we are all good people and we love everything

THE AMERICAN CONDITION AND THE BODY OF RALPHA 1

2011-11-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

The condition of America was finally concluded in the year Future. Sometime in the nearest Future. At a steel convention meant to introduce Americans to the Future. This was the last in a series of desperate campaigns declaring the condition of American prosperity. The campaign was called "The Done Deal". America had run out of money and all the cowboys had been lined up and run through with bayonet. Groups of naked men held meetings in the forest. But the experiment of America was too proud and there was still more future to be made. And the future was RALPHA1.

The purpose of the convention was so that federal officials could beg for the steel men to support their efforts with RALPHA1. It was America's last spasm. "No more secrets, America," they promised, "We really mean it this time. We really want to make it work this time."

RALPHA1 was a bio-hydraulic arm displayed inside a giant glass encasing. RALPHA1 was revealed publicly as a machine of massive death. There would be no question as to who could survive the work of RALPHA1: no one. The thing that RALPHA1 was was a long industrial arm with skin but mounted on rolling tracks. It was a certain thing. It was a flexed bicep behind glass. And so RALPHA1 was born for America. And it was the year of Future -- they were sure of it.

This is how RALPHA1 worked: the bio-hydraulic arm would roll into a country and begin to shakes hands and give everyone high-fives. It would strum an electric guitar and play rock songs. It would stop wars and break the legs of carnivorous men. It would pass out clothes to the poor and give food to the hungry. After some time, however, all the rock songs would begin to sound the same and the clothes would arrive brittle and branded with corporate logos. The food would be modified into smaller and smaller units until it became ultraviolet light and nutrients were projected into their feeble bodies.

The next thing that would happen was this: after some more time RALPHA1 would suddenly withdraw all of its support from the region. No more brittle clothing, no more mutant foods, no more corporate logos. And there would be those who would hail this as the Future and who were willing to seize that burning sun. But they were unable to understand how free the rock songs had made them feel and how weak the ultraviolet food had made their bodies. And RALPHA1 would wait for them to begin fighting each other. Then it would roll back into town and smash everything into dust. The arm would beat on the earth like a drum making a sound calling for war, daring anything to shake its hand or to give it a high-five. The very special feature about RALPHA1 was its ability to moralize. It could decide if a high-five was snarky or if it was well-meaning. But the thing was that the RALPHA1 never decided that something was well-meaning. It was always evil and brown and it was impossible. It was impossible to live in America anymore. Everyone was implicated. And the only idea of national allegience was Byzantine terrorism.

But the steel men slumped down into their chairs, eyes rolled back, licking their lips. RALPHA1 was certain and when a thing is certain in America then it means it is a 'Done Deal'. All America ever wanted was a done deal. Instant liberty. Instant rights. Instant microwavable food. And when Americans have said 'Done Deal' it means 'This is something to help us keep surviving. This is something in which to invest devotion. This is something which creates our identity. We have put our treasure here and we hope that it is where our heart is also."

THE AMERICAN CONDITION AND THE BODY OF BOB DYLAN

2011-11-08T21:52:00.001-08:00

This is how the American condition was manifested: in the body of Bob Dylan. In the beginning the boy was young and strong and America was made up of a tame field of his hair. The first Americans, the ones learning how to feel, were able to run through the cornfield of Bob Dylan's hair and celebrate America with their feet. The sound of their running were hymns echoing forever on the Fourth of July. Hymns coursing over the surface of America. And Bob Dylan saw that it was good. And that America was good.

The first Americans, the ones still learning how to feel, saw the body of Bob Dylan as the body of themselves, as another part of their bodies. There was some hidden pool deep in the body of America and they were now able to drink from it. From the mouth of Bob Dylan, from the body of America. They could simply press their mouths onto his and then, there would be America. Justly delivered. So they would all stand in line to French-kiss the body of Bob Dylan and it was considered patriotic to give him a little extra tongue while your dad was watching.

And through it all the body of Bob Dylan continued to manifest the American condition and the first Americans, the ones who were were still trying but failing to learn how to feel -- these Americans stopped dreaming about running through the cornfield of Bob Dylan's hair and dreamed only of French-kissing the mouth of the body of Bob Dylan, or rather the mouth of the body of American. The thing that spoke loudest. The thing that ate the most glass. The thing that sold the most records.

And America became full of these Americans, the ones uninterested in feeling themselves (but with bodies and feelings that new who could blame them, really). The ones thinking too hard about what it meant to feel and how the world could be understood more complexly this way -- these people were born then. And they filled America but they could not understand the miracle. And the miracle was that they were young bodies in a young world. In America. But it was always something newer they wanted: whatever new thing they could get. And yet always thirsting for America. And for that water deep in the body of each of these First Americans.

And so they insisted on understanding it with their minds and ideas. They said they would understand all of it at once or none of it at all. And so they could no longer see America. They could not see that the body of Bob Dylan was getting tired. Tired of being America in the body of Bob Dylan and not simply Bob Dylan in body of America. And no one could see that his hair was turning wild and thick from all the electricity in his new albums. That it was growing like vines and overtaking the path back to the hidden pool deep in the body of America. So when the body of Bob Dylan became a Christian it was because he had been in a motorcycle accident and it was because America was confused. The path back to the hidden pool deep in the body of America was overtaken by Americans themselves, all standing in line to French-kiss their dads dressed in Army fatigues and weeping.

And Bob Dylan saw that it was all so fucked now. And that it was a new problem for a new body now. That America was no good anymore and that he had not been able to solve the mystery. That the body he was in would soon end. That God bless her but America, she would end too. And so the Jew cut off all of his hair and went wandering into the desert waiting for a cornfield to grow again there. Waiting for the desert to turn back into water. Waiting for America to pack up and move back to England, for all the dead Indians to wake up and take over the fast food industry, for more arenas to be built and filled with more and more Americans -- the kind that were through trying and failing to learn how to feel and to understand a world without precedents and traditions, without miracles. Because it was these Americans who felt compelled to use his body as their own. It these Americans who felt compelled to produce prime time network specials and to fry chicken meat in boiling vats of scalding oil.

HEARNEBRASKA.ORG

2011-09-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Interview at HEARNEBRASKA.ORG

SLOW GOSPEL

2011-08-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

Guest post HERE on SLOW GOSPEL.

BLOOD AND WATER

2011-08-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

You are asleep when your mother calls. You do not want to talk to your mother. You throw the phone away from you and go back to sleep. What is it that repels you from mother? When you were born your bodies knew the way, you were not told to find the teat, she was not told to hold that tightly. Yet here she is. The woman is calling you and it's 25 years later. The thing about blood is that it runs thicker than water.

When I close my eyes and imagine the collection of humans which I would like to call my family, they are not holding themselves in a way through which blood may run between them comparable to water. If my family were suspended in a giant glass container of amniotic fluid I would much prefer that fluid's being water as to it being blood.

THE KINGDOM IN NORTHROP FRYE'S GREAT CODE

2011-07-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

In the "kingdom" the eternal and the infinite are not time and space made endless ( they are endless already) but are the now and the here made real, an actual present and an actual presence. Time vanishes in Jesus' "Before Abraham, I am" (John 5:8); space vanishes when we are told, in an aphorism previously referred to, that the kingdom is entos hymon (Luke 17:21), which may mean among you or in you, but in either case means here, not there.

DEAR FRANK

2011-07-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

You are always wearing the same clothes. When I see you out the window you are wearing the same clothes. I am standing at the window not wearing any clothes. I am smoking a cigarette and trying to change your clothes. I am trying to obscure the sight of you by blowing smoke around your body.

I whisper to myself, "The smoke is coming Frank. I am not the smoke. The smoke is something else. But it is coming to change your clothes, Frank. You will wear new clothes."

Frank, you are the veteran of some war that never happened in a foreign country. It was war between you and your former wife when you found her in the bedroom and never went back. You were looking for a new shirt to put on maybe. Maybe there were sweatpants for you in the drawer. Maybe you were looking for some money and then you were going to ride the bus out to the mall and buy new shorts. But you've never gone back Frank, and I say Yes to that. You just keep smoking more cigarettes in front of your house. And I say okay good, don't look back, just look forward. Good. But when you look forward all you see is me standing at the window smoking a cigarette without any clothes on.

So Frank I swear to God, if you try to obscure my body with your smoke, if you try to change my clothes, I will put down this cigarette and walk down the stairs of my apartment. I will cross the street and stand up close to your face and I will point at your face and say "The smoke is coming for you, Frank. I am not the smoke. The smoke is something else. But the smoke is coming for you."

DEAD SYMBOLS

2011-07-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

"A symbol torn away from the transcendent experience that generated it is a morbid thing. It has died as surely as the body dies once the heart is torn out. The world we build from cadaverous symbols is the world of the dead--Blake's Ulro. The symbols are still with us; they must be as long as there is human culture--language, art, thought, all are crafted symbols. But dead symbols are counterfeits, in the same way a well-embalmed corpse counterfeits a live body. And just as a corpse becomes more grotesque the more it is painted to imitate life, so a defunct symbol only grows ghastlier the more desperately we labor to disguise its death with the pretense of life."

-Theodore Roszak, "Uncaging Skylarks: The Meaning of Transcendent Symbols"

FREDO CORELEONE

2011-07-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

Fredo Coreleone with the world like an older brother but in the form of a Catholic priest. Holding his head locked in hail mary. Licking the dust off of doorknobs, seeing if it was a new way to make them turn. Fredo Coreleone fancying himself a new generation of locksmith. But all the new books he read spoke nothing of doorknobs anywhere. Instead only passage for pilgrims who were not him. Into halls with windows and a dome cupped over a gathering of fire lanterns, just touching the vaulted arcs. It was a makeshift temple claiming sanctuary, making a home for all the prayers without homes. In the end a prayer is a thing lit and let lifted into the sky. But always just beyond more dust and a few more licks. Fredo Coreleone saying hail marys and casting his line into the water, waiting for Christ to call from the shore. Just one word from the old man so Fredo could cast his net of bones over the timbered hull and pull up bounty. A sack of gold and a crucifix shaped into a key. Something to unlock an underwater door marked by a ring of floating lanterns on fire.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

2011-06-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

TIME HAMMER

WOVEN SYMBOL

DUKE OF THE HAZARDOUS WASTEPOOL

UUVVWWZ

HUSBANDS

POWERFUL SCIENCE

BROTHERS FAMILY TEMPLE

GAMMA GOAT

THE SHOW IS THE RAINBOW

ROCK N ROLL COMBO

ROY ORBISON TRIBUTE

BOOM

2011-05-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

He calls himself an Ideas Man. I am an Ideas Man, he says. I make Ideas for you. He walks into interviews and looks around the office. He cups his chin and looks around. He comes up with three ideas. On the spot. And these are new ideas. Idea number One. The coffee table. Stand it on its side. Make it pillar for a blanket fort. Idea number Two. The paperweight. Pin a quilt down onto the desk. Now you've got a backing wall. Idea number Three. The stapler. Staple a few sheets to the sheet rock above the cabinet. A couple more into the plywood bookshelf. See what happens. See what you think. He cups his chin again. Idea number Four. And again on the spot. The water cooler. Make it a second pillar. Fort size doubled. Boom, he says. He stands in the office and looks at the man behind the desk. He whispers, boom.

THERE IS BOTANY

2011-05-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

At all times the world appears before the eyes the same. Just how it feels changes. There are bricks and dogs and there is botany. There are bodies of water, straight water, only miles of water. They are sometimes called lakes and they are sometimes called oceans. There are currents of electric frequency everywhere.

What a task. Being human in the middle of it. Dragging the body around. Taking it to places. Making lessons or making war. I used to think holding out was all it was. If you could stand in the river long enough, then something...

Just letting all that weight happen so that there would be the next thing. And the next thing was more weight. So you would hold out. Like a man. Breaking waves with your body like a hammer. Like you were building something. Like that was the next thing.

But I have it right now. I have the thing figured out. I mean in being. Not doing. Christ. Who the fuck knows of doing? Just of being. And even then only darkly. Like some distant ship in the rain.

When you have things figured out within its spirit and above its form, then you have stepped from out of the river. You are now feeling your own weight proper. This is the first time and you are feeling yourself standing on the earth, feeling your body holding your weight up on the surface of it.

And now is that task of walking around with this new lightness. The task of touching bricks and dogs and botany. Godammit, you're on the earth now. That's the next thing now. So you just need to be patient with it. You just need to work it in pace. Just let them figure it out. And remember to give them that space. The space to be and to do what they need to be and do in order to figure out the spirit of it.

BLACK DOG

2011-04-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

there is a black dog on fire in the yard
it does not understand
it does not understand the yard and the mixed blood air

the black dog flexes the muscles of its neck
they are dark ropes on fire
the black dog does not understand why the air smells like mixed blood

the dog shakes the body of a rabbit in its mouth
the rabbit shakes into air
holding up a mist of blood

there is a black dog on fire in the yard
it is a dark bull
it is a dim cave
it does not understand
what makes the air into blood
from the rabbit and the shaking
of its body in his mouth

YOUR BABY DOESN'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE

2011-04-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

AND YOUR BODY HURTS AND YOU FEEL STUPID AND DRUNK WITH WHISKEY AND YOU THINK I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEP ALREADY

3 STORIES

2011-04-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

MUSTANG

Eddie died smashed by his car. His car was red. He made sure of it. He polished the thing until it looked like a blood smear. The last time I saw Eddie he was still alive. He was wearing a white tank top. He was wearing his black hair slicked. He was holding his arms crossed behind his head. He was leaning back in his chair. He was staring up at the sky. It was night. I was drunk. He was stupid. He kept looking at the sky and talking about all the ass and tits in the world. He was talking about his children. He was laughing about my sister's ass. He was yelling about his ex-wife and her devil mother. He was talking about his car. He was talking about his shiny red car.

THE THINGS I MEAN WHEN I SHOUT 'AMERICA'

This is the best we could do.

It is not better anywhere else than here.

I am going to get drunk now.

I was born here.

I am really drunk now.

BRUCE LEE

The uncle is wrong in the head. They were all born together near Salt Creek. 10 children and one widow. The men became alcoholics and the women had nervous breakdowns. They were not born in America. Now the uncle lives in a hospital in Miami. He calls himself Bruce Lee. The widow does not speak English. She smuggled goods across a border. When the children go to visit him he remembers some things. The dog in the courtyard. The rat in the pantry. The steps to the bus stop. The son who is not the oldest is now the leader. He organizes trips to visit the uncle in Miami. The widow comes along. They all speak with the uncle in his room. He always asks about the dog in the courtyard. Is it still there? When they come home they forget it was a vacation. They think Maybe he will wake up someday. Maybe he will remember everything. The widow has his phone number posted on the refrigerator. Above it is written the name BROSS LEE.

CYLINDERS

2011-04-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

You understand color. You take it into your hands. You put it around your room. You look for a rhythm. You shape them together like cylinders. You place your hands on it. You feel it and understand the heat. You hold your hand above flame. You are blind and every color is a different flame with a different heat. You understand color because you understand heat.

Your face, it looks stupid when you eat. You don't know that people are disgusted when they see you eating, when they see you working to keep yourself alive. You offend rooms full of people when you walk into them. You know this because you can feel all the heat coming off of their bodies like flames licking all over you. You can feel all the swelling beneath the broadcloth or the flannel or the lace and the silk but it all feels just like fire pushing out some new heat.

You think of the world in cylinders because you are blind and no one has been able to explain to you exactly what cylinder is. They talk to you about sidewalks and revolving doors but no one knows how to describe to you the shape that does little else but be its own curious unit of matter. They use words like 'round' and 'cylindrical'.

And even yet, you understand cylinder like you understand color like you understand the cones and rods your body does not have a home for. You are cylinder when you do not stop at the recognition of color but at the understanding of it. You understand your form as any possible configuration in the universe and that a cylinder is simple one of those configurations but what the fuck is it then? What else is it except the thing no one can explain? What else is it but the exact fucking key to all of it? The thing that will bore into your head a cavity to be filled with cones and rods. A home from which to restore your sight but not your understanding of cylinder. Something that will show you color but not explain heat.

WINDOWS

2011-04-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

In my room there is a wall made up entirely of windows. The wall of windows is made up of four windows. The room has seven windows in all. The perfect number. And I want seven windows in my room so that everyone on the street can have the chance to see me because I am perfect.

THE KINGDOM

2011-04-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

The main character in my cosmic horror novel finds himself in a pickle.

I have invented this genre, cosmic horror.

I have invented the main character, an extension of myself, finding himself in a pickle.

The pickle is this.

The poor sap falls victim to a barrage of symbols.

It's true.

Suddenly (yes, suddenly); something like a door opens and everything spills out.

The poor soul experiences true despair in his flux through the Kingdom.

This is what he calls it.

He calls it the Kingdom and he uses it refer to everything, to the universe, to himself.

It becomes something like his catch phrase.

He says it so many times that by the end the phrase has gathered a momentum.

I read a story about singing lions yesterday.

The story went something like.

The lions find themselves in a pickle.

The cosmic horror genre suffered a serious blow in 1986 when I was born and grew up to inevitably invent it.

The cosmic horror genre used to be locked up behind something like a door.

The door was opened and the cosmic horror genre is what spilled out.

I turned my hand into a lock and opened the door.

Cosmic horror literature is marked by hands turning into locks.

And people bent over slinging their hand locks.

Cosmic horror literature is marked by the power of decision and also by the flux of the Kingdom.

The flux of the Kingdom is a central theme in cosmic horror.

Only when a character turns his hands into locks and comes to terms with his ever-changing identity within the flux of this Kingdom, is he allotted a new amount of horror with which to come to terms.

Now I am in pickle: when my character falls victim to a barrage of symbols the poor sap gives up.

He chooses to discontinue his learning in the universe.

He choose to turn his back on the Kingdom.

So in the end his dad is crying over his bruised body.

Beating his lock hands on his son's stupid unlearned body

Repeating:

"Boy, is this a pickle...."

HARD AIR

2011-03-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

1. Where I am and where my body will be. All the lessons for me are the ones in the ground. The direct correlative and ratio of my body. In molecules bending together to make me. The splendor and curvature of the earth. I lift my body up on the altar. When a human being takes his body up to higher ground, he is asking for the earth to push down on his brow and smother him into another consistency. This consistency is of hard air worked into. The spirit ascends. And look, everyone clapping at the other --at himself but at the other-- drinking, laughing, vomiting squares of green carpet.

2. Anything less than everything only deserves the consistency of vomited squares of green carpet: a foreign growth which must be cut from the body. When a human being cuts something away from his body, he is pressing hard air into himself, into his lungs, he is working his body into a consistency of lightness. Anything less than a consistency of lightness can only be the refraction of body sent into darkness.

3. Being in love when the spirit ascends and the bodies make waters, there, the diamond cave it is opened and inside of it is what, look, somewhere to be. There is room enough on this dark water to float a legion of tiny cups. Cups which are tiny enough to hold all the refraction of light after we make our arms together and form a sun. And there, all the light we need. All the diamonds telling the same story. There is even room enough here to place tiny candles inside the tiny cups covering the surface of the cold water so that, then look, more light. And we play the light over us because we are bodies of water. We are bodies of water and we know what to do with this light. We know how to send this light refracted into darkness and we know how to follow in the exact correlative of splendor and consistency.

FUTURE

2011-03-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

you were born and now

this is the future.

dream your body into a magnet

watch the shape of it spreading

collecting mass and minerals

spreading through the entirety

and then

this

you asked

where am I going

you asked

where am I

anymore

the place where you are now

is the answer you gave

exactly

and so, now

this

perfect

exact

Everything

and what else

what else but Everything

what else but manifestation

what else but YES

BEACHTURNER

2011-03-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

S L E E P E R W A T E R

T U R N I N G P A P E R

L I T T L E K I T T E N

O H T H E R E ! I C A N S E E I T !

S A V E T H E C O R N E R F O R T H E B L O C K

P A Y T H E M A N H I S D U E P A Y M E N T

I W A S T H E R E I N B O D Y

I C O U L D N O T B R I N G I T B A C K T O M E

BLACK GHOST

2011-03-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

D D B

2011-03-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

DEAR J--

2011-03-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

You old fool.

You impetuous young man.

You running-around chicken with your shooting jets of blood and your head cut off.

You slow usurper, quietly looking and then slowly taking in.

You small philosopher with your hands folded behind your back.

You humpback whale doing underwater what ballets do in the air.

You cratered diamond head.

You foaming beach surf.

You dreaming dreaming dreamer.

You pearl-bodied boy, collecting sand in your pockets.

You small clay dish and all the things you can hold.

You drunk stuttering poet.

You colored feather-being, of a body soaring with sky.

You deep cold ice cave with your great yawning maw waiting, waiting for Moses and his closing command.

You red-shingle roof with your collected family of collected roofs shining all the way to the harbor, all the way to the market, then beyond it to the sea.

You sun-baked razor blade, looking again to draw up blood, looking again to dry up in the sun, waiting again to divorce the wheat from the chafe, the goats from the lambs.

You orange-breasted bird, with your peals of perfume and all the melody of a hot-headed lover.

You skipping vinyl record and your cycle turning eternal, following before you the path set by the Lord.

You great great Beginning with your great grateful Ending.

You beloved archer: an impeccable visionary but a terrible aim.

You telling teller.

You patient lector.

You drunken doctor with your split lip precision.

You exiled wandering jew, wandering for all wanderers and exiled for all jews.

You single salt tear drop burning sizzled in the Son.

You dark brush beast, wounded and holding up your wound for all the dark brush to see.

You prism-eyed prince with your spectrum of refracted light pouring forever and ever down the magic eternal shore.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR 2011

2011-03-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

1. lay down there. go down there and lay there. go down to the part where earth is coldest. cleave into the arc of the it, into the arc of the earth. part smoke and lay down.

2. say PATTERN. scrape your forearms on the ground. repeat. continue saying PATTERN. get up and look at your forearms. look for PATTERN. while looking say LOCUS. see what pictures happen.

3. collect the dead skin from your arms. collect the earth you have parted. put them together. build a mountain from them. turn yourself beneath the mountain. ask yourself this. ask yourself: is this where i am? do this and then understand it. understand the fullness of it.

WOVEN SYMBOL

2011-03-06T00:48:00.000-08:00

PERFORMANCE AT CULTIVA COFFEE IN LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

PERFORMANCE AT CLAWFOOT HOUSE IN LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

FOREVERLY

2011-02-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

2011-02-27T11:03:00.000-08:00

WHERE ARE YOU NOW? YOUR FACE COULD SAVE MY LIFE.

-DAVE RASK "INTO THE NIGHT WITH CAPES ON"

WE IS BROTHERS

2011-02-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

WE IS BROTHERS! LOOKS AT US! WE USED TO BE THIS BUT THEN WE BECOME THIS.

OH HOW WONDERFOL!

WE IS BROTHERS! NO HAIR UPON OUR LITTLE CHESTS OR OUR FACES. ISN'T THIS WONDERFOL! AND THEN LOOK. THERE BECOMES HAIR UPON OUR LITTLE CHESTS AND OUR FACES.

WE IS BROTHERS! WE CAME FROM THE SAME BELLY. WE USED TO BE ROOMMATES. UTERO-MATES. NOW WE IS BATHMATES. FOREVER BROTHERS!

LET'S GET CLEAN!

LET'S CLEAN BECOMES BROTHERS!

OH MY BROTHER. HE IS DEAD.

...OH MAN...

2011-02-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

STAR PILGRIM

2011-02-24T17:09:00.001-08:00

I. BEING A SEEKING SEEKER THE SEEKER SOUGHT THE TREASURE

First you turn your body into gold. Call it Alchemy. Fusing the idea with the essence. The essence is a small dark cave. Self-sustaining light. The light is where gold comes from. Take turns polishing the gold. The process of turning bodies into gold takes the shape of a crucible. The crucible is filled with molten body. Call it Geyser. The reconfiguration of stars, the shaft of light is led to its proper resting place. Run light through, the crucible forming. The body, then, is filled with light, so that turning a mountain chamber, I send out a triangle.

II. BEING A DREAMER DREAMER THE DREAMER DREAMT OF PLEASURE

Sending out triangles the body turns anew. The chamber and the self-sustaining light. The more triangles, the more gold. Okay, okay. Now in there. In the deep. There is the cave which is small and is dark. There is the cave in which is Geyser. Geyser is a parallel. The match of it is Comet. Comet is a path of burning space matter in the void. Geyser is a path of exploding water on the earth. The way that Geyser was led here was Triangle. In the stars the geometry was sound. The path was made clear and its spirit channeled above the face of the deep.

III. BEING A SLEEPING SLEEPER THE SLEEPER SLEPT IN LEISURE

The crucible is a body filled with fire. When a body is filled with fire, fire must issue forth. Fire must collapse the remnants. With this: a train is born. A train is the only thing. It does not stop until it has reached a place. It is the only path for itself. It is something between Geyser and Comet. The path between sent out Triangle falling from the sky, rolling across the entire country. The path of Triangle rolling across the country formed a crucible into the land and filled it with its body. Laid out in reconfiguration. Minerals reconfigured and laid out, taking the form of train tracks and the only thing. The only thing continuing forever.

SUNDIAL

2011-02-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

it seems the east is changing

the earth is becoming something else

i am standing very still on the earth

i am sitting on my bed in my room

it used to be the sun came in through these windows in my room

now it seems the sun comes in through these windows in my room

the earth is changing, these things happen

eventually the earth will change so that east will no longer be east

it used to be polaris that was the north star

then the earth changed and now it is some other star

and so my body is changing

and the east is changing

and this must be okay.

by the time the changing is finished, by then my body will have also have changed.

in the morning there are new shadows

that my body is making.

asking the body what shadows

it is making is useless.

the body will do as the body will do.

there is no use treating the body as a sundial.

there is nothing certain about the body except

that using the body as a sundial will change.

i find my body in a dark room

and my shadow drapes across it.

being velvet i am turned dark:

this is a reoccurring dream.

GROCERY

2011-02-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

I. The disabled elderly couple follow each other through the store in wheelchairs. One of the wheelchairs is motorized. The other is not.

II. The woman with crazy eyes and dark jelly hair says to the young man "God, the coke was so good back then..."

III. The unaware co-worker makes sure to say goodbye to everyone when she leaves.

IV. When the morning is cool, the supervisor leaves the sliding doors open. The employees gather around it.

V. The assistant manager is a wise old woman. When she is dead, what will happen?

VI. Meeting time. The young man is late. Oh no, he is in trouble.

VII. Working more hours is choosing to be shit on. It is also choosing to make enough money to leave town. Which one is better?

VIII. Hungover.

IX. Dead in the head. Off work at 3. What is there to do anymore?

X. The young man wakes up in the morning. He has work at 4. He lays in bed all day and reads comics.

THINGS TO DREAM ABOUT

2011-02-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

1. apples and snow

2. thatchwork of branches

3. bukowski

4. smoke on water

5. cobblestone

6. notebook

7. glass of scotch

8. underneath stairs

9. black haired woman

10. full desert moon

LITTLE JESUS COMES TO TOWN

2011-02-17T21:30:00.000-08:00

WHEN LITTLE JESUS COMES TO YOUR DOOR YOU FIND THAT YOU ARE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO. LITTLE JESUS IS WEARING SNEAKERS. HE IS WEARING A BACKWARDS BASEBALL CAP. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE SON OF MAN IS WEARING SNEAKERS AND A BACKWARDS BASEBALL CAP?

WHEN LITTLE JESUS ASKS YOU FOR A QUARTER YOU FIND YOU ARE NOT SURE HOW MUCH CHANGE YOU HAVE ON HAND. YOU REALIZE YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO GIVE MONEY AT THE STORE SO THAT YOU WILL RECEIVE BACK CERTAIN MONIES IN CHANGE. AND SO NOW YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY CHANGE ON HAND. WHAT TO DO WHEN LITTLE JESUS ASKS FOR CHANGE BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY CHANGE ON HAND?

THEN YOU ASK LITTLE JESUS FOR HELP. HELP ME MAKE CHANGE AT THE STORES WHEN I GO TO THEM, LITTLE JESUS. HELP ME TO DO SO, LITTLE JESUS. AMEN. AND YOU PRAY THIS PRAYER BECAUSE ANY TIME YOU TALK TO LITTLE JESUS IT MUST BE IN PRAYER.

SO LITTLE JESUS THINKS FOR A WHILE AND PRAYS BACK TO YOU:

OKAY, HE SAYS. I WILL HELP YOU.

A BLUE TARP WITH STRING AND STAKES IN THE GROUND AND THEN LOOK, LITTLE JESUS IS CAMPING OUT ON YOUR LAWN. LITTLE JESUS MAKES A FIRE AND ROASTS A PIG. SHOUTS FOR EVERYONE TO JOIN HIM. LITTLE JESUS GOES AROUND NEIGHBORHOOD. PERFORMS LITTLE MIRACLES FOR CHANGE THROUGHOUT NEIGHBORHOOD.

I. LITTLE JESUS WALKS ON WATER SKIS.
II. LITTLE JESUS TURNS WATER INTO BRINE.
III. LITTLE JESUS FEELS A LEPER.

AND LOOK, NEIGHBORHOOD SAYS OKAY. NEIGHBORHOOD CURLS LITTLE JESUS UP IN ARMS AND GIVES LITTLE JESUS A BOUNTY OF CHANGE. AND SO LITTLE JESUS AND NEIGHBORHOOD EAT ROASTED PIG ALL DAY AND COUNT OUT ALL OF THE CHANGE.

AND WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO WHEN LITTLE JESUS PRAYS THAT HE WILL HELP YOU MAKE CHANGE AT THE STORES BUT INSTEAD CAMPS OUT ON YOUR LAWN AND NEIGHBORHOOD GIVES HIM CHANGE. HOW HAS THIS BECOME THE WAY THAT IT HAS NOW BECOME? SO YOU TO GO FIND LITTLE JESUS AND THEN HE IS WITH NEIGHBORHOOD AT HIS TENT AROUND A CAMPFIRE MAKING FOOD.,MAKING ROASTED PIG AND LITTLE JESUS IS CHEWING AND YOU KNEEL SO YOU PRAY:

LITTLE JESUS, YOU PRAY, WHY DID YOU ASK ME FOR A QUARTER WHEN YOU KNEW YOU COULD RECEIVE IT ALL FROM NEIGHBORHOOD? WHY HAVE I PRAYED TO YOU TO TEACH ME AND THEN WHY DID YOU SAY THAT YOU WOULD TEACH AND THEN YOU DIDN'T? WHY, LITTLE JESUS? WHY?

AND LITTLE JESUS LOOKS AT YOU FOR A LONG WHILE. HE LOOKS AT YOU AND HE LOOKS AT YOUR FACE. AND HE STARTS TO SHAKE HIS HEAD. OH NO, LITTLE JESUS IS REALLY SHAKING HIS HEAD. AND NOW HE IS CRYING. OH MAN HE IS REALLY CRYING NOW. NEIGHBORHOOD HAS NOT NOTICED YET. NEIGHBORHOOD IS STILL EATING ROASTED PIG.

AND SO YOU PRAY, I AM SORRY LITTLE JESUS. I WILL NOT HURT YOU ANY LONGER. PLEASE, I AM SORRY. PLEASE DO NOT CRY. FORGIVE ME BECAUSE I KNEW NOT WHAT I DID AND SO I WON'T DO IT AGAIN, IS THAT OKAY LITTLE JESUS? I WON'T, I PROMISE.

BUT LITTLE JESUS STAMPS HIS FEET AND CRIES LOUDER. AND NEIGHBORHOOD STOPS EATING ROASTED PIG. NEIGHBORHOOD WIPES MOUTH AND STANDS UP AND LOOKS. LITTLE JESUS IS SHAKING AND NOW LOOK! HE THROWS HIS LITTLE HAT DOWN AND HE STOMPS ON IT TOO. AND LITTLE JESUS CHEWS ANGRY-LIKE. HE CHEWS AND HIS LITTLE EYES ARE NOW VERY BIG. AND HE POINTS HIS ROAST PIG LEG AT YOU AND HE SHAKES IT. LITTLE JESUS SHAKES THE ROAST PIG LEG AND HE PRAYS BACK TO YOU:

Y.O.U. A.R.E.N.O.T.H.I.N.G.
Y.O.U. W.I.L.L.D.I.E.V.E.R.Y.S.O.O.N.
A.N.D.T.H.E.N.T.H.E.R.E.W.I.L.L.B.E
R.E.J.O.I.C.I.N.G.

2011-02-13T22:21:00.001-08:00

with the space between us
and our heads touching together
we make a sanctuary,
we fill it with our covenant.
we seal it with the tips of our wings.

øøøøøøøøøøøø

2011-01-29T22:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Radiant Being.

I am writing to you by way of the earth. By way of the object, the sound, the thing. I am writing to you by way of reconfiguration. I am writing you by way of Geyser, by way of Smoke and of Water pouring from the ground. I am writing to you from the land of Burned Throats. I writing you from beneath Ground and also from above it.

I am not afraid. A cool wash has swept into my throat and brushed out all the burning. I have escaped Smoke and Water. Now placed at the mouth of Geyser. And no sound, only singular tones. Dark open tones. And then tiny waves sent spreading into the openness, sent out in black lines across the surface of the earth. Dark hair done into tight thin braids covering. Sending Water and Smoke to pour. Sending in its place holy Geysers. Sweeping out cool washes to brush out all the Burnings.

This is how any of us will learn. Only by way of the earth. Only by way of Geyser, by way of holy tones. Only in stuffing dark hair down into Burned Throats.

A formation of tiny dark waves meeting a formation of black lined hair.

A burned throat is only a place where fire used to be. It is a place which forced out Smoke and Water. A place of sending and black lines forming spreading from the fire of it.

I do not fear you, Radiant Being. I am only the exact equal of you, the complete proportion and sweep of you. You may touch me and kill me and so might I kiss you and sing you. So might I send out dark waves from my own mouth. So might I send you a small message, riding on the dark crest of them.

Radiant Being, I am not afraid of you but I do Fear you. Your collection of open tones and your broken claw passing over my face. I will lay still for you. I will only watch your black hoof hovering above me. I will lay still and I will watch you pass over my bed. And I will not speak when you brush with your wash all the small burning and dark hair from my throat.

IN YES,

b r o t h e r g h o s t

IT USED TO BE CALLED 2006

2011-01-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

DO YOU REMEMBER 2006?

I BELIEVE I CALLED MY BODY 2006 IN 2006.

I BELIEVE I LIVED IN A TWO-BEDROOM FLAT IN 2006.

I BELIEVE I TOOK THE BUS TO WORK IN 2006.

I BELIEVE I TOOK THE BUS AND THEN THE METRO TO WORK IN 2006.

I BELIEVE THE ROUTE TO WORK WENT LIKE THIS IN 2006:

FIRST I TOOK THE BUS AT THE STOP NAMED 'U PAMATNIKU',

THEN I RODE THE BUS TO THE RED LINE METRO STATION 'FLORENC',

THEN I TOOK THE METRO TO 'HLAVNI NADRAZI',

THEN I WALKED THROUGH THE PARK WITH GYPSIES SLEEPING,

THEN I WENT UP IN A GLASS ELEVATOR,

THEN I WAS AT WORK

IN 2006

NOW IT IS 2011.

I DO NOT RIDE A BUS OR METRO TO WORK IN 2011.

I WORK AT A CO-OP GROCERY STORE.

SOMETIMES I WALK THERE.

I AM A CASHIER.

I STAND IN A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE COME TO TALK TO ME.

I ASK THEM HOW THEY ARE FEELING TODAY.

I ASK THEM FOR MONEY AND THEN I ASK THEM TO LEAVE.

EVERY DAY I HAVE A 30-MINUTE BREAK.

GOING UPSTAIRS TO THE BREAK ROOM

I IMAGINE MY BODY ENCASED IN GLASS

RISING LIKE AN ELEVATOR TO ANOTHER PLACE

I IMAGINE MY BODY IN 2006.

GRACELAND

2011-01-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

Dear C--

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar. I was following the river down the highway through the cradle of the Civil War. I was going to Graceland which is in Memphis, Tennessee. There seemed to be a great number of people headed there: poorboys, pilgrims, and families. I felt good to be headed there with my traveling companion, Harper. Nine years old and the child of my first marriage. It felt good to be headed to a place named Graceland.

I thought of her as I drove. Harper's mother. She stopped by the other day. She wanted to tell me she was gone. She said it as if I didn't know it, as if I hadn't been sleeping alone in our bed. Seeing her reminded me how I miss the little things; like watching her wipe her hair from her forehead. She said something about how losing love is like a window to your heart. Everyone could see all the shit inside. I was difficult to be around. Blowing out a lot of cold wind.

But there I was. Going to Graceland. And it felt good to come back to that thought. I was headed to a place named Graceland and so were a lot of other people. It felt good. I was on my way and soon I would be there. I can't really explain it.

Love,

Paul Simon

COLORED COLORS

2011-01-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

a color the color of colored colors

i do not trust a person with dark-colored hair and eyes the color of colored colors

cold feet turn a color colored blue

i do not trust a person with dark-colored eyes and feet the color of colored blues

a loud drunk color

a stupid loud drunk color

SINKERS

2010-12-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

I said, 'Who's that woman coming this way?' and he said, 'I don't know who she is but I'm going to kill her' and then he makes little boats with his eyes all lashed up-like and to a dock and they're floating on dark water, just bobbing up and down, waiting for more water; just little boats making war, making traffic with the earth, filling up the world's ears with their mournful sounds, and really intending it. Intending on killing this woman walking toward us under the bridge and away from the men at the waterfront. We sink into the stone of the bridge like we've learned to sink into the stone of things before, placing our backs deeper and deeper into shadow, waiting for our shadows to fumble over each other. Then, in my head, the structure of the thing sinking into a lake and the material of it crumbling down to where we put our backs down into a deeper darker wall but made of mud and of the very bottom.

FOR ISRAEL :: LOVE TEAL

2010-12-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

We were born this way, into a hundred years of a house, that kind of legacy, which sticks to yr skin as with soft water & as with signs of aging. In the old days, things were carved out of stone to remember the being hard -- to remember how it is to be a solid form. Before birth, even conception, there is a frenzied state of solidity. It is so solid that there are no questions about it. Solid. However, the house fits in. It's perfect: all that needs to preface that is this:

"Every dream is a solid trust." And it looks like this:

"Four walls, ceilings tall, windows and doors, always the floor... and the head: The head of the house."

Reach out to your corners and sift the collected dust there. Who's skin cells mingle with what flavor & tobacco? But, with all due respect, let's remember the rowdy clans of dust until tossing them, finally to the water.

A BEATLE'S CHRISTMAS

2010-12-24T20:22:00.001-08:00

Hello, this is Ringo Starr wishing a very deep and happy and ultimately fulfilling Christmas to everyone in the entire world, on the entire planet, no one excluded and I really mean that. I want to, for the first time, say a thing that I really mean to all of humans, not as a Beatle or as a celebrity but as just another little person who is understanding a little more every day and trying, really trying, to just be here and love people and take care of them. I want really to get past all the bullshit of who I am and what you think I've done and I want to tell you that I really truly hope you have good and happy holidays full of joy. And that if you drink, then get drunk and if you pray, then keep praying. And if you are just at home by yourself in your room sitting on your bed and looking at your hands feeling stupid, I want to tell you that there is someone trying to make peace for you in the world and that that peace is for everyone and that 'everyone' includes you and that it includes me. And everything I have ever written touches nothing and has never even come close to really saying what the thing of the matter is, what the truth of it is, and the truth of the matter is who gives a shit about Christmas? And that it's not about Christmas right now, this thing that I am doing. Wishing good wishes isn't for Christmas or for Christians or for America and it's not for feeling better at the place that you are staying at right now. It's not about days that are holy or vacation time or academia or fuck--I mean jesus, in my twenties I was absolutely convinced that I had it all figured out. I actually thought I knew exactly how the world worked and I knew what religion was and where it came from and I knew about the vastness and about the world and about what was important and I knew exactly what needed to happen and I was just so fucking sure of it and I would drink a lot of wine and scream and live like shit. But after so many years, just years and years, of getting knocked on your ass and looking around at all the people walking around above you and just knowing that goddammit, this can't be it. This can't be all of it. And you just fucking, okay fuck, I'm so drunk right now, okay.... I guess what I mean is that everyone eventually figures out that you will only arrive at the same conclusion for the rest of your life: that you don't really know anything, that you never really knew, that you had no idea what was going on and that everything you've left is only a embarrassing testament to that and so just fucking keep going, keep leaving things behind, don't try to worry about it, don't try to change anything, just understand that, that we are all okay and just that's it, there's really nothing more so fucking merry whatever to you, bless yourself, bless your friends, and fuck--go get laid or something.

FRUIT HAMMOCK

2010-12-14T10:51:00.001-08:00

I want to make a sound like ......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm

I want to fill the void with the sound......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm

Together rock and ice make up a comet and yes, okay, I want to make up a comet of ......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm

My head is falling in, there is a soft spot here. Lifted in hammocks filled with fruit and pushing it makes a banana sound. The banana sound is something like a small planet breaking. The planet is stupid. I don't understand.

I am snowing the layers of head. I am breaking apart my head. I am spilling out ice and water. I blow the water into snow, send it out on waves. The waves spill out like serpents made up of ......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm. Filling up the void.

I am a golden symbol floating up in weak air. I am a banana falling apart in slow motion. I have descended before the apostle. The comet is the coming of the Lord. I follow the trail of ......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm. A turning of water. The breaking apart of the void. The apostle standing at the edege of the water of the waves of the ......mmm.....mmmm.....mmmmm.

3 AFFIRMATIONS AND 1 DENIAL

2010-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

MAKE MAKE MAKE

I MAKE YES TO YOU

YES YES YES

I WILL MAKE YES TO YOU

AFFIRM AFFIRM AFFIRM

I WILL AFFIRM YES TO YOU

I DO NOT KNOW HIM

I DO NOT KNOW OF WHOM YOU SPEAK

I HAVE SAID THAT I DO NOT KNOW HIM

FUNERAL

2010-10-20T17:04:00.001-07:00

this is how i want my funeral to happen. these are the wishes that i wish to be fulfilled.

the day of my funeral will be a bright day and there will be sun. the windows will be open and clean cold air will blow in. my bedroom will be cleared of all belongings to be either given away or destroyed. my body will be laying in the center of my room and draped in loose white robes. teal gardner will be the official chanteuse for the occassion and will play a improvised song on ukelele for approximately 3 hours without stopping. the attendants will go up to stairs to my room one or two at a time to visit my body and kiss my forehead. then my father will lead out the congregation in unison to read walt whitman's poem 'excelsior' while women knit my entire body in golden thread.

EXERCISE

2010-09-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

1. Extend two beams of light perpendicular to your body

2. Retract light burrow into your chest

3. Extend two beams of light angular with your head to your feet

4. Retract light as a sphere, place it within its cavity

5. Project a sphere: parallel and placed to extend

2010-09-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

PARTICLE ZINE

MESSAGING 45

2010-08-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

WHEN YOUR SPIRIT TREMBLES BEFORE THAT WHICH IT CANNOT UNDERSTAND AND YOUR HEART LANGUISHES BEFORE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THAT WHICH ANNIHILATES ANY THING ELSE....

GOD CAN BE IN YOU AND HE CAN BE IN YOUR HAND AS IT GIVES BREAD TO HE WHO HAS ASKED FOR IT. IN YOUR LIPS: WHEN YOUR WORDS UPLIFT THE GODDAMNED. IN YOUR EYES: WHEN YOU PERCEIVE THE PATH AND KEEP OTHERS FROM FALLING INTO THEIR DARKNESS.

MILKFRUIT

2010-08-06T00:08:00.001-07:00

1. Pass rosemary through my body. Understand your hair in spearmint water. Float out the black ropes. If you float my body over spearmint water you will understand my hair as dark brothers. Drag twelve ropes through a patchwork of rosemary. Make a brother out of your body. Kneel and understand where you are.

2. Pass black rope through my body. Understand a family of brothers only watching. Then, let it become my hair floating up to you in spearmint water. If you kneel in a body of water you will understand how mountains begin. A patchwork of ropes pulled under. A patchwork of rosemary passing through spearmint water.

3. Pull brothers apart from me. Pull me until brothers come from me. Understand them as mountains beginning. If you pass my body through spearmint water you will understand my hair as mountains beginning. You will understand them as a patchwork of brothers. Fill my mouth with rosemary and sleep me down in a spearmint patch.

VISION #1

2010-08-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

I was born under a bridge in the mouth of everything washed down from the eternal shore. I knew that I had actually come from somewhere upriver and around the bend but that this place, under the bridge, was where I had been born. I sat with a man talking on the shore, listening to the river pass over stones and rocks. And there we were in the muck of things. He watched me crawl and dance around the rocks. He told me to write something down but I was vibrating. I was humming like a crystal chord and I could not think of anything more important to document than: I LOVE YOU. I could see upriver something amassed and slowly swelling down to us. I pointed at it and told him that it was Death. He asked me what was downriver and I told him that we didn't know but we'd be there soon enough. I pointed at the graffiti and told him that we were right in the muck of things, that we were right in the cave of man. He asked me if I wanted to swim so I took off my clothes and swam with deep deep joy. I flicked up water into the sun and watched it come down in diamonds. We named rocks and dropped them all into the river.

Then he asked me if I wanted to take a walk so I put on my clothes and we went into the forest. Somehow I knew that he was Michael the Archangel and that he was leading me upriver, where I came from. I knew that he was leading me back to the Garden of Eden. He told me to put on my shoes but I told him that I did not want to and he said 'okay'. We took a long path through the forest learning a great number of things. I followed behind the Archangel in full trust of his direction. I asked him what his named meant and he told me 'He Who Is Like God'. Then I asked him what my name meant and he said 'The Chosen One'. I told him he was wrong and that my name meant 'He Who Wrestles With God'. He did not say anything but continued walking. I left my body following him many times and my mind wandered elsewhere to learn great and valuable lessons. Everything was on its path. It was all going somewhere. I saw that no one was different than a comet tearing through the sky. Everyone had a equal mode of trajectory. And every time I returned to my body after I had learned something, it was always with a great and violent breath as if I were being knocked back into my vessel.

We hiked for miles but I never felt tired. Once I even paused to give out a great echoing bellow. When I turned around I saw the Archangel was filming me. I became savagely angry. I told him that he was not allowed to do that. I said "No man should have to remember his voyage." And he said "Just the important parts." From then on I did not trust him as I had before. We continued hiking until it became clear that we were lost. I felt stupid for following this man into the forest. I felt stupid for trusting him. We found another bridge and he told me to stay under it while he looked around. I paced under the bridge while drawing circles around my body in the sand.

Then I heard my name be called. I walked out into the light and Michael the Archangel was standing on a hill with the splendor of the sun calling me up to a high place. I was afraid to ascend to him but he seemed impatient so I went up to him. We crossed the bridge while cars flew past us and I was very afraid. He said we were okay. He kept saying that we were okay. I asked him where we were going but he would not answer me. We finally arrived at a trainyard where he was trying to get his bearings straight. I heard a train coming in the distance and I asked him if I could hold onto his pack. He agreed but when the train came through, the sheer terror of that machine tearing through the earth made me pull hard on his pack. He pushed my hand off and walked away. I sat down and tried to make a home for myself. I began to draw circles around me in the sand. I was completely alone. The darkness of that solitude was so complete and total I was afraid that I would die. I was afraid that I would kill myself. I heard another train headed toward me again with its terrible soul-crushing noise. I began a deep long struggle with myself. I saw a darkness so deep. I knew if I gave into it I would lay down on the tracks. The insanity of that loneliness was total and complete. I knew I could never survive. And as the train flew by me I drew another circle around my body in the dust and repeated to myself that I was okay. I just kept repeating that I was okay.

LOUFFA PRESS BENEFIT: "MUST-ACHE"

2010-07-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

FER∆L T∆PES

2010-07-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

FERAL #1

A: Wagner Israel Cilio III

B: Hudson Gardner

FERAL #2

A: John Freidel

B: Dave Ozinga

HOUSE

2010-06-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

House sleeps and
cries and feels
near the ocean.

Made of wood
warped and salt
pinned to an overhang
fastened with cobwebs.

And near the ocean
with triangles for windows
above masses of stone.

Also held together with cobwebs
but made up of salt
and foam.

MARIA CHAVEZ

2010-06-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

MY FATHER

2010-05-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

once held
a broken bottle
to the neck of a man
at a bar
because they
would not
allow him
to leave.

GEORGE COSTANZA

2010-04-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

1. If I name my child Seven it follows that you will name your child Soda and if I take dainty leaps over water it follows that you will call me Mary. And if paper ever touches my fingers it becomes the venom parchment I use to send out my wedding invitations.

2. My eyes are the mothers of dimes and raccoons: I spot both prodigals without the use of corrective lenses. Blind men place their trust within me and when they take hold of my elbow I carry them out into the street.

3. If I treat my body like an amusement park smoke appears and I am led to clear a path through clowns and women. It is no simple task to live with myself. I sense myself tiring of this vessel. I sense myself shifting and swelling within this place.

4. My love she named Risotto and as portioned it never satisfies. My outfit I named Morning Mist and to the subtle observer I am a dense forest of bland fabrics and neutral weaves.

5. I unlock my jaws extending my face parallel to the earth. This is what my body looks like before I vomit a balloon. This is what my body looks like before I take a vacation from myself.

6. I dream of sex with a giant. In my dream the giant keeps asking for a cafeteria sandwich. I notice the giant begins to resemble a giant doll, and then a giant doll resembling my mother. I begin to cry. My giant doll mother opens her giant doll mouth and releases a small procession of wild dogs.

7. When I take a vacation from myself I grow a mustache and go by the name Arturo. I pretend to be an out-of-work porn star. I decide to visit Holland but instead become confused and visit the Netherlands.

8.This is what my body looks like before my ass is sewn to my face.

9. My hands were dipped in gold and I made a home for them inside of a balloon filled with light and diamonds. I made a list of everything I had made a home for: a skull for my brain, a plastic thing for my comb, a wallet for my money. A boy drifted by in a bubble and he named me Motherfucker.

10. I am the architect. I am the creator of a latex empire. I am the lifter lifting from my mouth the brightly colored balloons. I am the marine biologist. I am the healer of choking whales. Giant twisting masses coughing on the shore. I am the extractor of obstrusions.

11. And sometimes I find myself standing in the sky with a cluster of balloons blooming from my open mouth. I grip a small cloud in my right hand until it cries black rain. It is in these moments that I contemplate the essence of my work.

12. The essence of my work is that of cutting my own seed from out of the belly of the earth. It is of splitting myself into two small projections of something I would call a house and something I would call a relationship. And there is a space in my mouth in which to do so. There is a space in my mouth in which to tie balloon strings around my teeth. And I have found that walking with your face parallel to the ground does exactly everything it takes to make you believe that people are walking on the ceiling.

OH DEAR

2010-04-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

p.s. does anyone read this anymore?

DREAM #29

2010-03-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

I saw a burning pine cone floating on a black lake.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

2010-03-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these form of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving....

The real important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

Excerpt of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Kenyon College

THE FUTURE

2010-02-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

when i become the person that one day i wish to be i will be able to look at a cup and think about all the people who have ever drank from this cup and write down their names on a piece paper and repeat their names quietly to myself.

when i become the person that one day i wish to be i will not have to ask the question 'do you hate me?' in order to find out if anything is wrong with someone who is not talking to me at that moment.

when i become the person that one day i wish to be i will dig small cold holes in a field and wait until an animal breaks its leg in one of them so that i can turn my head and look out at the water.

<<<<<< DARBOLISTIC REX >>>>>>

2010-02-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

just finished my contribution to a monster double-tape compilation by DARBOLISTIC REX in iowa city. the compilation will be called A PAIRING IN DISORDER.

basically, the project is being funded at the moment by preorders. so in order to really put out the tape like they want they're going to need some more preorders. this is an email i got explaining it:

basically we're seeing how far we can go with the money made from the preorders. i figure most will go towards postage of sending the artist copies out, which is spread upon the northern hemisphere. then we have to get tapes and supplies. i already have some blank tapes, but if the total time is longer than my longest then i'll have to order a lot of new'uns. and screen printing supplies.. okay, i typed more than i meant to, but you get the picture, the more people that preorder, the cooler the final product. already it is looking and sounding quite uniquely varietal, i hope you are excited, because i am. if there's a message to take from all this glib, it is to tell a few creatively supportive friends who encourage what you do about the compilation. post it on any forums or whatever you use to spread and discuss info.

in addition to this my track is kind of pushing the 5-minute limit which means that there might not be enough room on the tape for it (longer cassette tape length = more money). the release will be hand-made and something you will be proud to be the owner of unless you would not like to be the owner of a small dried flake in a box.

i think it will be very worth your money by getting, like, 50 songs from unknown artists for only $11.

PREORDER HERE

A NOTE I FOUND TODAY IN A MAGAZINE

2010-01-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

"A man is lying on a bed in a room. It is a winter day. The window in the room is open. There is a dresser in the room with a glass on it. The glass contains a diluted red solution.

-What Happened-"

DREAM #28

2010-01-26T06:57:00.000-08:00

i was standing in a room with giant windows looking out at a square of bright grass on a snowy landscape.

ERIC BAUS

2010-01-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

Tuned Droves by Eric Baus is a small bright and brilliant little flame.

DREAM #27

2010-01-20T07:17:00.001-08:00

I.

I was in a foreign country with my brother and my family. We had come disguised as missionaries. There was some great thing that had to be done. We were traveling through the country meeting people and trying to talk to them about revolutionary ideals. We would stay in fancy hotels and hike all day. During one of our expeditions we were told the police were searching the area for us. We tried to make it back to the hotel that night but could not outrun them. We knocked on a stranger's door and asked if we could stay. He said yes and later turned out to be Fidel Castro. We become good friends with Fidel Castro. We left the next day back to the fancy apartment. Our parents sent us on a mission. We would plant a bomb to reset time. Fidel Castro would do what he was supposed to. We traveled through the forest and stayed with Fidel and his wife. She was very nice. The next morning we drove a van to a national forest and planted the bomb inside of a hollow tree. We drove away and down the road there was traffic. There was a commotion and cars attempted to turn around. Then a blinding light and everything was spinning.

II.

I woke up driving a car at night through a busy city. Everything was very dirty and dangerous. I was driving and trying to look for my brother. I reached a road block and some American soldiers asked for identification. Then a gaggle of of policewomen searched my car. They told me to get out of the car and asked me questions. I found out they were right-wing students promoting a political event in the city square. We would watch a man through nails through a giant wall. The wall symbolized the country's drastic changes in social class. They made us stand in front of a great wall. I found my brother in the crowd and some of his friends. A troop of american were patrolling the area. The man began to throw the nails at the wall. Every time he would throw them they swerved in air and sailed over our heads in different directions. We watched where each nail landed and counted all the nails together. We saw 10-year old rebel children holding giant magnets in an alley. The fascists quickly turned our attention to a projection screen and we began to watch a propagandist film about the duty of being a soldier. I kept watching where one of the nails had fallen. There began to be some yelling and screaming beside us and we saw American soldiers forcing the rebels to kneel. The rebels were only children. They were yelling and bleeding in the dust and forced to kneel and then shot. One solider dragged a rebel by his leg away from the rest of the group. The soldier seemed very young and looked very afraid to kill this boy. The rebel kept asking the soldier in spanish to please not kill him. The young soldier was scared and hit him in the face with the butt of the rifle and then shot him in the stomach. The rebel was still alive and the soldier had not killed him. The soldier tried to shoot him again but again only shot him in the throat. The rebel kept begging for his life and finally the young soldier pulled out a small jet propulsion engine and burned the rebels face off.

Then everything burned white and the screen projection became panoramic. We saw the young solider as a boy swimming in a lake with his friends. Then they were floating on a raft and rowing through a giant half-submerged tunnel of clear glass in the water. The rebel boy was sitting at the front of the raft with his legs dangling and the young soldier boy standing behind him and poiting things out to him that were far away.

III.

I was swimming in shifting beautiful light underwater with a mermaid.

WHAT IS IN YOUR BAG, JOEL CACHERO?

2010-01-17T18:20:00.000-08:00

Joel Cachero is a student of jazz at Wichita State and has amazing lucid dreams.

INTERVIEW WITH TEAL GARDNER

2010-01-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

teal gardner lives in lincoln, nebraska and plays in a band called UUVVWWZ. she leaves small twisted piles of scrap metal on her blog, Spirit Kazoo Has Song For Bells. i recorded this interview on some tape that had over things on is, but which are now only strictly under things. as result strange sounds sound along the edges of the sounds.

INTERVIEW

THE LAMB OF GOD

2010-01-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

1. We buried our tambourines into the earth and filled our mouths with ash. After that we only spoke in anvils. Our garden was filled with half-submerged steel rising from the dark soft soil. We decided to knit a giant quilt to cover the mass grave. We would not speak or sing or say anything. We would only fasten the quilt onto the earth. We would drive stakes through the fabric. We began to dig but our holes only filled up with blood.

2. The Lord had granted us victory and we moved up from the grass and foam dancing. We broke with flute and sacrifice. We made the wreath to present before the Lord; dancing and vines pulled through our hair, strings tied around our wrists. But the wrath of the Lord burned toward us and toward our sacrifice for it was not worthy. And the earth moaned and opened wide to swallow our drums.

3. Abraham pulled up from the rocks the water on which we stand. There were flaming swords keeping us from the garden and the serpents came to strike our heels. We said to Abraham, You must make us suffer. You must make us pay. After 40 days and 40 nights a dove came and spoke to us of dreams and asteroids. We were baptized by a flood and when we came up from the ground, our beards were laced with stones.

5. When I saw the limp swan falling through the sky I remembered the beautiful young woman at the oasis who stayed up all night at the water's edge. I remembered how all the neon passed behind her face and behind her neck. I remembered how we all waited hungry for morning and churning with dirt.

ROBOT MELON

2010-01-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

new story at Robot Melon

2009

2009-12-30T11:08:00.000-08:00

this years i surived an ice storm and moved to lincoln where i started dating katie and living on a embers floor where i met lillian her daughter. i recorded music and did nothing and then i became broke. i did a medical study and then got a lot of money. after i got money it was june so i left and drove around the country for two months. in those two months i rode roller coasters, sprained my ankle, and swam in many waters. i went to austin, denver, lake arrowhead, chattagnooga, and portland. in portland panther, no panther made its second debut. during the summer my album VEGA was released on Gandhara Recordings. after that i came back to lincoln and got a job at open harvest, a grocery cooperative. i was really bad at the job but then i started being okay at it. i played a few shows with a lot of new music that had been resting inside of rusted barrel on a loading dock somewhere. i spent the month of october very sober and was proud of myself. now i am in ecuador spending the holidays with my family. at the beginning of 2009 i said to myself, this is the year when things will happen for me. i guess they kind of didnt but i have learned to be okay with that. i have things take time to grow and become other things. i have learned that being disciplined or passionate or pondering is not enough to make things happen. it is the consistency of these things and also luck and the order of the universe in which this planet that we all live on exists. i love everyone and feel tenderness toward everything.

GUSTAVO BELTRAN

2009-12-28T21:08:00.000-08:00

my grandfather is a man who spends a lot of time looking at the ground and shaking his head. he is a man who writes entire novels on newspapers. every day he studies upstairs in his nook from 4 to 8. at 8 pm he comes down stairs a for a small dinner. he has the dinner and then he goes to sleep. yesterday tried to leave me with a quote by ruben dario, a columbian poet, but he couldnt finish it because he started crying.

Juventud, divino tesoro,¡ya te vas para no volver!
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...y a veces lloro sin querer.

DAVE RASK 1982-2009

2009-12-16T18:38:00.000-08:00

i found out on the internet tonight that an old friend of mine died this summer from severe burns on over 90% of his body. this is an album that he recorded one summer. i feel like it's something more people should be able listen to.

INTO THE NIGHT WITH CAPES ON (2007)

CASHIER FANTASY

2009-12-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

imagined stuffing diamonds into a customer's mouth and watching rainbows burst from their eyes.

DREAM #26

2009-12-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

i was a terrible person. when people said things i would take those things and make bad feelings come out. a friend and i decided to steal something. we went into a park near large boulders. we sat in the sun and short grass and thought about how to steal this thing. we met a bus full of hippies that were traveling around the country in this sustainable van that had 3 stories, a hot tub, cable television, and all kinds of gadgets. we went to a house. the house had something in it. we went inside. there were 3 people -- 2 men and 1 woman. we tied them up and started to hit them. i feel good hitting these people. i felt like something concrete and absolute. the house had nuclear radiation in the basement. the door was closed to keep it out. i started asking people questions. they would not cooperate. i scratched a man's face and scalp off. his face looked the way the floor does after you peel up tile. his face had dried and crusted bits of glue. i threw all of his bloody skins on the floor and asked him something again. the next guy tried to fight me so i had to scratch his face off too. i scratched the girl's face off, except i think me and my friend teamed up on her and really 'messed her up'. finally they told us what we needed and we had to go downstairs to where the radiation was. i was going to go down. my friend told me to make sure i put a radiation suit on. i said okay.

DREAM #25

2009-12-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

there was a book called the sexwood bible. in the sexwood bible you learned how to make women fall in love with you--not seduce them, make them fall in love with you. this guy dave, who i don't really know very well, started making advances on my girlfriend. i saw the sexwood bible in his bag once. dave turned out to be a very interesting. he knew about coffee and bicycles and all kinds of music. he started coming over for dinner and stuff. katie was very nice to him. he had just been dumped. pretty soon katie and dave were spending a lot of time together. i was just trying to squeeze in. one day katie was talking to dave on gmail chat. i said we had to go somewhere. she kept saying 'just a minute' and i kept getting frustrated. after a half hour i left. i came back an hour later and realized she hadn't realized i had left. i remembered thinking i thought this dream was stupid because i felt angry.

DREAM #24

2009-12-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

i was riding on a circus train in a caboose filled with circus workers. there was a woman in that caboose that i had had an affair with, however i never saw her and never felt certain she was actually there. a few days into my trip there was a terrible train accident. a caboose of lions rolled over and there were dead lion parts hanging in trees and bushes. the train stopped and we all got off and walked around not knowing what to do. i ran into my friend danielle and i was very happy to see her. we were both sad about the lions.

i finally reached town and walked down cobblestone streets with a slip of paper that had my cousin's address written on it. i reached a walled off compound and went inside. inside the compound were old havana-style apartments. i looked for the number of his apartment and when i found it i looked in through the window. inside i could see my cousin kneeling in an empty room in front of two body bags zipped up on the floor. i went inside and he told me he was the landlord of the apartment building and that these tenants had died in their home. they were an old couple and had been married for a very long time. no one was alive to take care of their bodies because they had no children. he was trying to find new tenants for the place. he knew no one would want to rent out an apartment with two dead bodies in them. so every day he would set them inside their old bedroom and make them hold hands at night.

i stayed with santiago a few weeks and many things happened. one day the police found the bodies. it had been raining. they were wearing plastic covers over their police hats. they told us it would be more humane to keep the bodies in closets. we said no and they said okay. i left the next day because the train was fixed and i never came back.

TETRAHEDRON TRANSCENDENTALISM

2009-12-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

2009-11-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

GOD IS A TEENAGE BOY HUFFING AEROSOL CANS IN A PARKING LOT SOMEWHERE.

MUST-ACHE

2009-11-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

1. My father is a man with a scar on his forehead and a tattoo on his hand. He is a man with a mustache that drapes over my shoulders and down my back. My father is a man who is a man who is a ghost.

2. When I wake up my hair is wet and rain is blowing in through the window. I take all of my clothes off and build a small fire in my room, then I set my wet clothes on the burning tipi. I stay up all night planting a grove of vines near the door.

3. I take a walk with my father's ghost. We go to the park and feed the ducks. I get crumbs in his mustache and he wipes them off my shoulder. Thanks, I say.

4. I dream of Mountain standing in the middle of a great prairie. I watch black smoke curl around Mountain's summit. I decide to give the mountain a name. I name it Mountain.

5. The apartment is dark and cold. There is no light or heat. Ivy covers most of the windows and doors. I lay on the floor staring at my ceiling until vines overtake it.

6. My father's ghost knits his mustache into mine and we walk through the woods holding hands. I try to tell him about my dream but he isn't paying attention. He is busy shaking bird nests out of branches and collecting them in our mustache.

7. I find a washed out picture of my father where his eyes are small dark clouds. When I put the picture up to my ear I hear thunder. My father's ghost tells me that it's only the ocean. I clear some ivy and put his picture on the wall.

8. My father's ghost drops me off at my apartment. He tells me that I feel lonely again I can walk to the library, or read a book. Maybe finish proofreading that letter for him. I say okay and then go inside.

9. I attempt to grow a mustache of my own. A small ingrown hair occurs. When I pop it blood, pus, and mud come out. I experience a great deal of pain. I decide to give my mustache a name. I name it Must-Ache.

10. One afternoon I come home and my father's picture is missing. The wall behind the picture is bloody and pale like the skin under a band-aid. A small flower blooms from the center of the wound.

11. My father's ghost stops coming around. I find tiny mustache hairs in the sink. I open a window and burn incense and herbs to lure him back. I fall asleep with the smoke pouring out ribbons and strings.

12. I sit out in the balcony in my sleeping bag and smoke marijuana. I become a piece of paper blowing in the wind. A gust of wind swings me over the guardrail and I watch myself swoop in pendulums down to the street.

13. I fasten tiny scrolls onto pigeons with small lengths of vine. I watch them fly out over my town. The message I send is: I HAVE A BETTER MUSTACHE NOW. CAN YOU COME HOME PLEASE?

14. At my mother's tree house, she tells me I look like a picture. I always wear the same jacket. I tell her it's because I want to look like my father. I tell her it's because I want to look like a ghost.

15. That night I burn more sage and watch the embers drift up over the trees. I watch them until they begin to look like small and dying stars.

16. There is a thing that when I touch it, the thing becomes something else. Something that feels like I don't think or maybe I don't want. When I say it, the thing comes out like I don't know.

17. I decide to stop looking for my father's ghost. I do not understand. It all seems a shroud. A veil of bones. I feel like the time we tried to make bread and our yeast did not rise. I feel like a small and dense thing.

18. I separate the hairs of my mustache and examine my ingrown hair in the mirror. I notice a small flower blooming from the wound. I fold the skin over and tear it off.

29. I dream a succession of polaroids each showing Mountain as it falls to the ground. I watch Mountain's face crack, then split, then crumble. When I reach the last frame the picture turns to blood and falls through my hands.

POLYGON

2009-11-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

1. //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\

2. I make a home for myself beneath the branches. I watch a man hanging from them by his hair.

3. >>>>>>>>>>>>

4. In the grass, there is a snake. I can see it's copper head in the sun.

5. ############

6. We knit a matrix of tracks through her hair, then lie beneath them and watch trains barrel over our heads.

FENCES

2009-11-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

FENCES by ben brooks is a very beautiful and small book.

a few months ago he traded katie for a copy of Vega.

ben brooks is 17 years old.

there are some interesting interviews here and here.

now i am going to plant my feet into a soiled pot and stand in a public area and stand very still.

H8 MALE

2009-10-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

these events stemmed from this april posting on this blog.

I"m just curious why it is you've chosen to publicly label me an
"asshole". Also, I don't recall granting you permission to publicly
post my intellectual property....I suggest you stop being such an
asshole yourself before you get yourself sued for libel. I mean, do I
even know you?

Respectfully,
-Josh

hello i found a booklet of children's stories in a thrift store and chose your story. i actually liked it very much and thought it was funny. i like raccoons too! i don't know anything about you, just the name. it was random. i don't think you can sue me but i'm okay with fixing the blog post. sorry for the inconvenience. take it easy.

-israel

Mr. Cilio

While I'm still a little (admittedly morbidly) curious about how you came to have "good authority" on anything that happened back then... I guess it's neither here nor there. Technically, it's not the fact that I was called an asshole, but there is a defamation of character issue that arises when we are both in America (you live in Nebraska) and you accuse me of being a "bully" and, for that matter, a plagiarist
(through using my mother's words- technically, she could make the same claims I'm making now- though, yes...I did write the piece...including the part about the soft white snow). You are correct- a libel claim would probably be tenuous....but still possible. It's really just best to avoid such matters. No worries mate, it's not a huge deal. I'm happy with you fixing the blog post...you can even keep the poem in
it. I suppose, were it not for the accompanying editor's note, I'd have simply been flattered.

Thanks for trying to resolve this in a reasonable manner...think nothing of it.

-Josh

then i shortened his name to "josh c"

I see how cleverly you "fixed" the blog post. Well, you may want to look into your html encoding, because you left my last name on there so long that any search engine could find the direct reference. Beyond that, I'm legally blind and have albinism...it's in rather poor taste for you to use expressions such as "the kid probably didn't even have a right arm." Look- either fix this as you said you would, be that either removing that post entirely, my poem and comment, or whatever you like or I will contact the system administrator of your blog with my concerns within the next twenty-four hours. I'm sure you're aware that the terms and conditions of almost all blog sites will not allow this sort of content if it is disputed. You seem like you've put a lot of work into that blog...would you really think it worth it all to be lost simply to call a guy you don't know an asshole and to personally take an ethically repugnant position yourself?

Just a thought,
-Josh

dear josh

i don't understand why we can't 'capitalize' on the things we have in common, i.e. our interest for raccoons, soft white snow, etc. i feel our relationship would be a lot stronger then. instead we have spiraled into threats and unpleasantries. i had no idea you were blind or albino. i don't know you. i think you should try to 'take it easy'. it's no fun trying to be a 'victim'. it seems to me the only thing more absurd and outrageous than calling an anonymous 7-year old first-grader from nebraska an 'asshole' is an anonymous 20-something year old 'asshole' being offended by it. i'm sorry you don't like my blog.

xoxo
-israel

INJURIES I HAVE SUSTAINED

2009-10-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

1. Oct. 12 2009 -- biking to work and took a slippery corner too fast, slid for about 3 feet.,road rash on my hip and forearm

2. Sept. 16 2009 -- lost in the forest and spotted three white-tailed deer. re-injured my ankle chasing after them.

3. July 9 2009 -- sprained and strained my ankle after running down a mountain naked in the dark and falling over a rail

4. March 14 2009 -- biking on 8th near downtown crossed the track and too diagonally, slid under a truck on my knee, tore favorite jeans

5. January 9 2009 -- slipped on the ice during terrible ice storm (Ice Storm '09), limped home making funny sounds with my throat like a squeaky chair

THE DELICIOUS

2009-10-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

VLAD KROMATIKA

2009-09-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

STEPHEN ELLIOTT

2009-09-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

i went to the stephen elliott reading last night. he read from his new book 'the adderall diares' which is about a real-life murder in san francisco with a guy who wrongly confessed to it. i had a small box of wine in my bag. katie and i finished it that night. i don't remember much else. fortunately, he does. lucky for me, he didn't write the part where i stumbled up to him at the end and slurred about how he should listen to my music because of how good i think he is or something like that.

DSCN 3299/4742/4966

2009-09-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

BEEN READING

2009-09-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS: William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac

about a straight man murdering a gay man who did not know when to quit.

QUEER: William S. Burroughs

about a gay man being in love with another gay man and not knowing when to quit.

WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET PLEASE? : Raymond Carver

about people who drink and are not happy with their lives but do not know how to quit.

MOTHER REDWOOD

2009-09-11T05:09:00.000-07:00

Continuous collage of a creative rebirth : recorded sloppily in the spring of 09 after a bleak winter in Arkansas --

please click on the image to download.

1. God Is Free
2. Cocoon
3. Jesus Wolf
4. Mother Redwood
5. Peter & The Wolf
6. Cousin Edgar
7. Black Octopus
8. Messenger Birds
9. Ave Maria

//WINDOW\\

2009-09-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

//SUN ARAW//

2009-09-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

GUSTAF NO. 3

2009-09-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

i just received my contributor copies from GUSTAF #3. i feel like this issue is really, really good. and i don't think i'm just saying that.

other writers include crispin best, noah cicero, ryan manning (commander keen), kendra grant malone, matthew savoca (my favvvvv!), jimmy chen, brandon scott gorell, sam pink, tao lin, chelsea martin, and more.

please purchase a copy. it is exceptional writing and also pretty cheap.

feel very proud to be on this issue.

STEPHEN ELLIOTT IS READING AT MY HOUSE

2009-09-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

STEPHEN ELLIOTT IS READING AT MY HOUSE

Monday, September 21
LINCOLN, NE
Clawfoot House
7 p.m.

well, not my house but the house in which i used to live and from which i now only live 7 blocks away.

anyone interested?

//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\

2009-08-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

i was sitting outside during my break the other day. the hair salon next to us was having some kind of a sale or something. there was a radio DJ outside in the parking lot. he was operating from a van. there was a table for hot dogs and things. the DJ was talking to the women at the salon. it was his job to 'make the party'. he was doing his best. i tried to look away. the women listened with their mouths open a little. i could see their teeth. the DJ wore plaid shorts and some kind of a shirt portraying a sport or something. i turned to read my book. later, he began his 'broadcast' from the parking lot. he talked into a microphone and told the public about deals on nails, hair dyes, and perms. he walked in circles and talked into his microphone. there was a faint ring of people standing around him, watching him walk in circles. they ate hot dogs and talked about the nice weather.

SHADOW PUPPET

2009-08-26T16:30:00.001-07:00

by michael thurber

2009-08-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

the television show PARTY DOWN is funny. plus it has bill haverchuck from FREAKS AND GEEKS.

OPINION POLL

2009-08-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

would you rather have a fish for a right hand or a cloud for a left foot?

please leave your answer and your gender in the comments.

DREAM #23

2009-08-14T09:58:00.001-07:00

i was in training to be a party animal. i was being trained by a veteran party animal. the veteran party animal had pock marks and bad teeth. his name was gilberto.

DREAM #20, 21, 22

2009-08-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

# 20: this was like a lucid dream. i was awake but i could not move. this was in a basement in portland. i could see light coming in from another room. i could see that it was becoming morning. i saw myself as a singular body made up of shifting tectonic plates. i had the strong sense of being the embodiment of the super-continent pangea. i felt myself begin to break and separate. i could still feel each plate as a unit of it's self but i could also feel the separation between something i would call 'myself' and something i would call 'everything that has ever existed ever ever ever'. i could feel the stones in my belly settle and fall. there was smoke every where and then my body sank into the sea. everything shook and then i felt nothing.

#21: i was married to my friend april. we lived in a staircase of an office building. every morning office employees came up and down the stairs and we said hello to them. one time we were sleeping and i heard someone open the door upstairs. i grabbed april by the back of the neck like a cat and put her under the bed. later there was a tornado and all the employees came to the stairwell for safety. we strung up christmas lights and beads and had a party for everyone. everyone lined up the stairwell drinking and talking.

#22: in one dream i was playing the drums very well. a giant moth came up to me and said 'you didn't really dream this. you are making this up. you are a liar.' i said, 'listen moth, i am just trying to be, nah mean?' and the moth goes 'no you are not just trying to be. you are trying to be an asshole and you are succeeding.' and i was like way offended and i go 'moth, you totally just offended me and that was not cool, ok?' and the moth goes 'when?' and i go 'just now, just a few seconds ago when you said me i was an asshole.' and the moth goes 'i'm sorry. you are only a small speck of nothing that somehow has reason.' and i go 'ok you are crossing the line, bro.' the moth said 'all you remember is that you were playing drums very well.' i blinked and hesitated and then the moth flew away.