Hair, pillow, thumb, tongue, thump, tug and dough: tacky puffs slick with butter/sugar/yeast. The reds never wash out. Naked, she smears paint with her hands. Blood or wine on the sheets, sings in the kitchen, beheads scallions, chops carrots, stirs a nutty roux. Robert Schumann. It’s the last time she will cry for the poet who crippled his own hands to improve his reach. Listen to her now, piano locked in the basement, spruce and sprung. All she can do is burn. Thursday, August 19, 2004
Naming the Paints In the broken car on the road between Cairo and Alexandria paint in hair tongue lungs I twisted the brush to a fine point in my mouth painted the air green/wadj malachite calcium copper I repeated each word a primer until I got it right (I never got it right) you found my diary read the apology the blotches on my skin red/desher cornelian ochre iron red hair red mouth red eyes the narrow road (Egyptian men depicted with red skin) the Opening of the Mouth ceremony a barque mirage water dust rimming your lips white/hedj chalk gypsum I couldn’t stop weeping or coughing the car broke down 7 times black/kem rubber stink soot charcoal burnt animal bones I squatted in the dirt traced a map (your fable that brown was ground-up mummies that I put in my mouth that I spit and sucked on the yellow/khenet bristles chewed and swallowed your history) arsenic trisulphide how brilliant you felt when the engine kicked over and the bells rang up and down your sides When was the last time you gave in to sheer desire or unapologetic self-indulgence?
Enter Antigonus, carrying the babe, with a Mariner. ANTIGONUS Thou are perfect then, our ship hath touched upon The deserts of Bohemia? MARINER Ay my lord, and fear We have landed in ill time. The Winter's Tale, Act III, scene iii Monday, August 16, 2004
Stroke as hard as you can
I watch a lot of surfing movies. Not on purpose. For the most part, surfing movies bore me after about 10 minutes. But when the Giant Surfer Children are here (and the waves aren’t) the movies are playing nonstop. Step Into Liquid, Billabong Oddessy, Tow Surfing, Poor Specimen, Steel House, Endless Summer, Islands in the Stream, Billy Goat. Right now my yard is littered with leashes, globs of Sex Wax and wet suits hanging on the trees like soft black skins. The tide is out, it's cloudy and no one has any money. And so we watch surfing movies, and a rare one has come along, Riding Giants. I thought it was fantastic, partly because it traces the history of surfing (a religion NOT a sport) and partly because it features tons of footage of surfer legends Greg Noll, Laird Hamilton and Jeff Clark. Greg Noll striding from a pack of awestruck surfers on the beach to singularly challenge the 50-foot swells off Hawaii's North Coast, Jeff Clark surfing the outrageously dangerous Mavericks off the northern California coast (where surfer Mark Foo died) all alone for 15 years before it was discovered. We get a peek into the lives of the early surfers living in little shacks on Wiamea, smoking and drinking and playing and stealing pineapples out of fields for survival. And, of course, surfing. The movie is interesting to watch (most surf movies are the same...waves) because of the insider archival footage paired with interviews. This movie is rich with good story telling and a sense of humor, and it lends insight into the impact of surfing on American pop culture. Even if you’re not a surfer, this is a incredible movie to see. Sunday, August 08, 2004
There Are Unclean Spirits You are a pea & thimble man On weekends you perform psychic surgery on children The room is slick with coconut oil You wave your hands over lungs chest plunge deep curl your fingers down form a cup in the belly knead one hand always always on the body (this completes the illusion) grasp garnet tissue and the blood packet explodes! For dinner I arrange meat on a platter tip juice into the sink It was messed up with blood from the beginning You are a theme park You are a rubber suit It might be sickness Your body has grown allergic to itself Saturday, August 07, 2004
Just Another Tectonic Event
In the fish shop on Rue de Lyon she coughed blood, missed the concerto, seven bars breathing secco, breathing a cardinal in her belly. The hotel docteur covered her head with a tea towel, prescribed suppositoire, hissed open the radiator’s brass knob. He sat in the fifth row, rattling his programme, unwrapping a lozenge before he stuck a fist up another girl’s skirt. Would he come onstage and unzip her dress if she fainted? He wanted to be with a musician— something about elegant fingers stroking a cello’s throat, his hands wide little shovels, carrying to his mouth, always the mouth. She woke with teeth marks on her thighs. It took him exactly a year to break her. She celebrated the anniversary with lemon cake and leaned out the hotel window. Tuesday, April 06, 2004
TARANTELLA
 REBECCA LOUDON Rebecca Loudon’s Tarantella is a book of stunning and transformative poems. Patterned after the beloved Italian dance, its three sections — “The Bite,” “The Dance,” and “The Cure” — explore the consolations of art, travel, music, the violin; and Loudon’s fascination with the healing power of sex, love and death. These poems are edgy and irreverent, but graced with a sublime intelligence and a virtuoso’s sense of line, language, and music. Peter Pereira Floating Bridge Press ___________________________________________________________________________________ The poems in Tarantella are as rich as they come. Thick and stunning, they roil with metaphorical finesse and literal abandon; like good sex or a gourmet meal, the lines are at once heady and illuminating, visceral and sustaining. And the stock has a deeper purpose: to instruct. Without leading or leading astray, Rebecca Loudon manages to reveal that place where pain goes, where it leaps up and leaps on, and hops, and runs, and sometimes falls, and crawls, until out of earshot, well past ordinary hearing, that nail in our foot finally falls free to become a stripped gear or a missing note or a hospital gurney. It’s as if to say: through pain, not us, but our world is transformed. And I like this; this is the essence of healing, to see it happening. A remarkable debut. David Ayers Avatar Review Available this summer from Ravenna Press, Amazon.com and at bookstores near you. |
