wake up, rod

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...