this is from a truly boring movie i watched for a class

in the past when out ancestors died we burned their bodies collected the bones and threw them in the water so when the white man came and used his pan we thought the spirits had returned looking for their bones

found poem

I've been going through my old writing and I found this poem. I searched lines of it on the internet for a while because I couldn't believe I possibly wrote something so good, and disappointingly enough I hadn't. I just forgot it was a C.D. Wright poem because it uses so many of my favorite words.


So Far Off & Yet Here

Because I know this is going to be painful
I can feel the pain before it acquires a shape
Now nearer to me

How at night it is just audible
like mice in the insulation

So windows snow and pears soften
an old house settles into its infested studs

Always there is more inside
than outside in the open

Where I came to be identified with
your scars and green limbs
Now nearer to me

What in the meantime happened to my eyes
they shone at least they seemed capable of shine

But a poem on a page by itself
does not penetrate the retina of fear
Now nearer to me

So the mind dispels us
radiators gasp and washers wear out

Your left middle finger sinks inside me
the nail of love just holds.

RIP i really liked you

wish you were here

pas de trois

inadvertent composition

matthew and i are taking care of each other:

the problem is i love midwestern comfort
it's because you're naturally nurturing
like a cow

last half, last dance

bad dreams

let them comb out
my hand is never far from the nape
that pale brainstem (yours is pouring)
pushing babies from your base
pushing sorrow to the tips of your frayed strands
you are splitting in your sleep--

you, conductor and conduit
i make ice and tweezer extractions
but you are all electric
and i can't touch that moving malady

in my lungs all along

I want everyone to start listening to Francois Virot so hundreds of his tapes will be ordered to addresses in Illinois and he will come back here soon. I'm afraid the only way I'll see him again is to go to Lyon. I saw him early this summer at south union arts and he is my favorite music. He doesn't have cds right now and there are no mp3s anywhere, but I like giving people rides in my mom's station wagon with his tape, "Yes or No", playing.

If you like you should listen to the four songs on his mypace. The real pleasure, though, is in watching his face and seeing the little coughs and throat clearings like a dog's in his videos, there are two sets on blogotheque. My favorite song right now is I Want to Know, which is not on the tape but on the second set of videos I'll list. It is something of a deep cut (do I understand the meaning of that term) but isn't it nice how "heat" sounds a little like "hate" as in "of your body"? I am sort of in love with this person.

http://www.myspace.com/francoisvirot
http://www.blogotheque.net/Francois-Virot,2776
http://www.blogotheque.net/Francois-Virot-2,3340

tendency

My friends Emily and Claire Rabkin and I are writing a performance about gravity. I keep writing dumb things from airplanes and while half-asleep thinking they have some potential and then hating them. I think I've confused myself. Is gravity a drift, a burden, or a magnetism? Get it straight. I started writing a list of

gravities

of mosquitoes to certain sweet blood
of blood to genitals of lovers
of lovers to necks and thighs
of thighs into wicker chairs (a lurid imprint)
of wicker chairs to a rift in a house
of a house further into a lake

a lake

down through ground to low ground
down to the point of shortage with salty erosion traces without the rain which comes
up from the lake before it comes down?
counter gravities.

a tendency to struggle against and relent to gravity (another one, now gravity is tendency? nothing less porous.)

friday night laundry

I love ironing all these size L silk shirts and the pleated shorts. This year at school I forgot it is one of my favorite pasttimes because the iron in the laundry room of Allen Hall is so ineffective (not to mention public and weird if you're ironing regular shirts and stuff). Silk for summer. High-waisted shorts to distract from all the vietnamese sandwiches and beer.

rudimentary record keeping

september 15 2006
first and only gang meeting: climbing ladders three piece suits

november 24
adrian's party nervous legs tonsils in the mirror

november 26
never put shoes on, a heron dropped through the mailbox

december 1
the most depressing snow day imaginable

january 5 2007
reds, socks, running, changing jeans

january 6
double life of veronique

jan 24
room with a view at claire's raced home in the car while they slept

march 1
flooded graveyard in evan's car and drawing bird necks

please look homeward to me

i came home in a cab at 85 miles an hour and overtipped, flew into my room, took off my too tight shorts, threw my keys in the sink, and i was pissing out three quick beers and thinking about how nine day are unbearable- i kept thinking words of love and wanting you and it's because it's night and i'm drunk and have had too much exposure tonight to a few men who hurt me (even if through a few screens). you, i love, i thought. i read the words seoul ballet in a magazine on the windowsill, see, everything points there, four or five signs and symbols. i race-walk when i am like this and i am winding tonight around my bedroom at your heels.

new york tomorrow

Tomorrow I'm going to New York by myself for a day. I don't know what I'll do but I am going have just a backpack and no set trajectory, which is appealing because I'm at the age. I found a notebook to write down some possible buses to take and it had a lot of Japanese in it. I saw Park Sensei tonight taking a photo at Northside's graduation.

elements

a comparison of manta rays and great horned owls
a two-person panic when a train passed too near
caves and cow bones

I'm taking down a public record of a little time; I am trying to write a few stories but it might be easier to fall on the naturally occurring in the next months.