11/03/2010

our beach, the beach's we

cast your weariness down the dune
and your dread into the shoals,
every pain you've ever felt
is scattered here and brought to ruin

those jagged shards of memory
encrusted on the hull of childhood
drop, polished to beads of glass,
smooth to touch -- hard to see

that dark oil ribboned tightly
to make wreckage of your lift
dissipates with whipping wind,
indifferent endless waves, and me

we'll return another time
to our beach, the beach's we,
numberless and unencumbered,
swirling grains within the brine

9/30/2010

FOUR+LETR+WORD

PAIN#SAVE#HOUR#DRAW
HOME#LACK#CARE#LAND
WIND#TEAR#READ#LIVE
GONE$WHEN$PART$MORE
DEAR$LONE$LEFT$TREE
REAP%FALL%BURY%WILL
SONG%WING%HUNG%PAST
THEN\HERE\PAGE\STAY
WITH!RUST!TURN!FREE
LORD!BLUE!RAIL!DAMN
TAKE-FAST-WARN-ROAD
LIKE.FIRE.BACK.WEPT
WELL WAKE DEEP NECK

9/20/2010

a jog

one time you went jogging down a footpath near your apartment building. it was a winding, dusty trail that led past slouching houses with dirty windows peering into darkened entry ways. it was broad daylight. you didn't jog too fast because you didn't know the path, and it turned quickly and grew wider or narrower as it slithered through the web of buildings, water pipes, rails, tiny courtyards, occasional streets. sometimes you saw old, lonely-looking people sitting in the houses, doing nothing, merely a glimpse. they seemed like ghosts or holograms, disconnected from the visceral sweaty run of life. you floated past them, they floated past you, trapped in the past. you were restraining your breathing and unconsciously reluctant to make heavy steps, to leave a trace of yourself, to even be seen. you didn't belong, but you were there. after the jog, returning to your apartment and stepping inside, you felt light, unpinned, as though your energy had been displaced. instinctively, you went to the living room to look out the window and see if anyone was running by or watching you. remember?

9/08/2010

sea of fertility


floating across a waterless ocean
without maps for land
or charts for stars
i did all my best to smile
on a voyage out
to nothing from nowhere
dreaming off you all the while
the stillness breathes,
"sail with me ~ staaayyy freee"
slouching toward
backward countless miles

i play a game to pass the time
a silent song to speed me home,
"there is no ship
there is no land
there is no sky
there is no sea
there is no you
there is no me
there is no time
there is no is
there no
there
..."

and then
a stillness,
"sail with me ~ staaayyy freee"

floating across a waterless ocean
without maps for land
or charts for stars
i did all my best to smile...

8/27/2010

mameshiba; maaya sakamoto

i used to lay on my bed for what seemed like hours listening to this song on repeat. the last part sounds like flying, like continuation, like it's ceasless, but then it ceases, so i listen to it again. and again. she sings:

dare yori hayaku tadoritsuite miseru yo kimi no moto e
kataku shibaritsuketeru nibui hikari no ito wo sutete ageru
asa ga tooku natte mo ame ga tatakitsukete mo
kimi no moto e

Faster than anyone else I will reach you where you are
I will throw away for you the strands of dull light that tightly bind you
Although the morning may become distant, although the rain may beat down
To where you are

the video is cute but not as glorious as the sonic build at the end.

8/20/2010

let the heat of youth shutter your windows, keep your disowned memories cool, foregone beauty sidelined, you're not a plant, you're not a seed, you're not a child, you're not in need, be

stalwart, fixed, not rolling around
in the leaves in the least in the leaves in the least...
(i can't believe the feeling)

indoors musty refined and unseen, pin a lattice of light across statue's face with bronze eyes peering through thin open space at that plant (is not me) at that child (was not me) in the leaves in the least in the leaves in the least (i'm moving past me) save such dreams for the sheets

7/27/2010

nagisa ni te


Ah, abandon the exhausted horse
Board the sinking ship,
It'll be just like that dream,
What happens after that,
I don't know any more
I already know.

Ah, Fading away, me on the beach,
My beach.

7/25/2010

ode to fire island by vada sultenfuss


I like fire island a whole lot.
It tastes good when days are hot.
On a cone, or in a dish.
This would be my only wish.
Vanilla, chocolate, or Rocky Road,
Even with pie a la mode.
That's all I got so far.

6/05/2010

right
ride
my bike
and whistle
take a right
what's left
behind
behind
me

5/18/2010

me, the non-man, and you in the glass

me:
today sky and water form one colorless canvas
"i want to dissipate"
curtains of water hung from high
rustle across the pavement
the man on the loading dock isn't moving
"isn't a man"
and all the drains and gates have rusted
i look at my chest darken in a cracked glass
"all the people caught in the net"
keep hidden indoors, dry in their cubes
while the bleakness enlarges
"and stains us
me, the non-man, and you in the glass"

me in the glass:
"there's a man on the loading dock and a vibration in the highway, summoning, saying death, saying sway stagger lift, they wear me out, they'd knock me down if they didn't pass through me see i'm not on the axis, i'm not on the plane, elevated away in a chemical stream a safe blood from the cold call the nearness the fall to the cold, the call, the nearness of--his eyes don't penetrate, the cars will go through me"

the non-man:
...

4/21/2010

The birth of Kim Jong Il in the days when the liberation of the country was dawning was a great event for the Korean people.


check out uriminzokkiri, a website run by the north korean government and start losing your mind. the lady above is kim jong il's mamma.

a bit about his childhood:
"Kim Jong Il was unusual in his abilities of observing, discerning and analyzing things.

In his young days, with sincere and careful observation, he learned why hens hold their beaks up after pecking at water and why there are no black flowers. One year, on the night of August 15 by the lunar calendar, he was watching the moon. Someone told him that according to a legend, on the moon there is a cinnamon tree under which a rabbit is pounding something in a mortar. Remembering that a plane seems to grow smaller as it flies higher, and eventually disappears, Kim Jong Il refuted the legend by saying that a rabbit on the far-way moon cannot be seen.

His abilities of observing things and phenomena, and creative thinking were quite exceptional."

4/16/2010

favorite lyrics as poetry

good
we slip through mansions with fences full-grown.
we slip through streetlights in crooked rows.
I saw the sky split in two: one half jealous and one half cruel.
I felt my chest cave in under a pile of synthetic grins.
the fields are day-glo under sobbing rainbows dragged through filthy thoughts,
false applause and camouflage.
I couldn't see the solar system,
it was camouflaged as a tape loop repeating.
I couldn't see the glorious meadow,
it was camouflaged as a smashed stain glass window.
I couldn't see the love and affection,
it was camouflaged as a jungle of erections.
I couldn't see the skeletal lightning,
it was camouflaged as a young machete.
-blood brothers

better
First the outside-legs of the bear
Up and fell down, in the water, like knobby garters
Then the outside-arms of the bear
Fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes
Low'red in a genteel curtsy
Bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders;
And, with a sigh,
She allowed the burden of belly to drop like an apron full of boulders
If you could hold up her threadbare
Coat to the light where it's worn translucent in places
You'd see spots where
Almost every night of the year Bear had been mending suspending that baseness
Now her coat drags through the water
Bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows;
In the magnetic embrace
Balletic and glacial of Bear's insatiable shadow;
-joanna newsom

best
Beetles and eggs and blues and pour a little everything else
You steam a lens stable eyes and glass
Not get pissed off through my bird lips as good news
Still we can find our love down from behind
Down far behind this fabulous, my turn rules
Beetles and eggs and blues and bells and eggs and then blued
Beetles and eggs and blues and pour a little everything else
You steam a lens stable eyes and glass
Not get pissed off through my bird lips as good news
You'll hang the hearts black and dull as the night
We hanged your pass and start being as you in ecstasty
Still being cried and laughed at before
Should I be sewn in hugged I can by not saying
Still being cried and laughed at from light to blue
And should I be hugged and tugged down through this tiger's masque
-cocteau twins

4/07/2010

a chronology of musical associations

  • early tori amos = high school, misery
  • bright eyes = early college
  • imogen heap, certain duran duran, bic runga's drive = quasi first love
  • bic runga's beautiful collision, boat = tokyo
  • low's curtain hits the cast = leaving, returning, failing, leaving1
  • damien rice, certain emiliana torrini, death ambient = first bf, both apartments
  • archer prewitt, broken social scene, arcade fire, antony & the johnsons = mori-machi
  • donnie & seiko, mew = early days of current bf
  • nina simone, mia, joanna newsom, kate bush = friends of late days of columbia
  • cocteau twins, faye wong's xing bu lai = me

footnote:
1i am looking south - i am sailing south
across an ocean that smells like you
that tastes like you inside my mouth
your eyes one deeply generous view -
a lilting, wet, atlantic blue

sprawled bare upon the weathered boards
i see a keen arc cut the sky -
as though the cloud was shorn by sword -
then light pours out so bright that i
must shield from you my weeping eyes

because though wrought for leaning toward
such light - from burden bright they shy
extracted from their dark accord
alike the heart, in use denied

3/31/2010

ohana means family


when you live in nyc, you get a lot of strange visitors. some friends visited during a rush of good weather. spring ate and ran. we went to the park and saw kentuckians marry. we gawked at sunbathers on the christopher street pier. we angered security guards. we ate a lot. we bitched a lot. and through it all, we learned and loved to hate.

3/17/2010

artifact

chest hurts with expected surprise at lack of notice given when all signals as misdirected and divided pulses have been sent over the ocean on shimmering harp strings though covered in wet dust dry moss hugged by fog, be still but still but still but confess: (unreadable) maybe scrawling out a dream sequence as a substitute for directness isn't cutting deep or clean enough for world's idiots to decipher that (unreadable) heart is calcium decaying every day like shells on shores, all life moving with bone and all emotion pushing out salt and all avoidance attracting as (unreadable) to (unreadable).

rosetta stone:

fragment- invest time and/or energy in fill in the blank
fragment- a well thought-out stream of conciousness
fragment- abandonment, soaring flags over vallies

3/06/2010

kate bush in books


when i read wuthering heights, i pictured catherine, the spirited protagonist, to look like kate bush because of the latter's famous song. then i read the idiot in which i cast kate bush as the tragic, fiery nastasya filippovna. and these days, i've given her the lead role in tolstoy's anna karenina. maybe my casting choices are getting predictable. kate's probably tired of playing strong and beautiful. i'm also reading the sailor who fell from grace with the sea, which is set in the seaport city of yokohama after world war II. i can probably find a brutish japanese boatman role for her... something without any lines, more like a cameo...

2/19/2010

excerpt from anna karenina


"O my sweet!" he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for what was happening behind. "He's cleared it!" he thought, catching the thud of Gladiator's hoofs behind him. There remained only the last ditch, filled with water and five feet wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the reins, lifting the mare's head and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt that the mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew how greatly the mare had quickened her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep up with the mare's pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew that something awful had happened. He could not yet make out what had happened, when the white legs of a chestnut horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Vronsky was touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At that moment he knew only that Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the muddy, motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare's reins. Again she struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.

"A—a—a!" groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. "Ah! what have I done!" he cried. "The race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!"

2/12/2010

think like a baby

i was at an indian restaurant one day with friends when i heard a small child across the room babble what sounded like, "nick nolte." i told another friend about this, and she vowed to make her child's first words be "nick nolte."

when he's old enough to eat it, i'm getting him a birthday cake with nolte's mug airbrushed on it. poorly. maybe stick some candles in the eyes and the wax melt down real low. then i'll take another picture and post it here. thus shall we mark the years.

2/05/2010

do not delay
daniel open the door
do for me
damage control
i gotta stop wondering
—to be free—
what or if
you think of me

1/29/2010

corpus christi


Lulley, lully, lulley, lully,
The faucon hath born my mak away.

He bare hym up, he bare hym down,
He bare hym into an orchard brown.

In that orchard ther was an hall,
That was hanged with purpill and pall.

And in that hall ther was a bede,
Hit was hangid with gold so rede.

And yn that bed ther lythe a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.

By that bedes side ther kneleth a may,
And she wepeth both nyght and day.

And by that bedes side ther stondith a ston,
"Corpus Christi" wretyn theron.

1/22/2010

she said, "it's getting a little frayed around the edges..."

1. my second-hand bike is propped up against a temple older than my country, and the sun is shining on the empty asphalt road that slithers through the glassy rice fields that led me here. i don't know where i am or what i'm looking at.

2. two friends from opposite sides of an ocean are sitting together on a concrete embankment bordering a river that feeds into a different ocean, drinking beer, sometimes talking, sometimes only listening to the gentle lap of water around their ankles or an occasional car driving over the distant bridge. the moon is low, the mosquitoes are out.

3. at around 3 a.m. in tokyo on a saturday night, an american is sitting in a chair by his desk on the top floor of a shabby, post-war dormitory building, staring into canopy terrorized by wind and rain outside his window, lost in memories of being in love with someone back home in an unconscious effort not to acknowledge a storm of anxiety and loneliness brought on by being foreign in a strange place.

4. i went with my friend and her mother to go see the fireflies in an area of town i'd never been. we parked on the road underneath a weak blue-gray street lamp, the only source of light other than dozens of twinkling, soft specks floating somewhere between us and the inscrutable blackness of the forest. we took our time, hovering, like the fireflies, from light source to light source in disconnected silence.

1/13/2010

i can read

i never used to have time to read. now i have the subway ride to and from work. it's a prison. i'm forced to read, and i love it. since moving to nyc in august, i've read these public domain books on my iphone:
  • the adventures of sherlock holmes; sir arthur conan doyle
  • the picture of dorian gray; oscar wilde
  • wuthering heights; emily bronte
  • the idiot; fyodor dostoevsky
  • to the lighthouse; virginia woolf
  • the adventures of tom sawyer; mark twain
  • heart of darkness; joseph conrad
  • the mysterious affair at styles; agatha christie
they were all fantastic, but "to the lighthouse" stands out as one of the best books i've ever read. i had never read woolf before. she expertly articulates the inarticulate, invisible, intangible urges that drive relationships.

1/07/2010

渚にて


below our feet, fish / in our midst, mist
rain rolling down the beach / reuniting as the sea

1/03/2010

new year's resolution

read more haiku.

名月の出るやゆらめく花薄

at the full moon's
rising, the silver-plumed
reeds tremble

-正岡 子規, Masaoka Shiki