Category: wordlove

Hip-Hop & Ladystuff

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1. In high school (middle school?) I was sure the chorus to this song said “Yo lie come way.” I actually have a mix where it says: Mark Morrison-Yo Lie Come Way. What would that even mean? Is it a request? No idea why I didn’t think about this absurdity a the time. Probably because I was used to not knowing what the eff r&b artists were saying. (The song is ACTUALLY called “Return of the Mack,” and he’s saying “You lied to me.”)

 

2. I like making words with “lady” in them. The verb “ladyweird” (to be your fucking awesome self in the presence of your ladies, which may or may not include talking in a distinctive voice/saying stuff you wouldn’t say around other people), the noun “ladyfairy” (the women in my life who drop their friendship gifts upon me & vice versa), ladyfriend, ladystuff, ladygravy (just made that one up–I’ll define it as “the delicious sauce of a  lady,” interpret as you will), ladywild, ladychats, ladyscapes (a landscape populated by ladies doing sweet stuff)….etc.

3. Speaking of ladystuff: THINX. Just thinking (thinkxing?) about how these underwear would have changed my life as an early menstruater makes me tear up a little. Future girlchildren of the world: get excited. (For the uninitiated, THINX are underwear for those days of the month when you are shedding your uterine lining like the badass female you are.)

thinx

4. LadyYelp now exists and it’s called Fairy GodBoss. It’s a website where women can rate how sexist our workplaces are. This strikes me as deeply important and exciting. Because, somehow, there is still no federal law requiring paid family leave, and women are getting discrimiated against for growing humans in their bodies, and we’re also making less money overall. Sexism is technically illegal…but so is jaywalking!

5. “You will never need another lover/Cuz you a MILF and I’m a motherfucker,” -Jay-Z, to Beyonce, in the “Drunk in Love” REMIX. These are the type of lyrics that made me want to write rap lyrics in high school, I’m not kidding. But then I realized who I was (short, white, Westchester) and switched to poetry. But still. Rappers. You make me LAUGH. And that laughter is infused with a little disgust (cuz misogyny) and a little reverence (cuz wordplay).

jay and bey

Thankful for bacon pancakes & so much more (poemthing) (mine).

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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.

Things that are awesome (Sunday edition).

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garlic scapes are awesome

roses smell awesome

tampons are awesome

women that use diva cups are awesome

old ladies who dye their white hair purple are awesome

men with babies strapped to their fronts are awesome (so is anyone with a baby strapped to their body)

bare feet are awesome

mixed recycling is awesome

happy hour prices are awesome

bicycling feels awesome

tie dye is awesome

“Made in the USA” is awesome

having a sister is awesome

homemade hot sauce tastes awesome

grilling is awesome

finishing projects is awesome

making pancakes for yourself is awesome (so is making pancakes with anyone)

driving a tractor is awesome

getting high on coffee is awesome

artichokes are awesome

handshakes are awesome

wordplay is awesome

DJ names are awesome

blueberry season is awesome

reading is totally awesome

i think rollerblading looks awesome but i only did it once so i don’t know for sure

being taken out to lunch is awesome

feeding people is awesome

riding shotgun is awesome

James Brown will always be awesome

writing poems is for sure awesome

giving poems to people is awesome

whiskey is awesome

ginger beer is awesome

old friends are the most awesome of awesome

homemade muffins are awesome

thrift stores are awesome especially the sunglasses section

records are awesome

the word “platypus” is awesome and so is “spritz”

hip hop lyrics can be really awesome

bartering is awesome

letters in the mail are undeniably awesome

bacon is awesome why didn’t anyone make me eat it earlier it so so goddamn awesome

summer coming on is awesome

Misha is number 1 awesome

treasures are awesome (like bird bones or gemstones)

wind turbines are awesome

root beer floats are awesome

notebooks are awesome especially new notebooks

woodcuts are awesome

worms are awesome

herbs are awesome

friendship bracelets are awesome

monks are awesome and so are nuns

hats are of course awesome but we already knew that

getting an mfa is awesome and i’m almost done doing it!!!! awesome over & out.

 

 

 

New mini chapbook (mine)!

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I am in the middle of making a new lil chapbook. As always, formatting and photocopying are more traumatic than expected. But it WILL be ready by Saturday. About 5 people in the world are as excited about this as I am.

 

 

If you want one you should come to Agitprop on Saturday at 7pm. Or you can knock on my sideporch door any time after Sunday. Or, I can send one to you in a sort of delicious correspondence barter (you’d have to write me back). I’d do that. I have a lot of stamps.

 

($2 each, or traded for $2 worth of what you got. Photograph & cover design by my farmer, Misha J.)

 

A giving of thanks (mine).

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This is a thank-you to everyone who reads this blog,

 

because you do, and it makes me feel thankful and surrounded and known and relevant. Because you google “panache taylor katz” or “taylor mardis katz” and you get here. You read it and you text me about it. You read it and write me an email. You read it and cry and tell me about it. You”like this” on facebook. You refer to something from here in a conversation. You secretly, you in your house with your mug, you in your house with your dog, with your nothing on at all, you read this thing I write.

I write this thing because I love people and I like people and I believe that a person who likes or loves me would like to end up here. Because all of you have jobs, or you are trying to have jobs, and you are walking around, taking public transportation, shaking hands, heating up a lunch, you are talking on the phone or you are completing projects or having a drink with new or old friends, or you are in law school or you are in Berlin, and you like poetry, somewhere. If only because you know me. Poetry is a thing that I love and people are a thing that I love and to me, the two are connected.

And then there are the people that end up here accidentally, because I typed up a poem they searched for, or I compiled photographs they were curious about. They don’t know me but maybe they click around. I am not famous and I am not invincible and I know only a small amount. I don’t know who ends up here, I only know the numbers, when I check them.

When I write about something having to do with love, people click. That, alone, is fact enough to thank. I have things to say and I like to sit down and say them, and I do it, and you read. This blog is not one thing, it is many; it’s here to say: I like poets. I like photographers, especially when they photograph people. I like Misha and my friends. I like to feel like I am living the life I began imagining for myself at a very young age. I miss people, and I care for them by writing a poem that will make them laugh. I love my sister, and she moved to Texas. I like to think of my parents when they were young. I have a sideyard, and you should come to it. I am questioning and sometimes a poem surfaces to answer. I drew something, and it’s unskilled but you can see it. I wrote a little ditty and why not put it out there.

I am multiple and I am grateful and I am predisposed to joy. I make poems as a way of staying here. If you read this, it is very likely that we get along. And so: hey guys. Thanks for clicking on this site, this someplace on the internet. It really makes me happy that you do.

With love,

Taylor Mardis Katz

 

(Edward Hopper’s “Freight Car at Truro”)

 

Words to live by (Chris Kardambikis).

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written at the summer sideyard & since then stationed on my refrigerator. & now you too can have this friendly reminder on your fridge, these words of wisdom, this clever counsel, to guide you through your future beverage selections, just save the pdf, click on print, and enjoy a future of smart hydration…

“5” (a poem exists, exists) (Inger Chistensen)

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5

early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;

seclusion and angels exist;

widows and elk exist; every

detail exists; memory, memory’s light;

afterglow exists; oaks, elms,

junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;

eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar

exist, and the future, the future

***

unfathomably translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied