Well yes, here I am
in the empty fortress, yes
Back in the atlas
an out—of—control
Last night—last night? I suppose it was—driving home around midnight slightly drunk totally exhausted Passed out just up the road from the house—jolted awake by a loud crash and the shatter of glass into the car and the sight of a house only a few feet infront of me ... carreening off a large tree braking suddenly—the rear mirror broke off and passenger window shattered into the car ... I didnt hear any noise and no lights came on so I turned the car back on, backed off the lawn and drove the couple blocks, after the booming crops—hot and without no evidence other than a mangled shrub by the curb— and the fact that there's still broken glass all over the inside of the truck and no window—I was even able to tape the mirror back on—and/or some sort of
bees are coming ... This
is Brandon Shimoda. We knew each other once, days dark and light. I can only imagine what you're up to, seeing things, run into your brother a year ago, seems the energies are true. haze of people braying loudly the season. I'm trying to convince Phil Cordelli to join. We've been fantasizing … Well, no need to pile it on. I'm here, feeling more tangibly human, shit you made it out of that careening, terrifying mess unscathed! Not in the lap of some old lady snoozing in front of her radio, shattered glass in her eyeballs, or else in the creek, face down in a rotted Playboy. Not to make light, but lucky/guidance is right, especially on them roads. The warm hand of reading, back in the spring there was a point I no longer knew where the hell we were, whether or not we were even following your truck … the same point at which I started to get sleepy, the rhythms of the curves. Zach was speaking, I had no idea what he was saying, I was pretty sure we were going to get hung in the trees with the witches
HELL, DEMENTIA, DEMOCRACY,
INVASION, DISCIPLINE, DEATH VALLEY,
CROSS-DRESSING ... locked in a room in the back of the institute, reading, writing, the book officially cracked, spooling out chaotic. to visit a cemetery in which two japanese men are buried, dead in 1945, among the casualties of the dept. of justice camp, many relocated from missoula, including ICHIRO SHIMODA, unrelated, maybe, who bit his tongue off.
Its winter, the mountains are white, the winds are bending grasses to the graves. i hop the cement wall to go to the store, but little to buy, drinking tea eating tuna
is best.
In large part managing this place contantly running in different directions, doing one thing while on the phone with someone trying to think of the next—a hateful way to spend the best part of one's days, doing your best to make sure no one slows or stops or has a moment of peace. The sense of being out of control heightened by an expansion of myself into society,
GLENN did indeed dance, resembling David. Watching my mom, turban covering her bald head my sisters dance was a MOMENT
For one, hardly anyone showed. There were about a dozen
THE PINES
BUBBLE
Now, when they set out a coarse painting of a sheep, skinned and cut open, vultures quickly spot it, land close by, hop over and begin to tug hopefully at the canvas the decoy was put down within two feet of the painting but failed to notice the food. Finally the researchers put out small pieces of beef, no more than an inch, on a canvas cloth, under which was hidden to detect the putrescent remains right under their beaks: to devour the offal, you know, finding less and less of substance and value, commitment and thinking and risking skimming curdled blood off the surfaces of skin. Dog complacency, this “generation” begins carrying forth the only ones killing ancestors in the way all seems to be
BUBBLE
THE PINES
The rest of the story goes: immediately after the Emilies got to the last “for you”—which, since Toder was almost 5 minutes slower lasted nearly FOREVER they mostly repeated those two words for it must have been at least 7 8 minutes, you know, an eternity—I abruptly flipped o the lights, blinding everyone in the room ... smoke and Emily dancing with 4 shirtless dudes pulling blankets down like a lamb coming and a lamb going primo: new swimming holeright underneath a dam whihc we'll hit when/if you're back in town for an event the more I think about it, rather now that I think about it—you must be dragged under as well, or we should drag the whole asunder—can you really remain in an audience? Will I prance and preen about alone? You sniff the night roof I feel confident you will be
Thinking about the woods connecting our properties, I think of emasculation. jump to either end, I’m not soothed or drawn into introspection, neither feel eating shitting, in a constant cycle. 10 things to say these were aspects I’m drawn. throwing soil, fatigue in the fields. oversimplifying, but I’m describing atomic frenzy to the activity; the more unreasonable joy—neglect, a ritual to death: snags, rampikes, blowdowns ... social or economic, Sunday erment, but it might as well be going on in a test tube into areas replicated in more urban ways southern boggy spirit. A constant did exist around the woods after dark, furious, the thumb and forefinger thousands of tiny California, for example, New York—commerce of some kind, cold, glittering. now steady trickle of chickens. I think of the potter’s field—strangers and foreigners unclaimed. something more evocative about magazine rejections providing onion plants stuck into rocky dry you were up and about, to convince you before bed ... otherwise, soon ... I remember more dead wood than those woods—much of what is evocative—in natural forms of the landscape. Both in the process of dying, upholding a sort of derelict life. Rough?
feces
in family portraits
THANK YOU
I wanted
a pill
life
a bag over head
my back
long spiral whip
bodies made houses
men women bought
and sold forever, as time
I can still here
the sounds
of a tape recorder
rain, pot cookie, inattention at readings, museum, Mexican neighborhood food, slight dance party, bottles of whiskey, no books bought or looked at, drunk hopping of chain link—in short all that could be expected
I'm sitting in a wedge-like corner of the public library, catching up on 1 month's pee-mails, watching bums and tramps making passes at each other out the window.
AT THE WEDDING, turned out to be one of the highlights of the affair. you should invite yourself over to her house. did you know that she and her boyfriend are actually husband and wife? for now, i'm thankful
threatened has dribbled a bit but remains
back to the stink and sun
DOES GLEN DANCE?
The barren
psychic opposite of urine—soaked
palette of age and abuse, beautiful? The drinking, bacon rolls, museums, the WALKING! Did you see any artists or artworks? To put energy somewhere. Well, I'm placing bets on you getting it, the lake, the letters of the words our legs and arms. garbage, soul-destroying. the pendulum continues to swing. at any rate, a book is forming. It feels like the first I've attempted. Sentences, structure, literature? Poetry feels incredibly far away—I can't bring myself to read it: single mind. EVERY THIRD WEEK, FRUITS
Taking a break from destroying my wrists ... just sitting outside on a stack of gray shingles, reading a book, feeling heavy with the sun—sun-drunk apex of feeling ...
~When I see that look
of battle~(court. JMW, Arroyo Chico)
We've had two emergency room visits: one for Liz she had an emergency appendectomy (repaired an umbilical hernia while opening her up), the recovery like her C-section; the other visit when Anna had a 105 temperature—turned out to be a virus but it was difficult due to the tests. Stress and chaos basically led me to develop shingles. Toby diagnosed it in our kitchen. It was fun having an OB/GYN. Needless to say, things have been difficult but settling. Bad things in threes. Amigo, I am restoring a house to its original state in a park protected to keep things the way they were reaching a provisional equilibrium, eking out just enough words and ideas and drum-taps to feel fed in that way eating just enough crapfood to keep fed in that way enough sun and wind to be in that waycompleted, smell hot pine needles baking on the granite at the summit of Dorr Mountain. It was sentimentality that made me want to go to town buy a guitar try recording again. I want it back to the way it used to be …
THE PINES
CROWN FRIED CHICKEN
Had an amusing conversation with a gold-toothed gent in Crown Fried Chicken the other day, about how it seemed like everyone was leaving for the “Carolinas” these days, that people were sending back word of a surprising lushness, mixed with a minor, though not entirely diminished sense of dread, apparently too transfixing to pull away from. The man looked at me, warm and conspiring, and said, “They can’t match our appetites, though.”
THE PINES
THE KNOT
OK now onto meatier topics: after much recent discussion about the nature of the relationship—more specifically the naming of such—we've decided to get married .... my god it is an amusing juncture as the mania and nausea swirl just outside our door ... leaving us thankfully but of course always precariously alone in our hovel we've dug out here—at the moment we are completely in the dark as to the form this will take—most likely a trip to city hall or in the memory of the wedding of a UDP pal, a ceremony where nothing can be heard by the crowd beside the din of the ocean (rest assured whatever the form, you will not be called upon to don officiating garb (though, if I happen to die first, I would like to reserve you for my funeral ...)) actually the ideal celebration might be a three hour nap in an orchard but however it all shakes out thats the most pressing news—at least until we can hash it all out trailerside (I'm envisioning this as a continuation of the great “is it easier to kill something once it is given a name” debate, complete w/ Col. Sanders connection)
Life then becomes, in part, finishing
OMITTED: A poem beginning with the line, “Trillium, Wake Robin” and ending with the line, “between between and between”
Experence of acid
when it was a pressing fact of life, what may or may not be flashbacks, strong memories of experience(s) of rupture, the
OMITTED: A poem beginning with the line, “imagination of the pond as dry” and ending with the line, “shortcutting the majority sound”
Should I refrain the Henriksen search party? Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation ... The other eight are unimporta
THE PINES
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
how you never think tot all continues well—still feeling new, ghostly, however settled into routine. teaching has kept us busy, exhausted, the night market last night, squeezing through the labyrinth of narrow aisles hundreds of people, youth—young girls wearing eyes. to see basically a urinal, complete with a gutter in the center damp with effluvia. I glanced at one the other day, felt repulsed and angry. weak. balls on a stick. angels in the mouth, counteracting devils in the eye—wandered slowly through scooters. still, the city is organized, polite. a morning refuge in this mausoleum of an internet cafe, the whole city of Edinburgh an ornate sooty coffin lined with a steep narrow alley connects a street of bars to the train station perpetually REEKED of urine—so intoxicating, collective drunkeness and been “working” on VOLUME EIGHT the last couple days ... Jamaica is for better or worse featuring bagpipers playing Journey and Guns N Roses—delightfully—all manner of crime tours ghost tours and plague direly sick! A fine fitting end to the trip, the graduation ball for Carin;s vet shcool, a slightly disjointed prommish night, the GOLDEN CHAIN might carry me up off this oil-tours cemetary walks blackened with age interspersed w/ traditional dancing, Cordellis romaing the dance floor, hundreds of people singing “by the bonny bonny banks of loch lomond” drunkenly with passion ... what that really means or any of this slicked tree. The abridged version summerstockjournal.com/2011/07/pines.html. we rented an alley called Fleshmarket Close (close=alley) formerly leading to a meat market, now infectious, as half the people probably were from other countries, but for all it marked something, a moment of union, more poignant for coming at the very end
on the verge of comitting in a very loose way to farmign a bit of land one town over, an acre, owned by a rich lesbian couple who arent around—if we come to an agreement about expenses and profits not much downside, an an opportunity to feel what its like to be in charge of an endeavor, make all the mistakes I need
THE PINES
METRO NORTH
GAME OF FINGERS stories to hear to invent sensations of the Bronx. the most intimate history as if no present time resurrecting the mold Do we regret our methods only for the task at hand. interrogation its own logic satisfied—the entire history, every encounter, vibrations, folds, founts of moisture; basements, the color of eyes staring down your balding head, who did what to whom. red face, anger: needs to be shoved for anything to grow, perhaps we felt the need to prune some of him away, to cut off his limbs to avoid growth we saw as too straight, focused, even then, reaching the canopy. Did you, or she yours? Just hold up your fingers, you don’t have to say, just give some signal we'll shut up. The train rolls on, we fall asleep. Our heads drag the windows, sprays of graffiti narrate the night, orange lights, abridged slumping stands, rain pooled in streets, headlights of cars flashing trunks of oak trees, guardrails. Our bodies warm, we're dreaming, run over each other, live with what has been said to the other, regain again the upper hand, to fit oneself into the seat. After. He must be held, who is going?
Brown crusts of marble goose-neck grimly pacing to meet the other and reverse lights the tunnel strain back on ribbed plastic fluorescent starlings repeated wood grain contact paper smoothly waved down the next, the next light fallen crowded with leaves standing water, tires, bittersweet, invasive ignorant limbs, netherworlds lending houses to the hills power lines, slack again and again by lawn reaches trimmed with red belonging to children, this mythology has curved unfactual, full of ascribed importance drawing from what's beyond border
The local is super slow. we're starving. Not a worm—nor source of our hunger. worm. Into the city. tunnel. No; to say so would be to say we are giving up, giving up trying, the train in the tunnel, 125th street.
all all invigoration, catching and throwing chickens after dark, the fatigue of thumb and forefinger after thousands of tiny onion plants stuck into rocky dry soil, the now steady trickle of magazine rejections providing unreasonable joy
THE PINES
THE MAN OF STEEL
I had to do our popular rendition of Enemies alone I would have liked them to multiply I think I would have asked when it would be your turn I realized it feels right I am in my life I have been together I think we've proved pretty clearly we understand each other I mean to death I need a document to keep me straight I hope you’ll best me knock-knock I expect you to corner me I may be related to levitation at least the girder and panel I exhale my final breath I have to go build shelves for my kitchen
OMITTED: A poem beginning with the line, “weak” and ending with the line, “b—”
You simply walk in and point, or have someone write out. little breakfast place that serves bamboo, oolong tea in cans. a room with no windows. we order batter, dumplings—splayed frogs on beds of ice, quail eggs cooked to order, “stinky tofu” smells fresh soy milk, everything less than $1—a table in the corner where four women sit with gargantuan noodles. everything makes boxes—noodle shop with long, communal tables, enormous bowls of thick, shaved sweat, you want to sit forever listen to fish balls, vegetables, tofu, sides of dumplings, cucumbers—bento—$1.50. lots of rice and meat, bamboo. piles of dumpling meat vegetables sauces, against a diaper microwaved in military base, with enormous hookah—hotpots boiling pork, beef, Chinese on a slip of paper. northern china—lunch style hotpot plenty of western too, no use fucking around with that. mangoes are extraordinary—we could get fat just on those.
Old capital up the coast: winding streets, narrow alleyways, street food, on sticks, tall bottles of beer in air conditioned rooms, dragon boats, neighborhood shrines, scantily clad women singing karaoke on stages that resemble life-size pinball machines
The city's supply of dried mushrooms, candy, shark fin, powders, hair-like sea creatures, smells over our faces, every item begging a question, no language with which to ask. Sat on a bench and watched a rat build a nest under a piece of wood. another rat, this one the size of an armadillo. Now, its peace-time. Spent a night earlier this week in the emergency room—started shaking, couldn't stop, one of my students had to drive me, watching the IV drain out, other patients dragging their get-ups to the toilet, a woman with a bloody rag stuffed in her mouth
Not too far into any capable realm, looking through Josh's books, came across his stack of PINES, which rekindled some fervor and feeling: forgetfulness, energy, amnesia, breaking bottles, opening my eyes wide with chlorine; re-reading your account of the wolf head, dirty blankets, the heat damaging. go outside to submit to the oven, risk brain damage. riding around on the bicycle somehow beats it: creates a vacuum in which it all becomes tolerable. otherwise, air conditioner and reading through a dozen books at once. alright, no report.