Spinal Taps

“Nina Katchadourian’s “Sorted Books” project makes inspired use of book spines . . .”

Katchadourian’s are so much better, but anyway here are a couple of pieces (the first from 2002, the second from 2003) I made using a similar method.

Blue Books on a Given Shelf

Comrade Past & Mister Present
You Are Happy

April Galleons
The Cities

The Light Around The Body
Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

[wordless spine]
The Flowering Stone


Red Spines This Time

The Young Recruit
The Human Abstract

Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers
The Ruins of Providence

Nothing Happened and Besides I Wasn’t There

Heartbeat Geography
The Green Lake Is Awake

The Misfits - Skulls

Maybe the best thing about YouTube are the cover songs by us regular folk. Here's a guy doing an acoustic version of what was probably my favorite Misfits song, “Skulls.” Surprisingly, quite a few people have posted covers of this one, but I think this guy gets it the most.



Here's a boob of the original song:

The Misfits - Astro Zombies

Not sure what's up with all of the posting today. S'pose I might be the Bizarro Scott. Anyway, was cooking up a cheeseburger for lunch and for whatever reason—maybe it was the meat, maybe the economy, maybe something to match my unusual amount of energy today—“Astro Zombies” (not actual zombies, but a song by The Misfits) came crashing into my head and wouldn't leave; a song I listened to hundreds of times back as they say in the day but not so much the past decade or so. And because blogging seems to be what I'm about today, I'm posting this nifty YouTube boob* courtesy of mysterio32:



*In case you didn't know, the videos on YouTube are called boobs. OK, so no one knows this yet, but it's going to catch on. Pretty soon breasts will be breasts and boobs will be boobs.

Kevin Young - I shall be released

I'm not a big fan of Poetry Daily, but today's poem, “I shall be released” by Kevin Young, who is definitely one of my favorites among the living, is definitely worth checking out.

Reticent Nerve

Because I don't have enough other blogs: Reticent Nerve. “Reticent Nerve” being a Cagian (minus the genius) piece from a few years ago (04 or 05—it's not exactly the kind of “work” you write down right away) that consists of a title and nothing else (and was more or less made for performance, though it's not like I get out much). RN will be for posting minimalist poems old and new. Rah rah rah.

A Better Digital Collage from Last Year

Tag


First appeared in We, no. 19.

A Not Entirely Successful Digital Collage from Last Year

A Dedication

To
Eileen Tabios:
Thanks for counting.

Keep Internet Radio Alive & Well

The telecommunications evil that is Clear Channel & friends is re-asserting itself by pressuring lawmakers to kill a bill that would help keep Internet radio alive and well. If you're in CT's fifth district you can email Congressman Chris Murphy and ask him to support H.R. 7084, the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008. If you're in another district (or a different state) you can search for your rep's contact info here.

The Subprime Mortgage Primer

The Subprime Mortgage Primer: have stick figures ever seemed more appropriate?

The Sentence

By way of jacksonpollock.org

Funerals by L. Manning

Hat tip: Cella's Round Trip

John Cage - Water Walk

Hadn't seen this one before. Two hundred and however many channels there are now, but somehow I don't think something like this would make it on any of them. “I consider laughter preferable to tears.”

Body Ammo

My poem Body Ammo is now up over at The New Verse News, a fine blogzine that “presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.” Thanks James.

The Complete Telepathy Poems of Scott & KC, part 2

Alright, so after our first telepathy poem, we did one or two more that year. They might still exist in a notebook in a storage bin under a paper box filled with books under another paper box filled with books, etc., shoved into the back of the basement or a closet. I don't think those one or two others ever got typed up. The last telepathy poem we made was from the summer of '98, not long before we split up for a year. I suppose we might have tried this “exercise” one or two more times after we got back together, but I don't recall hitting on anything. Like the first, this one had some tense agreement tweaks, and some of our lines were broken into two, and the title was made using the same method. This piece was published in the first issue of Skanky Possum along with one of our exquisite corpses. Here it is (thus ending The Complete Telepathy Poems of Scott & KC:-)

Outstretched Streetlight Aqua Serenade

Fresh sweat on a white Kleenex
we take off our clothes
and throw them over the sun

All the pretty blue bonnets pulled
tight over our eyes
the whites of our eyes brush up
against the cloudless sky

Sugar cookies baking in a lemon sauce
our twenty toes touching down
on seven globes at once

Dolphins swimming in my sauce pan
get beached on soggy saltine islands
Outside on earth
another fire engine sears on by

The Complete Telepathy Poems of Scott & KC, part 1

Some time in the fall of '94 or the spring of '95 I came across an article by Ron Padgett in which he described telepathy poems. Maybe it was the same as the "Telepathic Poems" bit in his “Gimmicks” piece which can be found at poets.org. Basically one person thinks of a line and tries to telepathically send it to a second person. The second person then responds with a line of his or her own and tries to send that response to the first person. The process is repeated until the participants feel the poem is complete. KC and I made our first telepathy poem not long after we first hooked up back in February '96. I typed up the poem, and a copy of the file has managed to be migrated from computer to computer over the years. I think it might even have been published in Conatus, a student-run literary magazine at WestConn. Can't really recall. For the title we did a variation on the telepathic thing, sending individual words instead of lines. If I remember correctly, the only changes were to verb tenses in a couple of places, and we split a long line of KC's into two. Here was the poem, warts and all.

Night Black Love Implosion

When a thorny rose sprouts out of an open Bible
Where we can go and make love
An eyelash beats thunderously against undereye skin
Like the bars of an angel’s cage
It is a song of exquisite foliage
And you quote T.S. Eliot while
The lights go out like stars

Zookeeney Bread

No Way, No How / No Why, No Who

In
my dream
this poem worked.

Each
line pushed
another meaning something

grave
like in
meant no way

out;
my dream,
no one here. . . .

A Way

Move in receive
the discrete
unit

starts
and stops
stays and goes

instigates silence like
lead exaggerates
follows

Rhymin' and Stealin'

Eileen Tabios's post on poetry-book stealing conjured up good times and bad times (you know I had my share) and inspired a couple of quick-sketch stories of my own—in the form she invented, the hay(na)ku.

The First

Took
Jim Morrison's
Wilderness from Waldenbooks.

Snuck
it home
and buried it

like
vodka in
my bottom drawer,

read
it only 
when nobody in

my
family was
around to see.


The Coup

Mailed
The Poetics
of Indeterminacy to

myself
from the
big pig “Pen”

I
was working
in back then

when
that whole
Lewinsky thing exploded.

In the Parking Lot at Work

The red maple in
September, leaves green
like a muddy lake.
Walk in or walk away.

Shoulder

Car pulled over on super 7.
Nobody in it. Nobody
around it. Nobody alone.

Noise Piece 1

Here is the other improv from this past weekend. This one was written to something (more metal than “noise art”) over at YouTube called “robots don't share math.” For some reason Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy was stuck in my head last week, which explains the first line. Not sure why I'm posting this though; it might only be because of the “bring your cave mouth with you” and “let me make you into my house” lines.

let me take you to the movies
let me take you to the dark
let me take you back to my house
let me take you . . . my mouth

i only wanted to be with you
i only wanted to . . . be
i never meant to mistake you
i never meant to mistake you
i never meant to be . . . me

there is no whole no more no self
there is no hole to crawl into
there is no one there is no all
there is only this streaming movie
there is only this streaming . . . fool

robots don't share math . . . noise
my best sense is fleeing . . . toys
. . . toys . . . toys . . . boys

let me take you to the movies
let me take you in the dark
let me make you into my house
let me shake you like my mouse

i am coming over to see you
when i come over to see you
i will bring my darkness with me
will you bring your cave mouth with you

i am coming on to see you
i am . . . i am . . . see you

Noise Piece 2

being an improv to Sonic Youth's "Other Sides" video which is currently featured on their site; definitely bearing the influence of bpNichol (for example something like “M.L.'s Dream”); and with the question “Why Is There Something?” in the ol' consciousness even if it's not directly answering it (nothingness on the super[or sub?]cosmic level, not a possibility; there can't not be something; but why this life? why this consciousness? accidents happen?). Anyway, here's what I received:

ring . . . ring . . . ring . . . ring
ring . . . bring . . . bring . . . ring

ring -- of recurrence --
ring of the end
ring -- of recurrence --
ring without end

ring, ring an end
ring without the end
ring without the end
ring, ring an end

ring around the mountain
with a ball point pen
smashes and thrashes
into the ground again

ring around the ring around
the mountain almost
can't be found
the pen is in the eye
the pen is in the mind
the pen is double time
the pen is double time

ashes ashes
no one ever found
ring within we're bound
ring eternal sound

rrr --- eee --- nnn --- guh

rise in sound erase
row in safe replace
facing sew safe
keep reep beep sew
eee ay, eee oh
eee ay, eee oh

i don't know
i don't know
i want to
i want to
i won't though
i won't though

move me through
move me through
who am i
talking to

i want to
i want to
i won't though
i won't though

we all do
we all will
i will too
i will too

without you
without me
without who
without be

been -- then / been -- when
beee -- rrreeeng / beee -- rrreeeng
thing -- ring / thing -- ing

Two Dreams

Nothing very surreal going on here, but what the heck . . .

Yesterday morning:
I'm reading over a prose poem I just finished. It's really wow. I have the perfect title: Seinoira. I print out the poem. The bold, one-word title looks especially beautiful over the block of justified text. But I think it should be "Sayonara." I Google it to make sure. I cross out the title and write in two words. My handwriting is illegible as usual. I correct the spelling in the body of the poem as well. I wake up and I'm awake for real so I head downstairs, power up my Mac, sit down in my squeaky chair. I have a three-line poem called "Sayonara." I hold it in my hands. The first and third lines are longer than the second. It's like an embrace. It might be something. It might be wow. I feel competent as a child screaming out for Mommy wakes me up for real.

This morning:
I'm sitting on the sofa in the living room flipping through the channels not finding anything to watch. I notice the time on the VCR (which we haven't had in years) says 8:15. I can't believe I completely forgot about the Cowboys' season-opening game against the Browns. Dejected, I click off the TV and head for the computer in the back room.

P.S. Interested in dreams? (Nevermind what I wrote in Meditation My Ass yesterday, that was something more specific), Be sure to check out Annandale Dream Gazette: Poets' Blog of Dreams.

Dashzilla

Vaughn sitting on the floor
in the living room, rebuilding
her Lego tower. When Dash
totters over and knocks it down
again, she turns to him and says,
“You're a monster, Dashiell.
You're the god of grief.”

A New Yorker Piece

In front of a deep, dark wood,
the plump old fairy stood:
“O.K., let's try this again,”
she said, pointing her wand
at Cinderella's pumpkin head.

Meditation My Ass

Get your morning meditation out of my face.
I don't care about your fucking cardinal,
don't want to hear about your cattle call.
Who cares if the dog has a master.
Words, pious my ass. Keep your dreams
to yourself and your woodpecker, too—
any other birds you want to twist in here?
Warblers? Shit, why not an Evening Grosbeak?
I'd rather eat their warbling little heads
than read anything more about them in
your finely crafted poem. Take your drums
and shove them down your dove coos.
Stop forcing yourself to talk dirty to me—
grubs and worms, you're so transgressive.
Get out of my event horizon, stat.
Take your honey-suckers and your bark-
breakers and demonstrate your metaphor
on some other fucking plane of existence.
Sap? Stop pretending you're not full of
shit. You can't hide behind the husks
of "rough" words. You're right about
one thing: we miss the obvious, don't we?
Where there's skin and blood there's sure
to be a hawk or something worse
circling in the duh sky. Why not put him
in her brain? It's wider you know.
You meant you and she when you said
"we," right? You meant the love between you
was no less than a song, where a song
is like this transcendent superhuman thing—
you meant you like made love for hours
then fucked like bonobos, scratching
each other's backs and biting each other's
flesh, mmm mmm good. I'm sure she wants to
see your fucking cardinal light up again.