I work from home now
and I’m jamming to this song today
because Margot recommended it
and Margot knows what to pay
attention to. No, I don’t know Margot
but I know other women
who create television and funny mugs
plus my cousin-in-law
I’ve written a lot about vests;
haikus mostly, and desperate texts.
A vest is like a hug
for your chest, I’ve been known
to sigh, my core warm, my style fly.
Jack Kerouac’s word world is totally different than mine. He’s all
bellhop
coat rack
campaign
buttonhole
ventriloquist
pince-nez
morphine
silhouette
& etc.
His words aren’t mine but I’d be a damn fool not to try some out. Here’s a poem I wrote on the couch on Kerouac’s birthday. Not an homage, more like a drunken text I’m sending him through time-and-space, saying, Hey, man. Next year: let’s celebrate our birthdays together. Next year: we’ll dance.
***
When it comes to billiards I hear mathematics
is rather relevant so I better stay away.
Today on Chelsea Street the oblong “OPEN”
sign that hangs for all to see just sat
inside the storefront like a half-forgotten
letter. With weather like this even a goat
can get pants fulla ants: ready to kid,
to be ridda all this bald white stuff,
she might just sidle into an epidemic
bout of idleness. I tried to call my sis
“Swiss Miss” but she didn’t like the name.
It’s just her darn-cute ponytail & white
toothed grin I want to emulate, to raise
high above the roof beams, Seymour,
to the heights where garlic dries in summer.
Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage,
cleavage, & the smell of sewage everywhere.
Pigs can clear the forest with their hooves
& bums I got to know out west can’t hear me
now, can’t see me now, can’t stop me now.
[photo by Allen Ginsberg]
The internet is too big to talk about as a whole, but on the whole I’ll generalize and say that my favorite thing about the internet is….this.
So now that you clicked on that link, click the little play button, and now you’ll be listening to Frank O’Hara (THE MAN MY LEGEND) reading his poem “Ode to Joy” over an instrumental version of Drake’s “The Best I Ever Had.”
I already love Drake because he is a pretty good rapper and once made a video that took place at a bar mitzvah (combining Judaism and hip hop, which rarely happens). I’ve loved Frank O’Hara for always & always will, even though he is very easy to love and everyone seems to. I think I still love him differently. His little lispy-crispy pronunciation. His gap tooth. His neck in a crew neck sweater in the postcard that lives in my truck. I do love him. And now thanks to the internet, (well, thanks to Cassanda Gillig, whom I would like to meet because he seems hilarious and cool and smart and essential), I can have poetry & hip hop fused in just the way I never knew I’d love because I hadn’t fathomed it yet.
And there’s more. There’s Brautigan & Mariah Carey! Even better THERE IS JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE AND ALICE NOTLEY. I am going bonkers right now. You know when you find something that you like so much you can’t handle it? And you think about how good life was before and how now it’s one significant notch better? And you feel like your posture has gotten better and that there’s more space between your toes so you can stand and jump and dance better? Do you guys know what I’m talking about?
Some people feel negatively about February, including, possibly, Maira Kalman. Or maybe she just picks up on everybody’s February blues. It’s hard to love February in the city, this I understand.
This February, I’m all about Patti Smith (again). Maybe I’ll make February my Patti Smith month. Why not?
But guys….remember those other times, those other seasons? Remember flowers?
Remember how it’s going to be Valentine’s day soon? Let’s not bring up our consumer culture rants again, we do that every year & even the truth gets stale. This year, lets just do some good lovin’. Let’s share what we got, or give ourselves a little bit more. I mean, Phoebe Wahl is doing it! And why not.
If you’re still not feeling good about February yet, then, here! Have this gift! It’s a free Frank Ocean mixtape! Also did you know he has a tumblr?! Fuck yeah, America! You know?
Alright February!! Allllllllright!
On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:
because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:
Thankful for
winter sun and
a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and
the shoes on my feet and
good soup and a fire and
the ever-discovery of poems and
the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful
and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and
thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!
and emoticons and
thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and
for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful
for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and
thankful for nice thick socks
thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows
thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and
for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”
which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and
thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and
thankful for mittens
and a yellow hat from my sister
and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for
a grey hat from amsterdam
and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck
like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite
which a woman at the stone store told me to select
because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day
and it was
I was sagging that day
I’m thankful for people who help me unsag
like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and
now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and
yayness and love and thankful and giving
this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and
in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.
Last week I met this man in the coffee shop. He was well-spoken and friendly and we chatted. Here he is:
(from Peter Money’s website)
I didn’t meet Allen Ginsberg; he’s dead and likely never visited White River Junction. The man I did meet recommended that I read Joanne Kyger. As it turns out, she’s great! She’s beautiful!
Then the other day I got in the truck and there were four pumpkins sitting shotgun. I put one out by the mailbox and two along the driveway and one is still riding shotgun.
(from this isn’t happiness)
It’s autumn and the mums are on display. I’ve been reading The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard and oh I love it so much I love it so much. Also, we’ve been drying sliced tomatoes, storing them in oil, stacking them in the cupboards where they’ll wait until they’re given as gifts. Here’s a painting by Joe Brainard, of a tomato.
(from The Met)
Outside, everything is in motion from the wind, the leaves flying to the ground like torpedoing birds.
(from Misha’s flickr)
The end.
I’M SO EXCITED TO GO TO CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IT’S LIKE CRAZY
(above: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joanne McClure, and Michael McClure at City Lights)
When I was sixteen years old I was the only vegetarian around—I lived in a small town and I guess everyone ate meat.
I had three best guy friends; we were a bit of a foursome. We once made a short film with my video camera where one of them, Eoin, turned into a cigar Indian while trying to thieve objects in a house (including toilet paper). The house was my house and we still quote that movie; it’s called “Sitting Bull” and my parents still have that cigar Indian.
The point is, I was the vegetarian of the group. They used to sing this song to me constantly. Listening to it now, I feel good about being compared to Mary Moon. She’s an intellectual, but despite this fact, remains quite sexual. I’m down with that.
This one goes out to Tom, Eoin, and Schnibbe, who taught me this song, to speed up at yellow lights, and the meaning of a “rusty trombone.” Gross.
All I ever wanted was a hip-hop bat mitzvah!!
I mean Drake got one, and Lil Weezy was there in a panda mask, so can I have one, too?
Sometimes you don’t need words! Sometimes you just need rhythm and some hand gestures.
SWOON!
