Sunday 29 July 2012

Trudgery.

Because I'm back from a vacation that was good in many ways, but left me exhausted, because it is sunday night and I am up early tomorrow but hacking away at things I'd hoped to have finished a while ago, both professional, personal, and artistic, because my face is cracking up like a cheese pizza, because everything has felt especially heavy today, we'll just go with a Mark Lanegan song.



more about stuff later, later.

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Pacific City Has a Newspaper

It is called "The Sun." Today is the last day of a family vacation, about which possibly more will be said, or possibly nothing at all. Liralen is waiting for this computer, which does not recognize her name as a word.

Tuesday 17 July 2012

Steampunk Cartoons

after hours of reading Ryan Johnson's writings I grew huge bat wings and crawled into the hollowed steeple of a disused church, where I thought about the differing types of adjectives that I and my girlfriend would use to describe me. The church turned out to be an airship run by gears and cogs and a man with a tophat and monocle, who refused to address me unless I bowed properly.
we are going to France, he said, but not Paris, they are all persnickety cheese eaters, we are going to Real France, where no one has a sense of fashion or good taste in music. These are the real parts of countries, he said, spinning a globe and poking at it with a disingenuous cane. Can you do anything about these wings, I asked, because there was no one else to ask, and he looked educated.
No, actually, you are our backup plan in case these gears fail. This will be your one service from now on, he said, little knowing that I'd long since gouged my eyes out in a ritual that did little to aleviate an inborn sense of guilt.

Sunday 15 July 2012

All Things Curved, Cartoonish

the saxophone's slow slope,
the drummer's snare taps, gathering gradually
the guitar player slides into place for a full fifty seconds
before a shift the players
just
nail, just
barely.

i do not know jazz enough to tell you
if this is good or bad, but can say there is something
(i'm sorry) phallic about the saxophone, if not literally, holistically
(what a weird looking dick) in pieces, mabye, like three or
four (quite large) dicks taped together,or less literally, 
just something SPIRITUALLY phallic

and I'm reminded of a carlos santana interview
where he stroked an acoustic guitar slowly, with two
fingers, back and forth, as he talked about the
sensuality of the music, the shape of the instrument
like a beautiful woman
without a head.

i do not know if the guitar player likes santana. that
is probably beside the point, what i do know is
it is too light
outside
and the shades
aren't drawn
and it will be three hours
until it feels like a jazz club

and sweet potato fries
dipped in ranch
and a laptop
belie the potential of this place
for nostalgic poetry, completely
displaced from the overdoses
of yesteryear's jazz

but I do know
that the servers are neither sexy 
nor grizzled enough, in their loose
buttondowns. They are, mind you, sexy and grizzled enough
for real life, or most bars, but they aren't SAXOPHONE SEXY,
where all the women become fluid cartoons, in 
teetering proportions and official classy sex uniforms
from a deliciously repressed era,
all the men, cowled and coiffed and quick with a line
and probably good at the saxophone

and there is no one in here like that
except for this one couple, at a table,
with ranch and potato chips
and with a diet like that,
you know they aren't here for the music.

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Grammaticality aside

All Things Gets Paid

will probably be the title of my next chapbook, and it will probably happen soon. A couple pieces to pair down, shape up, narrativize, but we go forward with this.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

5 American Americanisms

1) Crispy bacon.

2) Use of "American" as an adjective denoting newness, rawness, difference, frontierism, "the west". American slang. American Gods. American hearts.

3) Boots, and the various ways one finds their feet in them, and the uses for those ways.

4) Threatening to move to Canada.

5) The snide dismissal of Europe, internalized along with the near-reverence, the longing for tradition.