The Hardest Thing of All

My uncle hasn't sold a painting in
what seems like 20 years--and still they say
the hardest thing of all is to begin.

To wake, each morning's pounding like a drum,
and feel the way collision, between the mind and skin,
like light like from a bottle quickly runs.

Like women who, starting hard, begin to turn
their eyes, their concentration. Gone, like a gun
we drift through bars--the way our bodies learn.

I confess this to you. The anguish of witnessing
the careful ways our eyes collect, discerns
the fragility of our eyes, rain water in a spring.

But the time it takes to learn a language over
a period of your life equates almost exactly with
the words you haven't yet spoken to your lover.

I was young, and I learned that both feet
matter when you take a step, and my mother
matter of factly said to me

"All that holds you now is what you knew then.
The hardest thing of all is to begin."

Some John Cale. Paris 1919. Child's Christmas in Wales.
thanks obscuresounds

Here is a poem

Double Texas

& time with a deployed marine at lynn::yes

& pressure is the disarmed addressing piece but is capable now is it much too late

& meant sexiness delay torture pornography email & I meant double Texas

& down purchasing history or distinct methods & for Jesus I vote holy

& date dialectal modal distinct double bombing & took & whole & one more

& overtime the choreography of double tiny boots & I want your baby back

& Dutch but quickly-reversed course from the flame-shy curious

& dog hustle & given & greatly lowdown as performed by

& dare when you can get arrested for distancing the internet /could be my face the old orb

& Cheeseburger their own measure broad resort delay in the flames & was complete

& the relief disorientation & the parents strike & can

& the pleasure the primary the perfect pace power not hearing any audio

& duty diversity open space mega metropolis the traitors knew that after

& check & care & comfort & & someone symbols of the dominance

& team retribution terror contrition they are threatening an else

& body & tacit alley & viable disconnect of late

& entendre undervalued skewer oil ratio of the market moves

& apologies part of the wildly successful from fighting terror to

& or nothing smarter the nature of delivery but do we have enough

****imagine a space in the middle****

formatting on blogs blows.

Inland Empire is coming to Athens, downtown at Cine no less.

I have been reading Peter Markus's good brother, which is not as good as The Singing Fish.
But Calimari kicks ass.

I wonder what Peter Markus will do next? Hopefully a series of love sonnets in formal meter.

Or captions to manga comics.

Or something else fucked up.

More paper

For some reason, I have had a bad time writing research papers lately. I get very paranoid at about 50% in. From there, I usually doublethink all of my assertions, repackage, get scared, doublethink, try to return to the original ideas but with slight modifications, hate those modifications, leave for three hours....

It doesnt help when the topic is a page long, either, because then I forget whether or not I have answered the question by the end.

Which is not very good.

This is all I have to say.

Chile Com

Don't worry, if there's a hell below, we're all gonna go.
thanks palmsout

ok

so back to amiri baracka and the poetry of silence

And the windows of 5th street
scream

I am working on a poem called esperanto mountaintops right now.

Here is a section

Which was builded oflime and sand;/until he came to

247A.6 4 /

That was well biggit withlime and stane. 303A.1 2 bower,/Well

built wilime and stane,/And came 247A.9 2 /That was well

biggit wilime and stane,/Nor has he stoln 305A.2 1 a castell biggit

withlime and stane,/O gin it stands not 305A.71 2 is my awin,/ I

builded withlime and stone. 305A.30 1 a prittie castell oflime

and stone,/O gif it stands not 108.15 2 /Which was made both

and stone,/shee tooke him by 175A.33 2

castle then was made

oflime and stone the uttermost near by well built and

stone;/There is a lady 178F.18 2 built with stone andlime!/But far

Panda Bear

His new album came out sometime recently.

I am looking for a place to stay in NYC. Somewhere near the village. It is one hard place to get into. NYU is completely booked. Columbia is in Harlem.

It's weird trying to write about ones self. Der. I am going to get buy one get one free pasta at Bischero tonight. More revelations sure to follow.

Here is a song I like. It is by Sam Cooke. Honestly, could be off the best album ever. Live at Harlem Square. I am trying to incorporate more elements into my blog. I got this song off moist works.

I could make this an MP3/Poetry blog interspersed with my thoughts.

I am not good at writing about songs though. If you want my feelings on it, just pop in a video of James Brown dancing in the mid sixties--one of those famous tapes where he is surrounded by a bunch of white people who look completely confused and overstimulated--and turn down the James Brown music and turn up this song, or the whole album, in the background.

James Brown is such a space alien. There is a photograph I am going to buy of him. He is in a field in Augusta. He is standing by an old tree. He jumps. The tree starts to look less natural than he does. And his legs look like pistons moving in an old Pontiac. He and Gene Kelly knew how to dance. And Bojangles.

Ok.

starting to write

It sucks when people don't give a shit about you.

I decided to start writing down some things that I am thinking about, because I think beyond poetry that it might be nice to be able to cycle through some actual thoughts on this blog and not just old poems that I have saved on word anyways in huge folders. Lately I have been reading people's blogs all the way from beginning to end, and that is fun fun fun.

But, about people not giving a shit about you.

So I went down to Agnes Scott college the other day--Thursday--to check out the writing contest in which I was a finalist. I had been looking forward to it since January, when I heard I was a finalist, and was hoping, more than anything else, to get some good feedback from the superstar judge Yusef Komunyakaa who had been hired to read finalists' poems.

Needless to say, such was not the case at The Agnes Scott Writer's Festival 2007.

For one, Yusef barely even acknowledged the finalists, some of whom were MFA and PhD students from around Georgia. We were all lumped into a room with everyone else and forced to stand in line like everyone else to get our books signed. And its not like I am always looking for special treatment from Pulitzer prize winners, but, come on. I didn't drive all the way from Athens for a damn reading.

Second, I didn't win.

Not that I was expecting to win, or anything. There were some Pushcart nominees in the fold, as well as tons of MFA students, so, I mean, I was happy just to be in the running. But the head of the department spent approximately 17 seconds announcing the winners, and then went right back to introducing the next reader.

I mean, why don't you just post the names of the winners on the door to the bathroom. Then I can find out who won after taking a big shit in the rarely-used men's room.

It was like the contest was a total side-note. And, I mean, the winners must have felt like shit too. It was almost as if the announcement was interrupting the regularly scheduled program.

Finally, Yusef didn't workshop our poems. They called Friday a workshop day. But, unfortunately, no workshop. I have no idea what he thought of the poems. For all I know, he didn't even read them...maybe Ages Scott just sent a few undergrad minions off to the library to randomly pick the winners (including two Agnes Scott girls), and tacked Yusef's name onto the lot of them. The finalists did get an hour QandA with Komunyakaa, but, really, how much good does it do to hear for the bobillionth time what a poet's process is when writing a poem. Yusef also tried to push his theory on the relationship between the hand and the brain, which is either totally basic, or totally bullshit. But whatever.

The winners pool also looked a bit rigged as well. Only three writers from UGA--including Kristen Iskandrian, who is really great, but didn't win. A high proportion of the poets and writers were from Agnes Scott. Also, there were a lot of bullshit freshman comp-y essays from Agnes Scott in the nonfiction pool, which I am sure were outperformed by authors from, say, the Emory PhD program. But, whatever.

More than anything else, I wanted to start writing down some of my thoughts (starting of course with the crazy bitter ones), because the feeling I had right after leaving the contest was one of not necessarily anger, but one desiring a change.

If I am ever in a position to judge a bunch of up and coming poets in a contest, I will certainly take the time to critique their work and offer them at least minor opinions on how I think their stuff is good or bad. I don't care how sick of the scene Yusef Komunyakaa must have become after two days of fielding the same questions over and over again by Agnes Scott faculty. He probably got 10,000 dollars and swank lodging downtown. And, honestly, it is good to help out other people who have travelled a long way to get your opinions.

Moreover (what the hell type of entry is this, anyways), I think the attitude have toward a lot of these poets (raifying them like demigods) is totally counterproductive as well. Yusef Komunyakaa is good, but he isn't T.S. Eliot, or Frank O'Hara, or Bob Dylan. While I would be happy if guys like those deigned even to wipe their asses with my poems, Yusef Komunyakaa is not an unassailable poetic force. A lot of his stuff doesn't even do that much for me.

I don't know, I think poetry is just a hard thing to work at. It's a solitary sort of an enterprise, and not to many people can tell you that much about what it takes to write a good poem, or how to improve work you have already created. I don't even know if Yusef would have been that much of a help with my huge experimental poem.

I think what matters most is reading a lot. And writing. Even writing like this. Though I am sure few people are going to enjoy my writing I think it helps me focus in a lot of different directions at once.

Plus, I am feeling extra under-achieving because Jessica just got the Goldwater scholarship. Which is awesome. But after my little poetry debacle, it just makes me feel more and more like an amateur.

Ha.

esperanto mountaintops

when suddenly she reached up to the clouds and began to pour

a huddled mound that had been growing

these things, the new things, let them utterly alone and see

a thing of meshes; he had simply gone to sleep

but never afterwards recovered an image of embracing arms

what was really in their eyes

the surface of still water and the white note

the shadows fell further and the sky glowed deeper; but nothing

changed--nothing could

Oh the deep deep bath, the soft cool splash in the stillness!

the vast neighbourhood, under the trumpet-blare of the sky

unquenched, some happy thought of an individual breast

this time, with his lightened hand, the whole of the long line

a distance the sound of slow sweet bells

the summer sprinkles that bring out sweet smells

Fed

like an engine stirring its cold gears,
fingers
into your mouth.
The light fractures bones
in an xray, taps its tassel-toe shoes
across the dancehall
of your body, and my eyes
both open and close
to you

who, to me
stares back obligingly like a kite
in my fingers. Who, when the line slacks
like something that should not be held,
or cannot, smiling soars skyward,
isolato strange
and, like a good trumpeter can, dips
and scratches the ocean-lips of my mind

(this ain't done yet)

Wild and Local Love Poem

the way
I am imagining
cheerios on a spoon
honeyed and natural
to be your face


the way
I am fishing
one by one
each brown flower
from the milk-edged river


under a smokey blanket
we watch James Brown
hung in a frame
bending like a lariat
around the neck of the sun


our feet dozing in the water
curving like a forest
curves around the bank
animal curves
the ears of the rain


your curves
a bottle of beer
imported
the gentle condensation
of the sky