of the facts

an intense vision of the facts,
your demand seasoned with age

clarity ruled king
yet the noises you made communicated nothing
only the silent spaces between each
said it all
the melody of speech
dripped from your lips
as you held the coffee cup in your hand

parting ways
i tried to save your song
in my memory
i tried to save your song
in my mind
in my skin
within the chapped cracks

the record was written
in time for
the descent of winter

we all showed up
we all came over
dressed to the nines
dressed to kill
already dead
ready and waiting
for the drink
of your
last song

december 23, 2003

resurrecting an emailed poem, just because L. called the other day. i miss her, but cannot talk until the weekend when the minutes are "free." our interpersonal communication - data exchange - is marked with a commodity value like the food we eat, the clothes we buy, the cars we drive. information is the new hyperCapital, and this marketplace participant is frustrated that my production is ultimately restrained by my ability to consume ($$) my own value. more news (bitching) at eleven.

(from L.)

Used

The conspiracy's to make us thin.
Size threes are all the rage,
and skirts ballooning above
twinkling knees are every man-child's
preadolescent dream.
Tabla rasa. No slate's that clean--

We've earned the navels sunk in
grief when the last child emptied us
of their brief interior light.
Our muscles say
We have been used.

Have you ever tried silk sheets?
I did, persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy's clerk to bargain
for more zip.

We couldn't hang on, slipped to
the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt--
It's hard work staying cool.

Written by Rita Dove

those days were much colder

biting, bitter, made for the thickest socks possible, layers and layers, the struggle of stuffing two sweaters under one jacket, needing a pair of gloves covered by mittens. winter starts before the cold gets to us here, down south. the north begins its exhalation of the past year much sooner, shaking off its leaves and tracing windows of ice out of the edges of river beds. the coldest, flatest rocks somehow become colder, more flat, with the change in temperature. all of a sudden the wind is no longer welcome, turned into an enemy that the chest and lungs fight harder against as its numbness is taken in by the nose, the reluctant mouth.

the winter is less welcome here. we are wimps with weak blood and a weaker countanence. change, even the seasons, seems so much more a challenge, something only to whine about, if you live further south.

i am tired of the retreating indoors. if it must be so, more incubation and less hibernation, please. turn off the heat. welcome the fire of numbness, pins and pains in the bare feet on the bare floor. lift open the window, lift open the sense of touch and feel the movement across the threshold, from liquid summer to solid winter. take its shape.

Counting down

to art-o-matic.

Saw a sign for a company today called "Think Play," slogan = "Everybody Plays." I have an issue with that name, mostly regarding the enforced relationship between two actions that, to me, have nothing to do with each other at all.

I was reminded of the piece for Art-o-Matic that a friend, Mark Stark, finished installing yesterday. Greg Minah and I ended up playing inside his installation in a way that would seem off from the piece itself...

A few notes to be filled in later (and I'll take a photo of the piece and get it up here):

movement
body v. brain
hegemony of thought
relegation of senses to informants, rather than processors
jail
dylan thomas

There would have been a time for such a word...To the last syllable of Recorded Time

the marbles that were coursing through her capillaries each had a name:

Regret
Frustration
Inadequacy
Brent
David
Hope
Marie
Blonde
Painting
Need
Alone
Tomorrow
Farm
My Past
His Past
Venom
Ocean

Trying to identify and recount them all, their measurement began to take command of her limbs. But then the finger tips opened up. Gravity did its thing. Marbles began to stream from her capillaries to her veins and then Out! Out! Brief Candle, Life's but a Walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is Heard No More. It is a tale told by an idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing. They dropped to the ground, pinging it with the excitement of escape, singing as they scampered down the hill to their fate marked by the sewage drain. Meanwhile, the veins bled a little too, weeping at the loss, weeping for the release, crying with the freedom.

Oh, and did we mention what happened before to trigger all this? No matter, of course, but here's a quick instruction:

See that pile, that patchwork sack, lying on the concrete sidewalk over there? Yeah, the one next to the ionic capital, next to the ironic capital building (have you checked your compass today?). I could say more about this sack, but it is what it was: a pile of dirty rags, stuffed into a sack, slung upon the shoulders of a woman and carried around for an amount of time that goes without saying. Goes Without Saying. Nothing more to Say here. Nothing more to See here. Ciao bello.


---For my BFF on her FDF.

How To Collect the Works of

Will they dig through email servers
      hard drives
      abandoned floppy disks
      cookies and browser histories
to construct our relationship, communicate it
in words and metaphors and code
      that we use/d too

Will they weave the threads of words
      digitally produced
      digitally represented
to make a bracelet of friendship
two colors thick
      (that's one for me, and one for you, you know)
so they can put it in a case
on display,
a glass case
made to be more shiny
kept more clean
than we could ever
      clean ourselves
      keep ourselves
      display ourselves
      keep ourselves


Case Closed.
Files sealed.
Weapons withdrawn. For now.

Wait, I thought there wasn't Violence in this
No chance to talk of Struggle
and Power
and General Anger,
or, Your apathy

Weren't our emotions worked out
when we hit Reply
      Return
      Letter after letter after letter after letter
      Send

(wait for

      Reply.
)

It's Oh So Quiet.
      Now.

     digital dust has settled in
     and settled this
for us
for everyone
for all data collection agencies

The Work Order is Complete.

early morning stretching routines

before seven a.m.

the cat is awake
in the neighbor's window
the bird(s) is(are) awake
sounding alarms
(chirp! chirp! awake! awake!)

the leaves are awake
and dying
the wind helps them along, i guess
(there might be some secret suicide pact behind such things.)

the apple on the windowsill still smells
of waiting, waiting for the bannana,
or the pear,
to seduce it
from its own dance
of fermentation

shake dreams and early morning thoughts
from the branches and boughs
of bending trees
(they too, are dying. and they know it.)

forget.
forgive.

some things just know how to let it go
before seven a.m.