in duh pen dance day

Last night, at The Art Foundation
bar, a man interrupted my conversation
(what is it with men thinking they are so important they can just interrupt conversations?)
with a way too trying-to-be charming
pickup line: are you an artist?
I wanted to stab him with a pen
especially because he kept prying at me
our conversation felt more like an interrogation
but it turns out we love the same
poet: John Ashbery. Watching
my as-of-yet-unnamed-friend
reach for English translations,
in a not so fluid manner, I realized
it was actually remarkable that Ashbery,
a poet difficult for native English speakers
can, on some fundamental level, translate
beyond the words themselves. Not to fluff
Ashbery's ego, or anything. I feel like I've
been talking about him a lot lately, but this
Ashbery connection was coincidental, or what you
will. Anyways, he told me his favorite Ashbery
poem was "An Additional Poem" from
The Tennis Court Oath. Emotionally released
from his relationship, this poem prompted
[insert name here] to break up with his girlfriend.
I love that poetry can change people, can
allow them to see what they previously could
not, in this case, providing my very human
friend, the bravery of independence.

An Additional Poem by John Ashbery
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
The harbor cold to the mating ships
And you have lost as you stand by the balcony
With the forest of the sea calm and gray beneath.
A strong impression torn from the descending light
But night is guilty. You knew the shadow
In the trunk was raving
But as you keep growing hungry you forget.
The distant box is open. A sound of grain
Poured over the floor in some eagerness -- we
Rise with the night let out of the box of wind.

---
// Congrats to WS Merwin on Poet Laureate, though the handsome mansome seemed to be almost inconvenienced by it, which I thought suited the position quite well actually. \\

<< Oh, and speaking of the New York Times, if you haven't read this five-part series yet, I highly suggest you do. >>

read me aloud # 1: The Prophets by WH Auden

Perhaps I always knew what they were saying:
Even the early messengers who walked
Into my life from books where they were staying.
Those beautiful mahines that never talked
But let the small boy worship and learn
All their long names whose hardness make him proud,
Love was the word they never said aloud
As something that a picture can't return.

And later when I hunted the Good Place,
Abandoned lead-mines let themselves be caught;
There was no pity in the adit's face,
The rusty winding-engine never taught
One abviously too apt, to say Too Late:
Their lack of shyness was a way of praising
Just what I didn't know, why was I gazing,
While all their lack of answer whispered 'Wait',
And taught me gradually without coercion,
And all the landscape round them pointed to
The calm with which they took complete desertion
As proof that you existed.

It was true.
For now I have the answer from the face
That never will go back into a book
But asks for all my life, and is the Place
Where all I touch is moved to an embrace,
And there is no such a thing as a vain look.

my favorite as yet unanswered question of the day

how to write a drunk poem: the pageant night had promised?

Out of a great nothing, a theology.

Out of the amorphous, an edgeless body.

- Mark Jarman

forgive my lack of capital letters or proper punctuation or decent line breaks or artful articulation

i got down with Dionysus last night
and cappuccino
and red bull (disgusting, actually, how do people drink that)
and vodka
and more wine
i do knot recommend this combination

nor do i recommend allowing your sister to convince you to wear high heels
to a restaurant for which you forget directions
and end up hiking La Plaka's cobbled tops and turves
with only the confused compass of asking others to show you the way
after a self-proclaimed ununiformed "police officer" tells you your map is wrong
and a cab driver admits he's driving in squiggles

instead of diamonds on the soles of my shoes
I awake to blisters on the soles of my feet,
which feel merely like blisters
because my brain is stale bread sopped in booze

O, but it's all in the fun
walking on edges now
the outskirts of my feet
an echo from behind the factory:
"you unmitigated disaster, you!"
mwahahahahahahaa

vaguely remember a story about Helen of Troy
and her steamy affair with Paris after earnestly trying to make it work with her husband
analogized to a Greek island tryst of consensual moaning after the blush of flattery
moralled that not only men can enjoy variety in lovers,
but what is this obsession with numbers?

AND OMG THE ACROPOLIS!
erected and sanctified by memory,
thousands of stones mortared together
platforming the Parthenon and the Parthenon still
waiting to receive our unjesused prayers after all these years
while America's paint cracks
like sitting on a bag of potato chips--
before you have a chance
to spoil the grandkids,
foundations crunch to crumbs
and we batter-up the wrecking balls
after the umpire strikes you out (while the empire strikes back)
for your addiction to online poker and HSN
and you twenty years ago, still in the promise
trucks in rooms from a catalog
that slot together like the legos we played with as kids
before the big bad divorce blows the house down
or they sell it to pay off the mortgage

as I watched yesterday,
watery sky turn orange soda turn red wine
something magically modern bounded through the ancient air
those still employed walls, once constructed
to denizen the thinking mind,
logical as rooftops in summer,
civilized as question marks,
dependable as sunset,
inspiring as a hangover.

this is not a travel blog

But I am in Athens, Greece
for the month, relevant because
you should know that
the pigeons here are light brown,
unlike the blue feathered rats
jollying around Manhattan,
sucking up waste like
anteaters in sand
and the page-white doves jailed
to release at weddings or
swathed in magician's silk.

And because, when I woke up
this morning, the white
of landscape's buildings
against the sun had
yellowed the sky, though
logically we are taught
blue and yellow on canvas
turns green.

I tried my best not to squint.

Today, I've been giggling
about the poet John Ashbery,
who is forever defying
the sheer idea of love
poetry. I have this twinging
frustration with his deflection of
expectation, but it's beginning
to seem emblematic of both
Love and Poetry. For example,
the title of his poem
"If You Said You Would Come With Me"
promises romance, as if
it should logically begin
like, say: "Sand-scorched
on a temporary shore
somewhere inside
the cement jungle,
I hear boot heels click
three times and wonder
if it's you." Instead, he
writes, in prose:
"In town it was very urban but in the country cows were covering the hills."
As always, Ash,
thanks for sending us down
an unpredicted road -
blindfolding
us and upside downing us,
ultimately to show us life
more clearly in the end.

Maybe romance is over-
rated, he's telling us, or
maybe he never thought
of the romantic implications
of the title, it's really just about
how connections are like grape-
vines, and are ours to spot.

Or perhaps he's saying, no one can
really read our minds,
what we have in common is what
we see, which is, in turn, what we
experience, which is ourselves.
And then, these interpretations
simply wind the paths of my own
vineyard and, like he suggests
in the poem, you see & think
differently. But all communication
is not miscommunication. Ashbery
is a poet, after all.

Though land remains severed by ocean, the horizon boasts a spectacular shoreline.

Anagrammer by Peter Pereira

If you believe in the magic of language,

then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,

then you understand

what makes outside tedious,

how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,

and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,

and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way

you'd find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:

you'd understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,

and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,

and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

hello, new friend: blogifesto

Perhaps because I find
the name 'blog' to be
hideous, (the blog/bog
relationship, perhaps?)
I resisted blogging for
a while. But you know,
when the New York Times
started doing it, I realized
it might be an acceptable form
of communication. Just
kidding. Sort of. Anyways,
though I believe expecting
You to give a shit about my
musings is semi-self-
indulgent, these are ideas
on what I see, words I love,
and experiences: mine
and others. Hey,
maybe you will hear
me and we can be friends.

So, here is my "how am I
driving" bumper sticker.
Shoot me an email or some
comments: lemme know if
this echo is relevant.

And verse, O! You shine
dull shoes into patent
leather. Skeptical? Try
rearranging these lines.