Cyborg never heard a real record neither

“I went to a Spice Girls concert,
when I was 14,
I think I turned out
okay.
I wore my tuxedo. . .”
a
fucking weirdo
they all cheer waving
chickens in the air.
you can’t be a cop as well as
a cagefighter - -
always choose
cages and chickens.
corazon diablo
every one of two trying to cure a make believe
illness.
for daily use;
take with food;
on an empty stomach-
morning chaos, eternity chaos

facing each other
eating pickled lettuce
and chicken from a shared solitary plate
trading dex for dinner
chicken for speed
merry
on our
fucking
way.

Seabright

A little short story I had to write for Poetics...

The aged-grey curtains hung lank on the little window of the door standing ajar, letting in the pungent algae smell of the receding tide now tepid in the mid-day sun. She moved about the cluttered space slow and deliberate while pulling plastic half-broken teeth through lank hair, also grey, and humming a tune with lyrics long forgotten. It almost sounded like a hymn. From the ceiling methodically hung by pieces of twine were shells, driftwood, dried lavender, beer bottle caps, the spines of small animals, torn bats wings and anything else that delighted her time addled mind. If you looked closely, their shadows could be seen from the road waving imperceptibly amidst dust and the wings of houseflies.

Behind the house sit rotten shambles of neglected wood and blocks, another project her son had never felt compelled to resume, beside which stood a barrel for rainwater. A relic and a ruin. That same son muttering through brown teeth about civility and the way things were done had laboriously and conscientiously (or so he assured her) installed a septic system for the shack but it made no difference to her. What was plumbing when next to the roar of the grey Atlantic, she wondered while he castigated, sat passive and silent with an eye out the window.

Stare through the same frame for too long and nothing remains where it was meant to be. Who put that pebble there? How does the grass presume its place between gravel tracks for tires? She knew one thing. She knew that Rupert was where he ought to be. Green eyes shining and fixed on the horizon. Tail pointing towards the sun, or moon, or ceiling- fixed and loyal- better than any child. Quieter too. At times it grew burdensome the way he refused to bend; she always stooped to him. At times she worried that their life together was growing dull.

Morning after morning on days when the weather was good, which she believed (and who shall refute her) were fewer with each passing year, the two went about their daily ritual. After dragging the comb through her own hair she would brush Rupert until they were dapper and ready to face the sea. She’d leave him for a moment and cross over the rubble to the barrel to fill the copper kettle. By the time it shrieked on the stovetop she would have assembled their spot in the sun, a wicker rocking chair draped with a frayed patchwork quilt, and a yellow paperback. The bowls of kibble and water were set out for Rupert. While the tea was steeping, she would gingerly lift Rupert from beside the single bed - always mindful of his delicate tail, and carry him by his wooden base into the sun. The rays of light refracted in his glass eyes animating them like the flash of a squirrel might have in days gone by.

And so they sat. Hour after hour. The children passed with dirty knees and brine in their hair, transfixed always by the incandescent copper coat of the frozen beast. They stole glances over shoulders and through tangled hair. Their parents had taught them it was rude to stare. The tide came in, the tide went out. The neighborhood kids grew up and moved away, into the city or to the trailer park, and still they wondered about the dog that never barked and the apparition of a woman by its side.

Maybe the wind was different that day. Maybe it hadn’t changed. She passed through the door and through the yard but no kettle accompanied her. Clutching an old metal measuring cup she plunged her parchment skin arm into the baptismally cool water. The water from last night’s storm spilled over the edges as she drank deep from the metal cup, her hair still wild from sleep. Not sleep. What goes on when all is dark behind those grey curtains... endless footsteps shuffling across the floor...ghoulish incantations or dehydrated snores...padding paws....

Stooping once more she gathered Rupert in her arms and carried him beyond the porch, setting him instead on the passenger seat of the Oldsmobile. The tide was high that morning and laughing against the rocks with breathless foam. They drove off down the gravel path and away from the little white house, the rapturous shore. They came to a field where the lupins grew in a wild congregation of purples and pinks, greeting card hues. She continued to drive over the shoulder and into the flowers. An onlooker might have gasped- had the driver fallen asleep? Who could be drunk so near to dawn?

Slowing to a standstill, lost in the blooms, the car door swung wide open. Wrapping those arms once more around Rupert she carried him to the peak of the hill. Copper and grey, they swam among the gaudy stalks. The sky grew dark with the beating wings of a swarm of sparrows, common little farm birds so numerous they cast a shadow like a storm cloud. Lost in the commotion, the flurry, the morning stood still. Out of the stillness came the soft slow notes of a hymn punctuated once, twice, again by the bark of a dog. Among the waving lupins a copper tail wagged too.

Peach Farm

PEACH FARM

I washed my brain and hung it to dry

In a steady breeze on a black clothes line.

I put a blanket down where it looked as if

The sun would be for a few hours more.

I stood by a long way off, on a tower,

On a rock, on a rooftop made of glass.

I remembered half of bible history in reverse,

I watched myself go back to being a romance

Between two hellbent cells.

I followed an earthworm as far into its veriform

Home as it would let me go.

I followed ants carrying nearly invisible separate

Parts of something they wanted to carry back.

I no longer had a face, if I ever did.

The angle of the sun showed me shadows of things

I'd never seen.

I looked at my hands through a magnifying lens

Long enough for smoke to emerge.

I wouldn't need that brain again, I left it

For birds, in lieu of words, and seeds.

- Dara Weir

(From Jubilat, Issue 4)

give me some everest

stars ain't lied yet

back to school, playing the fool

i am that fish.

BEAR HAND BOXING

They almost got it.

MORE MAUS

Who is phone?

crazy dream machine week, embarked on a 2ci trip with b. and had mystic visions midst the outremont hasids. intentional surrender to insanity producing interesting and hysterical results set to the soothing (?) sounds of the one flew over the cuckoo's nest soundtrack.

see above blake-ian vision for an approximation.

i have decided that a large problem with summer is that it leaves me with far too much time to ponder the end of days, and that just doesn't do anybody any good.

back to the homeland tomorrow for a maritimey august.

summer reading list of a lazy student who will not be able to read for fun in less than a month:

-finish dr. zhivago by boris pasternak

-finish the master and the margarita by mikhail bulgakov

-under the volcano by malcolm lowry

-mythology by edith hamilton

-tropic of capricorn by henry miller

Nobody wants to get stuck stoned next to thaaaat guy.

Maus is Missing

I'm spending my sunday morning with a summer sinus infection reading some dense but delightful pop theory by the professor cum pop artist John Maus, he is an admirer of R. Stevie Moore and contemporary of Ariel Pink. He has a PHd and is a lecturer at a university in Hawaii and has some pretty immense observations about pop music and it's evolution. I would do a horrible job trying to summarize so here is a link instead:

http://www.moorestevie.com/press/maus.html

And a snippet from thoughts on R. Stevie:

"In the pop song 'Hobbies Galore,' R. Stevie uses the particulars of his musical situational state to exceed that state, to concentrate neither surplus value nor social meaning, but an excess of all particularity as regards the way of listening called music. The similarity of R. Stevie and Ariel, is above all, that they exceed the standardization of pop through excessive affirmation of this particular in all of its own particulars: standardization of form, standardized emotional intention, standardization of genre, and so on."

"The conclusion of this brief and unthinking text is that music's new master - commercial capitalism - though the cruelest master music has ever known (think how unlike other musical truths the musical truth of this situational state is), is unable to prescribe entirely what we listen to in this way called music. Both discrete subjects of the singular truth examined show thinking what remains in excess of this prescription. Moreover, they show thinking that this excess is subjectively wrested through concentrating the contingent particulars of standardization, materialization, and multiplication. Finally, they show thinking that these particulars, though often dismissed, offer a way of bringing-forth the immediacy of this way of listening called music universally."

mod wolves can save any day

irony in ma inbox

today's word of the day is not encouraging

July 25

Poetaster

(\POH-uh-tass-ter\)

Meaning: an inferior poet

...wompwomp.

tent-tative

i'm sad i missed evolve this weekend, any opportunity to bathe in a waterfall and camp with the gang is a grand chance missed.

here is a little poem that i've been tinkering with on my typewriter. once i get a scanner i hope to upload it because it is much nicer in ink the whole format falls apart on here for some reason. oh wellz.

I

an infant cries, the yard below

spinning

shamanic reveries

held up between a moment and

a distant port.

idly i wait

cooly considering

the wind of happenstance

for i am fickle as fate

and no less blind

wine spills as easily as time

and who am i to

for that is that

it rained today.

ca va ca va ca va ca va they say

-i was not invited

to the barbecue

below.

it's a shame

for we could have chatted about the weather

or caudillos

or soup.

i smoke upstairs instead.

II

solitude and summer rain

tidal thunder has a hold of the night

i walked down empty streets as the sky crumbled

carried softly in doughy reverie

stoned, lucid

lovely solitude

found in empty alleys and flooded nights

i do not feel woe or want

perhaps un chat at the

base of my bed

count thy blessings sip thy tea

i feel something in this brew

the devil says he

feels

it,

too.

walk do not rest watch do not listen there is no time for punctuation

the apocalypse is here so grab the cat i'm ready for my just reward

the pleasures of the flesh were too great i saw i wept i reaped sweet

fate but still the devil is behind his schedule

the pot has gone cold, flip the switch, another brew

oh never mind, i've had

it

we're through

twiddle these thumbs until doomsday comes

they say i have a

morbid

streak

hah.

III

on return from camping in mile end

moon imitates the street lights

cafe olimpico waverly and st. viateur

streetlights

mock the moon

their iced coffees are perfection, ya know?

i've been off the radar

couch camping

crouching kodak hidden gardens

running away from

home is

just as

novel at the

ripened age of twenty

seasonal imperfections and the sensation of

eternal childhood

summer

walking smoking talking bliss

as the humid air

keeps close by, the

whole

lonesome

way.

i want to force all of my friends onto a painted bus and drag us to a natural habitat-centric rehab that is dominated by a waterfall and the soothing sounds of bill murray speaking and boosting our self esteem. probably over-seen by an anarchist voodooist but i may be getting a little specific.

bjork talking tv

i wish this were all that science ever had to be.

what makes me think i'm so cool?

THANK YOU NYWANI (and jack's lady friend with a baby)

Poor Martha, She has no clue...

....that I was writing a scathing review of her for half of the last class.



Martha, O and what a Martha this one is. She just oozes Martha.
Sitting there with her little girl wire frames, squinting though she's in the front row.
Poorly powdered nose titled down bookwards
O mousy hair, mousy voice, mousy Martha.
It looks like she's decided to spice things up, the flirt that she is. Perhaps she had grand visions of imitating a starlet from eras gone by for she has tied a foolish scarf around her pale neck, drooping, it complements her perfectly.
It is washed out, like her.
Her shorts are khaki, of course. O and Dear me, what shoes peep toe bronze flat-notes. Dressed for success this one.
Crossing her arms, nose titled towards the professorial horizon...when she furrows her brow and tilts to type a nascent double chin forms.
Dios mios dolly, what is your heritage?
I can imagine you as easily with your gawky limbs in a cow pasture dreaming wild horses, or on the volleyball court with your massive paws smacking a ball to and fro. Maybe in some Albertan highway town, scanning items under fluorescent lights your milky skin a bitter blue. Price check!
Oh I saw that Martha, saw that hawk like scowl as you train your beady eyes (smothered beneath those adolescent frames) at another girl with the audacity to ask a question. You nod your head obediently as the Professor drones, laugh on cue, throw your gaze. Whoa girl, settle.
But here we are. You and I. You are probably a sweet and naive girl who loves her family, team sports, and doing her best. I can already see you full grown in your smart suit (panty lines showing and thick soled shoes perhaps?) spinning the cog as I spin out into oblivion, the wild night, the falling stars or just into some tangential ramble...
But here we are.
Adrift on this ocean, the scholastic tide that drags us, gratingly, as pebbles on the shore.
And now we sit, dreaming of Order and Progress, Brazil
And we sit and we write our notes
Martha in her khaki shorts
I in a vivid floral cotton shift
Contentedly idle and passive, perhaps peaceful or maybe just stoned
And so we sit and talk genocides and freedom at once
Me, Martha, and Latin American History 360.