stein stein stein!

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/12/steinopera/

My friend Anthony moved away.

I'm not going home for Christmas.

I think that tonight, Christmas Eve, will be a relieving experience. Sometimes just giving in to things is so much easier. Why be principled? Why even care about things? I thought indifference would lead to a more "open to experience" attitude, and in some ways it has. I guess involvement is sort of overwhelming. I am reserved to a certain place.

I watched Home Alone last night. I watched Home Alone 2 last week. Try getting through the second Home Alone, I dare you. The first Home Alone is timeless, well made, dare I say original. Rehashing is always annoying, writing things that hit with an audience the first time around for a second time just to solicit a similar response is dishonest. I suppose one could argue that within the first script, the repeated, outrageous scream scenes were sort of put in for the same reason, and they probably were. Held within itself, within the same entity, however, just plays differently. I'll call it endearing.

Things I'm currently/would like to be working on:

- poems (writing, reading, editing)
- screen play
- critical essays on the movie "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and Do Make Say Think's song, "Bound to Be That Way"
- organizing my things

Alcohol does not make me a more interesting person/writer. I get loud and sad when I drink, sometimes both at the same time. The context in which one alters him/herself greatly influences the results produced. My context is uncertainty. I roll the dice every time.

I guess I'm more interested in the process of things themselves rather than the actual thing, that includes a poem. I've been reading so many poor poems lately. Their focus is on experience and telling a tale. Fuck stories. Your biography is uninteresting, I don't care how interesting it is. Your writing is the experience I want. That's what I'd like to produce for you as well.

I probably wont even sing tonight, but I'll wish the entire time I could. We'll drive and look at lights like everyone else and be everyone else. I need to call my mom tonight and tomorrow. She'll like that.

life update

I met with the editors of The Benefactor Magazine (www.thebenefactormagazine.com) this last Saturday (at Tico's in Lincoln) to discuss poetry/art/the carting of individuals in cattle cars to be killed, as China is the new black these days--Americans are apparently the unnecessary portion of this planet. We also discussed the possibility of me becoming their poetry editor. They gave me a CD-R with the latest submitted poetry on it to edit and assess. I think that I officially accepted the position, however I'm not sure it came across that way. What I'm saying is that I am the poetry editor of The Benefactor. Submit, friends!

sharing others' poems

Kenneth Koch's "Paradiso"

There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave what you forever will have
But in the form of a disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There—inimical to you?—is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could never have imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That it has less to do with your exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?


Frank O'Hara's "As Planned"

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?


Frank O'Hara's "My Heart"

I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

James Schuyler's "Closed Gentian Distances"

A nothing day full of
wild beauty and the
timer pings. Roll up
the silver off the bay
take down the clouds
sort the spruce and
send to laundry marked,
more starch. Goodbye
golden- and silver-
rod, asters, bayberry
crisp in elegance.
Little fish stream
by, a river in water.

probably not what you're thinking

This is how I feel



and have felt for awhile now

*Lines I will eventually steal and put in something:

I want your picture, but not yours.

My epilepsy
loved it.

new york, anyone?

So one of my favorite poets is giving a reading in New York on Wednesday, where she will be reading my favorite of her books. Damn.

"Midwinter Day: A 30th Anniversary Reading Wednesday, 8:00 pm
Bernadette Mayer wrote Midwinter Day three decades ago on December 22, 1978; please join her and some special guests as they read selections from this epic work. Readers include: Bernadette Mayer, Philip Good, Marie Warsh, Lewis Warsh, Barbara Epler, Jamey Jones, Peggy DeCoursey, Lee Ann Brown, Scott Satterwaite, Bill de Noyelles and Brenda Coultas."

- http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php

I'm thinking about writing Bernadette a letter. I just need some paper, something to say, and her address. Jeff told me she gave away (or sold) a bunch of her books (from her library, not necessarily books she wrote) to some book store in Amherst, MA. He said there were some gems among them, her name written on the inside covers.

What's going on Bernadette?
That's what I'd ask her.

w

"...there will be an additional paid holiday for State employees on Friday, December 26, 2008. On December 12th, President Bush signed an executive order to excuse federal employees from duty for the day after Christmas, Friday, December 26, 2008.

According to Nebraska State Statute 84-1001 (3), 'For purposes of this section, paid holidays shall include all of the days enumerated in section 25-2221 and all days declared by law or proclamation of the President or Governor to be holidays.'"

Who ever said George W. Bush was a bad President?

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

blogspot friendly poems (no absurd line breaks) to share

1, 2, 3, 4, Fyfe
for Justin

behooved to know
a hoof has its hoofs
and hooves, for one
leg is no damn good
without the other
leg and leg and leg,
four, and four stands
in there, four stands
in mud but these
fences, sir, have
plenty of posts dug
in mud, poor boots
are aching, those
battle wounds, those
wires, those barbs
will catch you
standing too close
to blue, buried
in the ripe dust
and wine in the shit
just bend it and smile
it's ok to smell it here
they say it's money
they say it's the smell
of money

Passive Brass

I'm supposed
to read a poem
with my mouth
to you, friend,
I'm not
the bell of a
ring but bright
past the lip--
a horn
xxxxxI am
an eye reader,
reader, and eat
yellow sound
with ears
and my brain,
my reference
reads to thumb
pages inside
my head, a fan,
a face and diction--
air between the image
and the mouth
hangs
holding eyes
on my page,
my body.