jeudi 29 avril 2010

lundi 26 avril 2010

l'aveu


pardon my laborious essays
my canopes o'er closed gardens
the malentendus have gathered
to plead their ignorance

while i have flooded the world
a minor excuse for water
far from god's house i find
a rousing of red flowers

my acreages of harrowed thought
diatribes in search of revival
yet the malentendus have come
to pick the ripened fruit

baritones open their lips
they lift up the host and sing
while i wander these lonely hills
wistful and colorless

and there a yellow tulip springs
and there she dies too quickly
do not pick these posies, my friend
let them stay in the vale and live

dimanche 25 avril 2010

déprime sans fin


the harder i try
the worse it gets

my brain is empty
of all significance

i sleep like the cat
by hours

i spill into the
atmosphere vacuous

i have nothing to
say again today

why bother
why bother

they're mowing the
lawn across the street

the grass will do
push-ups by midday

it will be sunday
before we know it

the phone will
be silent

i'll nap through
the afternoon, then

when evening comes
i'll watch a film

i always fall asleep
before it ends

forever
the same

leading to this
déprime sans fin

leading to the
absence of poetry

vendredi 23 avril 2010

Guru: RIP et Respect.

Drill, baby, drill?

Perhaps Obama should reconsider his ridiculous off-shore oil drilling plan!


NEW ORLEANS, April 22, 2010
Officials: Sunken Rig Could Cause Huge Oil Spill
11 Missing Now Thought to Have Been Near Blast; Search Continues, but Relatives Reportedly Told to Prepare for the Worst

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/22/national/main6422077.shtml


Update April 26, 2010: Oil Spill Likely to Reach Land in Days





lundi 19 avril 2010

loss death and resurrection


"madman" by ziadan

loss death and resurrection
that's the path i seek
one step and wham oh baby
that step leads to me!

a cycle in perpetua
a death stalked disease
and then some grateful heart remembers
seems to light up the night!

for now for now
there's nowhere else in time
but now and now
and if i forget
there's loss death and resurrection again!

i could live a thousand years
if i'd go inside myself
and let all those white birds fly about
so free but gone!

they've gone into a better place
a heaven not so far
but here inside this grosser body
let the subtle fly!

for now for now
there's nowhere else in time
but now and now
and lest i forget
there's loss death and resurrection again!

i wish i could forget this world
its wims its endless clamor
and live with nothing and nowhere forever
no loss no gain!

but that would be a cave for me
someplace warm and oh secure
and that's not what i'm looking for
between loss death and resurrection again
and again and again and again...

dimanche 18 avril 2010

Foals - Spanish Sahara

Suite d'un article dans Le Monde: http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/foals



Foals - Spanish Sahara

Bilkovitch on Salmon Days



Bilkovitch, I knew him well
Just a little clown from Lower East Bay
He took himself out of town
each year on Salmon Days
to escape the humdroning
of a mediocre parade
paradisiacal façades
and the red-haired girl who
flagged his heart
with her knotted scarf

All the talk about Salmon Days
found him reeling on the sand
He crouched, picked up a shell
and glistening in his rage
commenced a tirade against pretty
girls who play songs
that go all wrong
Promises the gods never make
except when the wind blows east
on Salmon Days

I knew him as a fool then
with his wisecracking mouth
flubbing like jelly in the East Bay wind
He tried to hang himself once, twice,
three times over Salmon Days
Each beat of his heart
built a shelf that held a rock
stamped with his obscurity
Transfixed, his thoughts washed away
with each throw of the rune

He's mad, Mr. Bilkovich
A chronic loner with only one glitch
The needs won't let him be
The sea has bled him free
to merge with the elements
and to author a tale
of the red-haired girl who refused
to look him in the eye
And who died in a wasteland
East Bayers call Salmon Days

vendredi 16 avril 2010

Le Sens de joie perdu


Photograph by Farooq Khan

Il me manque une langue sensible
Et voilà la vraie liquide enfin
Qui verse du soleil à ces eaux profondes
Mais c'est une mare dans mon âme

Elle ne comprend rien de vivant
Tout fuit, il n'y a que d'ombres
Et un sens étranger de disparité
Suivant ces chemins trop sombres

En fil avancent les veuves de bois
Leurs vêtements noirs et lourds
Qui marchent le long de mon âme
Dans le rythme de temps perdu

lundi 12 avril 2010

1966 Early Fontaine - Devaste-moi

Encore la reine Brigitte Fontaine...


samedi 10 avril 2010

exercise #3 - ghazal


Miwa Yanagi's "Erendira" from her series "fairytale" (permission pending)

He holds the lantern on that bounding ship
He rests vigilant on that bounding ship
To light the way of pilgrims in the gloam
And sinners that fall on that bounding ship
Where sink and break the rotting planks of oak
As drunken and bold on that bounding ship
Men do wend their way to her chamber bed
To pay with gold coin on that bounding ship
For her lingering kiss her fingers bled
Her long flowing back on that bounding ship
For when their seed breaks forth in foaming spray
It is thrice as strong on that bounding ship
The lamp wildly sways with maddening winds
Yet he stands solid on that bounding ship
Collects the coin and pockets his chagrin
For his orphaned wife on that bounding ship
Who lays childless under heavy flow of
Men and sour breath on that bounding ship
Sold for a dollar a dinner of whale
Laura as witness on that bounding ship

exercise #2 - rondeau


Munch's "Two Women on the Beach"

Turn our gaze from the earth-filled grave
Far from kitchen and hovel cave
Where comely sons and daughters rest
In suits of ash, their lacy best
That mothers press and cannot save

We will not weep the more to crave
One last look at babes fair and brave
Little chicks in their yellowed nest
Brief brief the day

Turn our eyes to the sea's bright wave
That bears their souls from this enclave
Another hour our hearts to test
Brief brief the day

mardi 6 avril 2010

Collatoral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq

the back story is explained on the video...


Le vrai de Jean Fauque

Interview pour Gonzaï, à l'occasion du premier album (13 aurores) de  Jean Fauque, auteur. La cinquantaine et 30 ans passés aux cotés d'Alain  Bashung. (14:34)(Merci à Patrick H. pour ce cadeau)

dimanche 4 avril 2010

intrinsic differences

i've never published this poem, so i thought i would. it was selected by edward nudelman for his poet series in may, 2008. you can read his analysis of it, along with many of his own wonderful poems, on his blog "thirteen blackbirds poetry": HERE.


You are adamant, you want answers!
You rally reason from wreck, put out inchy
feelers, scrutinize pharmacologic text,
then proffer cures like colored seeds to birds.
 
I'm intransigent; I swear I've tried it, all of it!
I've spent thousands on gels, mincemeats and frills
and still I'm sexless; I peck among the rhetoric,
swallow limpid jewels, rise a shadow of myself.
 
Spilling over this thirsty landscape, we're all
dry as dinosaurs and old as hills;
we've got loser libidos and sinewy sloughs,
we've got what we paid for and we're thirsty still.
 
You are a maestro of bird song with all that hope,
singer of Ode to Joy in the cafe dawn, you thrill:
I'm torn down in the book of Psalms, I sin,
for I can't wait for a god to call me home
 
And end this senseless race for cure,
another muck-muck run of luck
that seeps into deep caverns of my skin,
absorbed in the big pores of my nihilism.

samedi 3 avril 2010

battle scars


pile up the parched bones
roll them in parchment
make glue from the cartilage
bond hieroglyphs to soul

when you wake up
i shall take radiographs
bright spots on the nebula
men become idiots

love yourself love a soldier
when i hear the modern slogan
my mental projector starts up
i feel rashes and mosquito bites

in the x-ray of each fresh recruit
will burn the neuronic images
i carry a pack on my back as if i own it
i've got eyes for cameras

exercise #1 - free write


détail de mon "spring fever"


decadent polyglot
couch potato
she's got holes in the head
joyless sexless

remember when we
could embellish?
now i need a film
a radio anything with sound
the snapping fingers
like velvet on bone
give it a beat yeah
beat the thing over the head
do what is necessary

there really is nothing to say
love is overrated
marriage isn't for everyone
thirty years
you'd think i would have learned
but i think i'm special
bilingual bipolar bisexual why not
better than this thing that sucks
better than dependance

looking at the tv all day long
it's got a big fat penis
it's fucking me up with its
sackcloth and nonsense
promotional subliminal intellectual porn
assholes with car horns
medicines to ask my doctors for
whores and wannabe whores
bios of famous people

someone said it's hard to write
with fibromyalgia and i said
oh yeah? just pick up the pen, baby
we tell it exactly like it is around here

but no one wants to hear
this loss, this self-pity
this diagnosis
everyone is tired of it
everyone is tired
get over yourself because
you ain't gonna get over it
in a million years
not in this life time

big fucking deal they found a
retrovirus no one can duplicate
let the little buggers eat
glutinous cake

self-ennui how excrutiating
this whole exercise is more joy than
sitting in a frying pan with a boiled egg
oh boy my sandwich
another cup of tea yes!
am i grateful? oh yes yes
full of gratitude the sun is out
i've got ten fingers
and a back-lit keyboard

i'm here listening to the wind if
you want to say anything
i'm listening listening
to the bloodless wind