On & In are different from one another

broke open
broke open
broke open

something starting
again
open

broke
broke and


broke you do this
yr


thrilling me

the empty open

Blue House, Brown Door

I love to read Missed Connections or I Saw U's. They're so hopeful & silly & uplifting & a bizarrely wonderful way to talk to someone or just yourself & sometimes someone says something completely sublime/utterly stealable. Last night at dinner I read my roommate a few of them & came across this one:
Blue House, Brown Door
I saw you in your cute bins boots and all your short-statured splendor as you stood in your doorway, making me want to stay and kiss you forever. Here's the I Saw U you always wanted.
When: Tues, March 17, 2009
Where: Everywhere.

I wish someone had written this for me (well, minus the Bins boots, obviously). Of course, it would have to be Blue House, Purple Door (yea, no, really. And the second purple door I've lived behind).

Went dancing last night: it turns out one of my favorite songs to dance to is Rolling Stones' Paint it Black. I don't think of this as a dance song, I would never put it on a dance mix or play it when I wanted to dance, but every time it comes on at the club I lose my shit.

Today's been a win day: Juliet at Blood Pudding Press just announced the winners of her chapbook competition & she's totally going to be putting out my chapbook in May! Whee!

The whole time I've been upstairs I've been moving the arm back on the song Love is a Loser, which is a lot more uplifting that that title might suggest. They say love is just infatuation; I say love is dancing 'cross the nation.

Har Mood/Perfect Arc

This morning my choices were: wash my hair or rat it up all pompador/headband style. I opted for no. 2 since I'm going dancing tonight. I was in the Goodwill & a woman was checking me out so hard. Finally she was like "That is such a perfect arc -- how is that pinned?" (a: three parts). It moved around a little by the time I got a picture of it, but I'm generally glad I pull my weight as a spokes-hair-woman.

While I was there I picked up 3 albums -- Erasure's Wonderland, Bronski Beat's Age of Consent & Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's, which is playing. I Before E Except After C is kind of blowing up my head. I'm too lazy just now to record it & can't find it online -- come over to my house & I'll play it for you. It reminds me of some of the weirder OMD Dazzle Ships stuff, which I just eat up.

Also of this Jack Spicer poem, which I just read last night (& don't I love just anything to do with ghosts)(also, I can't get the spacing right -- am html blockquoting it, but if someone has a better idea, let me know):


Ghost Song

The in

ability to love

The inability

to love

In love

(like all the small animals went up the hill into the
underbrush to escape from the goat & the bad tiger)

The inability
Inability

(tell me why no white flame comes up from the earth
when lightning strikes the twigs & the dry branches)

In love. In love. In love. The
In-

ability

(as if there were nothing left on the mountains but
what nobody wanted to escape from)

Spend yr money on the corner now

Best dollar I ever spent: today I picked up two 45's for 50 (where is the cent sign?)s, & my roommate & I had non-moderate dance party in my living room to Belinda Carlile's Mad About You & Duran Duran's All She Wants Is.

Author thoughts

Today's coffee was too viney & lovely not to share (like a mini Orla Kiely in my cup!). Drew, yr a doll.

I finished reading Nelly Sachs' selected last night in a fit of not sleeping. I returned it to the library today, but I'm going to buy it just as soon as I can. I want to read it again, I want to study what she does with her repeating images, b/c she makes me feel so much better about only having one tone & eight items. She also did some weird stuff with line breaks towards the end that I'd like to pay just a little more attention to. While I was there I picked up my copy of Trakl's Song of the West, which I am absolutely buzzing to read.

I also went to the post office (expect treats, Lauren & Andrew!) & picked up a sheet of dark stamps with the quote "Leave my loneliness unbroken!" on them. Poe, yr a funny literary icon for America.

My favorite song that never existed

New Order's Touched by the Hand of God played at 33rpm: the Knife cover that never happened. This has been my favorite thing to listen to (when I'm not killing Calvin or Guidance Counselor [eventually I'll upload his amazing cover of The Germ's Forming]). Also, the lyrics get SO CREEPY -- esp when he says I've never looked at you in a sexual way in my life before.

There must have been something on the record, b/c it pops twice towards the beginning, but it's pretty clean after that.

Touched by the Hand of God.wav - New Order/the Knife

Retrograde

Oh, love, I take it all back. 'Cause don't you work with me to work it out.

When hearts turn blue they're all the same: dark blue, black & blue, black hearts, blue hearts, blue hearts black...

Venus Retrograde

Dear Everything,

i love love, i love being in love

I am farther away from & less impressed with love than I probably ever have been in my life. Love, you fucking molten downpour, I'm not going anywhere.

Visual/Auditory. "Whatever they will open, will open."

Today I saw a blue balloon lodged in a bare tree, branches black against the light gray sky & thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in days. I had my Polaroid in the car, but there was nowhere to stop to get the shot. Instead I took the shot you see, of tiny green spring buds & the sudden patch of blue that appeared.

Then 4 men (possibly homeless) stopped to give some love to Dudley Cheeseburger (my roommate's dog), then one called me back & gave me a daffodil right out of my landlords yard. Sweet!

I caught up on the poems on Weird Deer & listened to Andrew's reading on Apostrophe Cast & then wandered over to Fishouse & found a reading from one of my favorite poets I ever heard make sound: Ilya Kaminsky. I was nearly blown back out of my chair when I first heard him read in person. I think he's magic.

I realize how much I love to hear poetry read. I love to go to poetry readings; I love listening to readings from the Poetry Center archives; people have copied cds of poets readings for me; people have made me cds of themselves reading other's poems. I love when people read their poems to me. I love voice. I love breath & vibrate.

At the same time, I hate to read my poems out loud, I hate to hear anyone else read them (except for you, Mr. Dunbar). It just never sounds like what it sounds like in my head. Maybe if Calvin Johnson read them, it'd be different. Man, when he says he's haunted, you believe it.

Habits/"Is love a space people built in dreams"

When I am writing, I fill myself up with images. When I'm not writing, I fill myself up with poems. I'm currently barreling through Nelly Sachs' selected with a pen & a series of index cards:

Or there,
where lovers hurt each other.
Lovers,
who are always close to dying.

-- which I am going to type up on a typewriter, scan, enlarge until each letter is the size of my hand & put on my wall.

I'm also poking around the ejournals:

{Concordance, Ray Hsu}

I love this poem, but I especially like the concept. Also, it reminds me of a Stephanie Barber poem-film. I really want to have a poem up on Weird Deer (apparently, though, not enough to ever call) mostly because I have a little lispy voice & isn't that always fun for others?

I also try really hard to learn CJ's part of Virginia Reel Around the Fountain: "pull me apart limb by limb / limb by limb / wrestle that bull heart from the grass"

Dear Batteries,

{something's hiding in here}

Or I'm going to get there.

Spatial Poem (after Mieko Shiomi)

blister
velvety
corner
love
placed beside each other skillfully

I was going to arrange these into a poem, but I got so few responses that I think I'll just keep them like they are, in the order received. As/if people participate, I'll add them to list, the words making their own sense/nonsense.

The usual strange unveiling

Worked on putting together my room a little more today & this song was on repeat all day until I actually felt a little nauseated. I like to think it filled up room with wild cheer, like some kind of sonic flood, the markings of which will always be secretly on the walls & in the fabric of the sheets. The feeling I feel when I hear this song -- I should live that feeling more often. I mean, there are activities that ideally have this as their emotional soundtrack. That's the kind of day life I'd really like.

Speaking of emotional soundtrack, is it weird that Calvin Johnson's What Was Me seems an ideal makeout album right now?

Creation Reaction

{Tauba Auerbach}

Also, I forgot how fast these things move down the page: I have poems at Thirteen Myna Birds right now...catch them before they're gone!

I'm nowhere / when I'm without you

I've watched this video I can't tell you how many times today. Tripods, balloons, chandeliers, shoe-rain on a yellow umbrella: this is infinitely better than a runway show. And yea, that's Ernest Hemingway's great granddaughter running throughout.

Superstitious

Oh it's all heart beat, thought sensitive, sound that sounds like zombie rubber-bands attacking in my stomach. It's all I can't understand my own relationship with sleep.

Here I am.

The other night a woman was commenting on how small my hands are (my hands are really small) & gave me her wedding band to try on for size. I took it, panicked & handed it back to her, saying sorry but I just couldn't. I didn't understand the depth of my own superstitions until that moment. The funny thing was, when I gave it back to her, she said "Yea, I wouldn't do that either before I was married." Is it weird to offer someone a situation you wouldn't participate in yourself?

"What is that cheerful sound? / Rain falling on the ground."

Dear Andrew,

Re: the soundtrack to my life (or at least my life right now):

It's a surprise even to me, but when I played it today I knew: Book of Love's I Touch Roses is my theme song. This song has followed me faithfully from high school to now. It's nearly goofy with synth, it's tinkling & girly, but at the same time her voice is so deep & ironic? over it? & withholding.

These songs are all repeaters & they all are right where I am emotionally: happy/sad. They all manage to be hopeful & full of longing at the same time; nostalgically cheerful or winsome & dark but upbeat too; or seem to suggest something other than what they suggest. I guess most importantly, they all wouldn't be out of place if you listened to them alone at night in the dark of your bed, but neither will they let you break down into tears. And really, that's all I want out of a soundtrack.

P.S. Originally I had chosen Tiger Trap as my Beat Happening selection, as it's my favorite song from them, but it wasn't on this site & when I saw Indian Summer I knew I had a perfect stand in. Also missing off this list is Animal Collective's No More Runnin'. I might update it as I think of songs or as things become available! I'll probably not be able to add a Guidance Counselor or Breakfast Mountain song, but a few of those are right-mood repeater contenders.

Dear you

Dear hello,
Dear dear,
Dear feeling I feel when I am paying attention,
Dear feeling I feel when I'm not even aware,
Dear draw on me,
Dear sugar shine,
Dear right now, literally, no-one,
Dear online,
Dear bright, the shadows you cast,
Dear the shade you erase,
Dear milk meal,
Dear write it to me,
Dear entirely different color palette,
Dear O O O,
Dear open umbrella,
Dear foot-falls,
Dear sound of keys,
Dear keys being struck,
Dear the seconds,
Dear sleeping,
Dear sometime,
Dear sometime.


Also, this song, which is hypnotic in its overwhelming repetition without Newsome's lyrics (tho it's awesome with), but mostly: look at it. The colors of the walls are the best thing I've ever seen, ever, but then his green shirt w white lettering mirroring the chalk board which is mirrored in the black piano but for the part blocked out by the black stand knocks me out. And then how many long lines & squares. And then the rectangles. The geometry of it. And then his fingers. His fingers are going to take the fingers of the sharps/flats.


And the sound! I was so mesmerized by the visuals I failed to notice like 10 times that the sound didn't sinc up with the video at all. Oh man.