re/member

(no subject, no object, no past, no future)

monthly quota

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-- Robert Frost

this is me

half-cooked, half-raw

no surprise

an artist quoted on a starbucks cup:

"In an age when pictures have become more eloquent than words, schools are still programmed to reduce the child's immersive interaction with the visual world to the practical poverty of the alphabet. Visual literacy should become a pedagogical priority in order to prepare our children to function within the increasingly visual complexity of our environment." - Vik Muniz

oh those young kids

don't trust anyone over thirty

what an anthem.

in retrospect, what a waste of toothpaste and disposable cameras. oh wait
maybe that's my generation.


ambition will get you somewhere online
your little plot of sand in the dune of time

but wait for the wave

no one will cry for your castle

because they always already remember

it was never always never there.

Forthcoming

"To the mosquitoes that I hope will die here: A Memoir of the Times We Never Spent.”

i don't miss your pleasure anymore

or, it has been a long time, the brain can't keep track of it all...Or, I am stuck on you(r scent).

"The salient feature in this case is odour. Rats, mice and voles recognise each other by smell. Christie Fowler and her colleagues at Florida State University have found that exposure to the opposite sex generates new nerve cells in the brains of prairie voles—in particular in areas important to olfactory memory. Could it be that prairie voles form an olfactory “image” of their partners—the rodent equivalent of remembering a personality—and this becomes linked with pleasure?"

or some guy's explanation

------
The heart asks pleasure first
And then, excuse from pain-
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

- Emily Dickinson


---

we all knew that was coming.

there are fewer things

still, when did a minute become so long?

now that we control what time used to dictate
tell me why so little is given
without the expectation of gain

(addition addiction)
(addiction addition)
(add)
(ad)
(add)
(added)
the new
minimalization (Fine Living) is living in forced
waves of the microserfs,
a steady
supply of square one
plus
its own negative
(
addition

now is a good time for this one again

From the Long Sad Party
Mark Strand



Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its
white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more of the same.

Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two
candles
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.
We begin to believe

the night would not end.
Someone was saying the music was over and no one had
noticed.
Then someone said something about the planets, about the
stars,
how small they were, how far away.

fair

well? perhaps.

this site has been draining itself
dry for months now

it's just plain silly how very true
that the more you open
the more you leave exposed,
out your control,
the more that flows,
flows from you
you alone


so let's put on this act
the one that we've rehersed
to the point that the lines we recite
become wrinkles
on an exhausted face


so many things are just plain over.
now.

gushing is the last one would expect

and i was preoccupied, changing my name,
creating a fictional address
just so i could buy porn online

what little chariot of wild horses
would come bearing down upon
this stick frozen by time and the chill of a lake?

i, for one, was not sticking around
to find out



the scene always reveals itself in the past tense
and the arches of feet ache for the miles of rocky
dust ahead

sometimes a shoulder stand is better
than a head stand.

today is a good day for this one, a still life

by William Carlos Williams



so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



---------

(pay attention to the ordinary, the small things

the quotidian.)

the cold water is always so warm

and it takes more than a minute
to register the command:
"cold, drinkable water now, dammit!"

expectations are not always so accommodating
to instantaneous need

even after years, or just a few weeks
we are still waiting
for the right response
("right" of course being the demand of intent
we attempted to create)

...influence only goes so far...

hiccups are oh-so-symbolic
if you want them to be

the most over-looked,

under-rated condiment EVER is

horseradish.


and that's all there is to say about that.

a time for the new?

i was thinking about starting up a new blog space, a new manila folder to contain writings of a different kind, a new space to carve out in my mind, an online portal into a separate section of thought.

this has nothing to do with the new year.


to quote a band that i referred to in an email to friends last year upon the changing of the calendar..."so this is the new year/and i don't feel any different."

that does not apply in this situation. a new year, with all of its culturally imbued metaphors of change, growth, and progress, can certainly begin at any time. i prefer to make my "resolutions" well in advance of any particular time change. besides, my "new life," or whatever, began a long time ago. fuck forget january first. the conventional symbolism of that day, like many named holidays, is just another day to colonize with commercial messages and PR campaigns. pessimistic? sure, why not. i'm a big fan of the alice in wonderland tea party song that goes something like, "a very merry un-birthday to you, to you..."

funny, those Washington Sports Club ads with the "desperate" RESOLVE text and imagery, nevermind the sad appropriation of tracy chapman's from-the-pit-of-heart-and-head anthem...

if you're going to do it, do it. the word "try" should not be a part of anyone's vocabulary.


and about that other blog...it may be in the not-so-collected works.

when did it become a job?

did it always work this way? centuries ago, was the pressure the same?

when did the word Labor become synonymous with the idea of just going out and doing things?

i guess it's just part of the process, part of the becoming ______. well, maybe it has more to do with an audience. when your audience becomes a list of people with names you don't recognize, and the pressure of ownership/responsibility to history and the push for something more, insight (the kind not tucked into ad campaigns or magazine articles), becomes a weight, one that is light as a feather and stiff as a board...

well, that's when you leave the computer and turn of the tv.


but first...

from a movie i just watched: "he just pulled out a gun. it's not like he even fought in a war."

last line, before changing the channel: "i try not to want what i don't have."

let us speak now

let us speak now,
or forever hold our piece

(that's right, you know the peace i mean.)

a soundtrack to our lives could replay
all of the words that should have
would have
could have
been

but instead
white noise fills the gap between
crickets clicking away at the closest moon
that hangs its light
just so shadows can be born

would
have
could have

(to have and to hold to have and to have not)

would have
could have
have their own ring
their own way of becoming audible
to the composer, the only member
of the audience

< hold >

so many songs are sung about silence
none of them come close to mimicking its echo

< let it reverberate >

Hold. perhaps the only word
worthy of capitalization
when standing alone.

there is something about histories

there is something about histories
and the way they always seem to repeat
themselves (ourselves) when we've reached
another new plateau

despite the evolution of the self
the self returns to that same old
sickly little self
wicked ways can't change
the hearts that have memory programmed
into the pattern of its pumping
of valves and vessels, in and out,
values exchanged from ventricle
to ventricle
the rest of the body
can't take
the continued flow
of past to past and past again
though it's learned how to oxyginate
and recycle
the past (its food for thought)

somehow, with time,
we reach the surface of the skin
the elements remind you, reconnect, you
to the reality of what was
for the first time, automatically,
the nervous system reacts
and the blood that is shed
is not saccharine
not of salt
but of a wish,
a wish to continue,
to close
the proverbial chapter
the one that has her as the lead
and you waiting in the curtains,
the wings that could lift you to life
if only you could remember
those lines you know you
can finally say.

ways to torture a broken wing

stem from the insecurities that are best hidden by daily engagments with calendar items
to do lists
checking stock quotes...

a yellow door is the gateway
to admitting one's failure at
facing the hard stuff

but that's why we turn away, isn't it?
because it's "the hard stuff"
the difficult things
really facing the issues
at hand
or,
stuck on the bottom of your shoe


mourning any loss
only concludes when we die
we become a collection of souls we encounter,
the pennies given to us as change
from hands we never hold
histories we never meet,
as we let the change
drop to the ground
and pass away

we keep the private stuff private
and annouce our commings and goes on away messages,
email reply receipts
"out of town"
"not here..."
"currently away from the computer..."

currently away
from any sense of responsibility
to the past
we refuse to face
to touch
to admit
to the ones that matter(ed) the most.

(all of us are with wings.)