shake the baron: THE BAND – panache, perhaps

The past month or so in photographs.

Published on 07/10/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

This is one of the farms that will not be our home.

This was at the farmers’ market in Montpelier, when Ellie was visiting, and we met up with Kenzie, who is also a Suzie’s Farm Person, and she had those long fabulous dreadlocks.

This was when Ellie and Scott and Josh were staying over. I made Misha wear my happy wreath because he was happy, too. And we drank that whole bottle of bourbon. And life was sweet and Scott jumped in the pond and Josh ended up getting a free Suzie’s Farm hat.

This is my favorite photo of my friend Andrew, because the sun is all up in his face.

Those ladies? Oh those are my ladies.

These are some bodacious poppies and some pretty Unidentified Other Flowers that grow beneath the grapes in front of our house.

This is another farm which we won’t live on. But boy, was it pretty.

This is my pen pal, Shannon. She’s even better in person than written. Plus, she’s married! Also, a poet!

This was the fourth of July. Misha didn’t even mean to wear red white and blue and we had sausages for dinner.

This is Misha with flowering mullein on Cape Cod. He really loves that plant. And in this photograph, he even matches it!

This is my family in the early 90s. I don’t think I’ll ever be as baller as I was that day on Cape Cod, with that stance and that minnow net and that belly-bearing bathing suit. Also: how cute is my sister. Also also: notice how all our bathing suits match!

This was leaving the Cape just today, admiring the font of the Sagamore Bridge, admiring structure.

Love & friends & verklempt (something in prose).

Published on 06/27/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

I don’t think I’m a poet of the atrocities, or even of the victories. I think I’m a poet of the people I love. I’m trying to make sense of how much there is to love in the world. I’m trying to put into words the moment when someone reaches out to touch someone else’s face, but then doesn’t, and then that person never knows that that other person wanted to touch them. And so that touch will never be in the history books. But I might just get it into a poem.

Do you have any famous friends? Friends who people know because of something they did or wrote? I have a couple of great friends in a band and it makes me insanely proud and insanely baffled to know them and to see them progressing in the music world and to know that they are an entity outside of the dudes that I got to know in college. And to think that I knew them in a dorm hallway, with their morning hair and their late night gaits. How I’d leave the coed bathroom when I’d see one of them with their sneakers facing outward in a stall (pooping!).

I have a lot of friends who really impress me. Not just because of their jobs, but sometimes because of their jobs. I have some friends who were born knowing how to be great friends. A lot of my friends aren’t the same as each other. A couple of my friends are attempting similar back-to-the-land plans as I am, but most of them aren’t. I’m here as a human and as a girl and as a poet and as a farmer-in-training to say: my friends, I love the shit out of you. I know you know it already, maybe because I told you recently in an email or textual exclamation or maybe I sent you something recently or maybe you read a poem here that reminded you of it. Either way, I might as well say it often, because life is short and fast (especially in summer).

So here’s a music video that really impresses me featuring some dudes I know. For some reason this video is making me want to hug people (BAD), probably because I’ve been drinking wine and I live with a man I adore and because it’s summer and there’s quite nearly enough sunlight to provide for all the words I want to write and say each day. Amen.

Joyful poem of New York City (mine).

Published on 11/16/2012 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

Scott in the Guggenheim’s whorl

stared at a Picasso with both eyes

forward, said to me “I see the Eiffel

tower, a saxophone and some boobs

on a plate.” We laughed in the museum

and got in trouble for photographs

and got kicked out a closing time

and talked right up to the stop

where we split off from each other

in the underground undergrime

of the subway. I zoomed to Kathryn

with her foster dog who did not

love me but he loved my thigh

and dinner at a tiny restaurant

where we cried in the moment

in between dinner and dessert

when the cook in the kitchen

right behind us began slicing

tomorrow’s onions. Eyedrops

and overdue birthday presents,

hummus scooped around, wine

and wine and a whiskey, a bouquet

and a beer and asleep in Sam’s

bed with the lock fully bolted.

And so much to eat every day,

scalloped potatoes by Kath

in the sweet lowdown space

where she’s made her small home.

And Andy so tall that we hug

like a tree and a sapling. And Max

even taller, so full of face that I’ve missed

since last winter in Bushwick when

the cabs were all taken. Awe of piled

trash on every street, awe of the ease

of jokes and jingles made around a small

wooden table. Only three tiny pills

twice a day for Sam. Schiele for free

in a gallery uptown. The subway running

as if the storm never blew. Sean lives

with Scott and they’re both my true

friends. Poems and lentils and The Strand

and more whiskey. Running down 12th

like a bat outta barn. Coffee in mugs

and coffee to go. Dancing in honor

of a liver restored. And back on the bus

to my home in the country, fat to the gills

on signage, on sweetness.

Saturday song (The Head and the Heart).

Published on 11/03/201211/03/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Katie put this song on a mix for me. It’s track 14 and I skip to it as I drive up the winding hill toward home. And I sing along to it very loudly, especially the lyric that Katie must have known I’d need, the crescendo of “Been talking ’bout the way things change/my family lives in a different state.”

And then today talking to Andrew of Shake the Baron who is my friend and is moving to live in a cabin by a lake and teach guitar and record music for people and make songs through the winter. He listens to songs for melody, I listen for lyrics. Hopefully someday we’ll write a song together.

This video is is in a lonely place, a high underpass somewhere where the acoustics make them loud and resonant. I wonder how much of songs is still in the stones there. Either way I’ll sing along.

New Year’s Eve Brunch Sonnet (#5) (mine).

Published on 01/02/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Max is also a Pisces

He hands me the astrology book while reading my “Lovepoem” out loud

My photograph is on the refrigerator

This is my first time at their apartment and my photograph is on the wall

At midnight a blonde girl lights my sparkler after two minutes of matches

Sam in her black turtleneck with a small cup of water and grooving

Kathryn dancing with her hair

Mallory on the couch getting the scoop

In Andrew’s room the bed is stripped

Max makes coffee and the room is mugged

No taxis in all of Brooklyn, no taxis in all of New York

After 4am I’m not especially human

Math and sleep are both about the numbers

This year, again, is all about the words

Two Mondays later & it’s over…

Published on 08/15/201108/15/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

We came by plane and boat, we beached

(he left), I danced in rain, I trained in along the Hudson, I saw Erwitt at the ICP and photocopied Sanchez at Poet’s House, I advised and pyschologized an entire closet, I lounged briefly in the 70s,

I quiched and coffeed, I dined and dozed, I family-ed and friended, I parked at Prospect, gave a gift, hugged tall men, ran in rain again, ate squids and octopus, shared kiwi chapstick and met two new boyfriends, hugged a crying friend and hot sauced a burrito, licked honey off my pinky and wouldn’t leave a restaurant, listened to my grandma’s birthday song and was dropped off in rain and sun, I bageled and I slept until I wanted to, I missed west people and wore a wide-brimmed hat…and tomorrow I’ll head to San Diego.

We never know what will save us (Bob Dylan).

Published on 03/23/201103/23/2011 by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

Today it’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Specifically these songs:

Girl from the North Country

Masters of War

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right

Oxford Town

Corrina, Corrina

And now I’m thinking about college: about Charles Hartman, and Jen Superson, and Andrew Oedel–about second semester of senior year, when Winged Nike was right outside the window and my refrigerator had only pickles & cheese inside it and my jeans got lost in Sam’s room for so long that when I got them back, they felt new. And dinner was a far walk away but at least we never had to cook it. And we did this on the streets of New London:

Now Andrew’s in his own real band and doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Now Jen is somewhere in NY gesturing excitedly, I’ll bet.

Now I’m in a house that smells of sweetgrass, with a lot of papers all around that mean I’ve done hard work, and also that I have all of it to do. Robert Hughes once said, “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” God I hope so.

A friend is a poem: part 1 (Max Currier).

Published on 01/25/2011 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

A friend is a poem is a friend is a poem, and sometimes this is true on a Monday.

TK

as my favorite poet, i thought i should send you a poem i really like. today i am making paninis with honey-mustard. i don’t know how to spell ‘panini’ and either does the computer. i miss you.

may

Snow by David Berman

Walking through a field with my little brother Seth

I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.

He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.

Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.

Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.

I didn’t know where I was going with this.

They were on his property, I said.

When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.

Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.

But why were they on his property, he asked.

Please forgive (me).

Published on 01/01/2011 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

The Brunch Poems have taken a two-day hiatus; instead of writing them I’ve been having brunch with once-or-twice-a-year-in-their-presence friends, and food and them are great excuses. See y’all tomorrow.

Don’t Let Me Name Your Band.

Published on 10/18/2010 by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

This was 2007. Or 2008.

(I do still stand by some of these. One day, when Shake the Baron is famous, they’ll comment to their hip documentarian, “Man, I wonder if we would’ve made it big like this if we had been called the Spastic Sassies?”)