wake up, rod

Infinitive 1. past Joe and Shari fuck in the back of a Boston Market. They go there for the roasting smell, that chicken all-spice. He rub his hands on the inside of those ’92 jeans – bedazzle, puffy paint trip his fingers, a tone-arm dig and skip. Hands stuff into stuffing, into buttery hips. Insertion quick, smooth, cold steel pressing perineum, thrusts segment quads with wide chill lines. Hot chicken cook on thick rods like pyres, altars, meat-scented candles pipe mood. Nirvana play on the Discman, treble shrieks. Shoulder blade on Tupperware, jagged little growth mark near his pubis. She touch it, squeeze it, press it, pick it. It go nowhere. They go nowhere. Later, they take the chicken scraps outside. The cats let it rot. 2. present The second gyration elicit a hot flash. He hide the Viagra. He don’t take it – it be the loosening, the slackening, of things inside him and inside her. He spend too much time think about the record store clerk in Toronto, tattoos and cords under gian...

White boy 1. statement of bias Privilege, I used to think, is monstrous. Pink meat, spoiled in white tyvex, coiled around something more essential. These male parts, preventing transcendent understanding, cursing progeny, progenitors, the presence of preference. Privilege, I think, is monstrous – but monster knows best. 2. the conflict is a conflict of interest How presumptive to pick up the hatchet. The hatchet cuts wood, I need no firewood. Others need wood. Others hate wood. I hate wood. But I hate it because that tree should know better. Still, I keep that maul in paw, lend my strength to those mid-cut, pray as lumber falls that similarities don’t attract. 3. discursive proof The white boys listen to Hot 97. As primary consumers who bought the product they do with it what they want. Let’s put a advisory on money, saying “Buying shit entitles you to nothing.” Let’s teach that “Owning money is enough of an entitlement already.” 4. pilgrim’s progress What’s the net utility of the priv...

I've got a problem with being told what to do, so here's a choice of two: (1) Write about yourself as a middle aged or older feller/gal/trans/pure energy.       The piece must take place in the home.       Don't skimp on the details, on the physicality of the place and how it is to be in your body. (2) Write about the last thing that happened to you/you did that you didn't want to tell anyone about.      Dive in. Due Monday, November 23rd.

We got stoned so we wouldn’t have to go home, the hour growing hours. Viscous. Go on, you can tell me, you said. What’s unspoken: I’ll lick yours if you lick mine. Your sister’s murder in Melton School cornfield :: the button pop before he bored into me. No matter which way you stick it, it’s still a cunt, you said. No. This rip is riper than whatever you’ve never had. Forgive me an example: My ex-girlfriend. She used to tell me, Whenever I get close to coming I see a white-tailed doe bleating by the side of the highway, a whip of magnolias browning. I begged her, Pare it back. There’s promise in the act. I’m scared of everything bigger than me. How the boys write their biology under Dalton bridge. How to rip a finger from a fist: straight outta the socket. Still I know the thickest bone, the weightiest fleshblanket is what can throb me through. Cover, cover, I need the hair on your knuckles. I need your mouth. I need your every rotting ounce. Fuck, I kn...

It speaks for itself. For Dogs What's the difference between a soldier and a dog? You cry when they shoot dogs. Is it funny? Did you laugh, snicker maybe? No? I'll try again: What's the difference between a soldier They shoot dogs. Sorry, the punchline came too early and the joke is too heavy. We talk instead pile platitudes, perfect paeans to service, they shoot soldiers too the joke suggests. It's funny because it's sad when they shoot dogs; service when they shoot soldiers. Perhaps it's a question of quantity - question: 4680 dead soldiers, dead dogs, is it funny yet? No? I'll try again. It's either funny or it's not, the balance doesn't fit on a credit card, a teleprompter or a gravestone, but it's roughly bullet-sized, so why aren't you laughing? I'm telling you a joke.

Assignment #9, the gauntlet, the proving ground, the bildungsroman, the trial by fire: SOMEWHERE IN FLORIDA VOTES ARE STILL BEING COUNTED. Its simple. Write a political poem. Write a political poem with deference to performance. Write a political poem that's performative, but not pedantic Write a performative political poem that avoids the easy, and avoids the pedantic. Make it something as fun to read on the page as it is to hear. Make it something new. Use any politics. This is it, folks. Due Friday the 13th. If he's not woken up by then, he'll probably go into hibernation.

Lex, who I left ½ empty, on Daedalus ( after Bioforge ) half of something, left depleted, the master energy of that masterful thing – you bludgeoned him to death with his own arm, said a witty aphorism, breathed acid, walked among waste. master-switch death-ray meat, sing a wordless song on a pylon, left alone with a dying battery. you know damn well that if you shoot all those cyborgs I’ll die here. no do-overs. depletion, and I watch the world die. wake up with fingers bound by steel, with ten toes smelt to two. movement disorients. made of metal, but they left the skin on. gravity holds things to ground, minerals especially. a laser in the knuckles, a power cell in the arm – you decide not to find out where I came from. you forgot to put on my hazard suit before you ran...

The above is a quote from Prince of Persia, a remake of a classic 1980s video game. In the most recent iteration - as I understand it - the narrative elements are foregrounded throughout the game and the quote above occurs when one dies in the game. This got me thinking about consequences in video games. Recently I was talking to J.P. about a series of games wherein the goal is no less lofty than averting the apocalypse but the characters traipse toward their grim fate gingerly, languidly moving at the player's behest as if time was made of molasses. Video game worlds are fraught with this kind of unaccountability. In the Street Fighter series, people all over the world gather around to watch super-powered weirdos throw fireballs at each other with no thought that an errant fireball (they often miss) will plow through the crowd and toast the school girls hanging out (curiously) in a construction yard. Thankfully developers are starting to unpack this historical curiosity of video ...

or in print - namely, I've been gestating and mulling over the state of poetical affairs and such, and I see an entry point. There needs to be a journal out there that gives voice to newness, unqualified, that fucking BRINGS IT no matter what. That does, for poetry, what all these banging small press lit mags do for fiction (see: UNSAID [ http://www.unsaidmagazine.com/ ], NY Tyrant [ http://www.nytyrant.com/home.html ], etc.) - bring it, fresh as fucking flowers. Is it presumptuous? possibly. But necessary. I am actively considering fucking putting my absence of money where my abundance of mouth is, and trying to affect change. I think that there's poetry out there that can melt faces, depress uvulas, and penetrate brain flesh, and I think it's our job to find it, and give it the stage it deserves. Nothing small, nothing conventional, nothing simply designed. A big poetry journal for some big fucking words. This is not to say that I'm going to be gone from Rod - on the ...

http://www.voicesnet.com/loveromancepoems/poempoetry60187.htm if so, rawr you romance poet

So B.Scary posted a link to the City Lights No Contest which is to produce a less-than 200 word fiction piece using the following constraints: -No Adjectives -No Dialogue -No Space -No Time -No Omniscience -No Names Needless to say, it was difficult, but I did it, cuz' why not? The result is below: My dress, I possess the tense. How it looks, how it doesn't, feels - how it doesn't. Something is moving and it makes a noise. There is a patina of fear, but I do not react. I must not be seen in a dress, must remove it, replace it with a suit and a tie and a smile and hair sprouting from my chin. I know that what is boy is boy. What is girl, I cannot say, or will not say. I am taking off the dress. This is best, I think. I would not describe it. It is not my dress after all, even if I care for it. No. I am a boy, I possess the tense, and I do not make a noise. [126 words] (Though I did submit it to the contest, I don't actually intend to win - so if you find that I didn'...

an important message from the ministry of Rod: busy a bee? slippery as a nipple? try this nifty contest from city lights, submit your results to rod, and get yo self some bonus points! Thrilling City Lights Contest Link

Iz's First Visit Riffing in slim light sits Him. Him sits within sin singing within sin. Iz is pissing in his tin din-- it's his first piss with Him. Iz finds his piss ticking in his tin. Iz finds his piss nihilistic with Him sitting, spitting, skidding his Sin Sing. Him drinks gin, spitting hiss-diss: "Iz, finish this piss This shindig's ill! Living in Sin Sing, Iz will mind things Iz will mind" Iz is ticklish, Him is tickling Iz with his Sin Sing swinging. Iz swings with his Sin Sing hits- Living is frigid with Him in his pits.

You don’t use words like that. Imprimis, bring it in this, within this slit. Ditch it. Pitch it. Immix with it. This iridic ink is incivism, indign. Sing it. Itch.

Rod hath bequeathed a new assignment unto us. Revel&rock&roll my pookies: Exercises In Limits: Along the Oulipean  style of things, construct a poem in the style, length, and subject of your choosing, BUT: 1) You may only use one vowel and that vowel is the letter i 2) You may not write the poem in the first person 3) Y is a vowel today, so don't even try any funny business Struggle in dem dere restraints.  It's better if you've bruises to prove it.   Tis due 10 days from today on 3 October.    

Hey kids, The title and topic was inspired by a wonderful babelfish translation Mjr. Gn. Bea Mao gave me once. section ii is entirely round-trip spanish translated in babelfish, which means that the original is lost (though I will say that one of the original lines was from a book i read about pedagogy, saying that teaching creative writing was equivalent to "putting wings on the invisible." guess which sentence it is! it's like a treasure hunt). the poem's pretty crass and ridiculous but i think it's super fun and stuff. Sorry for the lateness mi nalgas de cigarrillo son su nalgas de cigarrillo 1. expletive deleted We buttfucked at her house which made me uncomfortable but you said it was the only way you’d get lit in this wind. Between giant pulls from a jug of Carlo, we talked of rumps and junks and badonk adonks, but never addressed that if you burn from the ass, what goes up to your lips? Nips of whiskey all around, but when “all around” is two people alone i...

: two truths | and a lie : I am a liar : bracketed in the unwieldy, the unyielding, a liar |for love for a|rt, : hungry : desperate : but apart. + A little thing. It was more but it's better less.

Escape from New York I was born to die here. To stretch away and snap back. All love is elastic, the snap is what stings. All my memories die here. Bridges whisper into tunnels, the river wishing, washing light across the Hudson’s fractured face. It’s not enough to just live here. The city is two boroughs, all else – a beggar – a polite half-smile, a quarter cup of orange juice. The sting is what snaps. How can one sleep here? The sky is a grey noise, the streets for days run their fingers along our soles and speak. There are two boroughs, all else. I was born to die here. In a quarter cup of orange juice, snapping swaying across, under, between. The Hudson rises up and nothing needs to be said. And it is elastic, the way it reaches back toward me, the horror and nothing needs to be said. How can one sleep? The way it divides, us and two sorry boroughs, the way even love spoils. It’s not enough. The sting. The snap. The city dies and I crawl into it to stay warm but cannot sleep ...

Escape Velocity what word not undone to noise)( the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole what fringe)(not frayed to flare the canopy of nerves rain on down)(rain on temptation take the next )(blankness to bay light the chords of flesh and flesh)(the fire the pot boiled too long to belong)(anywhere momma the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole momma I'm too old)(to come home the sound of steam pushing through a pinhole

I want to write a preface, and there should probably be some official footnotes, or something, but the cafe's running out of internet and I've gotta get this beast up.  Also.  This isn't the poem I was originally going to post, but that one is at home on the back of a Tiger Balm box.  So just paint me pretty & call me Frank O'Hara. PS- The spacing's all messed up.  Sorry. PPS- This beast makes no sense.  Enjoy regardless. To the Over-Fashionable Girls Taking Over-Fashionable Photos at the Bay or Notes on Why I Refuse to Write a San Francisco Poem   What memories I have of you, tonight, &you sitting at promising points wishing realities out of vacations out of the void that slinks between a zero in checking &not.   Simplicity doesn’t want to be gained: no distillation that my lingus could sidle into. But there are brain mush molochs to consider& their mollusking ways, I’ve been nerding to see.   And then a Pelican! A real...

Due to the generosity of my lovely, brilliant friend Rory, I've recently been reading a book called Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story . Despite its myriad flaws, this novel draws attention to an at-least-half-truth: us academics, us rampant intellectuals, whether we embrace post-modernism & Derrida's deconstructionism or not, are afraid of writing about happiness or joy with the kind of sparkle WE KNOW seasons our lives. Fuck, it's hard to write about transcendence with a kind of real nuance, with complexity that works. So, though these effervescent moments comprise the promise that keeps us waking up in the morning, it's so difficult to find this promise in our writing. Thus, I make the following (1) mandate and (2) suggestion for this assignment. (1) Write about some joy, with joy and depth. There must be hope in this piece that is not wholly meta-commentated away. (2) Stuck on boring syntax? Tired of your own phraseology? Have a translation party. http://www.translation...

I'm worried this is damn near unreadable. But I wrote two poems while listening extensively to different dubstep artists, then sorta mashed up the two poems. It's all abstract 'n' shit. But maybe it is a little fun? Who knows. Thought I'd try my hand. It's about dancing in subways. Concurrence (Jellyfish) Chemical orange snaps light, pops fixtures, ripples along metal brackets, coats blacktop grey salt, basalt and flashes of ruby. Move vertically, flex the orbiting percussion through skin. Tripping with a knifey face, the night etches dark raccoon rings around sockets, spreading down squint lines. Red tendrils, rend- ripped jeans gouge slits in sidewalk. Snake chloroform of subway, squeeze into the space between headphone and ear. Recoil against my spine. Bitchassness bustling into the car, tear at the windscreen, fill the car, be fat and happy, be the firestarter, cloak eyes with lids. The jellyfish pulses, rotates, undulates in the stagnant travelled air. Catc...

For Him (Finally) ) and the rest of his life spent running from /- containing principles, kissing /- boys in the Autumn, oblivious to the sound of male smashing /- ceasing /- turning /- staring /- mouthing /- the boosters running for the bleachers. ) fucking pick up the phone, Papas, fucking pick up the phone, Papas, fucking pick up the /- [Mom] and [Dad], in the abstract, prostrated /- before the invisible altar, raising a revenant, ) but he gets out, keeps the )secret) on the inside of his lips, just beneath a ridge of wet cheek. Wrapped around /- his fingers, snaking, scratching up his arms, left in hair matted down from hands. )pick it up man, come on pick up the fu /- The king worships the followers, the skin of a palm pushed into side flesh, the gold gilds the cross, the young hairs on end. ) the inviolate object of the ball, the smell of pig leather and burnt bread curlicueing between parting lips /- parting between the /- parting behind) Send away, elders, for salvation. Call f...

Hey kids, Big Scary can't post up - no innanet, busy trying to make her way solo through the streets of San Francisco. So, for the forseeable future, AD's got a hall-pass. Which is going to change up our Rod-System. We're going to be making shit on deadlines, now. And deadlines are deadlines. The current rotation is JP, K, AD, B. This assignment is due on Friday. On Friday, even if K doesn't have the assignment done, she's gotta post up a new assignment by then, in addition to getting out the last assignment. I'm posting two assignments: one for the group, one for Bendi. Group Assignment: [-:] (inspired by ]Open Interval[ by Lyrae VCS, as she's known on facebook) Write a poem that makes heavy use of punctuation. preferably the punctuation designed would be a new style or form of punctuation, or at least a new interpretation (i.e. the use of "-:" in Lyrae's book). If the punctuation is somehow creative or mimetic or kinetic but not a punctuatio...

Hi all, here's my take on the assignment. No excuses. But, I will share with you guys, who may or may not know this about me, that this assignment was harrowing because I have adult Night Terrors. On average, I remember intense flashes from between 3 and 10 very vivid (and often very violent) dreams a night, and many times I continue to see (hallucinate) the images once I wake up. This is coupled with sleep apnea, which prevents me from breathing through my shaking. When Night Terrors continue on in adulthood, they're sometimes associated with Schizophrenia or other mental health disorders, but luckily, I only see these images immediately after waking up. Here goes. These three segments are some sequences that have recurred, in different iterations, over several years. I miss and love you all. ________________________ I. the force Blindwhite screen fires its own light in a room so large the dark has walls. Click of a projector turning on. I am bound. There are no voices but ...

The theme shouldn't be that hard to ascertain. The dream has stuck with me for a while. I don't know if it's represented here in a way that I'm completely comfortable with, but it's a fairly honest retelling. Cheers. -B. untitled I am certain of nothing. The waking, the wet heat like a blanket, dis- oreinted wet, hot and close. I am certain of nothing, but the dream returns in fragments. I. Steel, or his arms, or the way they give nothing away. I'm sixteen and his eyes are cool, mirrors reflecting only themselves. II. He calls me closer and mind harrows the body: my symptom a stiffness, this stiffness a sickness; I want dear lord, I want. III. There is an innocence in the way we lie, almost chaste head to his hard-soft torso, his metal, flesh and tone his dog tags jingle when I reach for them. When I wake, I am certain only of the wetness, the slick hot heat as sticky as some fading dream.

I've been a bad rodder for a bit, my bad, but my internet is super super sketchy and thusly I haven't been able to really work on my piece for the assignment as I've wanted. As such, I'm extending the deadline to Thurs. but seriously guys, it has to be in by then. -B. ps. Feel better, K. pps. Enjoy SF, BigScary. ppps. Shower hot and shower long, Jim.

Hello, e'erybody. for our readership, we currently have one Rod moving to SF as we speak, via car, one Rod packing to move on Friday, one Rod living as a transient in Upstate New York, and one more actually learning and doing high intellectual thinking on a daily basis. We're going to become a bi-coastal rod soon, so be on the lookout for the dual-ocean hilarity that ensues. But if posts have been a little scattershot, that's why. Secondly, this assignment. I wasn't sure if we are supposed to provide a description of said dream, so I won't. Father Cyclops Blue Styrofoam pressed in with red wires stabbing out, a mother-of-pearl sphere dangling on the end. Galway, let me not chew chicken feathers again. Slats of wood arranged on pylons, jutting out over water, a saggy bridge, water shooting up between the cracks. My Father, eyeless and screaming on the end of the pier, the beating outsize pearl clutched in my hand. The mist turns bloody from exposure to the socket, th...

Sup, Rod? Wanna fcuk? Asl? Jk. jk. THE DREAMSCAPE ASSIGNMENT One of the cool things about dreams is how they stick with you, at least I think so. So for lack of a better assignment at the moment -- transmute with Rod a dream that you remember. Preferably the dream should be one that is over five years old. Something that has nagged at you, clutched at the dark bits of your psyche or has been glowing radiantly in the corners of your mind. I know you guys have dream-secrets, it's time to bust them out of the closet. The poems will be up by Aug. 4th. I'll send reminder emails/phone-calls/text messages if I have to. As for further parameters, I don't think that'll be necessary, we're all big kids now.

So admittedly I didn't use that many links and the poem is uber short, but I figured it was best to get something out after the assignment was left lingering for so long. The resulting poem is nonsense and written at nearly 7 a.m. after literally no sleep, a hangover, a four hour long phone conversation and several over goodies. Still, better late than never, eh? Parce out the meaning or don't, you're beautiful regardless. -B. No Boy No Cry 1. tough boy david copperfield once disappeared his wallet, made air of a thing while under the gun's solemn glare. His passport, keys, his whole life tucked into some tidy fourth dimension. Even as the gunman flees, the illusion creeps toward a kind of deft reality. 2. keep you, burnin' an old gyspy witch casts a spell full of apocrypha and dried dog shit throws the bones to the flame and slits the dog throatwise. She chants, she shrieks, a missive in the madness, calling the kindling, urging the burn. When it is said, it is don...

Hey all, this is going to seem super lame after the inordinate amount of time I took to complete this assignment, but no matter how hard I tried for a five-part epic, the poem wanted to be a one-hit-wonder. So I slaved over this little ditty and exchanged a lot of packets in my pursuit of inspiration. Some links I traveled to are at the bottom, though I lost track of many others. One prerogative: I'm trying to challenge myself to write longer lines. Nonetheless, sorry for the sleight of hand, and I think neither the poem nor the puns should be easily forgiven. Carry me there in concrete shoes The fop's a flop, Billie Jean: No one believes he's a Jackson. Daughter Darling does, at least, believe love is another sequined glove: ugly with the effort of animation where once was. Jack White makes a living off this knucklebeat, plays it so we can feel it fuck up our bloodheat. See, a synesthete of finger and fantasy can come pretty in the face of baseballsand flesh and feel ...

1, Part one. With sapphire toggles locked on my bootlaces, horse bedazzled and whinnying, the desert gets a little glam. I steal a cigarette from the cigarette tree, lighting with a quick scratch along the inner-side of my jeweled thigh. Far overhead, the eagle is just a lens flare. A series of light puffs polyping from blue. I melted down the harmonica for silver horseshoes. I made a nickel-wound pipe from the guitar. I took that nostalgia and froze it, dappled it like rhinestones along my eye-brows. Because the thing is, you have to look good, even if no-one’s watching. 2, Part two. Swathed in colorful-like materials I collect desiccated wood for the fire. I collect the skin of condoms, the bones of IUD’s, the diaphragms for a fire swathed in color. 3, Part three. The night skypalpates with heat thunder, the hum of woken bees playing decibel chicken against the flashing grounding strobes, shooting from grandiosities. I construct the kanji from the parts for swarm, for burst, for ambu...

I wanted to write something that dealt with the construction of gendered identities, so I did. It works within a specifically heterosexual lens, which is intentional. Yet, it's not totally critique. There's a kind of mesermizing aspect to the dance of gender: a formulaic, unsympathetic samba toward something monstruous, elegant and artificial. -B. Table of Context i. mater every woman must own a little black dress, must wear it’s simple shape with complexity, learn it’s secret: that every woman is her own secret stuffed into a silhouette. every woman must own a little black dress, must remember where it’s curves meet, feign simplicity or at least the shape of it, learn where to make room for secrets in a silhouette. every woman must own a little black dress, must tuck away the shape of her dreams, learn how to hold herself simply, secret the complexities into the shape of a silhouette. ii. pater a man is an elegy of wood and stone. a man is not allowed. a man is an elegy of b...

A moment of pause and applause for blogger and poet compatriot (and hey, it's also a 4th of July poem, and hey, it's not one of ours, but hey, it rocks anyway. I'm trying to dig up a recording of this...the text falters at showing his tendency to scare the beejezus outta you with the combust-shout-scream) Dream Song 22 Of 1826 John Berryman I am the little man who smokes & smokes. I am the girl who does know better but. I am the king of the pool. I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut. I am a government official & a goddamned fool. I am a lady who takes jokes. I am the enemy of the mind. I am the auto salesman and lòve you. I am a teenage cancer, with a plan. I am the blackt-out man. I am the woman powerful as a zoo. I am two eyes screwed to my set, whose blind— It is the Fourth of July. Collect: while the dying man, forgone by you creator, who forgives, is gasping 'Thomas Jefferson still lives' in vain, in vain, in vain. I am Henry Pussy-cat! My whiskers f...

In between daily arguments, a new part-time job, daily migraines, managing a visiting ex-boyfriend, etc. - well, let's just say over the last few days my online presence has somewhat diminished. Yet, I am unfailing in my commitment to this blog. So much so that I will get to work as soon as my work commitment for the evening is done. Peace. Love. Good Vibrations. -B.

so this has been heavily revised from the original, to become an entirely different poem, b/c without the form of the earlier version, much of the poem is rendered useless. the following is a potentially helpful diagram. It illustrates what exactly I mean by tetrahedral spiral. The poem is ideally a spiral divided into threes, forming three-dimensionally a tetrahedron (one of the strongest structures) except inverted and spiralled. The idea for the spiral and the poem came from kate's use of cochlea. an organ in the ear, the organ of corti, is responsible for much of the sensation of sound, but three things I liked that it does: mechanical transformation (pressurizing and amplifying vibrations), shearing (the surface of the little hairs that translates vibrations into "sound"), and recruitment (which is the technical term for shit like tinnitus - an unbearable and unnecessary rise in loudness). For the fluid, the medium substance passing through this organ, I used gender,...

Even though a certain Rodder, *ahem,hoo-ah,ahem* didn't subject hisself to Kate's assignment, I'm posting another for general cogitation. I've got a hunger my friends, and that hunger happens to be for badass poetry. Here it is: Optional Step 1) Get schwasted. Approved varieties: whiskey, Pabst, Carlo, or a $10 bottle of champagne 2) Go on a magical internets treasure hunt. The stipulations are as follows: a) A pastiche poem of sorts is to be made, blasted, molded, squeezed out of the treasure hunt. b) The hunt must be multimedia (I'm thinking the triumvirate of music, film, text; but play with this how you want). c) A search engine must be used in order to generate islands along your personal treasure map (this is so we aren't purposely going to sexy sites we've scoped out before). d) We google (or whatever) 5 of the same words/phrases to generate different websites to put on the map. These words/phrases are to be voted and decided on by this SUNDA...

This is super retarded, I know, but I can't figure out how to get my poem to publish with it's correct formatting to blogger. So i'm posting this picture, while I spend time trying to figure out what hoops I have to jump through. the form is a tetrahedral spiral, I just made up an impossible geometrical shape, I know, but that's what happens when Kate gives me an assignment like this. So, until I get it worked out (and I don't want to email it around, b/c that seems uber-lame), this is what I've got.

Kate!  I want to shake you with simultaneous frustration and giddiness.  This assignment was ridick.  Thanks for a good one.  I really do think I tried for the Olympics in this poem & it ended up over the top in a I'm-wearing-too-much-makeup-kind-of-way.  DNA + heredity + dance + silverfish + magnetism + repellence + well you get the idea.   heredities of silverfish i. fishing The dance was not simple rather felt with intention. The wonderbread like earthworms drooped limply on fish hooks. I really did catch fish like that planting differences out of the arms and reach, out of your neck ties lengthening the walls. ii. sticky Salsa is easier when produced from a distance.  A certain push frame repelling the arms it rests on. "You don't learn from touch,  just absence of touch." She showed me a current you can only ride in the chase away  or towards  the cultivated frame. iii. sliver but the halve has more work to do a further flair to coax; we align post to stars, ...

JonJon, B, ADC--you've inspired me. See it here. Some chaos from me to you. This poem was a real struggle to produce. Thanks a lot, self. I. the buzz she cleans up well, but not without a mess; just days ago, she ate her way out of a weevil. wasps are fools for the filling. tsk-tsk. cycle through. pop the skin. age. prick a partner, then again inject some eggs. the slow project quickly speeds ahead. the sway of summer whey, hips in heat, shush-shush. II. you go on ahead without cochlea, I'd come loud every time. escapee from the eardrum doldrums, the fruit bat divulges his secret to nocturnal feeding: with no sound there can be no unsettling. Pamplona's the only place Ms. Plath couldn't push balls-out past the bull. so what hibiscus pouts its pollen unabashed? fleur-de-lis, a design done up in more machination than B ü ndchen daily musters. mollusk-sting the achilles. sea-bottom out. sashay. sway baby, sway. III. we're past patina once fe...

So, I've started carrying my notebook to the gym because there are some neurons that only fire over cog-taut muscle fibers and daytime celebrity television. Oh baby. And, in addition to this extra time sweating & watching E, I've recently spent five hours at the Academy of Sciences' aquarium, an evening ogling the anthropomorphism of the pointy-breasted Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, and too many weeks leering at the lanky torsos of San Fran's Skeletor elite. With all this input, I've been musing on an assignment I know you three can demolish like no other: Write about the oddness of form, transubstantiate from flora to fauna and back again, get fired up about how jellyfish do dress-up, flirt with the eros if you choose but focus (ahem!) on the construction of style, gender, and jive across the organic world. If you want, talk about how these forms play at the imagination in the dreamscape, in art or music. Or, skirt the manied humanness of new machines. Me, I'...

Several N.B.'s: I found it incredibly hard (&emotional &soul shattering, but in the good way) to write this poem. God damn you Jon. +237 points for making me think like a motha fuckah and feel like a poet again. The only way I could conceive of this poem was visually, so for your viewing pleasure, I have attached a drawing of sorts (I'm really hoping this will score me at least 30 points). I saw the assignment as a magnet toward or away entropy, with the first and fifth sections edging on organized, rational, ordered. The second and fourth became increasingly chaotic--entropy at its sexiest. Followed by the middle section: absence/void/the black holy suck force. The way it came out was surprisingly Gertrude Stein-esque. In fact, the title was taken from the poem A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass, from Tender Buttons. I'll shut up now, because it's 2AM. I'm falling asleep & still deciding if this is the best way to look at it and if the theme I chose a...

Zion I(reflect.) the fridge, restless, gotten into wood grain, pressed, varnished an incompletion in the kitchen, cheeks of cornstarch and saffron, architect eye drifting, wandering, obscene the appliance uprising, the discarded army a rosary of sausage, the detritus of the Aesir, I find secret stashes in the subwoofer holes, bits of God, broken into chunks by beautiful air hammers. blue note(specific.) With water of body, from out of myself, I build a monument of blue coral for the broken of body. With a gauntlet of lionfish I fashion striped crowns. Within a pool of salt, burn eye-words with other, strap tin-fish to moans to make the world imperative. raised 4th(hosanna.) declare a bible, break this beast with rocks declare a pit of lions feed the Tigris God, do not delay in sending your prophet. the wolves are hungry and your arrows no longer slay flattened seventh(peak.) strap water jugs to seatbelts, ...

... sort of. Sorry guys, after much rewriting, I ended up breaking the rules; this is a four-parter in which one and four do the mirrored mamba, but I'm left out of the high-fiver symmetry. Deal with it. I love you anyway. Likeness I. Throat hoarse from swallowing the sword of my mother’s silence, too dumb to know I’m doom -struck too, I find nothing easy to be true. 1993. We visited Aunt Sue in southern Jersey where I stood gaping at a naked skeleton, picked clean by a painter’s brush, a coyote, a too-blue sky. What is that? I asked, afraid. Georgia O’Keefe, she said, She’s famous. It’s called Pelvis. Pelvis Two. I stuck out my tongue. Even then, I knew of the coyote, of how his hunger gnaws and gums, seduces, similes just a facsimile of tonguecell barbs. The smooth lick over the hook. Mother. II. Lonely as an unopened letter, clinging to your cotton sweater. 2008. We soaked in subfusc the day of his death until we both smelled of salt and sweet mea...

arguments on penetration Top (I) It’s not enough to want him open you have to pry, wrench, lie, spit, slide your tongue-sounds through his ear-holes, beg like wolf to pig: I will fry you in your own grease. It’s just enough to want him open, the rest is in the finger-mouth-epithet triumvirate, spitting dirt-coarse lies through powdered teeth, wolves are familiar with the things conceived darkly in estrus but pigs know their meat is sweet and salt to taste. Bottom (II) There are limits, but you do not know them, do not heed the ache if there’s more to stretch. There are limits and as you approach them you are full of light, eyes brave with light and lust when light fails. There are limits for the pig crying whee – the wolf knocking hard, blowing, houses bending, the tender meat tendered rough from the ham of the beast – satisfaction lies in the taste of the things prepared darkly. Flip (III) There is one language that flesh speaks: in grunts and gasps, sighs and shudders. ...