"Fist, stones, batons, and the gun...with courage we shall beat those Blackshirts down!"

"Ghosts of Cable Street."-The Men They Couldn't Hang.

A Poem with Rumors

Probably one of the worst poems I've written in some time.


He carries a gun
I hear he's a Satanist
I hear he's a virgin
I hear I hear I hear
and I realized that responding
would only fuel the flames
so
I went back to fucking my lover
back to thinking about Sufism
admired my knife on its small shelf
and hugged my love close
to bask in her being.
--
This poem is admittedly horrific.
Tough, as they say.

Ex Oblivique.
Oh, there is no joy in it anymore,
the thought of getting drunk and painting
until I'd painted my way into a corner
of something superior by Velazquez.
Painted my way out, out, out
of a piece by Whitman or Frost.
Painted my own exit from here
and that there is no joy in this
in the thought of escape...
couldn't make me happier.
I love being here.

But blood for blood without remorse I've taken at Oulart Hollow

That's all.

Desk, a horrific bit of poetry, because I'm tired and pants.

The desk is clean
except for a tea pot,
brown with blue flowers,
glazed,
and two tea cups,
small, china, also with blue flowers.
And the Buddha,
with a mala around his body,
keeping it safe and serene.
And my talismans
totems
and charms on the shelf above.
So perhaps the desk
isn't clean
after all.

Senachas.
Bury him, deep.
First, he is the prince.
That's all.
Blessed, cursed,
strangled and thrown
into the deepest bog
down among the peat,
the reeds, and the copper shields.
Then, he is the saint.
Buried alive in Iona,
a druid, perhaps,
damned by Columba's dreams
to breathe dark earth for eternity.
Next, he plays the martyr,
different from the saint,
mostly, killed by men in red
serving a foreign, Saxon crown.
This poem took a Fenian turn.
It was not meant to.

Can't stand it,
the sound of your face
crashing hard
against the dead-television sky
against the Ginkgo tree out back
against the dark, frozen ground
against against against
this poem has failed.

And sometimes
      rain and body
match their sounds.

Tonight...started great...and then...my body, this meat and bone case for being...decided to declare open war on me in the most annoying way possible.
At least I get to wake up in five hours and see a great concert with my lover.

culture keeper: Peter Beard

culture keeper: Peter Beard: Peter Beard may be the most adventurous man in the world. Perhaps he is also the most stylish. His photography and collage work are phenom...

The True Subject

This poem
is brief.
Though not so brief
as to avoid
mentioning
the true subject.
I'm sure
Hafez is happy
in his rose garden.

"And when I washed my hands,
I ran the water
hotter than I could stand."
"Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident"-The Mountain Goats.

This song is amazingly depressing, and rips me apart every time I hear it...
so I usually listen to it once a week.

I'm having trouble ripping a new poem out of my brain/heart/soul collective right now.
And...that's all.

Rambles and a poem

 I am writing about an entirely different piece than the one pictured above.
This reminds me of those works from Pompeii and Alexandria...the really awesome portraits and such--makes sense, because Campigli (Massimo, by the way, is a wonderful name--I think the feminine "Massima" is even better--consider breeding and naming a child thus, report back to me in twenty years on how awesome they are) had a certain fascination with antique art--at least, according to wot sources I've read. I think I'm going to clean for a bit and straighten things around my writing desk somewhat--clear it all away so that I can write poetry and maybe (maybe) even paint a bit...but...mostly write poetry. I need to get back to doing that, and maybe I'll have something finished by Monday, when...I need to actually have something finished. Sigh. For the moment, though...to work.
My lover is working on a fascinating paper on Dali next to me.
And just said "What, what, what, what...gross, gross, gross, gross."
Why? Because she is amazing.
I saw Jim the Bead Man today and picked up a fantastic Turkish piece to hang from my desk...one of the evil eye emblems, tied onto a really nicely worked piece of brown twine (if you want to win yourself into my good graces...twine is the way to do it...what can I say? I'm easily amused--especially knotted twine with things attached...but...well, we all have our fascinations.).  Anyway....there's that. I also had some lovely and not prostatitis-aggravating tea from Great Horse Teas (apple-blueberry green tea).
We just team-wrote a marvelous little poem based on the absurdity of the fashion world.
I'll post one of them here, for your enjoyment:

--
This one is called
Just because we are both hot.
The light box illuminates the taffeta
organic wires, like trees, around me,
blue and red, black and floating.
A forest of electronic cables, a kelp bed.
Which would bind, but are confined
beyond plexiglass walls. Illuminated barrier
between myself and the exterior.
I turn and turn again, within these four walls,
illuminated light box.
The cameras watch from above,
pink hair, necktie, angular forms
bent beneath their gaze.
Illuminated light box.

In search of the perfect crescent wrench.

Looking for the perfect hammer,
and a few good screws,
I wander down the street.
In place of tools, I find
"Temple of God" painted
on a white plank.
They've replaced my shiny metal
with their religion.
Don't sweat it, I say,
there are still plenty
of mom-and-pop hardware stores
on other continents.

Reading Loren Eiseley
to find answers about Dickens.
A garbage truck rolls by,
the dog cowers behind me.

Returning:
That urge to shave my head
and paint my face blue,
and shout,
shout in welcome to the Vikings.

Fiat Lux.
Let there be lightness.
Let there be air.
Let there be water.
Let being be.

A small town in Idaho.
"Loose Lips Sink Ships."
Abjuration.
Objectification.
End Scene I.

Scene II.
Abjuration.
Objectification.
You are in a pinstripe suit.
Sighing, you strip.

Ever have that feeling
like you're being thrown
down a flight of stairs
by the universe?

That's kinda what a panic attack is like...
except...with guilt that...well, like the panic attack itself, shouldn't be there.
This week I have a list of things that I need to do, and maybe all of this panicking and fear
will vanish if I finish everything on the list.
Probably not, but...it's better than sitting around complaining, doing nothing, and being terrified of some sort of cosmic vengeance.

Dreaming the Neolithic.
The caves of
What did you expect
other than a rhinoceros,
looking off to the right
on parchment that has somehow
survived centuries of war
and freak fires,
the kind that periodically trim
even the greatest collections
of masterwork after masterwork.
The deeds of Ecgtheow's son,
most noble of the Geats,
smoldering alongside
Byzantine codices.
---
Imagining a lesser victory.
I'll probably go blind,
later in life,
but not gracefully like Borges,
rather, mad like Belisarius
cursing the genetic betrayal
of my eyes
while Byzantium
is under another attack
by the Bulgars.

Material things, a wish list.

Things I wish I could afford:
a pair of wool pants that fit perfectly.
The World As It Is by Chris Hedges.
a place of my own, our own, however small.
a personal trainer.
a minstrel or two to follow me around
and play music
wherever I wander in the city,
especially when crossing bridges.
I'm not sure if this is a poem,
or just my admiration for the music of breaking things
into lines.
Peace and goodnight.
I've had a wonderful and illuminating weekend.

Reflections on Paintings by Steven Archer.

Reflections on Paintings by Steven Archer.

Tentacled beasts, thousands of eyes,
hearts splayed out on maps
for the world to see:
“Here is my aorta. Here is my soul.”
“Not Special” the sign reads,
Memento Ars: “Remember
you are art. And that you are on
the back of an old textbook.”
Bloody hands and faceless men
playing jacks, dice, cards,
or maybe just
twirling the heavenly spheres.
Monks not bothering to dodge
the rain of arrows:
“Welcome to the Garden of Delights,
heavenly, hellish, earthly.”
Bosch with neon blue hair,
dreadlocks, tattooed arms,
shorter in person than on stage.
His wife another part
of the same inked mirror:
“We heard the click again last night.
We start forgetting
to be scared of walls,
of things in the in between.”
Red flags, veve, La Sirene, Loa, wolves.
The din of crows,
mantras born from fear,
painted animals skulls:
foxes, badgers, coyote.
A wealth of antidepressants.
Everything overflowing with biology:
“I am flooding with your science,
metro nocturnes and hopeful machines,
and likenesses.
Even your serpent totems
are a homage to Crick and Watson.”

The weight of a decade of secrets is slowly being lifted from my chest, leaving brutal marks in its wake.

I am, slowly, beginning to understand the darkness within me.
Understanding it is the first step to driving it out.
I have caused so much pain, and I never want to hurt anyone again.
Not even those who have wounded me beyond description.

History

"Sing this corrosion to me."
-Sisters of Mercy.


And that is exactly what I intend to do. If nothing else, my writing will try to acknowledge the lost, forgotten, and rotting away pieces of the world. Those various beings who are either in danger of vanishing or have already gone into that great and terrifyingly unknown universe known only as history. Small 'h' history--History is something done by men with funny accents intent on killing brown people. history is...more noble, in the sense that it is common, and there is a marvelous nobility in the common man, woman, the human animal's history is largely one of toil...and that is what makes it fascinating, especially now, especially always.

A continuation.

I don't remember where I
stopped finished ended
last time I keep forgetting
places things people ideas
vanished gone lost hidden
my mind has become clouded
occulted misted fogged
thoughts replaced by serotonin
based reminders of
this is what sanity feels like
what well feels like
how normal feels

A brief, stormy verse.

Try summoning     up

a storm from the blackness below you.
Call that tempest. Blow winds! Blow!

Beg    for Boreas to unleash his fury
and Triton his wrath.

Write with    blood
on the air around you

Carve your name     into
the heart of the world.

Flat boxes. My first experiment with white space.

I hate those cardboard boxes
that you have to    build    yourself.
Taping       them together
is just   another form of
bureaucratic        Purgatory.
-The Books Slave, canto XI.

He filled the cart    with
books, and rolled         it
to the edge of the slight ramp
that traversed the narrow hallway
in the damp and partially flooded basement
of the supposedly remodeled library, the carpet
was all the same, didn't match the drapes, had a glow
to it, labyrinths more intricate than Minos in those floors
readying himself, steeling to run, chase, pursue, track, hunt,
the cart as it rolled towards the large iron door marked EXIT
in large red letters, knowing that the alarm on that door never worked
but that the noise would draw unwanted attention to his activities, decidedly
not related to his job, whatever that was, he wasn't sure, thought nobody really
knew, acknowledged his existence, a ghost in the machine, a broken machine at that,
fitting place to haunt, letting go, the cart sped away from his fingers and down, down, down
down, legs moving, lurching after this book-laden cart, this chariot of words, they crash together.

-the second one needs work. Then again, everything does.

Inspiration, in prose.

I could break this up into verses, lines, quatrains, tercets, but...I'd rather not. I write in blocks, large things that Gutenberg and Adlus Manutius might have appreciated had they survived the centuries (perhaps they have) of plague, war, famine, plague, and more war before the wars to end all wars that rocked this century and raised the body count to levels that I pray to the angel of history we never meet again, before coming into this modern era of ours. Of yours, of mine. My left hand is falling half-asleep. Which will make typing interesting. I do so love a challenge. At least I'm not writing this out by hand--though one of these days, just to give you an idea of my writing style, I might just post a photograph or two of my handwriting, a cross between runes, Early Medieval Irish, and Carolingian minuscule. For now, though, make due with the words that blossom on the page before me like those little flowers whose names I always forget. Trillium, I think it is. I have ridiculously fond memories (they should not be that fond, but I do not pick what my mind attaches itself to from my distant past) associated with that plant and walks in the Warren Woods when I would have been...eight, maybe nine, ten, and all the countless strolls (once a week) in those woods or the nearby dunes of the same name, some with an Estonian woman, her (now divorced) husband, and their kid in addition to the usual troop of the four parent academic family that somehow raised Rachel(Artist and Fairy (because fairies can turn into dolphins), Mike (PhD, Computer Science/Math Genius), Gena (world-saver extraordinaire and my sister), and myself (perpetually introduced in high school as "Gena's brother" and sometimes, "Thane of Quizbowl"). I learned something recently, well, was reminded of, I suppose I learned it four years ago and just misplaced it somewhere in the archive of my mind. There was a rumor at my high school that I carried a gun around in my greatcoat--not just any gun, mind you, but a flintlock or something equally old and antiquated yet still deadly. In reality, I carried only a slightly pointed piece of flint for protection, something that still rests on my bedside table (one of those tables, anyway), though I don't think I would have noticed if the school administration searched my locker for any such 'contraband' as I was rumored to possess. I hate guns...well, firing ones. I have an obsession with getting an old rifle stock and transforming it into a Last of the Mohicans style warclub. What can I say other than that I have weird obsessions, but you probably knew that already. At least, I hope some of you did.
I find myself writing poetry about the strangest of things. Well, perhaps not the strangest, but...things of a nature other than I'd expect to find myself writing on. Anthropology, history, sex, gods, demons, and my favorite contemporary artist, Steven Archer. I think I have five of his paintings in my room, all propped up on different shelves and half of them (only half?) with quotes or themes relating to my pale interpretation of Sufism, Zen, and other such things...the other two pieces were commissioned after quotes I sent in, and are both of a sort of futurist monastic bent. I like them, perhaps immoderately. Of course, I'm socially awkward to a horrific degree when it comes to actually meeting such luminaries of the biopunk and goth world, and if I remember to smile (the last time I saw Ego Likeness in concert, I was on a massive cocktail of antibiotics that had me hallucinating and being very allergic to the sun, amongst other side effects in an attempt to cure a case of chronic prostatitis, which still dogs me, and I imagine there was a bit of a dazed look in my eyes, dazed, crazed, something) I consider that a victory in the Victory at Sea sense of the word. I hold fucking ticker tape parades. As...where the hell was I? I scrolled up and started writing about something else, and what started as a brief prelude ended up slightly longer than expected. Poetry, yes, poetry. I write during class, just scribble words next to one another on page after page, my left hand, the one with the stigmata on the back, soaked in red ink like blood. Speaking of stigmata, it is the Feast of St. Francis today, so...go be nice to an animal, give away everything you have, and live like a respectable person should. I'm always a fan of religious organizations which say "Less is More" and then mean it. One of these days, I hope to work up the nerve to try that sort of detachment for myself. Well, it isn't something you can try much as it is something you must live and breathe--at least that is what I've learned from all my research into the subject and discussions with folks who have lived as monastics for a time. My father, actually, is one such Jesuit-refugee, though I part of him never really left the seminary of Shadowbrook, Lennox, Mass. Shadowbrook is now a Kripalu yoga retreat and Reiki center--Duke, my mother's older brother, heads up there once or twice a year for retreats and to escape the general hectic nature of his life. I've never asked if such things actually work, but I imagine that they do, and...hope they work for my lover and I, as we will probably be embarking on a short venture in the Providence Zen Center this coming summer. Especially if she decides to go to Brown for her graduate work in Art History. Poetry, poetry, poetry. Right. I think people in my various classes are starting to notice that I'm just scribbling away like a madman. I usually take notes, too, though, so the verse just kind of flows from my brain when it does, and my notebooks are a strange mixture of notes (written in verse) and poems--written either in prose form or verse depending on the way my mind is working at a particular moment. My fingers tend to lock around the pen, reminding me of the year I spent in seclusion from the very act of writing things by hand aside from personal correspondence, reminding me how very out of practice my body is, my mind is, everything about me is, to this new academic pursuit in a field (I was a medievalist, I was going to be a fucking great medievalist, tweed jacket, elbow patches, muttonchops and all...now...somehow, because it is what is necessary, required, I am getting an M.A. in English from a community college whose threshold I swore I would never cross.) that is almost entirely alien to me, discussing things that I really have no cause to be discussing. Still, I hope they'll give me a degree in a year's time and send me on my way, traveling to wherever my lover is getting her very own shiny Master's degree. And then? Doctorates for both of us. Tweed jackets, a greyhound, a mattress, minimalist furnishings and overflowing bookshelves. Most of all, us.
And now...I'd say I'm going to turn in, but that would be a lie, as my lover is still next to me, writing away furiously on Yeats. Goodnight to all, though, all the same.
With luck, I might be able to write more on this general theme (inspiration, historic muses, etc) tomorrow.

A brief thing about my writing and this blog in general.

My poetry can be pretty insane sometimes.
And I don't mean the colloquial usage as something awesome kind of insane. I mean the screaming in the night at the horror that the moon brings kind of insane. We all have our demons, darkness, black dogs, and the like...I work mine out through poetry and not-all-there rambles that I sometimes post here because I know only a select few people read this blog. Sometimes, they even leave as I put the words fill the page.
Best,
The Robinson.

The scientist, part I.

Experimenting came naturally to Mick,
first with plants, then animals,
then a few drunk test subjects,
and eventually, the formula was perfected.
We were all so sure it would change the world,
and it has.
Not for the better,
but still,
a change is a change,
and there is some beauty such shifts,
like the capsizing of a ship with no ballast,
trying to run before the wind,
taking all hands less two down with her,
into the depths, away from angry gods
and burning cities.

Fiona Lavry and the Angel of Janitors.

Ash drifting to the cobblestones as her cigarette
burned down to bite at her perfectly stained fingers,
Fiona Lavry brushed a few stray hairs from her face,
the remains of a wilting mohawk, electric blue, spiked.


She never could clean the mold of those walls,
old and pockmarked by a thousand wars,
bombings from the last few, air raid sirens,
balls of iron, stone, and oil before that.
Always the mold persisted
in devouring every little piece of the city,
of the walls the angel of janitors
had assigned her to clean.
It had said not to worry,
this angel was decidedly androgynous
in its smudged grey jumpsuit and black hat,
mop perched on one shoulder,
not to worry about this particular wall,
all walls were dirty, and few of them
were metaphors for the souls
of the afflicted and cursed.
Even the angel of janitors,
such an immortal and timeless voicebox
for the will of some absent divinity,
didn't remember anything ever being
truly clean, truly perfect.

Poem for a squid love goddess from the nth dimension.

Jed wasn't looking for a new god when Sandy popped into his life
that sweat soaked summer afternoon in that little parking lot. 
"I am your new god," said this ethereal creature from the great space
back beyond the market, back beyond the beginning of the universe.
Never being one to disagree with apparitions, especially those proclaiming divinity,
our hapless and rather greasy hero nodded and knelt
at the feet of this admittedly perfect specimen of something more than human.
Her tentacles didn't bother him in the slightest after the first week,
and he treasured the sucker marks they left
up and down his back.

Well, today started lousily. Waking up from dreams I really would rather forget into a world of rain and mist. The storms of last night tried to wash humanity, creation, clean from the world, but to no avail, at least...I'm still here...I haven't gone out to check the rest of the world and can only verify the existence of the environs I traveled through today, and other rains, storms, might have driven those things into the primordial mire from which all of this evolved in the first place. The Farmer's Market exists, the Griffon exists, quite eternally, the mall exists, sadly--despite the thrill of strolling the short expanse of shops packed with humanity on most Friday afternoons. The family demesne still exists, or...if it doesn't, then I am deeply screwed, for it is where I am writing, and where I intend to sleep tonight. I awoke mildly confused, with my phone ringing, VNV Nation's "Defiant" blasting from this wireless telegraph's speakers. Alex was calling in a state of panic on the way to get her picture taken at Saint Mary's. She runs a blog here too, The Alexiad, in case you are inclined to read something of a much more academic nature than this...which can be academic, but such things are often reserved for my other blog, at sacredgreenfedora.blogspot.com, just to give myself some press somewhere in the world of the internet. I also keep a livejournal, to show my age, and a tumblr, to pretend to keep up with the rest of the speed of light and cybernetic chromed world of ours. The panic in question turned out to be misplaced, and her photo session went quite well by all accounts. Materializing at the door in a lovely suit purchased for her thesis presentation last week, or perhaps for the portrait, which was originally assumed to be last week, Alex took my breath away. She always does, you understand, by virtue of being herself and being my cosmos. After strolling around with the dog, we headed off for a quick breakfast at the Farmer's Market and then onward to various errands throughout this pathetic excuse for a city. Hiding from the second deluge of the day in bed, napping until a break in the slumber by heading out to the Flat Top Grill in the mall. Having been recommended by several trusted comrades along with other folk who just seem to have good taste in establishments of fine dining, the Flat Top Grill was a blank on our culinary map of the city, otherwise an almost completely charted territory. So, like George Scott in Burma, we ventured out into the unknown with only our wits and wallets to guide us. Entering the Flat Top, we were met with a din that wasn't so much lively as much as it was deliberately noisy for the sake of noise. I cannot abide such chaos. The chaos of well-oiled culinary machine, however, is something else. The clink of forks and glasses and dishes being washed and dozens of conversations flowing at once. That is a symphony of progress, of civilization, of...I don't know...I just like restaurants that are noisy for a reason. The clangor in question, though, seemed to be generated largely by the speakers pouring out various hits from the Eighties, Nineties, and Today adulterated by awkwardly stilted conversations about all sorts of business ventures. Stir-fry buffet style, like O'Sullivan's Crossing used to be downtown, but not as good nor as cheap, the Flat Top Grill presented what could have been an interesting culinary experience and simply watered it down while somehow managing to give me food poisoning of a rather unpleasant sort. I've spent most of the rest of the day in a recumbent state, trying and failing to recover some state of what would probably be called 'Health' by those who name such things and insist on cataloging every aspect of the world into the grand system of said cosmos. Scientists, perhaps we can call them, or maybe Naturalists, or perhaps, if we are very familiar with them, we can call them Charles and Alexander (Darwin and von Humboldt, respectively). I could spend an age studying Alexander von Humboldt, but I shall have to delve into my passions for those protoscientists and men of great learning at a later date, as other things call me away from my keyboard and out into whatever it is that masquerades as reality. Peace to all.

rambles, continued.

Aum Shanti Shanti Shanti.
So we begin our chant. Our prayer. Our boon. Whatever it is, we begin with peace and end with peace.
We must at least attempt peace and mindfulness every day, especially on the days when all we want to do is take up the sword and torch and visit fire and blood upon our enemies, especially on those days, and oh, oh they are many. This blog started as a sandbox for me, an experimental place where things will come into being and then be shaped by me, where I will learn to share my work and be quite willing to let people stomp all over it, because it is just sand in the end. In the beginning, it was rock. But now, some thousands of centuries later, it ends up as sand. That there are industries devoted to making sand, harvesting it from otherwise inert and strong rock, speeding up the geologic timescale--which can take epochs to fully realize itself in the battering down of coastlines into something soft and warm on which half naked Brazilians can lounge with ease--into the course of an afternoon's work. I've been to gravel pits, limestone quarries. I find them equally terrifying in their grand design--harvest the very rocks of which our civilizations have been built...but on a scale that outdistances anything that has come before. Such is the march of progress, the March of Time, as the newsreels would say in the smoke-filled darkness of a wartime theater while Spitfires protected the skies. I realize that the March of Time was, if memory serves, exclusively an American thing, but...well, maybe they sent it over for servicemen to watch before they launched the great Crusade on Europe. My grandfather was a part of Eisenhower's Crusade, landing at Normandy on the first day, getting knocked off the boat by shrapnel which he carried in him until his death in 2004, and surviving to see St. Lo and the Bulge along with the last push into Germany. His bayonet and hat, all that remain of his wartime kit (everything else having been given away by an aunt to whom I still don't speak to for that and other reasons) sit on my nightstand, reminding me of my origins. But enough about that. I want to dwell on...different things, happier perhaps, perhaps more depressing (thanks largely to the major depressive disorder that I try to silence with the proper pharmacist-combined chemicals, and also to my natural Irishness, which tends towards the depressive) things if that is where my mood and thoughts lead me. I haven't written on here in a very long time, but that doesn't mean I've just been off avoiding writing. Far from it, in fact. I've been firing up the typewriter from time to time and remembering the dark old days when I would spend hours punching out an essay on that machine just for the fun of it. None of the essays survive, or if they survive, they have been secreted away, perhaps like the texts found by Poggio...which were never really hidden at all, just kind of sitting on the shelf to the left of everything currently being read. Poggio...makes it seem like a treasure hunt, and to the thinking man, that is exactly what it must have been. Without him, well, I shudder to think where we would be. I probably wouldn't be writing this, that's for sure.
Interlude:
My mother, addressing my father in the next room: "Hey, do you think if we start going at it really loud, John will close the door and make the light in his room stop keeping us awake?" Yep, this is my family, this is why I want to get a place anywhere in the world with Alex and return here once or twice a year to play with the dog and dig through the trove of books I'm reasonably sure I'll leave hidden away somewhere.
Now I'm watching From Dusk 'till Dawn--I actually fast forwarded to the scenes in the bar...largely because the first part of the movie is rather droll once you've seen it two or three times.
And now, before I cut this ramble short, a picture of my  bookshelf...guess which one it is?

http://www.lookshelves.com/lookshelves/?currentPage=3

I wonder about you and curse you from time to time, you vagrant Hun. I expect to see you on every corner, lounging calmly, Zen-posture, cat-like, on every stairway. You didn't seem to understand Zen, or maybe you understood it perfectly. Cats, you liked them when drunk, and otherwise preferred dogs. Severing all attachments is one route to Nirvana, to the Pure Land, to union with all beings, but...it is damned rude to do to those you suddenly stop talking to, leaving them wondering what they did wrong, if they said the wrong thing, maybe they called you crazy--I remember how much you hated being called crazy, when, by all accounts, that is exactly what you are, bughouse nuts, my friend, bughouse nuts.

Lighting fire to the face.

So, this is an experimental blog. I'll keep saying that until it sinks into my head. I come here to write things I wouldn't write elsewhere, so if you have a problem with that...well, you should probably seek your blogosphereing jollies elsewhere, because here I stand (recine, actually) and I can do no other (in point of fact, I can, I just choose to remain here, writing away).
Thoughts on Matisse. The sign is high over the museum entrance: MATISSE in large silver letters, standing out against an eggshell colored wall, with the exhibition dates like touring rock band. YEAH! We're going to the ART MUSEUM! WOOOOO! I don't know about you, but that is exactly how I feel when I step inside the iron and glass threshold of the Art Institute of Chicago, just gets me all warm and fuzzy, art is...art, beautiful, wonderful, uncritical, the paintings rarely judge you, and the sculptures do not ask anything of you, no commitment of blood or soul, just your eyes, your ears, your nose, just those senses you've been born with (barring some accident of genetics or earlier life), and even those only for a little while, you'll have them back eventually, and memories besides, memories of sight, sound, smell, maybe the touch of a brass railing, never touch the artwork, we all think, impulses begging otherwise, wanting desperately to reach out and feel the perfectly tropical breasts of Gauguin's figures, bathe in those cool lagoons, grab a cup of coffee, just hot enough to drink, with the Nighthawks, pass around cigarettes for everyone, feel the bronze of a Rodin, a Manship, maybe even the achingly beautiful curves of a Bernini, of marble lovingly chipped away, revealing a hand clutching at the thigh of Persephone, fingers pressing into that perfect leg, leaving marks exactly the way my fingers do when I run them along my lover's legs, each moment recalling a different type of beauty, one artistic, the other cosmic love. Still, we go into the exhibit, free for the first hour to members, giving us a superior edge of sorts, no plebeian lines for us. First ones in the gallery, greeted by sketches from Marrakesh, beautiful pencil and ink things you'd never see outside of this exhibition hall, the same hall we are in later on that year to see a work by Da Vinci, Madonna of the Yarnwinder (Private Collection), a painting that rarely makes it out of whatever palatial estate owns it. It is beautiful, causing old German ladies to stop and mutter 'Oh, Leonardo.' approvingly to one another, the oldest of them probably met him when she was a child, beating out Jeanne Calment by centuries. A trio of students, two of us scruffy, the third absolutely ravishing, stare in awe at the work, knowing we will probably never see it again, this bringing to mind a sort of fury within my breast, art should be for the people, the Socialist in me rails, give this to a museum, a free museum where people can come and marvel at the total wonder of art, don't just keep it in a high rise penthouse or restored French chateau. Fuck that idea. I shake my head, and travel back in time a year to the Matisse exhibit in the same gallery, it is the special gallery, and I've seen everything from Van Gogh and Manet to Olmec and Aztec statuary in this hall which can be quite cavernous whenever it wants to be. Right now, though, the walls have been shifted around to give it an intimate feeling, a false feeling, of course, canceled out by the alarms and guards everywhere (the alarms having more brainpower than the guards, who all seem to be taken from central casting as either whale or weasel like in build, each with the bitterness of not understanding the beauty in which they work every day. The might as well employ the blind, but even Borges, Milton, and Homer had appreciation for the arts, so perhaps the blind, deaf, mutes, simply broadcasting 'Stay away from the ART, do not look at the walls for too long. NO PICTURES. NO SKETCHING. NO DERIVATION OF PLEASURE.' into the minds of all the people strolling through the gallery--in my mind, blind, deaf, mutes get telepathy to make up for being blind, deaf, and mute--life ain't like that, which is a shame. I'll return to Matisse later on, I have a lot to say about him.

Phone sex and the Single Eye

This blog...well, this blog is entirely experimental.
If you hate it, that's wonderful, tell me why.

If you love it, great, again with listing reasons.
I am writing this blog entirely for me, even if it might sometimes be addressed to you, the reader, well, you are just another type of me, and...so there we are.
And now here is the long and winding post related to this work by Dali.

I wrote the following just now, not reading it over, simply going until it was played out appropriately. Okay, so I went back and altered one or two things, but that is for the sake of…well, not clarity, really, just…for the sake of writing. I hope you like it. Please feel free to send me comments in my ask box. I really do like comments, good, bad, indifferent, and otherwise slanted.
Peace.
—-
Alex loves the burning giraffes wherever they appear. In a lot of ways, I think I’m like a burning giraffe, oddly tall, almost ungainly, and with a tendency to light myself on fire without really meaning to. This work by Dali fascinates me, as most of his stuff does, largely because you can really see his preoccupation with Surrealism, and…I do love me Surrealism, especially the Spanish schools, partially because I think they have more influence than anyone is willing to admit on the magical realists of South America. I’m still working on putting this into a sane theory that I can use for my Master’s Thesis, so don’t go running off with it and publish something on your own—if you do, you will feel my knife, and it will not be a good feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this work by Dali, and think about having a telephone line snaking its way through your legs, running its segmented and chromed metal along vulva, clitoris, foreskin, glans, moving over smooth skin or perhaps the marble of Bernini’s perfectly frozen bodies, Peresephone, Hades, Daphne, Apollo, maybe getting the proverbial rise out of you if you are into that sort of thing—can’t imagine that would be very comfortable, though, the wire probably feeling more than a little cold on softest skin of all, not skin, your mind corrects, sex organs, generators, the ultimate artists, creating these things called humanity, and I’ve always been a fan of humanity, of people, and not just in that base, biologically sexual way that all of us are, however we are wired, but in the more intellectual way, or way that I hope is intellectual, of considering all our achievements, artistic, architectural, literary, religious, poetic, hell, we made it to the moon…though think about being a real anthropomorphic telephone cabinet. In a way, we all have these cabinets within us, these drawers where we put memories, emotions, internal formations, bits of a soul that we maybe thought we lost—we didn’t lose it, it is still there, in the heart and eyes, sometimes we just see reflections of it in the world around us, and we put them in drawers, special drawers lined with velvet and corduroy, soft fabrics to distract the soul-reflection from its new home in your breast, under your breasts next to your heart, lungs, ribcage, maybe a cracked rib or two from forcing a drawer in when the humidity makes things stick, maybe even an entire drawer missing, ripped out and thrown on the floor while you search for something within it, ignoring the now gaping wound in your chest, a wound with perfect drawer-shaped edges, fuck, maybe you ripped a handle off one of the drawers and now its contents are irretrievable without sticking a hand into yourself (I’ll let you figure out the mechanics of that, which, I suppose, depend upon where the drawer is in relation to the various points of ingress) and pushing in the back of the drawer. When it pops open, finally, you smile as you look at all the memories you thought were lost, all the brown paper packages tied up with string and lovenotes you went crazy looking for, maybe even , fuck, I don’t know, maybe these drawers don’t have anything in them, and are just filled with the lightness of memory, something which can weigh more than the moon when lodged in the breast. Maybe you just decide to write on the inside of the drawer itself, scribbling notes, warnings, entire books in the smooth marble, slightly gnarled wood, or velveteen lining, just writing, maybe some pictures as well, a new sort of ideogram, putting Chinese and Ugaritic to shame in the course of an afternoon, impressing departed Calvino, Borges, and the living, sainted Eco with your linguistic playfulness, a brand of semiotics for this century, for all centuries, the sequel to the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus, a puzzle and delight for scholars of the future, perhaps of your own future, interior monastics puzzling away in the scriptorium behind your third rib, weakened from a fall years ago, a bad fall from a horse, leaving the ribs cracked and your chest wrapped for three weeks, breathing shallow was necessary for survival, to silence the screaming of your lungs with every deep inhalation, mindful breathing becomes impossible while things take time to heal. Eventually they heal well enough, even if you still wince whenever you pass by the field where everything happened, everything turned in an instant, turned to stones given up by the earth at the end of winter, like the passing of a glacier, these frostheave remnants dot this brown pastureland, turning its muddy expanse into a moraine, hoofs falter, struggling for control, you slip from the stirrups, falling for an eternity before first an arm hits, rolling up into the right side of your chest, feeling the snap as two ribs break, others are bruised, knowing how lucky you are not to have punctured a lung, you stagger, muddy, bruised, broken, after the horse, and with the help of a companion, eventually make it to the local hospital, leaving your mount with this comrade of yours in a daze as you stagger in. The doctors seem almost amused at your injury, and you want to break their ribs for the smiles you’d swear you can see behind their eyes. Ugly eyes, these, lifeless, colorless, not that they change color and are hard to define, simply that no color exists, they have been sapped by years of staring at worse injuries, the dying, the dead, the ulcerated and gangrenous limbs, missing fingers, frostbitten toes, lovers on the way out, some quietly, others bemoaning their tragic, tragic fate, and so the color slips away with each body, each numbered case put into a file, each file put into a drawer somewhere in torsos of their own, locked away, never to be examined, reviewed, memory is a painful, stabbing bitch sometimes, like sleeping in a bed with shattered glass on either side of you—lie down in it awhile if you must, but move carefully, and don’t turn too quickly else the sheets will be covered with blood. The drawers don’t bleed, that is the amazing thing about them, they pull out easily, greased by a mind that cares about them, by a cabinet maker who knows they are doing—even pulled out, behind them you see wood and the barest hints of a spinal column in oak.
Blonde hair flows down her back, maybe your back, telephones entwine her legs, grazing against a recently shaved sex disturbingly wet with anticipation of this ultimate collect call, the absolution of the 900 number’s operator picking up, smooth voice disguising that she hasn’t left her house in days, hates going out into the street, no, all she wants to hear is ‘Hello again…’—they don’t deal in names, neither the blonde nor the operator, and just talk in a way not befitting such a phone service, paid off in ten minute increments, time in purgatory, about what can only be called problems of the middle class, worrying about bills, in-laws, that boat your brother Roy bought to run guns for the Columbians, well, maybe that isn’t such a middle class problem, but then again Roy always was a special one. She doesn’t want to talk, but the operator, a transcendent, naked, floating eye of Whitman’s, draws words from her lips, keeping her on the line, pulling her closer to that ultimate union with the grandest switchboard of all.
All that remains of her existence, the phone disappeared with her, you see, is a silk shift, barely even clothing, wrapped around her legs in the fashion of a sarong, yet not serving any real purpose except comfort—it felt amazing on her legs, especially when she shaved them, and she did that twice daily, though not because she needed to, simply because it was a way to pass the time and watch as the herds of pyrotechnic ungulates (even toed, odd) roamed by outside her bathroom window, into the desert, out of the desert, it was always so damned hard to tell.
At last, her arms stretched out and finally reach the iris at the exact moment one of the phone tentacles brings her to orgasm, wiping away any insecurities about her clitoris, radiating out and cleansing lips, pelvis, thighs, belly, knees, breasts, calves, flushing with pleasure as the waves of this perfect feeling, this one true union with the universe achieved via collect call rocks through her being, taking her away while rooting her more firmly in existence than ever before, her toes and fingers twitch at the same moment, gasping, sighing, begging for an eternity like this, a kind of constant moment we all seek, and many of us are lucky to find in the arms of a lover, under or on top of this lover of ours, maybe next to, maybe thousands of miles apart, you breathe in love and it wraps around you, never letting go. There is no afterglow, in that ever expanding moment of climax, wet, dripping, heaving, moaning…all adjectives are transcended.
The voice comes on again when the scene is cleared, there is only a phone booth now, receiver waiting in the cradle, hot to the touch, the black plastic almost blushing, satisfied with itself, with the world.

‘Modern Rhapsody’ by Salvador Dali, 1957