For a limited period of time
a system of relationships and dynamic access
can entail the attribution of
a responsibility to a greater congress
when in fact the recent trend
to surveil the unauthorized
may result in a chilling reproduction
of the past
and the products
of the past
and the stark direction of a new incentive
into a blank horizon.

II.

Periods of the past have reproduced
and their unauthorized relationships
blank out the horizon,
their congress surveilled and directed
by the past's own products
and their stark trends towards
chilling systems and all that the system entails
(for such time that the period is limited).

III.

A labor ethos, dispossessed and
uncontrolled, sees the product of its labor
as a reflection of its expropriation
from the tight black camera lens
of history
and its products—
but those revolving doors and windowshades
still wait in stark galleries
and sleeping pens
and the inky products of those pens
and histories.

IV.

A reflection on the lens of sleep
is underway—a shifting violator,
rehabilitated and taught to abandon
its stories and its sex,
compacted into rights and violations
and unclear like an annihilated water
without an access, or a system,
or an ethos—and its labors
still enable the fickle art of
dread engagement, beds disheveled
and debated as a model or a mayhem
and attributed as such
in the monetized production
of time.

—Manhattan, April 14, 2010

We sang a hymn to new ghosts and old fears
and dusty canons of schematics,
beatific orders of Resistors and Amperes:

Hallowed ghosts of code
that

the hard ghosts of metal,
aluminum and steel,
proud yet pliant as the flower's petal;

the sacred electric ghosts who charge
down upon our wires,
strand upon strand, large

and looming on the breadboard's pale horizon.
No meter measures better the currents of our time:
Watching, seeing, her eyes on

gold and starmatter,
tin and rusted works of art,
fertile as magnetic fields.

—Brooklyn, ~December 15, 2009

—Brooklyn, winter 2005
Written atop a roof in Williamsburg overlooking Manhattan in the freezing cold dawn while working on a feature film set.

A is for Ascot
B is for Baudelaire
C is for Country-house
D is for Dilettante
E is for Elegance
F is for Fop
G is for Garish
H is for Hetero-flexible
I is for Intellectual
J is for Jobless
K is for King Charles II
L is for Laudanum
M is for Maudlin
N is for Nocturnal
O is for Opium
P is for Polari
Q is for Queer-bait
R is for Rake
S is for Syphilis
T is for Tribadism
U is for Uranian
V is for Verlaine
W is for Wilde, Oscar
X is for Xerxes, literature and paintings thereof.
Y is for Yusupov, Prince Felix Felixovich
Z is for Zenobia, Queen of Syria

This stanza is from a poem called "Rescue the Dead" by David Ignatow. I rediscovered it in an old email written to me by someone very special, whom I will never forget.

still impossible
to hear,

too far away
to see,

too distant now
to fear.

—April 12, 2009
Directly followed "The Skin."

The skin is not translucent
but nor is it opaque.
Neither is it luminous—
and yet I sense a faint
or dying glow about its pores.

The skin can breech no
statement to my touch.
It will not communicate;
it will only give
as upon it I slightly press,

pressing on with an eye
to the pale horizon of the flesh.

—April 12, 2009
Directly followed "Sabres Fell."

we march forward
to the bright good,
the twilit dell.

Lightly glows the dusk.
A smell of jasmine
floats among moored

lives like still vessels.
The floors are dusty,
boards groaning with

a wisdom and a lore.

—April 12, 2009
Brooklyn. While falling asleep.

The sky a spartan-bare cerulean
may slow dispel the stasis and the fear,
and gloamings hyperboreal defy
the weary convalescence of the year.

A frigid shadow overpasses and
a warmth from dying twilight fast repairs
with all the resignation of the dead:
this weary convalescence of the year.

Upon a chill cadaver Spring presides—
and though the sun draws ever near,
these waning fragments of the dark resist
the weary convalescence of the year.

—April 9, 2009
Union Square, NY

And all I can do is laugh, the great laugh of the city, that incredulous laugh of remorseful joy, the laugh of walking down 6th Avenue at dawn knowing that it's another story, and our pain and pleasure is only footnote to the footsteps on, one by one down on the pavement of the city, each hour one by one down on that cruel clock of the city, cold dream-engine and fear-engine, fastidiously creaking out its existence like any of us, unable ever to pause or sing its praise for us, drawn down to the subways and down to the towers and fortresses, able neither to speak nor hold its peace between us.

All I can do is regret that city and its million stories, or sit down barefoot on the ground and cover all its stories with the soil, garbage black and true and steaming with the taint of death, and gather up the flowers and the laughter from that one redeeming truth of lovers and the city: that time reduces everything to dust and no time is dependent on the "why" of life or love—just please remember that the city gathers not the stones of shame but rather begs of you to laugh and know that death waits gently for us all, and gently praises both the city and its shame—and creaking walks the shadows of its streets, the whirlwind play of nights that daily prey upon us and the way we ply by trying not to stop it—

the wandering bleats
of trumpets slow
in distant fields lie
calm in a silence there,

and the crow entreats
the dusky haze of twilight, low
on the horizon, to die
now like the light upon your hair,

black as the vault of sky,
naked as the sky laid bare.

--Brooklyn, 2008

For weeks I had been avoiding talking to Megan in any way, and likely as a result, becoming more and more depressed. I still find it gut-wrenchingly painful to think of her with this new boyfriend. He's not even new now, really. Is this just insecurity on my part? Is no-one confident enough to be immune from that pain?

The other night, when I was visiting Ruth and Laura, Ruth asked me something about pain, possibly something like how I deal with pain. I thought about it and was mildly surprised to find that I simply felt used to it. I don't think I've ever fought pain; can it be fought? I've always simply let it hurt me and hurt me until it went away. It never occurred to me that there would be an alternative, though now I know some people fight it weakly with TV and shopping and other modern nostrums and snake-oils.

It's not like I've "lived with" pain in the way that all too many people truly do. Generally I consider myself to be a quite happy person, and I think I always have been. But I've also always—first implicitly and later explicitly—accepted the highest highs for the lowest lows, and immediately accepted those trials and the great suffering that is fundamental to all life, and fundamental equally to true happiness.

I’ll write stanzas that span
canyons, soon,
soon, I’ll sell the car
that dad gave me, but not
its grief or memory.

The lunar cleft demands that
I continue soon into
the dreadful alleyways of the night,
but I’ll be fine, he says,
I’ll get mine and you’ll get yours.

Soon I’ll know the bleak refrain of death, (he says,)
the life that’s in the chlorophyll,
and spin that’s in the spider—
and I’ll hope that I can at least
become a little closer to
my father, the martyr,
soon to be the ink I’ll spill.

--Place and date unsure. I'll have to look it up in the archives. My favorite lines are "the life that's in the chlorophyll / and spin that's in the spider."

--Gainesville, (2004?)

The rest of the poem doesn't live up to this stanza. I might chuck the rest of it... or reconstruct a new poem around it.

I threw together a little site today so you can hear the song: http://mucinogen.com/

The funny thing is, last night I was talking to Brien's girlfriend Kristhal, and she ended up sending the song to her friend who runs a radio program in Mexico called "Terror Alert: High" on Radio Mente Abierta. You can listen to the program here: http://radiomenteabierta.com/teah/?p=16

My song is towards the end, maybe the 3rd to last or so? Enjoy!!