Wednesday, November 29, 2006

sayings of the parking lot

            Marty said there was no wind.

Darting evil thing.

Slap me before I sin again.

Washing out the wind.

Starting again this evil thing.

Tap and sin removes the stain.

11/29/06

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

in the campground our forefathers wrestled















Monday, November 27, 2006

hypergraphia ex tenebris

mushroom, orange, nutmeg:
opossum breath in the house.

not nothing
don’t help anyone:
disappear

“what are you
looking at?”

do you need help?
kiss the ring,
I don’t need
a cup of that mercy.

the toxicity, the fat,
the giant orange whale:
none of this is
digestible.

hypergraphia,
except only
write what I
would read.

October 2005

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Memorial Day weekend 2005, grotto expedition through western Iowa & Minnesota

Slicing through the pot roast countryside of Iowa...

While we waited out a thunderstorm at Pizza Ranch in Harlan, IA,
gave $20 to the pizza-jockey Sean, who didn’t know
anything useful about grottoes in the town, but he needed the money
to buy The Da Vinci Code — he’s a HS senior, wants to go to Rome
so he can see the “secret altars” etc. that Brown writes
about in his bastard accounts of the cabal du jour...
also wants to major in Business.

Epiphany in lightning flashes and empty pizza pan
on the wettened Saturday night streets of Harlan.

“I got my cheerleader’s outfit at the Carroll, IA, Wal-Mart for $22.66.”
Every Wal-Mart is a city of death. Discount
consumerism digs more graves in the retail necropolis.

Stayed the night at Motel 71-30, manager: Jan of Schostakowa, Poland.

Unmap
See no
Hear no
words or images
(5/30)

No Dobberstein grotto in Carroll.
Grotto in Defiance, IA, is sub-par.
Was Carroll grotto dismantled
and hauled to West Bend?
How ‘bout in Harris, Iowa?

Rembrandt, Sutherland, Hartley (got hot fudge shakes here),
May City, Harris (Bud Allen’s “David Grotto”), Sibley
(met Aunt Glad’s companion, days before she was moving
for good to her brother’s in Michigan).

Into Minnesota via the southwestern corner. Blue Earth, Arco
(a great old grotto/ gas station turned private home here,
mosaic'd facade and free-standing patriotic, animal themed
statuary has been moved to the local campground.)

The visions of the Midwest continue under this blue sky and upon
this blue earth.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

St. Paul historical blotter : November

where my hands freeze, write less, where
stories, my stories transmute likeness
likelihood like heat to blood in family places,
I look for the dead butchers of Saint Paul,
the handlers of industry turning wares out from barges,
stoneworkers on the cliffs, builders in steel or white jade.
I look for bar tabs still unpaid across from the cathedral.

from across the century... the names of my ancestors break
my heart, but they pass by along Summit on evenings,
to the cathedral, they are on trolleys or horses, on foot,
black hands, clean knuckles white pressed shirts.
they laugh in the streetcars or step quick, avoiding mud
splashing from another unpaved street. delicious cold of
every Winter Carnival, they were spectators and owners
and wives and entrepreneurs, until they couldn’t take the cold
anymore and went by train at last to California.

cold now, but Uncle Peter’s cigars still warm me
like Mars and Orion, laughing lights, the First Insurance
tower welcoming all to the garden edge of architectural bluffs
over Raspberry Island, Harriet Island, places named for school-
teachers and priests, the old cave Pig’s Eye staked out, lost
under all that work of decent people who could let
no mushrooms grow under their feet,

who saw more than selling whiskey to Indians in a place
they were making in the last eastern city before the wilderness,
the prairies. the world wrapped them up at night, to sleep.

11/10/06

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

experiment with



experiment with .. experiment with
experiment with

experiment with
experiment with
experiment with


experiment with experiment with
experiment with

experiment with experiment with
experiment with


Tuesday, November 21, 2006

pointing finger

Monday, November 20, 2006

impression of the worst of Pound's Cantos

strength, you,
strength of an ox.

arrangements at
moonset, under
the pine tree.

keep it down when
first light comes.

he tells us “I’m
tired of these gnats
buzzing around, blood-
suckers, returning no
dividend. the day
is dawning, my
children, when
Il Duce returns
and then he’ll know
I was right. niente
usura per noi
.”

but silence lavishes
its balm on the dead.

we are left to pay
our bills by computer.

usury in the land,
usury is a word no
one living understands.

bury it in Italy, there’s
still life outside conspiracies.

11/6/06

Friday, November 17, 2006

I wrote a past for you

I wrote a past for you
I wrote a part for circus dwarves
I wrote three dozen sensible requests
I wrote nothing that wasn’t in the papers
I wrote with no intention of seeing my name in lights
I wrote and the sound of the words lasted
I wrote after the fact, I wrote fast
I wrote because of the effect
I wrote in the space capsule and watched it rise above the clouds
I wrote young and was young
I wrote the time down but then the clock ran out of ink
I wrote all the memories I hadn’t purged for spite
I wrote a season and then I wrote another one
I wrote because we’re all gonna die, but that doesn’t happen now
I wrote you this but in time you will fade away
I wrote in a book but the book was made of edible materials
I wrote and it wasn’t work it was a house and what’s my address
I wrote about being lost when there was no money in it
I wrote a pretended sign, I wrote a vision
I wrote out of mind ideas, I wrote it kindly
I wrote several out-of-body experiences no one really had
I wrote the young flies don’t pass their wisdom on to the old
I wrote she’s practicing piano across the street again
I wrote nails that come up in the spring we pick them up
and use them for repairing the roof
I wrote all about sarcastic wit and the people who take it seriously
I wrote an anger that cooked for me but didn’t clean the floors

9/2/06

you can paint my food
but eat off yr own damn plate

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

face / frame


















11/14/06

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

butter

Big B, little u --
there’s a sale
on Butter.

10/14/06

Thursday, November 09, 2006

3 angels










5/15/2005

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

lett rs

let your typeface be your umbrella
don’t let your punctuation become your grave

11/8/06

Sunday, November 05, 2006

colors always feel foreign

now that I’m in Holland
now I’m in the big city
now the colors on walls
now people don’t look.

the colors on walls are streets,
the river moves faster here.
there are lots of rivers,
but the people see just one.

10/31/06

Uncle Ken dreams of returning to Oregon

centipedes and scarecrows,
chameleons and digitalis,
amanita, the drought’s across
the Bitterroots this month,
pungent grasses where the frost
has been taken, carpets, dead
vegetation thrown out the back
window, we left on someone
else’s driveway, the west is
calling every single one,
in their soul, the west wants
everyone treading its rocks,
escarps, wading pools, streams,
or drowning on the banks
of its ice-blue lakes, rush along
the creeks, the pines are
murmuring on Donner Pass—
get your ass back in the van
and go West.

10/14/06

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

use resource,
national identity.

the color wept.
widening the
foreign river.

urchins are wild.
all other wisdom
is humanity’s.


11/1/06