REALNAYA

How they tango in Constantinople, --

2012-02-19T06:21:00.002-08:00

Münir Nurettin Selçuk, tango

In this day & age,

2012-02-18T08:02:00.004-08:00

All wrongdoing stems from love of money.
Servit avaritiae … in hoc aevo scelus omne.

– Hildebart of Lavardin, ca. 1100

cit. Alexander Murray. Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, p. 59 (trans. mod.).

Chain Smoking || Little Baby

2012-02-18T05:54:00.001-08:00

Subway Sect, Chain Smoking

The Blue Rondos, Little Baby

The golden face of truth

2012-02-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

“‘And all this’, he tells us, ‘is done because of my pure love of truth, whose golden face I desire to contemplate, and which is most worthy of love.’”

-- Leontios of Byzantium, ca. 475–542 AD

Patralogia Graeca vol. 86, pt. 1, col. 1276a.
cit. Basil Tatakis. Byzantine Philosophy. Trans. N.J. Moutafakis. Cambridge: Hackett, 2003, p. 47. (1^st ed. Paris, 1949.)

All brave souls

2012-02-17T05:14:00.002-08:00

“All brave souls will have to keep two torches lit all their lives, that of practice and that of reflection.”

-- Elias Ekdikos, ca. 8th century AD

cit. Basil Tatakis. Byzantine Philosophy. Trans. N.J. Moutafakis. Cambridge: Hackett, 2003, p. 43. (1^st ed. Paris, 1949.)

The bad thing about Athens

2012-02-16T08:30:00.006-08:00

Socrates -- I'm a fool, Callicles, & truly a fool, if I don't think that in this city anything can happen to anyone. ... It would not be surprising if I were put to death.

Gorgias 521c.

Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus, trans. R.E. Allen, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984, p. 310 (trans. mod.).

The good thing about Baghdad

2012-02-16T08:02:00.005-08:00

The geographer Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamaḏānī writes, ca. AD 903,

‘The good thing about Baghdad is that the [Hellenistic, ‘Abbāsid] rulers can feel secure against the head of any religious party winning the upper hand there, as the ‘Alids and the Shī‘ites frequently do over the people of Kūfa. In [this philhellenic] Baghdad, opponents of the Shī‘ites live together with the Shī‘ites, opponents of the Mu‘tazilites together with the Mu‘tazilites, and opponents of the Ḫāriǧites together with the Ḫāriǧites.’

Dimitri Gutas. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (8^th–10^th centuries). London: Routledge, 1998, p. 190 (trans. mod.).

A Berlin story : Walser, 1907 :

2012-02-15T01:02:00.000-08:00

"Meanwhile I’ve found time to lay hands on another beer. The elegant lady is somewhat hesitant to bite into her caviar marvel; of course I immediately assume it to be on my account and none other that she is no longer fully in control of her senses. Delusions are so easy and so agreeable."

nybooks.com/aschinger/

a new Gilgamesh, trans. Stuart Kendall (Contra Mundum, 2012)

2012-02-05T07:08:00.004-08:00

see a bold & precise new rendering of the Gilgamesh Tablets, by a translator of Bataille & Blanchot;

-- in which the melancholy prospect of death in ancient Babylon has kept, as it were, all the freshness of youth;

-- published by Contra Mundum, a new boutique press in New York, which has a spate of noteworthy titles forthcoming;

-- & keep an eye out for my conversation with the translator, to appear late spring/ early summer in the Los Angeles Review of Books;

-- Jerome Rothenberg has called it “the exemplary version for our time”.

How it happens : Ben E. King

2012-02-02T05:26:00.013-08:00

"Darlin, I love you!"

You know that you lied.

( Wondrous-strange footage is from from a 1962 film,

Il Sorpasso, dir. Dino Risi )

When love lacks, for instance, "the intensity of love"

2012-01-30T15:48:00.016-08:00

We possess three powers directed to three several ends. .. . We have first, then, a conjunction of equals called 'friendship' (philia), which achieves unity through the good; we will call the corresponding power 'longing'.

There is another, which has its origin in a deficiency & which strives for fulfillment; it is called 'love' (erōs), & it strains towards the beautiful.

In the third place we should distinguish a kind of desire which is weaker than love (erōtikēs), which consists in being contented (agapōsan) with what is done to us in justice, & lacks the intensity & impatience of love; we could term it, for instance, 'contentedness' (agapēsin).

|| Damascius, Philebus commentary, §16

Damascius. Lectures on the Philebus, Wrongly Attributed to Olympiodorus. Text, trans., notes by L.G. Westerink. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959, pp. 10-13 (mod.)

A secret that is not worth knowing

2012-01-28T03:38:00.004-08:00

Among the orators, Gorgias, whom some call a sophist, .. . lived to the age of 108. They say that when he was asked the reason for his prolonged old age & health with all his faculties, he said it was because he had never allowed himself to be dragged to other people's parties.

Lucian, On Long-Lived Men, 23
per The Greek Sophists, ed. J. Dillon & T. Gergel (London, 2003), p. 54 (mod.)

& I live like this, like a real Erotic. -- I myself live like unbeautiful Love

2012-01-27T07:19:00.020-08:00

Eros .. . is ever poor, & far from being delicate & beautiful, as the people (hoi polloi) suppose, he on the contrary is rough & hard & homeless . .. sleeping in doorsteps & beside roads & under the open sky .. . But he ever plots for fine & beautiful things, because he is courageous (andreios) & intense, . .. desiring understanding (phronēseōs) & capable of it, a lover of wisdom (philosophōn) through the whole of life, clever at enchantment, a sorcerer & a sophist (sophistēs) .. . & sometimes on the same day he lives & flourishes, whenever he is full of resource, but then he dies & comes back to life (anabiōsketai) . .. though what is provided ever slips away so that Eros is never rich, yet never at a loss .. .

The celebrated passage, -- Diotima in the Symposium, 203c-e
Trans. R.E. Allen, New Haven: Yale, 1991, p. 147 (mod.)

The restless essence of Platonism

2012-01-26T10:35:00.009-08:00

Everyone who desires, then, desires that which is not at hand & which is not present, & what he does not have & what he himself is not, & what he lacks -- desire (epithumia) & eros (erōs) are of such things as these.

Of course, Agathon said.

Socrates in the Symposium, 200e
Trans. R.E. Allen, New Haven: Yale, 1991, p. 143 (mod.)

Ketty Lester on the written word, --

2012-01-26T07:14:00.005-08:00

A Greek theology in twenty words

2012-01-25T08:06:00.009-08:00

"Lover (erastēs) is more divine than beloved:
the god is in him & he is inspired (entheos)."

Phaedrus' speech in the Symposium, 180b

Trans. R.E. Allen, New Haven: Yale, 1991, p. 120

& note: Phaedrus' Greek here for 'beloved' is paidikōn, suggesting "especially boys, but often refers to the beloved, & is used broadly enough in Plato (cf. Republic VI 485b 8) to mean any object of love" (Allen p. 12, n. 17).

Cloud & blood in the entrails of god (A revenant)

2012-01-22T21:16:00.004-08:00

Words flow like blood, burn like diesel,

Dry on the ground like a life poured out by accident;

Come up from tongue, lungs, spine-fluid and bones,

Cut the skins of the world — suture, fester, refuse to heal;

Suffer birth that is not word but nerve, and depressed number, shot down fibril wire

Against white screen curvatures — rod and void — of several eyes.

// Washington, D.C.

// viii.2004

Eclipse! (A revenant)

2012-01-22T20:51:00.006-08:00

Solitude recurs,

as we wake alone with god

in the endless hour god dies in

Eclipse!

We can only gaze at a darkened sun ---

but we live & praise in its light

// 30.xii.2004

// Buenos Aires

Variations on a fantasy (A revenant)

2012-01-22T20:30:00.012-08:00

& who will deliver the prisoner that loves his cell?
This deliverer will be hated, in the end.
Crucified, perhaps ---.

& in the former bloc the old ones (so I hear) long for Stalin.

Ah, yes, THE REMORSES OF FREEDOM ---
LET US KISS THE HAND THAT STRUCK US!

For the slave is secure in his chains, &
The slavelet is secure in her chains, --- all
Exalted on the selling-block .. .

So here is Jesus, the Liberator ---
Ecce Peccator!

& of the three lift up at Golgotha,
Christos the most heinous!
Christos the most heinous!
His word of love the endless coup .. .

Yet this is empiric, if nothing else:
Christos saved Barabbas, & died for him .. .

& perhaps, some time later & nearing death,
That freed thief Barabbas broke some bread &
Took a cup, saying,
'This is the body & blood of that Jesus,
'which were poured out for me!'

& ah, sweet Jesus! --- to say to a crucified dog at his side,
'This day you will be with me in Paradise,
'This day, in which you die,
'Is the endless daybreak of our bliss!
'My son, my brother, ---
'We thieves are sons of heaven!'

& in some last, sweetest dawn,
--- 'that hour ends the day' (Marlowe) ---
Perhaps that naked one drinks wine, even now,
With the slaves that served him gall,
& kisses Judas, resurrected, ---
& calms the soldiers' tears that pierced him,
& leans on Jean Baptiste, --- who reclines with
Herod, & Herodias! --- & washes Pontius' feet .. .

& perhaps as Stalin's guilt sears off him in the purge
--- 'that mustache cockroach tyrant' (Ginsberg) ---
The twenty millions souls he slaughtered
Intercede for him with love
--- a wronged, wronging, washed, ascended host ---
Against the wounded side of an ageless Lamb
--- who is goat, dove, dog, & serpent of the gods ---
& plead their tyrant's release .. .

& it could be that Stalin himself in his doom of grief
Now weeps those living damned
Who suffer famines, wars & violations,
--- as Dives wept his relatives, or so it's told ---

& this, of course, is not a faith.

I have not seen the Boudha face, serene,
In the bleeding palms of Jesus (G. Okara),
& I have not gone silent in that most ancient Day,
the perfect god, --- but
I have tasted hope, in certain hours, ---

Yes I have drunk that bloody wine .. .

// 8.i.2005
// Buenos Aires

omnia vanitas

2012-01-22T20:03:00.003-08:00

"Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity.' ALL. This willful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet."

H. Melville, The White Whale, Ch. 96.

The bitter morning after a sinless night (A revenant)

2012-01-22T19:39:00.010-08:00

I drank hard last night & lusted like a bull, -- but I drank with the doors closed. I drank with my hands on the table.

I drank with a tasteless Quebecois at Fin del Mundo .. . acquired some grass for him & enquired after cocaina, -- but no such luck.

We drank with a couple of beauties, Lucrecia & Josefina. I wanted Lucrecia, that goddamned Borgia sister & lover of all curias -- yes,

So I said, 'Te quiero.'
& she, 'Rapido, no?'

I told her 'Kiss, girl -- let's kiss.'
& this little Lucrecia says 'Ah! no' -- she has a lover.

So I ask, 'Is history, then, so superior to this, now?'
(Implying, at once, the Borgia Lucretia & this girl's little love-past.)
& she, with all the simplicity of youth, 'Yes!'

So Lucrecia & Josefina left us boiling in our lust, & left like flattered children.

& this, a stillborn kiss, is all I worked with that girl. Modern decadence! This, & drink.

So I left Sylvaine, the Quebecois, bent over a drunk piece of loud despair from the city of Leeds, -- exhausted girl! .. .

& I slept, having prayed, 'God forgive all the sins uncommitted in my youth.'

// 16.xii.2004
// Buenos Aires

Weakness

2012-01-22T19:28:00.004-08:00

Weakness is a bad guest in the flesh. Unwelcome, it comes in & leaves as it pleases; sleeps, wakes; acts the slum-lord, not the tenant. It has the keys to the kingdom, & makes entry, & ruins the place. A guest like this drags down the reputation of the house, &c.

// 19.xii.2004

// Buenos Aires

Codex 6 || Codex 7

2012-01-22T19:24:00.002-08:00

The poor eat dust with forked tongues & crushed heads,
could it be these snakes will inherit?

Los pobres comen polvo con lenguas bifurcadas y cabezas abrumadas,
puede ser que estas serpientes vayan a heredar?

The rich purchase heaven with workers' blood,
& with the greed that fuels their heaven,
purchase hell.

Los ricos compran el cielo con la sangre de los obreros,
y con la voracidad que mantiene ese cielo,
compran el infierno.

// Buenos Aires2005
// disseminated by hand in the main Bs.As. train terminals

They never sleep in hell

2012-01-22T18:09:00.003-08:00

End; no. 43

A man; a woman. A nondescript flat; little furniture, but messed with dishes, clothes. Open glass doors onto a small balcony; it is night, city lights outside. A tall, ghetto-class apartments tower built in the 60s, 70s. This is the living room.

The man is tall, thin, shaved head, bare chest, dressed in his drawers. She stands at the bed-room door. She is pregnant—3 months—wears no bra and a short, thin slip, bare feet. He sits on a low couch at a low table; a triangular, old, metal mirror; he cuts lines with a kitchen knife.

She has tats on her right shoulder, chest. Across the back of his skull he has a large red tat—VIRGEN [VIRGIN]—and a green crescent moon tattoo’d on his left hand, a red full moon on his right.

The radio is playin’ CAMARÓN loud (Antología inedita).

He has a low, rusted-as-fuck, menacing voice. She whines, he growls.

She: Cut me some! . . . I’m sick man!

He: You’re not sick . . . No . . . You got a fucken life in you . . .

He snorts.

H: You’re sick with my child.

She folds her arms across her chest and groans, sinks to the floor, crouched against the wall. Her face shut with discomfort, eyes closed.

H: And you’re gunna stay sick once he’s out. Live sick the rest o’ your fucken life . . . You’re done with this . . . finished . . .

Phone rings—a wired phone—and he answers.

H: What. . . . What you got. . . .

These are questions, but he don’t ask them—he states them. As he does so, he leaves the couch to go out to the balcony—leans out, looks down. (He leaves the wired phone where it is; you hear the person on the line still talking as he goes out, returns. But you hear no words.) He don’t say anything to the receiver, when he comes back to the couch; he dials the fucker in, hangs up.

She, real quiet, eyes still closed: Who is it?

He: A user, honey . . . A fucken fiend . . .

He pulls a 40-gram polyethylene sack from under the couch, and scales. Weighs some out, lessens; checks the scale, lessens; cuts it; lights a cig, runs his hand over his face; gets a new, empty poly sack, sweeps the powder in with some sort o’ small-headed household brush, seals it. He puts the scales and the goods back under the couch, smokes deep. Leans down over the mirror—he don’t look at her—and grins, says to her and to himself,

You know they never sleep in hell? . . . They never sleep in hell. Burn like the fucken sun—all awake . . . like the sun!

He says this increasingly to himself—grinning, leaned over the mirror. Teeth brown, but all there.

There’s a knock at the door—his customer has come up—and then again, immediately, a knock. He jerks up his head, looks at his woman. She has fallen asleep, crouched there, arms crossed.

The above is copyrighted material

Pierre Bayle

2012-01-22T18:02:00.002-08:00

".. . such spectacles [as hangings] are in use in some countries to intimidate wild beasts. Rorarius was eyewitness to this. He saw two wolves hung on the gallows in the duchy of Juliers; and he observes that this makes a stronger impression on other wolves than branding with a hot iron, the loss of ears, and the like does on a thief. He also says that in Africa lions are hung upon a cross to frighten the others, and that this works."

|| Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, s.v. 'Rorarius'

Eight ends : from a samizdat film-script

2012-01-22T15:02:00.009-08:00

— things have ends and beginnings —

EZRA POUND, The Pisan Cantos

END no. 29

A father, a son, in handsomely furnished a mansion flat. Father smokes, son does not. Wine on the table, the remains of a meal on plates.

In the background is the persistent clang of a hammer against a metal chisel, from the next apartment. This noise comes thru the wall—not hectic, paced.

F: You know I won’t be there?

S: Yes.

Pause.

F: Tomorrow I’m leaving your mother.

The son leans back, sudden, in his seat, but doesn't speak.

F: I’m sure you knew . . . You saw it.

Pause.

F: I have no word for you . . . your bride . . . But—hear this. Listen. I’m your father.

Pause. He leans in; voice low, but intense.

F: The god o’ love is a goddess of need—and the goddess o’ need is frigid.

Pause. He leans back; but speaks with the same voice.

F: And there’s blood in the mouth of love—always.

Silence.

S: I’m going to marry her.

F: Yes. Of course.

Silence. Father stands.

F: So. Love her!

S: I will.

F: Kiss me! I’m leaving.

The son remains seated, does not look up at his father.

F: Ah! There’s blood in the mouth of love!

He looks down at his son. He turns, leaves the apartment. It is his son’s apartment. His son sits at his table, in the after-noon, silent.

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END no. 30

A black man—Senegali—knelt on a concrete floor painted black. He wears a white linen suit, with gold at his neck, wrist, fingers. Knelt alone in a small room with white walls, black ceiling, black floor—no windows, no mirrors. Knelt on a scarlet rug, head covered.

A recorded muezzin—tape-recorded—calls out from a hand-held player set on the floor at his side.

The camera sees him prostrate the last three times of his nine; each time a different camera-angle; each time, a close-up on his hands as he covers ears, mouth.

He sits—knelt, erect—5 seconds at the end. Switches off the tape recorder.

Stands, uncovers his head, lays his covering on the prayer-rug. Adjusts his cock. He walks out the silent back room.

He walks into a loud, mod bar—all mirrored—which he owns. Most in the bar are whites—there aren’t many, it being the beginning of the drinking night—and dressed in black. He—black, perfectly sober—is dressed in white, selling drink to white fools.

He lights a black, gold-tipped cig. He exhales.

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END no. 31

A Passion-week mass. A 60s church, Roman Catholic; an old, bent Franciscan priest. He has a beard, perhaps thick glasses; wears the liturgical gown, but under it—at his feet and hands—you can see the Franciscan habit.

There are not many parishoners, and most—not all—are older and widows. Since it is a Passion-week mass, there are more present—and more young folk—than would be at a normal week-day mass.

The priest speaks his homily, slow—

Sisters, brothers . . .

We have heard how the Lord sweat blood in his garden . . .

Dear children . . .

Have not many sweated blood, saying,

Must I take this cup? . . .

And,

Must the cup be my blood?

Is there no other cup? other blood? other will?

Is this life the light of men? and death a dark noon? . . .

He closes the homily appropriately; congregants respond. He returns to his seat, and sits. Exhausted.

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END no. 32

Two old men in fine dark suits on a busy corner, centro. It has begun misting rain.

Man # 1 has slicked grey-black hair; a sagging, clean face; big eyes, fat hands. He speaks with his head bent down, eyes up to the other, intense as fuck, and standing close to the other. He gestures assuredly with his hands.

Man # 2 has white hair, a kindlier face; is thinner, has a moustache. 5–10 seconds into the conversation he folds his arms across his chest.

The way # 1 stands close, head down, eyes lifted into the other’s—who is slightly taller—is real intense. At some point he grasps # 2’s arms, with his hands, for emphasis.

They have just commenced talking—a chance meeting.

#1. You know my life, timeless! Chance, like this, is the only time I have—

#2. Yes—

#1. The essence is this—and you would have seen the brief next week, and known—but no—the face—

#2. I know what the brief will reverse.

#1. Reverse! No—it will clarify. Your decisions—we are old, no? we have seen, we speak freely—your decisions cannot be reversed . . . Overcome—yes.

#2. My decisions will be lost. This is clear. My work will be lost, overturned. This, of course—

#1. I see! I see! But I would not say lost. This is the language of frustration. No! Your decisions are recorded, and this is no purge. Your work remains. Re-directed, clearly. But not lost! We are old—this talk of loss is for the young bastards.

#2. The young bastards fear what I’m living, if—

#1. Ah! I see! I had hoped, of course, face to face. And we were given this time to speak, but you’re dissatisfied . . . I can’t change this.

The first pause in this rapid conversation.

# 1: We’ll speak again, at the hearing. Cordially, I hope! And we’ve done what was necessary . . . My friend, the law is nobody’s wife. Leave loss to the children!

# 2: Loss is ours, if we—

# 1: I must go! Of course. Don't mourn, my friend.

# 2: Don’t gloat!

# 1: Don't mourn!

# 1 kisses # 2, and grips his arms again. Stares hard, a second—the first he has looked full in his face, not just up with his eyes—walks fast. # 2 unfolds his arms.

The camera pulls back some, and then down. A short, dark man is passing at the feet of # 2, who doesn't notice. This man’s legs are emaciate, lame; one is pulled and crossed over the other in an extreme lotus; both legs are bent. He drags himself with his hands.

The camera moves down to this brother as he passes by the legs of # 2—alone in a rush o’ feet, on his ass and crossing ground with his hands, lower than a young child in the world.

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END no. 33

An older man with longish, curly hair and nicotine-stained moustache; clean, old dress; horn-rimmed glasses, old-style. At a news stand. The sky is misting rain.

A young Asian is working the stand—proud, reserved. It is not a busy street; there are no other customers.

The old man has selected his porn and laid it on the counter. First frame—he slits the top of the plastic cover with a pen knife, takes out the mag. Opens it. Flicks pages. His selection is very young women.

He knows the price, and after several seconds takes out a bill, hands it to the Asian who makes change, lays it on the counter. The Asian again looks away, disinterested.

Old man does not take the change, and has resumed looking at the flesh-sheets. He begins speaking before he looks up, but 5 seconds into it he looks hard at the Asian while he speaks. About five seconds later, the Asian looks at him with a blank face.

The eyes! Never get tired! . . . I’m old, but my eyes are still strong.

[Speaker looks up now.]

Cause eyes belong to the mind. . . .

[Speaker looks back down to the mag, flips, smooths the page, flips.]

So young! So pretty! . . . And all men have the same eyes!

[Asian looks at him now.]

Always. Lust! A conspiracy of lust . . . it's the oldest social contract . . .

Some are ashamed, but ¡the women! . . . they’re in it, up to their thighs . . .

[Speaker looks up, again, at the seller.]

Our eternal civil war . . .

The Asian has not looked down at the mag. The old man smooths his hand over the sheets as he turns them. Two seconds after the old man finishes speaking, the Asian turns his face away from him.

So young!

The old man is looking at the mag again. He closes it.

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END no. 34

A man and woman on a low couch in a spare front room. A film is on the TV—Tarkovsky, The sacrifice, the scene where the Idiot prays to god for his world in terror. The film is not dubbed, and the screen is not seen at first. Heard in the background—Swedish.

The woman watches the screen intently; he is less engaged.

The man is tall, thin, in his fifties; balding at the top, long grey hair in the back and at the sides. He is not unhandsome, for his age; his front left tooth is missing. He lived rough, in his younger days. They sit on the same couch, in the afternoon. There is a low table there—the remains o’ carry-out Thai, smoke, and much drink. The place is his, not hers.

He leans back on the couch. The room is dark—curtains drawn—but light is visible at the windows, and two shaded lights are on in the room. He says, eyes still open, and dead serious—first declaiming, and then more to her,

The world is final! Life is final . . . Christ! I’m fucken drunk . . . ’D you turn it down?

She passes him the bottle o’ whiskey (whiskie nacional). He drinks—finishes it—sets it on the floor, as she goes to the TV, first turns down the volume then kills it. (It is only then that the screen is seen.) He pulls his legs up on the sofa while she’s gone, stretches out. She comes back, kneels by the couch at his knees, and begins to cry, and then to weep, convulse. He, eyes closed,

What is it, girl? I can’t help you now—I gotta sleep.

She’s pulling off his low-slung boots, weeping.

What’re you doin, girl?

Pause. His eyes still closed, repositioning on the couch,

Why’re you cryin like this?

She is stripping off his socks, massaging his dirty feet with a bizarre intensity.

Him: Why’re you cryin, baby?

Her: I don’t want you to die!

Him: We all die .. .

Her: I don’t want you to die!

He lies there drunk. She weeps at his feet in the after-noon.

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End; no. 35

The camera, stationary, shoots through a window. Relatively wide frame. Sound o’ streets twenty levels down—no other sound. The sky is misting rain.

The camera is on a terraza—hanging plants over the wide wall of windows, and planted trees. A roof-garden o’ Babylon. Summit o’ one of those typically sick, hyper-riche hotels that put their bar-restaurants at the highest floor, overlooking the city.

A young, riche woman at the table nearest the section of glass wall that occupies the frame—slightly decentered—is breakfasting lavishly. It is dusk.

She eats lazily, haphazardly.

She is not alone in the restaurant-bar, but nearly. The Argentines dine late.

She is a foreigner, most likely from the U.S. Dressed well, but in loose clothes—has just waked. She is gorgeous, and bare-footed. This last is inappropriate—and she can be.

Her cellular—on the table under her electronic room key, by the San Pelegrino—rings. She checks the number, answers. All charm, sexed and full o’ life. She speaks this way 10–12 seconds. We hear nothing—street, twenty levels down.

She wipes her clean mouth clean with a wide linen napkin. Stands, lays it over her plate, absorbed in the conversation. (Camera should have some distance, but the richness of the meal, and the fact that she’s tasted of it freely, leaves it all nearly untouched, has got to be clear.)

A waiter—older than she—approaches her as she leaves the table. Asks if he should keep the table for her. She says and gestures not, all charm. Leaves—bare-foot on thick carpet—to her room. Speaking on the phone to a lover, fucker or friend.

The waiter takes her napkin-covered plate, beginning to clear the table.

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End; no. 36

A drunk hobo sits on concrete with his back to a graffiti’d wall, legs out and spread, a dead bottle at his side. The street is busy, rich. He has long grey hair and beard—resemblance to WHITMAN and MARX is real. He speaks, not loudly, to those who pass him. The frame shows he and the legs, lower torsos, of the rich who pass. The sky is still misting rain—surfaces damp. He is sitting on a low ledge, and is sheltered by a ledge.

[to the street] Spare change, mothers? Black money for the righteous one o’ Babylon? Likker for the last priest?

[louder, to the street] Worship! Worship! Stoop to your sovran’s shrine and grease his cup!

[to him-self] Is it not a bitter cup when eyes refuse to meet? Pride is the wage o’ the blind. And is not irony the last dregs o’ pride?

[to the street] Change, brothers? Lucre, fuckers? Plata, slaves? . . . Coin? . . . sons o’ cunts?

He speaks, again, to him-self. His face withdraws. His hand, which was outstretched, now rests open, but forgot, on his right leg.

[to him-self] You are alone now, Lord God. You are disavowed, Lord God. The voice o’ need is offensive, yes, and the Herods’ creed is dismissive. Lord God is come to this—the last-priest-high-god is this. Exiled, reviled, shamèd; poor, filth, borrachón. The god o’ this order is a son o’ the streets!

[to the streets, not loud] To put it simply, I’m your soul’s landlord. I engineered the tenements o’ your flesh. Recognize me! Tithe! . . . Is it the simplicity that makes you doubt? the dead bottle? . . . I am your Lord God, that is all.

[to him-self] Crazy, Lord God? Is Lord God a lunatic? A mad bearded spic? He is silent, yes. Fixed, Lord God—fixed. Silence is the fix, Lord God—yes. Let the rich man regret. Lord God shall not speak.

He ceases to speak. His eyes have been closed in this monolog. His eyes are closed still. It is not clear if he is passed-out now, or thinking, or in a trance. Throughout, the foot traffic passes. He is seen like this perhaps ten seconds, when an unwealthy widow stops at his side, takes out a small coin purse quietly, searches, finds, and stoops arthritic to lay a coin in the hand on his leg. She straightens and walks on in silence.

The above is copyrighted material
© 2005 David van Dusen

For my son, still inwomb

2012-01-22T14:26:00.001-08:00

A furnace is lit in womb’s night

— a new heart, sudden dawn

& still that gotten son rests

whom gods foretold while

Abel drank at Eva’s breast

He with heart & throat & hands

still drinks love’s blood as breath,

who drinks wine, who drinks light

That son without shame —

that dove, that goat, that soul

I pray grace ransom his hands

for Davin Lloyd & Kate;

7.ii.2000;
Boston, Mass.

A good reason not to, --

2012-01-20T08:25:00.003-08:00

"In fact, I understand most truly (verissime) from one who is still living in our own day that when he was subject to the sin of masturbation (mollitiei vitio), an infinite number of cats (infiniti cati) appeared around him while he was polluted, & with the greatest yelling & noise (maximo eiulatu et strepitu) they licked up his semen & carried it off (semen lingentes et deportantes)."

|| Albertus Magnus, Commentarium in II librum sententiarum (d. 8, a. 5, ad quaest.)

|| cit. Franklin T. Harris, The Embodiment of Angels: A Debate in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Theology, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 78, no. 1 (2011): 24-58.

Jealous, adj.

2012-01-18T07:44:00.003-08:00

"Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping."

& also:

"Alone, n. In bad company."

|| Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The enemies of our enemies are rarely our friends .. ."

2012-01-11T08:41:00.005-08:00

|| Jacques Rancière, 'Joan of Arc in the Gulag'

Victor Hugo, --

2012-01-10T10:33:00.002-08:00

'We hear the breathing of the horses of space
'Pulling the wagon that we cannot see ---'

Les Contemplations VI,16.

Editing J. Ranciere, listening to this, --

2012-01-08T15:56:00.010-08:00

Will Glahé - Fascination (Immer wenn der Abend beginnt) (1957)

Black Ace (Fort Worth, TX)

"I'll be your winner in any game you please"

A Greek tragedy in twenty words

2012-01-06T10:07:00.005-08:00

Socrates : Now we conceive of a thing being loved (philoumenon) & of a thing loving (philoun), & these are clearly different?
Euthyphro : Of course.

Euthyphro 12, 10a.
Trans. H.N. Fowler, pp. 36-7; trans. mod.

Berlin, your dancer is death

2012-01-05T12:20:00.003-08:00

What remains of when I took to the streets, winter of 2006 :
In collaboration with Susie Nielsen (design) & Jonathan Demaree (footage) :

"How long could you love a woman who doesn't love you?"

2012-01-03T07:14:00.002-08:00

"A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!"
"So could I. But it's so difficult to meet one."

|| Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, act 3.

"The veil of maya isn't what it used to be ..."

2011-12-29T22:14:00.002-08:00

// Updike, 1975.

Youth!

2011-12-22T15:54:00.002-08:00

"To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

// Wilde, Dorian Gray, ch. xix.

Blacked-out tercet

2011-12-12T09:53:00.003-08:00

How much weight
a look
that has no love?

Dahlak Lounge/ Baltimore Ave./ Philadelphia

"... a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life."

2011-11-23T16:22:00.002-08:00

(W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, ch. 9.)

Bernard Daly Dusenbury, 1959-2010

2011-11-18T08:07:00.039-08:00

Breathless,

weightless as lead,

there is in the dead

no last desire to hold us.

Drinking a Sol in Rio Lagartos

2011-11-03T09:09:00.004-07:00

These boys were strangely compelling: Rio Lagartos, Yucatan, vii.2011

A lawless hokku

2011-06-17T14:38:00.004-07:00

Lightning has no place here,
in a city that I have
no place in, yet still
it comes

16.vi.2011

Son House. Forever on my Mind

2011-04-26T07:00:00.002-07:00

"I Say It's So Hard To Love Someone That Don't Love You"

‎"You Know The Blues Aint Nothin' But A Worried Old Heart Disease"

"You Know Sometimes I Wish I Had My Whole Heart In My Hands"

Lady with the Dog : a Khrushchev film

2011-02-23T20:07:00.007-08:00

The Lady with the Dog
Dir. Josef Heifitz, with Alexei Batalov and Iya Savina
1960, b/w, Moscow

Just witnessed the most gorgeous Soviet film, 1960 but could be 1890 —— The Lady with the Dog, following the Chekhov short.

The silentest despair; the most unflinching, impossible love —— an insistence that can’t break free of a foreordained cowardice: passion at its purest, yet least perfect.

Such is the scene, all shot through with light & the lightest touches of absurdity —— which saves the whole from a false melancholy.

Yes, it is pure —— that is, neither forgiving nor unforgiving, yet obsessively involved: implicated at the deeps.

& the last scene is silent, speechless, though she speaks —— this lady with a lapdog. It is shot at that most-intimate remove, which is glass. It is shot from outside the high, cold, closed window at which they stand, she & her lover, in the last of a night: she speaks silence. Which is —— silence —— the language of love's end.

& the phrase, spoke in solitude to himself, which first announces a man's love for her is this, after their first meeting at a Black Sea resort —— & far from saving him, this is what sweeps him further out into her open-water heart:

‘There’s something pathetic about her, yes, she’s somehow pathetic.’

But in this: there is nothing approaching, to be confused with pity. Somehow, to the contrary, a certain unlikely & irresistible admiration, such as only a woman can inspire, for a sadness that she later confesses —— ‘I’ve never been happy, I cannot be happy’ —— but will not surrender to.

Fois gras & gin at Grüner, while I contemplate a somehow noble ruination, never less than total, that is love.

Seven Ends : from a samizdat film-script

2011-02-23T19:38:00.001-08:00

— things have ends and beginnings —
EZRA POUND, The Pisan Cantos

End no. 1

A young man in a squat. Not ugly but with a severely pock-scarred face; could be twenty to thirty-five, could be thin, but not fat. He sits with a dim light on a bench seat pulled from a car. Papers— handwrit, it is unclear what— all on the ground at his feet. He sits there, naked in the light, hits a tall bottle o’ beer— there are others on the floor.

It is 0200 hours; his woman is asleep in the bed in the same room. A very slight girl, not older than twenty, long dreads or very short hair, small breasts.

The walls are hung with large charcoal abstracts or crude images on sheets nailed at the ceiling. It is a squat— old building— but they have some furniture, possessions. And they have electricity.

He sits by the glass-paned doors that are opened onto the supporting rails of a collapsed balcony; he sits facing the room.

He hits the bottle; turns out the light; leans back, shoves out his legs, hits the bottle. It is quiet—little traffic, no music.

He stares at the far wall; it begins to glow with a red, moving light. He leans, turns, looks out the window.

A derelict warehouse across the street— the squat is second, third floor— is burning. The flames still growing, but conflagration is underway; fire engines not arrived.

He stands, strips the sheets off his lover, turns her, kisses her, runs hands down her body. Says to her sleepin face,

Wake up, baby. C’mon. This is it, baby. This is the night. It’s all here. It’s all here.

What is it?

A fire.

He pulls her up by the hand, leads her— she wears panties, naked but for these, and unsure— to the window. The warehouse is burning. She sinks to the floor, face lit with fireglow and alert,

Goddam! The house is burning!

This is the night! Lean forward, baby. Right here . . . this is it.

He turns her head, kisses her hard again. She pulls to her knees and leans forward— arms out, neck turned and face on the ground, eyes on the fire and lit with it. He fondles her breasts from behind her, kisses her neck, runs hands down her back, strips her.
He begins. She grimaces— slight— then she moans.

Not a word, baby.

He rides her, his face also lit.

Not a sound, baby . . . Let the fire scream tonight . . . Listen!

And the fire shoots and hisses— the warehouse is burning— and he rides her hard at the window.

End no. 2

A taxi; a busy avenue.

The driver is dark-skinned, mid-age, thin. News is on the radio, low volume— the rattle of a reporter’s voice. His rear-view mirror is etched with an image of Our Mother. He smokes a cigaret, silent. His dispatch radio also rattles with jobs and locations, also low volume.

His passenger, in the back seat, is a clean-shaved man in his late twenties, early thirties. He has light, longish hair— well cut. A foreigner, but speaks the language. He wears a fine suit, brown; open-collar red shirt, a light-green silk scarf is hung open around his neck. He is silent; overweight, but handsome. There is a pint-bottle o’ black-label whiskie in his right hand, on his leg; a pained expression on his face. It is late-night, but the traffic is still relatively heavy. The passenger has no briefcase, and is not smoking.

The driver looks once or twice in his rear-view mirror— unconcerned; he lights another cig. The passenger is self-absorbed, not drinking.

This all occurs at a red light— 15, 20 seconds. Light changes; driver makes the left turn and pulls to the curb on a small street at a rico bar. He looks again in the mirror, unconcerned; turns on the ceiling light in the cab.

The passenger turns his head left, to the bar, slowly— and as if he has been more aware than it appeared. Passenger says in a calm voice,

And what do I owe you?

Eleven-sixty.

This is a public taxi. It is metered, and the meter is visible to the passenger, and in the frame. He wants the driver to charge him, voice the amount.

Passenger puts the pint-bottle, uncapped, in his breast pocket; opens the door; walks around the front of the cab (he was seated on the passenger side) slowly; pulls out a money clip, a bill.

He folds a bill between two fingers, leans down with the bill in his right hand (at the shoulder of the driver), visible. He leans with both hands on the driver’s window ledge— 2/3 of the bill is exposed at the driver’s left shoulder.

Passenger says to him, intense but in a calm voice,

All money's blood money. Take it!

The driver is also calm; he has not looked up at the passenger. He glances at the bill, over his left shoulder, reaches across with his right hand, takes the bill. The passenger stands, and the camera follows his face— the sound of the taxi moving off the curb— a slight grin; unclear if it is mockery, pain, or a certain pleasure.

End no. 3

A mirror.

A woman is in the mirror. Not bad looking— in the right bar she still might get laid— wearing evening clothes. It is over her bath-room sink.

She is no younger than fifty. She says, in a serious voice, to herself.

How old are you?

Looks hard, runs fingers down her face,

How old are you?

She has dyed hair, is dressed gaudily. For some seconds, she lays foundations, paints, varnishes over her face and neck. A lot of close-ups— the smearing, an unnoticed violence— and cuts.

Finished, she lifts her breasts, moves out the mirror.

End no. 4

A young black man in a bar, dressed well; he is in a back corner, which is pretty dark. Music is loud— a mod, post-punk bar. He has been drinking alone, is the only one seated at the table. Several empty glasses; an empty ashtrey (he doesn't smoke); a glass o’ vodka in his hand, which is on the table. He drinks, but his face is cogent.

A hot white woman in her late thirties stands at his table; black slacks, light shirt open low; high heels. She is drunk and high; her hands are on the table and she leans in close to him, leans hard on the table.

Are you Cuban, Emmanuel?

Haitian.

I’ve never fucked a Haitian Emmanuel in all my life . . .

Who are you?

I am . . . who I am.— Rosario . . . Rrrrosarrrrio . . . My husband is a pig . . . a very rich, rich, hand-some pig . . . I never sleep with him . . . And I have two children . . . A son, a daughter— the son is older . . . Emmanuel . . . The daughter is Rosario . . . she is beautiful, perfect . . . Emmanuel is pale, pretty . . . I never see them . . .

Your son is named Emmanuel?

No . . . Do you take cocaine?

He nods once, slow.

Stand, Emmanuel . . . Come with me . . .

He stands, drains his vodka. She leans back from the table, takes his hand and turns it palm up. She bends, kisses the palm of his hand.

Your hand is so pale, pretty . . . I love it.

She pulls his arms around her waist, places his hand on her front hip-bone, where the abdomen inclines down.

Come on . . .

CUT.

They are in a stall, doing lines off a mirror from her purse. Emmanuel is bent down with a silver straw— short, the same breadth as a mate straw. He jerks up from the line.

She's been leaning back on the stall door with a hand between her legs, trousers on. When he jerks up from the line, before he can speak, she lurches forward, turns him and kisses his mouth; he responds; she puts her hand on him, pulls his hand to her.

CUT.

He is fucking her. Her chest is naked.

CUT.

She is bent to the floor to the side o’ the toilet, recovering a sack of C that had fallen off the well-cover of the toilet in the fuck. He's now leaning back on the commode door where she was, clutching his chest, flies down.

I have a wife and son. I have a wife and fucken son.

She's recovered the sack and is bent over it and her mirror; she jerks up.

So does Emmanuel . . . My name is Jezebel.

He stares at her, face gone wild. Spins, flies down; pulls his trousers to, steps out the commode, presses out the bar; it is light, wet, cold. It is dawn. He walks hard, it's getting light; shrieks! And stops, bends, weeps.

End no. 5

The king is coming! Like a felon!
The kingdom comes like a death-squad! a flood!

Stalin descends! He is black! He is pale!
A warden! woman! priest!

The king resurrects like a dog in the streets!
Like he died in the streets!

Charlie ascends from the pit!
Gasoline on his breath!
Cigaret at his teeth!

Swan! Virgin! Snake—this king!
Like a dove on a knife!
A knife to your throat!

The end of it all is the endless coup!
Hammer your sickles to shivs!
Phnom Penh! world with-out end!

A short indigeno with the hammer-sickle tattoo’d or scrawled with permanent marker on his neck; hair and face-hair mangle-cut with scissors; bare chest, no other tattoos; a wool bedroll tied across his chest like Johnnie Reb; wool military trousers, leather boots;

Sweating furious.

He lets his old megaphone drop— it is tied to his bedroll and swings to his back. He stands on the base of a statue (a naked crowd dragging a large stone, Paseo Colon) at first dawn; climbs to the ground— the streets near empty, deathly quiet.

Walks furious.

Pulls a small unlabled bottle o’ grain alcohol (alcohol de grano) from his ass-pocket, still walking; up-ends the bottle; says to himself— quiet, new-drunk,

I also have spoken!

End no. 6

Five men, two women sit in a warehouse.

It is a degraded scene. The place is trashed after a party. This is a band, and two o’ their bitches. The boys are in their late thirties— bad 80s style long hair, bad tats, tight clothes, boots, etc.

The girls are younger. Bitch 1 is a pale, very thin whore. Long hair, dressed all in black. She is pretty, but with a scabbed cut on her upper lip, from being hit by a woman wearing rings. Bitch 2 not unattractive, but overweight and much pierced.

They are sitting and lying around a low table— cocaína, likker. On the table is a long-barrel revolver; no bullets are seen, but there is one bullet in the cylinder.

The game is homicide-roulette— Hun roulette. Spin the cylinder, place the barrel at the head o’ the cunt to your left, pull the trigger.

It is the overweight girl’s turn.

The man at her left is passed out with puke at his mouth; there is puke on the ground beneath him. (The fifth man is also passed out in some grotesque way. He is not involved at all.)

The first light o’ dawn is visible thru the high row o’ windows, or the basement windows above-ground.

#1: Move! The gun is yours. Hun roulette, bitch!

#2: Gun is his! Fucken sleep-death!

#1, to the left o’ the passed out guy, shakes him.

#1: Wake up, Rosy Mastah! Wake–the–fuckup! It’s your gun! C’mon man! Insult the dawn!

#2: Sleep-death! I’m tellin you! Cunt’ll shit hisself either way!

B1: He looks like a sick baby! Spat up milk in his sleep!

B2: He’s gotta be . . . awake . . . I’m not gunna do it when he’s sleepin . . . he’s gotta know . . .

#3: Shit! He’s gotta know shit! Shitface put the kisser to Black King here— he’s in!

#1: In-sult–the–cunt-red–dawn! Damn us all! Drink! Do it!

B1: Look! [laughs] Spat milk in his sleep!

#2: I envy the bastard!

B2: This is fucked.

B1: You’re weak!

B2: I kissed it, bitch!

B1: You’re not his mama . . . you’re not his lover!

#1 takes the gun, spins the cylinder (manically, several times), holds it out to B2.

#1: He’s dreamin it, baby. You’re God’s Bride in his sleep. Kiss him! You’re his Watersnake Venus.

#2: Sleep-death!

#1: Shut your cunt! [to #2; then, to B2] We’re all damned here, baby. That’s the beauty of it. In-sult! You owe it to him! You owe it to the dawn. Here!

#1 manipulates the sleepin man’s face— tilts it back, opens his mouth, introduces the barrel—

#1: Here! He’s kissin it!

#3: Ro-sy Mas-tah!

#1: Kiss him! Kiss him!

#2, screams: SLEEP-DEATH LAY YO’R HANDS ON ME!

#1: Kiss him, baby! In-sult the dawn!

B1: Milk-him!

#1: Kiss-him!

B2 takes the pistol-butt from #1. #1 grins mad, takes a bottle, hits it.

They watch her, wasted, focussed, quiet.

Bitch 2 pulls the trigger. Click.

The boys scream insult and praise with the rush of it.

End no. 7

A male-whore. Tall, criollo— trans-vest or trans-sex, but clearly born male— more naked than not. He stands on a street, but you do not hear street-noise or music. She stands on a street— her client has already pulled to the curb— but all you have seen is her.

To the camera, quiet,

To see a man-whore wash the virgin’s feet with tears . . . to see the virgin weep!
To wash the sick and sane in the same ointment . . . to suffer, grieve, ascend!
To live the laws of all flesh . . . to survive, and die!
This is it!

Silence, 2 seconds.

Then the basest jungle-trance (music) invades the screen from her john’s car— screams.

She grins.

She moves to the street like the drag-queen o’ heaven, to a white Ford Escort or some such, 1985, which is pulled to the curb. It has an obscure symbol detailed on the back window— something like the international symbol for biohazardous material— and a slow strobe light shoots thru the car from the cigaret-lighter outlet. The car is manual shift; the driver a badly dressed fat man, white or mixto, of 28–30 yrs.

She waits for the client to open her door, sits, leans over and kisses him hard on the mouth.

She pulls away from him, looks down scornfully at her open door. The client reaches over and closes it. The client throws the car in gear— this is the end, begin.

The above is copyrighted material : copyright 2005 David van Dusen

Brothel song : Antique Summer

2011-02-12T14:56:00.008-08:00

You can now stream "Common dirt" -- a distilled & revised "Brothel song" -- & several other Antique Summer songs.

Jess Carson's version of "Like forgiveness" to come soon.

"Common dirt" : words David van Dusen & Jess Parker Carson // music Carson
"Like forgiveness" : words van Dusen / music van Dusen & Carson

Come on, come down: 10 Febr. 2011

2011-02-01T16:25:00.009-08:00

"Smalldoggies is pleased to present poet, writer and critic: David van Dusen who will be reading a few poems as the evening’s special guest.

"This will be the last reading David gives before heading out of town.

"He would like you to know that he drinks at the Magic Garden strip club, and lives at the Elysian Garden apartments."

My old poem "In winds that wreck us is a wind that perfects us" closes volume 1 of Smalldoggies, & dj Narcissus plays a new set at the Worksound Gallery the following night: 11 Febr. 2011.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

2010-12-10T16:50:00.017-08:00

NOTE: all the racial language here -- "cracker", "coonass", "spic", "gook", "nigger" -- was in keeping with the scene I was living at the time I wrote the following notes. No disrespect intended, then or now.

9 February 2002. Houma to Morgan City, Louisiana

Hitched out o’ Houma over sugarcane fields and cedar swamps with this cracker from the Bunkhouse.

Dyson, from ‘the north’— meanin' Monroe and Haynesville, Louisiana. He slept on the other upper bunk in our closet at the Bunkhouse, and was holdin' tobacco— so his three nights there we sat up top in the glare o’ the bulb, smoked cigs, and he talked about his five years in the pen in West Virginia, how to cook ‘crockpot crank’ etc. etc. We agreed to hitch out together.

He wants to go to this labour camp in Amelia, and I wanna look for offshore work in Morgan City, so he came with me. This is the problem— fucker followed me. At the end— until he left this afternoon to hitch to Monroe, which I told him he oughtta do— he sat when I sat, lit up when I lit, silent when I went silent— shit got on the nerves.

It took us eight hours to get from the Hwy 90 exit outside Thibodaux to here— this is a matter o’ twenty-two miles. I’d forgotten how wicked the deep south is for hitchin— all religious citizens drivin by vagrants drowned in wind.

Workin the road with this mid-aged convict, all his belongin’s in a black garbage bag— this is difficult. I stole a pillowcase from the Bunkhouse as sack for my shit.

End o’ four hours— with nothing, no rides— we walked on up the road. At the 311 junction— truckstop at hand if we gotta pass the night there— we got a ride past Chacahoula. Fucker let us out on that piling-raised hwy over miles o’ cedar swamp and snakes— nowhere to sleep or build a fire, just concrete and slough.

Two hours hitchin' and nothin' comes— the sun bleedin' red in the west where the hwy cuts through a heart o’ swamp— so we walk. I walk desperate and angry as hell— Dyson hung back some, lookin' in the reeds for a 22oz beer can to brew coffee in— but there’s no fire gonna get built out here— all wet wastes.

Thirteen miles out o’ Morgan City, I determined to walk through the night. A ways down the road I saw a burlap sack on the overgrown verge, put my shit in there: the new sack.

Several miles walked and the sun gone— bruised light at the horizon— a migrant worker pulls off. Mexican brother. Takes us into the city, buys us beer. We drink on the bridge pilings at the river, off Front Street. I locate the offshore company, which is closed for the weekend.

In town I get us change for cigarettes and a supper o’ canned meat and saltcrackers. Stash my shit under a jacked-up trailer at a trawlin' company, at the wharves. He went off to the RR bridge to sleep. I shat in a bucket behind wharf offices— there were human shits and torn shitpapers there already. Threw the burlap down under the trailer, put on all the clothes I got, wrapped my head in that scarf my sweet Orleans whore gave me, and lay down.

A cold night with wind.

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10 February. Morgan City, Louisiana

That bus from D.C. let me off in the concrete bowels o’ frozen-waste Atlanta, 24 December 2001, wind howlin' down the corridors and dusk sky threatenin' a hard, cold rain. Shit— gotta get shelter or get the hell out.

I take my sack from the luggage handler, throw ninety cents and a cigarette in the trashed styrofoam cup o’ this homeless brother, there at the depot. Shoulder the sack and take a street down the hill towards the city jail. Old black brother, clear mucous streamin' out his nostrils with the cold, directs me to Interstate 10. I walk hard down these savaged streets.

Got to the highway before the sun is gone, but hitchin' is shot to hell— all city traffic, and streetlights comin on— and the real killin' cold sets in at the bones.

Interstate 10 cuts down through the city— raised, interworked, glutted— this is grim. I press close to the concrete wall with the sack, set the thumb out. When the dark has really ended it, I turn and walk towards the ramp.

This muted green 70s sedan jerks out the flow and stops against the wall. Young fucker, asks where I’m goin'. Tell him south and west. He’s drivin' to Florida. And we crank out that city and I fall in with the drone of Amerikan road in tires— glory.

Down the road the talk gets heavy— death and love. I set out this philosophy I have of freedom and death— freedom for death— him slow and pensive.

Freedom comes out o’ total and dispassionate knowledge of mortality— it is in this sense a freedom through death. And yet the recognition of this cessation— this awakening in which death is seen as the end of all, and introduction of nothing— in the light of this recognition fear of death becomes seen as precisely the fear of nothingness. This fear is, of necessity, groundless.

It is this recognition— this awakening to the groundlessness o’ fear o’ death— that frees us now, in living, from all constraints that take strength only in relation to fear of consequences, which fear is grounded in fear of death.

There are two cords bindin' fear of consequences to fear of death— {i} seein' death itself as a consequence, when it is precisely absence; and {ii} failin' to see this absence as a freedom in the chain of consequences— failin' to see that death is at hand in life as release.

In this sense, this freedom for death is also a freedom from death.

He stops at a gas station for coffee— he was drivin' through the night— and I buy a pack o’ cigarettes. Interstate 10 intersects Hwy 58 in a void o’ north-Florida plains, so the kind fucker took me eleven miles west on I-10 to the junction town o’ Live Oaks. Silence these last miles— oppressed— with the headlights flashin' dull against low, scattered mist and newgrowth pines at the ditches.

Cindergrey sky hung low in the mornin'— cold, and the air feelin of rain. I took my canteen to a gas station— lot empty, store minimal stocked— tell the attendant I’m broke, could I pour some coffee on the house. Fucker says, ‘you’re supposed to pay, but OK.’

I shoulder the pack and cross under the junction, climb to the westbound hwy. As I set the pack down I see this sad couple sat on large suitcases at the end o’ the gradual westbound ramp, further up the road. I had no intention o’ cuttin them off but I’m here and they’re not on the hwy proper, so I leave ‘em to the sparse ramp traffic— drink coffee, reach out the hand.

Old boy has left his woman and is comin' across the long grass to where I’m at. Slow rain is begun to fall. I know his type— whitehaired and beatdown with his fat old lady who sits, passive and detached, cradlin her face w/ her hands— these folk aint runnin' the road they’re tryin' to get somewhere. Shut down and afraid o’ the law— this is why they haven’t come up to the hwy— and as it always is out here, those that need it most get it least.

I walk toward him and we meet on this hill with the rains takin' weight— his clothes faded, hair short, face not shaved. And yes, they are tryin' to get to Oregon where her father lies ill, most likely dyin. And they are broke and have sat here three days, sleepin' under a dead gas station roof. And he says ‘the road’s got rules’— you don’t cut someone off like that. I tell him, ‘you’re not on the hwy brother, and I hadn’t seen you, but I’ll walk on.’

I cross a bridge further up, over unpaved road, and before I have set the pack I look back and they are takin' their suitcases toward that dead gasstation roof, out o’ the rain.

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Dusk, west Florida, a old greyhaired black man stops for me. He has been with cousins this afternoon— and goes to meet the wife already with her kin, in Mobile. Innerestin' old fucker. Served in the Army back in the day— never could determine, durin the wars or no— and got a Leavenworth sentence, five years— never could determine what for.

He worked the shoe factory there— says this was the easiest, most profitable work at Leavenworth— and got paroled twenty-eight months in. Says he served time with German officers, and they wrote to him years after bein' released.

Outside he drove trucks, but got caught out o’ state in violation o’ parole. Says he’d left state to see kin in Mississippi and hitchin' back got in with a car o’ white soldiers. Boys stopped at a bar to drink, left him in the car. So he slept. Pigs come to give him some trouble— racial, I assume— and in doin' so see that he’s packin a single-shot pistol. A call is made, dispatch comes in that he’s breakin parole.

So he went to a federal prison in downtown Atlanta, where the work was either a cotton or wool factory. Married men and men with children have priority bein placed in the factory. Once in, a percentage o’ the wage is withheld according to the number o’ children, and mailed to the wife. Of course, wages were low. The rest o’ these earnings went to Commissary.

Served twenty-two months there and paroled. Went back to drivin' trucks. Says he has several kids with his wife and five others with as many other women— says he knew truckers before child support laws got so hard that fathered ten, fifteen known children for so many women across the country. This is old school.

He stops to get us beers, and we ease down that dark desegregated hwy with our booze. Lets me out at a truck stop east o’ Mobile and the cold is fierce. Writes his number in my notebook, takes coin from his pocket. And this lot is howlin' and isolate.

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I see this Winnebago pull in slow and park at the edge o’ the lot. A man comes out— mid-age, longhair, and scarf at the neck— with his dog, walks to the back o’ the lot and out the dirt road that cuts through frozen field. He’s out a long time, but comin back up the road I walk to meet him, ask if they travel west. They do, but sleep the night here and only go as far as Mobile come mornin'. If I’m still on the lot then, they’ll take me to the city.

This night is unnatural cold and it pains me, seein him pull the curtains to in the back o’ his lit vehicle. But the man comes out again, and with a small tin o’ thickass sweet coffee in his hands. And now a woman follows with a slice o’ dark bread that steams on a plate. They invite me to the Winnebago. I leave the sack in a ditch and follow this man and his woman, take hits o’ coffee with hands pressed to the tin for its heat.

The space is low-ceilin’d, warm and lit— they feed me cheese & olives on a cuttin board, a glassneck o’ red wine. Fuckin' hell.

They come from the north— Québecois— have a cottage industry there but live winters in southwest Mexico. The only necessary thing, they say, is to go with money. Five hundred— it don’t matter— this is necessary. So I drank their wine, recovered life in the bones, left them.

Sat the night, wakin', in the truckers’ lounge with the Dhammapada.

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Left out o’ there before the sun dawned— frost and cold mist and coffee— went to the hwy. Not off the goddam ramp and a drunk bastard’s at my back in a Japanese car, says ‘get in.’ He goes to Cameron, Louisiana, western silt-edge o’ the state. I go to New Orleans.

Pissed-off, strungout, starved offshore worker— twentyeight days out, fourteen onshore— this bein' the low end o’ his most recent fourteen. He suffers the effects o' this freedom with coffee in his hand and liquor on his skin. He is sick, still-drunk, no-sleep and angry— angry with his bitch.

He met her buyin' groceries at a supermarket— her workin' there as cashier. They kept their eyes on one another— or he kept his eyes on her— a full year. He only shopped there, once he saw her. That’s where it’d stayed— in the eyes— till he made the mistake o’ askin after her number.

He called her— and they got to fuckin'. Last nine months, she’s lived with him when he’s onshore— at her place, with her children, when he’s out. He’s not real particular about fidelity— way he sees it, when he’s in then she’s with him. When he’s out, then fuck, he can’t see and can’t fuckin care. But don’t flaunt that shit, right? Well that’s what she did.

She comes to his place several nights back with this fuck she’s been fuckin'. He knew of it, and she’d talked of him some. But this— comin on his property, comin in with this piece o’ shit, sittin in his goddam livin room— expectin him to be civil. Bitch has gone foolish!

Early on he just stares at this boy.
Then he says, ‘so I hear you’re a real cocksucker’
Boy don’t respond.
Says ‘I hear you’re her bitch’
Boy don’t respond. So he tells this boy to get the hell off his land.
Boy’s only response is to look at her— the boy's gone foolish!
‘What god’s fuckin name’s she got to do with this? this her fuckin house?’
Screams, get the fuck off his land! Boy’s gone foolish!

So he threatens to pistol-whip the fuck and the boy gets hell out. In the heat that follows, tells his old lady go to hell with her cocksucker and get the hell out— and she does.

I come to believe this brother loves her more than he says— or cares to know. I come to believe this brother’s in pain. He stops at a gas station in Orleans— leaves me coin for the bus— and goes.

And I am sat on this ground, drinkin' exhaust, against a creosote pole. I am the dirty south— ride a bus to Canal Street, walk on to Bourbon— sullen with lust. Goddam.

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15 February. The Hotel Dixie, Morgan City, Louisiana.

Dunno the hour, but it is dark and still outside and the eyes burn like hell.

Larry the Manager hit the door, persistent, told my stilldrunk roommate he had fifteen minutes to get out— to leave for a rig. Goddam— fuckers secure us work sometimes— praise be.

And he is gone, now, and I sit eatin salt crackers and rollin a smoke, in clothes, under naked bulbs.

And I can’t distinguish the churn o’ the baremotor fan from what might be insects out there in the dark— and the barges at this hour and that far downriver sound like birds callin out sad and low.

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And now a hard vacant rain falls at the window through which I see the whole world— cleansin the mildewed detritus in the collapsed garage— what a sweet pulse to this rain, and its abatement into silence! And now it comes down again on the just and unjust, down on lizards, marshbirds, and a pregnant dog stretched on her bed o’ trash.

And in here it’s the cling o’ filth and stale smoke, the whine o’ the fan and Larry the Manager hittin the door and yellin through
‘you home?’
‘yeah’
‘come sign yer bed ticket’

I have been sat in this Hotel Dixie room five nights and days now w/ the sixth night comin on. Darkness’ll fall in several hours— but the sun has been hid in bruised clouds since dawn, so— grey to black. And now with the other boy sent out I am alone in this upper room. Cigarettes and salt crackers and water at the tap— I am content.

This is what I need. But for six months— unbroken, and no bill gettin run up, and no threat o’ work. Just a room and that brown voiceless river and some books and a type-writer. But I am content. And I want the work. I am willin to be a slave to get out there to my son.

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Went to the darkgrey church for evenin prayers. Then went to the Vietnamese cornerstore where the gay son who holds down the nightshift lets me take sausage and bread gratis every night— and every night gives me a bottle o’ water gratis, but won’t give me beer.

Well as I am leavin there, this halfstarved shakin drunk comes in for a bottle o’ malt likker and pint o’ Dorba vodka.

I leave for the Hotel Dixie while he’s buyin, but he comes behind me on the opposite side o’ Railroad Street. Dunno how but we get to talkin as the trains roll by and the cops pass by us slow. I go to his $75/wk room over the Blowout Lounge to help him put down his beer and grain likker.

He’s been out ninety days as a deckhand and spent that $1200 in twenty days onshore. Name is Clark— likker bloated face, red goatee, meshback cap worn backwards, cheap collared shirt— and I help Clark put down this likker and pour the dregs o’ his Night Train Express portwine into the vodka, cause even after drinkin his hand is too loose to pour that shit. So it’s Dorba vodka from Frankfort, Kentucky.

And he spews vomit on the floor without warning, then goes down the hall to finish the job in the commode— pulls a mop through the mess— sits on the bed and we resume.

And he tries to tell me he’s livin in hell— meanin that he is dead and damned, and that I am a demon— which he means. Strange thing is, I feel the same way about him.

I tell him ‘dunno what I am but I’m no demon and I’ve never died, so I know you’re not in hell’ and he seems to accept this, so we drink.

‘Shakin like a fuckin leaf’ he says— and he is. Can’t hold one hand still with the other, them both so loose and agitate. He is thirty-seven, come down here skippin Idaho bail. Says he served three years on a five year sentence in Texas— for stealin a case o’ beer from a convenience store.

Says it was bad time in Texas, and since then he thinks he’s livin in hell. ‘In there you’re either a man or a woman’ and all you got to do is ‘keep puttin your guns up’ to stay a man— which he did, and kept gettin the shit kicked out him by this tall nigger. All the fuckers in there for thirtyfive or more got ‘punks’— and a punk is a man gone bitch that takes it up the ass, cause he wants it or he don’t got the pride to resist it— ‘and men wearin lipstick, I don’t know if they were like that goin in there or not’— he says this tall nigger wanted him for punk.

And every time they unlock his cell to go to chow this tall nigger’s there— he puts up his fists and gets the blood stomped out him.

So one day he puts the razor to his arm and pulls it deep and again and spews blood on that smooth prison floor— red, like the vomit he just hurled.

He had been ‘refusing housing’ for months— lodgin complaints with the wardens— and when he took the blade to his-self they moved him to the infirmary where he got bandaged, stripped naked, and left in a cooler cell— the ‘hole’ I heard of in OPP— for thirtysix hours on suicide watch, and then back to the same cellblock.

I left this poor fuck blacked out on his bed. I finished his vodka. I heard out his prison and offshore death stories that I’ve all already heard. But they’re sick and they’re true— and justice is the hard-on dream o’ the secure in this country.

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16 February. Morgan City, Louisiana

FRY, embalming fluid: Dyson told me one night how he got so fucked he vowed never to go there again.

He and some boys were drinkin in Orleans at a sketchedout bar, this old fucker tells ‘em he’ll smoke ‘em out at his place— alright. They leave, and he takes them there. Oldman rolls a fat joint and dips it in this bottle of fluid, sets it on the table to dry while they keep on with their beers, shoot the shit.

Oldman lights it up, passes.

Can’t recall if Dyson hit it once or several times, but the terror comes on him with a killin desert grip and his mouth is parched to aching— and he’s leanin back on the couch starin hard at the beer his hand holds on his knee. His throat is closed and cracked, he is dyin o’ thirst, but he’s paralyzed.

All his strength is focused but he can’t fire the nerves to pull that sweaty beer up off his leg to save hisself from consumin thirst. And he can’t take his eyes off that can or conceive anything else in the world or see whether his boys are also collapsed into paralysis like he is.

He described it in terms o’ hours— but hell, it coulda been seconds stretched with the drug. And he thought to himself, leanin back powerless and dry like he was, ‘any fuck could walk through that door and kill us all and I couldn’t make a noise much less resist,’ and it was psychic torment and hell.

And the cellmate that just shipped out told me he ate several thousand aspirin at the suicide end of a drinkin binge, to die— his wife kept forcin milk down his throat, he kept vomitin it all, and nothin happened but that he was deaf for the next five days— could not hear a goddam thing.

And nothin happens in my life— no fuck since that little Orleans whore I last saw in OPP booking, minimal likker, none of that fine vibration o’ road under tires— this is a stretch of stasis and confinement. And I am more at peace here in this dinge upper room, hours leanin back in the chair w/ Mircea Eliade and cigarettes, than I have been in years.

I miss nothin— up here and alone.

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17 February. Morgan City, Louisiana

And this is Sunday— malt likker and noodles for supper.

That smoothface boy with blackeyes takes care o’ me— that slender sodomite boy at the cornerstore looks after me. All sausages and cigarettes and beer and noodles, all gratis.

And all the niggers come in there— and everyone comes in there’s nigger— they all know him and there’s this smooth free style to their talk. ‘I’m not your slave’ he tells them— so it goes.

And stood there, white and poor and trash, in the crossbarred door at this gook cornerstore in southwest Louisiana, eatin poorboy sausage w/ beer and hearin Chong the fag give lip to niggers in swamp boots who buy cases o’ beer and go on about their boys who’s cookin truckbeds o’ crawfish, on this Sunday afternoon— it is good.

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18 February.
I am goin out to the Gulf. Pablo comes at 3am to drive me west to Texas, or south somewheres. I am bought for $75 per night— need to be out two months to pay off this shit Hotel, labour agency, two cartons GPC cigarettes, steel-toe sea boots, the government, and clear $1880. Shit— a long two months. But I can pull that time— I am goin to pull that time.

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20 February. Gulf of Mexico, the Celeste Ann

The joints in the hands are stiff from tyin, breakin, throwin lines. Makes it difficult to write. But I am out— all heave and slide on this sungreased gulf.

We unmoored after dark last night from the cut outside Intercoastal City. Cranked through miles o’ shallow churned creeks, interworked with marsh and oilwells that spit fire at the sky. Through the bayou locks and out in the black gulf—it’s rough out here but the swell don’t make me sick.

Other deckhand ruptured hisself before we unmoored w/ the spoke of a steel crankshaft as we were sealin the rudder compartment. We carried him off the boat— him not cryin but tears o’ pain on his face. That set us back several hours— had to secure another deckhand.

I have the night shift— noon to midnight. It is late afternoon now. They offloaded the ten metal crates o’ supplies we brought out, while I was in the bunk, in the dark, with sleep comin on against the noise o’ the engines. Now we are moored to the buoy, waitin for a radio call— pitchin, throbbin, empty.

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21 February. Gulf of Mexico

4pm. The sun angles down to the shiftin horizon— kicks up a white rooster tail o’ light right down the heart o’ gulf.

I sit in blacksea boots full in this wash o’ sun that comes over the stern, smokin a cigarette in the dyin afternoon heat, with the floors mopped, the kitchen washed, the radio speechless. Yes, god, and they’re payin me.

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22 February. Gulf of Mexico

It’s rough out here— ten to twelve ft swells. Groanin grey seas, wind soaked sky.

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Midnight. I brewed a pot of coffee and woke the other deckhand, now he leans on the wall w/ his coffee in a plastic cup.

The moon spills light-not-its-own on runnin troughs o’ black water, hung like a half-shut eye or pock-scarred face over deeps that rise to meet it.

The occult gravity o’ this bonewhite body is heavy out here, and the god o’ night is in his house.

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24 February. Intercoastal City, Louisiana

It is bitin cold, windcut, jaundice lit here— we are moored somewhere in a shallow water fuelstation complex, somewhere outside Intercoastal City— somewhere near the Intercoastal Waterway.

I moored us 11.30 last night and hooked us into the fuel and potable water tanks for refillin. Workin in the grease-stained undershirt Chris Kliger— the captain, longhaired, patois-speakin coonass— gave me. Workin in the mosquito wired balm and bayou night.

But the cold came on and that with the furies, and accordin to radios the gulf is runnin in sixteen-ft swells under a full moon. So we crane-loaded the deck and stayed here in the cut.

Shift-change, so now I work midnight to noon.

Luke, the ruptured bastard, was scheduled to swing in-to the other deckhand rotation, but failed his piss test. So it’s Robert— 45-yr-old, thrice-divorced, pockscarred, ex-morphine/heroin/chrystal hypojunkie— pullin down the hours. Chris Kliger rotated off and this high-voice, agitate Cajun swung into his place.

2.55am and coffee. Watchin Robert’s deepbellied pot o’ roux simmer down— and I got a small pot o’ bisque doin the same.

The Cajuns still learn their bastard dialect o’ French down here as mother-tongue, and inbreed like hell. I am told that first cousins are only kin below the waist; with second cousins, the waist goes. Go at it, boys, I’m envious— I got some nice second cousins.

And the Baton Rouge Advocate reports

‘US troops in Afghanistan are taking on more jobs that look like peace-
keeping and nation-building. . . . Soon, US military advisors may be sent to
prevent clashes among feuding warlords, which would give evidence of
deepening US involvement despite the Bush administration’s reluctance to
engage in peace-keepin.’

Ah, yes—and US administrations have all been reluctant to roll over ‘rogue nation’ sovranties and lay their fine carpet o’ bombs for the oppressed, fly in their ‘advisors’—. I learned last November that my mother’s father was one o’ the ‘advisors’ in pre-war Vietnam.

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We’re cut loose and churnin out to the lock. The east blooms redorange like a knifeprick and blood over marsh—a pallid moon crouches low over stirred waters in the west.

A flat waste and clear mown horizon. Brown water, yellow reeds— we move through this sea o’ reeds out to where it’s just us and GOD on the waters.

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28 February.

I’ve heard all the eyewitness bullshit out here o’ caverns collapsed beneath a rig and the whole bloody mess gets sucked into a sinkhole and buried.

And starin in a cold grey dawn at the rusted, sandblown rigs I saw that this is just like life and just like death.

Livin up there like in a seabird’s nest on bent, welded, hollowbone pilings that are sunk through the deep into the stone floor. The rig’s not movin and there’s a bunk and a stove, news-papers and work to be done w/ the waters’ bellow at the pipes and the black blood still flows and w/ it the mammon, and hell— it’s a life.

But you can’t see beneath the surface of these waters, and one o’ these days you just know that vein’s gonna dry, the rig left to stoop and collapse— or any night that cavern could give and these soldered steel bones fissure and crack and sink before you got your boots on.

Until then there’s a bunk and a stove, news-papers and work to be done and no use complainin.

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So it’s squall and we’re in it to our necks. And these waters are a blue that looks to be grey— and these skies are still in the heights but lash us merciless w/ wind down here.

And I am glistenin wet, reekin o’ salt and sweat and driven rain. And I just stood against the elements there on the stern in a dullgreen rainslick and blackrubber boots— just stood against the elements and threw a heavin line to the crew o’ the heavin Provider— that allblack crew leaned over her bow in stocking caps, as her curvedcut, blackgrey hull jerked up from troughs and hung, shuddered, sank, and jerked and sank and spit salt in my face.

It took four throws to curl that line over her lip— four goddam throws. But the Provider and its men are tied to our stern and we are goin nowhere—. Not in this weather that I love— the wind hammers the rain hammers the waters hammers the undersides o’ the boat— grey on grey on grey and you get lost in a dull purifyin haze.

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7 March. Gulf of Mexico

I have never taken on the name STRAIGHT. I am not blind or dead to the sexual attractions of men. Some men have been objects o’ sexual desire— but never such that I have set myself to realize this desire sexually.

And the Hebrew prophets (nabhi) liken the men o’ Israel to lustful yellin stallions. And as far as polyeroticism goes the sight o’ some beasts— all muscle, vein and hungry eyes— can’t but heighten a man’s own rush o’ new blood, awareness and desire. The bull is a handsome beast.

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Sabine is a bayoucountry insult equivalent to nigger, but directed at Indian mixbloods. They say the only thing to do with some fuck calls you a sabine is take him to ‘fist city.’

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These pelicans, brother! catacomb El Greco shades— paleomorphic, cave-dark, web-flesh spiritgods— wild blood-brown feathers, prey-beaks— and the folded-flesh odour they sow in the wind all wingspread in risen droves from the rigs—.

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8 march.

Throbbin-cock sweet still pure-land night and dreams— and I wake to the shameless virgin-sister sun and chaste waters illumined by her eyes— this bride and harem together sing psalms of desire in the name o’ this boy— this beat blonde tired-eye laborin boy stretched w/ his coffee and five last cigs— and he knows— yes— he knows that love is strong as death.

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11 march.

The life out here is dreamlike. The recurrence o’ tasks and caffeine, the Kafkaesque authority o’ the radio and vagueness o’ the waters.

I am in a dream, closer akin to ‘The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie’ (Buñuel) than to ‘Waking life’ (Linklater)— cause the problem isn’t that I can’t wake up but that I keep wakin up, from different dreams and fears— as different dreamers— and never knowin that or what but these recurrin signs and faces are my life and carry meanin— and all o’ these dreams and dreamers come together only on a vacant road with no words spoken but the rush o’ some other traffic, unseen, pressin in with its noise.

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12 march. Morgan City, Louisiana

Oh god— oh god— oh my god—
must it fall so ready—
this hour you promised me and this solitary lifting-up?

And the waters at my feet—
hissing and deaf and deep—
why have you forsaken me?

And it’s all sun and wet rocks and despair out here by the river— down here by the dirty flow— by the RR bridge over the Atchafalaya.

Yes— it hurts. And oh— bloody— yes. I am alone. Money in the hand and booze in the bottle, huffin dry smoke that tastes o’ shit. LIFE. Not yet ten o’clock in the morning.

Oh god— oh my god— are you so far?

I cry to you— but no one speaks. I cry to you— but am ashamed. Out here by the river— by the RR bridge over the Atchafalaya.

Drunk— I am drunk. Drunk deep and lost in a booze neck. Alone out here with the wastes and my beloved speechless on a sad coast. FUCK.

I am cryin out— unheard. And this— this is a truth. So drink deep of my drunk love!

Now— and for now— the word is DRINK. So drink— fools. And if you can’t walk don’t try.

Yes— sat under hot sun, the river licks the mud— so DRINK.

Yes— yes. The sun is hot.

DRINK. And the mud cries out and claws the back o’ the river.

Where's my woman? where any woman?

There was that woman-child in Orleans, that drunk-deep girl who sounded o’ the ends o’ the bottle and whose tongue came down on me like the wind on waters here.

She is gone— she's still locked away. And my desire for her— yes— my desire for her is also locked away.

But no love's void— and this criminal bride, this locked-down lover is here with me now as if she’d never left.

There is a place where the perimeters dim— there is a place where the darkness shines— but you must fall so you can see. So DRINK.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

13 march. Morgan City, Louisiana

Slept last night on the floor o’ the house o’ Phang the fag— owner o’ the gook corner store.

Lockin up the store last night— gettin in his truck— and outta nowhere there’s this hooded black male slammin fists on the driverside window and cursin and holdin what looked to be a gun.

Attempted armed robbery.

My boy drove us out o’ there hard and the cops came with dogs and lost the scent. No violence done— no mammon lost.

And waitin on the stoop w/ the pigs gone after this failed nigger I watched a pregnant cat fuckin with a wounded moth.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

And now, cleanfallin hair starin at myself in the haze convex ceilin-mirror o’ the 10am Star Bar— smokin reds and drink weak coffee down a distance o’ bar from two regulars and the crimped hair bar girl.

10.40am
All the mirrors are smoked over.
Steer skulls and pale life rings hung on the red walls.
’09-11-01 we will never forget’ tacked up at the likker rack.
And on yellowed paper ‘to all employees: NEW INCENTIVE PLAN—work or get fired’ hung behind the cash register.

And I swear— I’m about to break.
It’s a thin skein o’ nerve threads through me and holds back that LOSS o’ whatever it is keeps me in this light o’ living.
I say goddam.
The National Rifle Association sticker on the door threatens to take me down.
My hand shakin.

I really need a room— the strain o’ livin with my boy Phang the fag is just what I don’t need.
But it saves me twenty-five dollars a night.
Just god— get me out o’ here. Get me back to the waters o’ your healin indifference.

‘The price is right’ all foam and plasticene, sicklit, howlin on the tube. The very image o’ damnation to me.

Wrote letters to all the folk—kin and friends. I’d rather not write, but did it in love and this came through in the writin.
Can void give voice to love?
I do not know— I pray it does. My only goddam hope.

Now soaps— gravest soul o’ daytime TV. Calls to mind Aline Evangelista’s cousins’ flat in Ft Smith— long afternoons w/ Brasilian novellas. And I recall these faces from OPP days— ‘Young and restless,’ yes.

‘Kick it [the man] to the curb and get happy, girl’— barbitch to bitch.
‘I did that four times already in the last three years and it’s gettin old— but I tell him he keeps smashin shit and yellin and cursin and moanin like a bitch on rag and he’s single— that shuts him up’
‘He knows where his grits get buttered at’

Still there in that breast-curve haze mirror. Still leerin lustful at my pretty self. Me and Cassius Clay— we boys are pretty.

‘so I asks him— will I go to jail? and he says— more’n likely’ and they laugh and cough up lung.

Coffee pale, room-temp comin off the warmin plate— no steam breaks off this blackfilm swill.

‘And this dick don’t know to wipe his own ass—’
‘Couldn’t find his dick in a dark room—’
‘Too stupid to steal the booze—’
‘I don’t know no men could get through a stovepipe like that less’n they get muthernaked and grease theyselves down’
‘I know a few— they fuckin agile’

Can they really make me pay for drinkin this dark tepid water—.

11.40am.
And I piss the kidneys out in a piss-trough in the boxcutter and grainpainted commode.
God— this note-book slides down w/ piss to new depths o’ banal. These cigarettes are dry— $4.50 from the cig-vending machine.

A dim sign on the wall—
‘the minute we go on national alert no check, no tabs, cash only, “no acceptions” [sic] effective immediately—“BOSS”.’
I ask the bargirl, is this a joke?— and she just laughs.

‘And my father-in-law was like that— he would tape the soap operas and watch ‘em at night. And now— after thirteen years of marriage and two kids he’s married to a man’— bargirl
‘I want a man who won’t beat up my ass’— oh, girl

This boy at the bar says he knew me in Orleans— he recognized me, I don’t know him—
‘gawd she’s wearin blue jeans aint she? what’s your name baby?’
‘Rhonda’
‘you know my boy Scott don’tch you?’
‘Yeah— he’s always up my ass’
‘cain’t blame him’— laughs
‘Yeah— he come in here n kissed me goodbye n asked me for a cigarette’
‘you won’t be seein him for twentyeight days’
—so it goes— bring on the BANAL.

1.50pm.
So it’s a friendly game o’ spades with the bargirl and two regulars— and the first beer cracked and cold, some old guy puttin down a first round for us all.

Bargirl says to some fuck— ‘come back sometime you can’t stay so long’

And I work the jukebox— starved for music, man— Elvis King and John Cash and The Stones.

At the gametable—
Mike— pockscarred face, blackdyed long hair w/ thin and brown roots at the scalp, went to Nam in ’69 for two years, he volunteered, got shot up twice— now workin on a $790 credit debt here and bummin smokes off Rhonda
Tom— greyhair drunkass belligerent old boy, got cash but still bums smokes off Rhonda and it’s pissin her off
(and Rhonda just put Steve Earle on the juke— hell and shitfire and
skullfuck— YES)
And the bossman come in just as Rhonda was set to go to her car and burn one down— bossman talks about refusin to bail some fuck outta jail he says, ‘like they say it’s not who ya know it’s who ya blow and I can fuckin blow’— potbelly cynic-face old bastard
Rhonda— this hour I got eyes for that full slack ass, yes

This is the Star Bar 2.30pm Wednesday afternoon—

Sun hot out there but no-one leaves this dim-lit room to sweat it and the Boss gone now so Rhonda heads to her car to smoke that grass

I am sober as all hell— holdin on to my goddam wages and it hurts—

I got some lucre but still livin broke—
AH—
and that threatenin collapse still a nervous energy and fright kickin in the blood—
hold on, boy— keep your shit together—
god’s got no time for the real and utter LOST and neither do men.

Sorta force my boy Mike’s hand— him up at the bar, I call out ‘Rhonda what’s your cheapest beer’ and he comes to me with a Bud—
so it goes— you friends and lovers— this last and beatest freeloader says this is how it’s done and won’t fail him for a long time yet—
yes, you’re still young and that road still looks to be long—
but you never know what or who is holdin your number or where—
hear me.

And as sure as drink calls for smoke, smoke calls for fuckin drink—
and smoke and drink press you on to talk or silence dependin on the hour and its moods—
and this chemical dialectic winds itself out to where your voice don’t recognize itself and legs give way to the floor—.

‘I went up all dancin on Smitty one night and he looked me dead in the eyes and said Baby, you’re dancin up a dead tree—’ Rhonda, with old boy Smitty sittin bald-head and age-spot toothless grin at the end o’ the bar.

4pm and I hate myself, hate this sad fuckin scene and I in it to the knees.

And all these boys’ meshback hats and company jackets are writ with ‘Delta Well Surveyors, Inc’ and ‘Alaska Petroleum Contractors’ and ‘America Oilfields Divers’— even the long-retired fuckers.
And there’s just too much time pressin down on me here in town— I drown in time.

‘slap him upside the head with a full bottle o’ beer’— Rhonda, about this old fuck I was talkin to
‘slap me upside the head with a full bottle o’ beer’— I say, comin out the latrine
‘I can think of a lot better things I’d like to slap you upside the head with’— thus Rhonda confesses her love for my cock— or my face

‘WHO’S GOT THE BEST LINE?’ Oldboy says this is the old and only question—

And she leaves— Rhonda leaves this place and the barroom’s loud and I get a fuckin call on the house phone— Rhonda’s there on the line askin me what I got goin on tonight, and HELL, I tell her— SHIT, I tell her— there’s this girl I’m wantin to marry in a coupla months and can’t do this thing—
and she says she wishes I could and I say, YEAH, ALRIGHT, I’ll see you around girl—
and come back in this room—
and that fuck is OVER as shit gets.

And this salvage-yard owner’s talkin Xanex and Oxy and someone says, ‘you best watch out he’s writin’—
junkman says, ‘I don’t give a shit I aint done nothin I don’t sell opium’—
and I look up at his face and say, ‘if you did I’d quit writin and start talkin’—
and they all laugh.

And I’ve bought several dollars o’ shit beer and been bought seven rounds— but not near drunk and not much mammon and I spread the buys out just to kill time—
and I’ll drink Busch cause I’m poor— but bush tastes better and that says a lot.

6.40pm.
One last can and I leave here for the Viet corner store—
cause this whole scene’s gone worse and honkytonk on the goddam box—
‘tha night I fell in love with tha queen o’ Memphis’—
SHIT, boys—
can’t take your shit no more, but you killed this day and I thank you.

6.45pm.
And I think there’s gotta be some name to draw this waterinhole long fuckin day under—
what to name this beast and this garden—?
But brother— kind, killin brother—
there is no name comin, and no garden between these red walls—
no sex or visions—
and nothin but bent cans and the crushed pack o’ smokes to certify that I lived here—
and these words— that, I got—
these words are the name o’ this beast—
TAKE, OR LEAVE—

7pm.
And this bar cleared out like seven PM is the end o’ the world and onset of all after—
I'm the fifth bastard in here, and the life o’ the bar is focussed at the gametables, and drunk tensions rise—
I want no part, but throw words out none the less and raise ‘em all the more by my indifference—
and the night-shift bargirl is older and extremer skank than Rhonda, and so she cradles that ass in spandex— it aint pretty—
and a pall falls.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

14 march.

And this whole writhin orb bent on its axis and all that has breath and all children o’ man born o’ woman w/ blood— all fevered, sick— all clutch and claw just to LIVE
—just to fuckin PERSIST.

And the life of the flesh is in the blood, yes—
and oh, bloody yes, the death of the flesh is also in the blood.

I am sat on a whitewash bench outside Star Bar just cookin in the sun— fatigue latent in the wet stems o’ my bones— and it could be I am too low to even lift intoxicatin drink to my lips—

drink no exit— I know this—
sobriety no exit— I know this also.

And GO has been my word— lifted from the lips o’ Narcissus (the rush o’ his love held him transfixed), and the sons o’ Dionysus (as he hunts and fucks in hills and the night w/ a presence that must be hunted and fucked for and again)—
and RETURN has been my fear—
and I have gone, mutherfucker—

But the demonheights always level back out to the desertlands o’ this oppressive god’s threat o’ grace—
and there’s no tellin if this is syndrome or SPIRIT or if the two are wed and oneflesh—
I just know this unbent road defies all geometrics and curves back on itself—
to the solitude and abandon from which I came—

And my mother wiped the blood and birthin-fluids off me and gave me suck—
but I’m still cryin out for air and orphaned in the desert—
and some god long-dead spoke to a prophet— an exiled prophet cherishin bedsores on his left side—
and said he found a girl— a little girl out here in this same desert— and took her to himself—
but her hair began to grow into a veil over those secret parts—
and her breasts took curve and form—

But I am no girl and no goddam semite—and this god is long-dead.
This hour calls for DRINK—
1.40pm.

This room howls with hollowness— and I have found a house of mirth that is to me a house of mourning—

‘Oh Ruby, don’t take your love to town—’

So let me detail this hell— I got FIRED. Yes, thought I’d worked through that shit with the owners o’ the Celeste Ann over the phone, and they were gonna place me on another boat— but longhaired Chris, coonass that fired me, put his weight against this hard, sayin I was a ‘hygiene problem’—
GOD! all these fuckers lack vision and obsessed by the clean modern showerhead—

as Dyson said, ‘yeee-fuckin-haaah!— another day in paradise’

I got $410 in hand, a further $50–$100 comin in tomorrow— hold on and wait out, or live the old words ‘when in doubt, move on, no need to sort it out’—
Crew Service is gonna secure me work elsewhere, it is a question o’ time—

What worse than bussin out to my silent girl’s neck o’ woods with nothin for me but a coupla hundred and nothin gained by two months’ torment—?
NO—
I could sleep on Rhonda’s couch and wait for that lifegivin call— this woman Rhonda wants my cock charges me for ever-other beer.
And still that haze breast-curve mirror— and still this swivel stool I hate— and still that lustful egolatrous leer and fear o’ all things comin.
And there’s a knife at the fifth rib and it’s sunk, with blood—
but the hand at that blade is my own, and even stuck and drained as I am it’s all— like he said— ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

Lines from a low-country song

2010-09-07T12:26:00.014-07:00

The light's hard likker in this west
that Utah sun it burns
it riles & roils the spirits high
lifts steep & sweet the blood
inflames the mind, sets red like lust
& leaves the memory clear

/ viii.2010
/ Portland

Then the unseen // a song

2010-08-26T13:35:00.020-07:00

I’d half-open her blouse
& she’d half-shut her eyes
she had breath I could feel
she had lips I could taste
then I’d hear she had a voice
I’d hear her say my name
while her breasts sank & swayed
on a bed she never made
& it could sound like a killin’
when our joy was complete

But then the unseen
it came between us

I saw the ring she wore
but love’s still raw desire
the past’s a nightly fever
the future’s never far
our kitchen was a wreck
our hearts were never washed
she shattered all the china
I nailed the windows shut
it destroyed our reputation
but our joy was complete

& then the unseen
it came between us

She had eyes I could see
& a gaze I could not
& it could look like hate
but our joy was complete

& then the unseen
it came between
& then the unseen
it came between us

// Portland
// vii-viii.2010

2010-08-24T12:33:00.017-07:00

In this upheaval of blood
that is the heart
is all the heart has & has lost

This is the open vein
that holds us here,
the bone-thin hand of life

'Susceptibility': van Dusen on Lyotard

2010-07-09T14:17:00.019-07:00

My review of Lyotard's Enthusiasm. The Kantian Critique of History (Stanford, 2009) is out in Radical Philosophy 162.

They've embedded a shot of some neon installation piece, A Laser Guided Democracy, in the review, which serves as a precis.

See rude beast to scan it on-line.

War poems

2010-06-28T14:52:00.009-07:00

Several of my war poems have gone up at Naked Punch, a review of political culture, philosophy & art based out of London. The site features some stellar interviews.

Like forgiveness // a song

2010-06-24T14:35:00.012-07:00

Lover, I want her
when the night opens up
& I still want her
where her thighs open up
& the river breaks upon us
& the pleasures flood up in us
sweet & promised
sweet & promised, like forgiveness

Lover, I want her
when her eyes open up
& I still want her
when her hands tighten up
& the clouds they brood above us
& the seas break white against us
close & senseless
close & senseless, like forgiveness

Lord, but I want her
when desire rushes up
& hell, I still want her
when her back arches up
& the skies they wheel above us
& the blood burns cruel within us
lost, dishonest
lost, dishonest, like forgiveness

// vi. 2010
// Portland

The Tropic of Charleston

2010-03-10T17:32:00.025-08:00

The air down here can drown you,
& a young girl's heart can't but become
a deepening dark, deceiving & deceived,
in such close & sensuous heat as attends
these waterside nights

// ii.2010
// James Island

2010-01-21T11:26:00.054-08:00

I tire of it, having waked on the first with a stranger in my arms & having moved, coolly, in the way we ’ve moved since our heart was first forked so that it knew, still in Eden, the sublimity of desire within the certainty of death.

Yet so I moved with her, so made that steep ascent up the pallor of some new girl's breasts above her slitted-shut eyes, raised hands & so we were, forgetting of our unforgetting deaths-- which is the sweetness in the promise of any pleasure.

{in the old style : an experiment in form}

January 2010
in London
an experiment in form

Brothel bride. A low-fi love song

2009-12-09T03:54:00.016-08:00

I said a woman’s kiss would heal my heart—— said yes, a girl-child’s kiss would heal my heart like Jesus’ spit in common dirt that cleared a blind man’s eyes

But by what road does a sonovabitch come to love——?
by what road——?

I slept in ev'ry chamber of the brothel of her heart—— lord I possessed her, all the brothel of her—— she loved me there and led me out

‘You have my heart!’
—— I heard her very words
‘You have my heart!’
—— but how could I believe her?

So she caressed my suicide wrists—— said lord, she kissed my regicide lips—— broke all the bones o’ my blasphemous hands so tenderly, so silently, so insolent and sure

But by what road does a sonovabitch come to love——?
by what road——?

// Portland, 2005

Lost love songs

2009-12-08T04:16:00.006-08:00

1

I kissed lips—— I kissed with her blood
I kissed lips & surged on her side

Ah, sweet christ, I married her fate
& in the heat of her breathing I heard it—— the material sermon, salvation

I kissed lips—— then the lids of her eyes
I kissed neck bones, breastbone, the lines of her hands
then I kissed with her tongue

Bliss—— in the caves of the heart
Bliss—— at the lips of her eyes
Bliss—— the sweet crisis
on her love-riven side at the last end of god

In the cool grey light of her sorrowful face
& in the moveless light of her sorrowful face
tears loosened her eyes, renewed her eyes
tears grieved her eyes

In the shadowless light of her desolate face
& in the shadowless light of her delicate face
her love is verglas

Love is verglas, where her last tears came

[‘verglas’—— pronounced verglay; the first glaze of ice that forms over snow]

2

I had come all the way here from the sea,
Yet met the wave again between your arms // Hart Crane

She——— she, I have loved—— swanskin neck,
The raped heart in her chest & groove at her breasts

‘Let me wash you

She was naked—— black waves, white where they broke——
A girl-child in sea-drift, pearl-dark in wave-shift
& I heard her,

‘Let me wash you in the sea

She was sunk in love’s rip-tide, sad with some grace,
I put a hand on the groove of her up-turned breasts,
Laid a hand in that shadow, there on her bed
& I heard her,

‘Let me wash your wounds in the sea

I bathed in her deeps & sank at her side
—— cigaret in the teeth, loveless, proud——
—— and I heard her—— she, I have loved,

‘Let me wash you
‘Let me wash you in the sea

‘Let me wash you
‘Let me wash you in the sea

‘Let me wash your wounds in the sea

// Portland, 2005

Last love song

2009-12-08T03:52:00.004-08:00

I thirst——
Said I thirst !
I long for love, thirst for it

I want her where I breathe, where I speak—— where blood shoots & rushes, ignites & gyres.
I want her with my eyes—— with the nerves of my hands,
in the stems of my bones, the cord-fluid of my spine !
& I have seen her stripped and lustral on the love-couch
in first light

I am hurt——
I am hurt !
The world has cut into my heart, & it bleeds

& I swear in all-sweet pain & loathing—— I am distracted with her !
But she distracts me from peace & a whole world of sorrow—— in my desire, in her beauty !

I gaze——
Said I gaze !
On the world with deep eyes, gaze on her with deep eyes

This is dawn——.
This is fuel poured out down the waters of the sky & lit—— let there be light!
Cold fire, this light—— ideal!
Breath is lit with this fire & domed on its light

You innocent——
You innocent !
Kill your innocence, & waken to my love——
For it is wise as your flesh, my love !

// Portland, 2005

The Pious Origins of Nietzsche's Immoralism

2009-08-26T03:18:00.006-07:00

My new review-article has come out in volume III of The Nietzsche Circle journal The Agonist (New York / Berlin).

In the last light of dawn

2009-02-15T04:15:00.003-08:00

A deacon sinks his weight into the rope,
the clapper swings & a church-bell peals

I pull the sheets back from us, turn into
her as she curls towards a ringing wall

There is light outside & light within-- it
hangs in the curtains & shines on our eyes

& with her lips half-closed, breath slow,
I sink towards her neck & below

Which is holding her, which is Sunday,
which is calm-- in the last light of dawn

// 29 i 2009
// for Ornella

Londres

2008-10-14T04:22:00.004-07:00

C'est la damned vie.

The solitude this hour is sweet, & the madness I suffered in love is not risen or lowered -- is sheer-level with life. Eye, hand, heart, blood, sex --

I am beyond this desire, this hour -- & this beyond is a calm, a coolness, a peace I owe to every girl-child I have seen or held or taken. They have given me this peace -- this last-flower of all their wills & lives & half-given loves.

La gloire -- this new-perishing of desire. I pass on -- while the sky inclines toward dusk.

Drafted lines

2008-08-04T11:09:00.003-07:00

This is the hour when children are born
this is the hour when new-borns cry
such bloody joys as coming, crying
to such bloody shores as birth

Birth to this world that still lives within us
in dusks & cups & front-room bars
on the lips of virgins, tongues of whores
down reverent dawns & impenitent nights
on sinking tides & wakenings

draft of a draft: The Heathens' Rage

2008-03-14T09:51:00.001-07:00

Is reason alone baptiz'd?
are passions then the heathens of the soul? -- Young

Man-born is heathen. Flesh is heathen-flesh,
breath-spoke is heathen breath. Bride is heathen,
breast is heathen—womb & tongue & flank is
heathen. The bed o’ love is heathen-bed. The daughter
& her sobbing cry, the daughter with her new-born
eyes—heathen in her nerves and bones! Her scream-
raised, sensing gasp is godless as the world!

How godless is the eye? how godless is its light?
Is not the nervature clean from the womb? is her eye not
open & pure?

But her hand is born bloodied! arm bloodied! rib-cage
& face all drenched in blood! gleem’d smooth with shrieks’
sweat in a hard-mother’d pain! We must wash her—surely!
—this shuddering daughter! Sure this babe must be
stripped of that ominous stain—the black blood of her coming!

Black blood of the womb & its waters’ releasement!
black blood of a love-bed, red blood of shed seed!

// Wales
// x.2006

STILL STORM

2007-10-10T08:58:00.002-07:00

Such love as I have
& such hate

Such bone-shapen hands
& liquid-void eyes
suspended in the light

While the city grinds its teeth

Such I have
with this blood-beaten heart
& its silence alone

Where comes the Alone

// London
// ix.2007

das Mystische

2007-08-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

that the heavens bleed to death
in our streets

ERRATA

2007-07-23T05:26:00.001-07:00

Ah, sweet jesus!
the darkness ---
heart-dark, eye-dark,
sky-dark night

Her beak tears at
my side again

ERRATA

2007-07-23T05:20:00.001-07:00

Night--- & the blood pours in world-dirty veins,
the tongue grey with smoke, the eye white with light

Night--- & the sky is a future, the wind is a past

ERRATA

2007-07-09T07:38:00.001-07:00

This burn-wheel of blood in this dusk,
this flesh in the air

Here,
faithless yet alive, I hope for
some love to swell my ribs

& wash-clean a voice that darkens
what it speaks

Dream-texte [09.15.2005]

2007-07-04T10:33:00.001-07:00

Dark, heavy dreams.

Images, yes—the mind lit from within and warm, where I drink with other drinkers; a bar built over waters, with double-paned, moist glass walls; outside is night-dark and still, electric boat-lights move and anchor to the waters; all images thus refracted by the glass, diffused and made weightless by mist and the water inside that adheres to glass-surface—these images, yes.

A light and dark night—world of light, worlds of dark; nets of light in seas of dark—all emerged out of and imaged on black waters—they shine, under light—all shifting, sexed, and seen through light-obscured walls of water and of glass.

I drink vodka, sake, at the tables of this mind—with others, sexed drinkers—and all our parole seeks to decipher the shiftless anchor and anchorless shift of this thrice-obscured, drunk, light and dark world.

In that most perfect mirror

2007-07-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

I reflect,
& reflected in her eyes
I see
with a new immediacy

Dishearted

2007-06-23T09:26:00.001-07:00

The silence is deaf water on his skin & the sadness is blind wind
his heart has seen the end, & shakes

strophe

2007-05-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

clearing the heart of black dirt,
clearing the eyes of black darkness
& moving, resolute, into that clearing
that is Vision & Love

anti-strophe

2007-05-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

& the dark ages in our blood,
the garden, famine, plague, & flood,
the centuries of desire that surge up in us
surge us to the Crisis

I offer up my ruined heart

2007-05-21T03:22:00.002-07:00

This is last light,
the last cigaret

last wordless breath,
last city, last sip

last hand-clasp,
last hand

surrender,
last surrender

to the stab or fear of last love

// south London
// iv.2007
// for Nicole

A report

2007-05-10T04:43:00.001-07:00

Ah! my love---- I try her, press her, provoke our hearts to pain---- scowl, fall silent, leave her on the stairs to the locked roman church---- kiss her, sip & breathe her, drink & undress her, bite at her breasts---- & in the dead times I study, scrawl the merest fragments of poetry

So be it---- there is no weakness in the short forms---- to sing the light that glances off-wing in the wheel & turn, & fall silent

Jahveh was my god, & he died; Jhesus was my muse, & I killed him---- I live in wait of a worldful, mortal, sinful god-muse I cd sing with eyes void of guilt, void of judgment, & wide with a love-dirty light

I shd sing of my love, sing my lover---- but it seems that I am too near to her to sing---- (she is the nearest, die Nächste)

The ark is god's---
ours the bowl of heaven gone to dust
& the brown-budded rod,
the tarnished ephod,
the cracked tables of the law
& the lips of a woman in whom we love

// Wales
// iii.2007

11 a.m.

2007-05-02T04:08:00.000-07:00

& we lie abed, let the light drift in
on the wake & spume of the night

In winds that wreck us is a wind that perfects us

2007-04-03T06:47:00.001-07:00

The heart,
yes,
exults

Liquor pours & light burns,
the skies break
& we rest

Release our souls,
release them to release,
that the reckoning may be with new light

Eyes in the clouds & voice in the winds
that we wake

To cold water, shaken on the face
in a mirror

With smoke on the tongue,
in a city

To silk & credit,
steel & graffiti

That while the graces, tides & furies
still lick our breathing shore
this life may be glory,
still glory,
is glory

// Copenhagen
// iv.2007

What I love, when I love

2007-03-30T17:58:00.004-07:00

My meat-red heart,
this night that spills no blood

Her milk-white eye that blossoms grey,
the light that in them moves

Originally titled "Quid autem amo?" after the place where Augustine asks, Quid autem amo, cum te amo? at Confessions X. 6: "What then do I love, when I love you?" The lines: 25.ii.2007.

4.iii.2007

2007-03-29T06:27:00.000-07:00

she wakes from keeling fears & edgeless light,
this woman-child I wake

17.iii.2007

2007-03-24T05:17:00.000-07:00

Dawn in a city of lenses and mirrors---- dawn in a city of pale-reflect skies. The streets, the locks, the doors; windows & scaffolds, gutters & codes.

A failed poet smokes a thin cigaret. The sky is his & his heart is his lover's.

He cannot sound her eyes, he cannot sing the sky---- so he smokes, & loves.

He loves what cannot be sounded, sung, shattered, laid bare. He loves a nakedness that veil-reveals a soul---- the claire that reflects in a surface, the obscure that rises to her eyes.

He loves the cities of her flesh---- windows, locks, lips & doors; the streets of her soul---- her wrists & her mirrors, impenetrable futures.

A tide-risen silence that harbours all speech & all sound.

15.iii.2007

2007-03-24T04:55:00.000-07:00

This thirst, this heart-thirst,
is it for love? for pleasure?

The lidded eye thirsts light,
& what cd slake the living heart?

8.ii.2007

2007-03-10T07:07:00.001-08:00

The sky fell white, froze over the ground. The young sheep call and cry, birds lift. White as caught light, the world. Light caught against the clouds, against the cloud-covered ground. Light shot and held and shining, greyed by wet winds. Winds, the voice of a crying lamb------ the noise of white-hearted babes. Says Dostoevski,

we are all little ones,
we are all babes;

White-hearted, crying------ delivered, held and shining----- against the clouds, against the ground--------- held, yes, yet standing.

Nicole is the youngest of us all--- a jüngster Tag---- and she is out in it, this shrouded world.

I will go to her for a while.

Jüngster Tag, "the Youngest Day"---- Prussian colloquialism for the Judgment Day. Cf. Kant's 1794 essay, "The End of All Things".

Asiatic tercets

2007-02-28T05:14:00.000-08:00

18.ix.2005

The taste of this world—
a dry cigaret burned in cool, dry air,
in the shadows.

5.ii.2007

Solitude at dusk.
This is when
the silencing comes.

Hard quieting of the heart.
The sense for noiseless things
and lust for noise.

A post-card

2007-01-20T06:37:00.001-08:00

8.i.2007

This narcotic weather: hypodermic skies; tourniquet winds and syringe-like clouds------ grey sorrow the fix.

The gods tie us on, the fates flick the spike, the world-soul pricks our dammed-up vein----- with weeping!

Our hearts flood-over with grey-coloured tears.

Weather's bleak, and I sleep bad in the new room.

But the sky is a mouth, breast, and life-flooding eye--- no deathgaze, no spike; the rain is milk, not junk; and the winds! breath of the seas, and very seas.

CRANACH

2007-01-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

This is the LOVE-INFLICTER and his mother, VENUS---- and jhesus, what a gaze this jezebel has; what sly, indolent slope to her pose; what breasts, bare feet; shaved forehead, braded necklace, nimbus-crown o' plucked birds-down; shadowless sex, utter ease.

And her boy---- the child; the child that dirties his hands with love, that ruins our minds and pricks our veins with the childishness of love---- he is stung and helpless and whining. Lost in a mean cloud. After the nectar--- thirsty for honey--- he gets the sting.

What is this? and which am I?---- mother, son, stag or wasp or mule?

[18.i.2007. A post-card to J.D.]

PURPURO

2007-01-13T04:52:00.000-08:00

Maria K. and icons

2007-01-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

Saddam at the gallows

2007-01-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

And the uncertainty of every hanging is this----

When the body falls, whose neck is it that breaks?
whose blood is it that stills and pools?
whose heart that blackens, dies, and is changed?

Whose the last voice, last eye, last hand that gleams
in the judged and hooded face?
whose the fury? whose remorse?
whose the terror? whose ruin?

Whose quietude and new-dug grave?

Dupont Circle, xii.2006

2006-12-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

The man who chains his eyes to the ground---- to bodies, faces, walls and glass---- this man is chained as a grazing beast--------

we must lift our eyes; and this, in the city, signals madness or rebellion;

we must loose our gaze on the skies----

Loose your gaze upon the skies!

The birds circle; the birds lift and curve and sway--- but not even the birds have eyes for the endlessness of heaven--- they rise but to gaze on the dirt, to fix, dive, and tear---- they live in the skies but for meat and dirt.

We live! while doves and death-birds gyre in shining clouds above our heads.

Thus howls

2006-12-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

Thus howls the dirty south, thus howls the freed and
god-sky'd slave--
the releasement of undoing----- his releasement of-----
listen!------

the drunken soul takes hold of siege-work skies-----
the drunk voice shouts and shies-------

lost song?, gone down to resurrect-------
sunk down to grieve, still down to save-----

we hear!----- still---- yet still we hear the blood-cloud song
of woman in her sons-----
her corded hallelujahs gathered to the ground,
her rise!

I, a son, still cannot speak; and I, a slave, still cannot weep the high hard-shuddering skies,
for there is the resurrect and suckle-breast of god our mother----- god her gotten son!

George Kaiser, 1921:

2006-12-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

'Love blasphemes love and purifies love with love!'

Seven Expressionist Plays: Kokoschka to Barlach, trans. J.M. Ritchie and H.F. Garten [London: Calder and Boyars, 1968], p. 73.

Ivan Goll, 1922, in the preface to his play 'Methusalem, or The Eternal Bourgeois'

2006-12-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

‘Why is only the death of man called tragic? A conversation five sentences long with an unknown woman can well become far more tragic for you in eternity.’

Seven Expressionist Plays: Kokoschka to Barlach, trans. J.M. Ritchie and H.F. Garten [London: Calder and Boyars, 1968], p. 80.

On eyes and lips, the signs in her face

2006-12-01T14:59:00.001-08:00

---- her face becomes old in the darkness, young in new light---- young and wise, in new light

// Wales, 2006
// for Maria K.

A new definition

2006-10-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

---- we speak on thirsting breath, in seizing and allaying noise, and from the inward discord of our silentest intent.

A drinking song for old men and infants

2006-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Thinning the blood with drink;
enflaming the mind;

the heart trembles, and opens,
beholds its own blindness as with a mother's tender eyes;

and the water pours---
in his very blood the hard water
pours in flames---
enflames his tender mind.

Gloss on a line

2006-10-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Poet is Priest says Ginsberg-- in Paris, in 1958;

--- yes!, and his cup is filled with blood and never wine,
his sky is visage and is veil,
and the streets for him a heavenly basin that runs with
bulls' seed and doves' gore
--- he speaks!, and his words pour clear as water,
black as blood sprung from a frantic, slitted side

God's beast has swallowed me

2006-10-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

It was not on the night of the third, no---- but morning of the fourth day that the great sea-creature spewed out a half-drowned poet onto a sun-beat, hostile beach-- shaking and bitter but saved.

And so it will be;---- this is the night of the third. Not yet dark, and I drink. God's beast has swallowed me; and I drink.

And I will drink til I wake on the beaches at Nineveh.

Night thoughts

2006-10-22T13:27:00.001-07:00

18.x.2006

And the only pity and dignity of the dead is this---- that they have lived; yes, even the babes dead inwomb.

21.x.2006

And at the end of a night spent in her swan-like, knife-scarred arms I climb to the grave-yard to watch the wind in the sky---- and to-night the dead here, the graves, offend me.

// Wales, 2006
// for Maria K.

IRAK

2006-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

The leaden goddess with her cruel and servile, sectarian gods --
suicide furies, precision harpies, majestic rage --
and no water to be drunk!

Babylonian streets of murdered skin and silken blood --
terrace upon terrace inlaid with suffered pain;
and on the lowest cobalt terrace the Kurdish girls weep yellow tears
over the imprisoned and the dead;

Whole rivers prayed of tears --
and no water to be drunk.

The mercenaries of Rome, bud-breast daughters and sons,
repent the vile heat and kneel to the fasces,
pray sad to the fasces, spit on the fasces,
spill blood on the fasces;

And guilt that is in us, upon us,
streams in black endless wave from the fetishized screen
-- eyeless, irreal! --
the murdered skin and silken blood of Iraki dead
and the soldiers of Rome.

Mahmoud is rendered insane in a black-site prison
and Zahra his daughter killed by tribal imams
for her love of new names and her naked face,
and RIGHTEOUSNESS IS THE ORIGINAL LIE.