thanks nicolas

the first thing i saw upon waking up this sunday afternoon - the onion basket had plummeted from the hooks above and created a veritable installation (you know how these things are - "art") in the kitchen. i suspect the mynahs chewed through the wicker.

this made me cry. it charted my little tete a tete with barcelona to a t, right from the same moment - that rivaldo bicycle kick to that last iniesta goal that made me accidentally jump up and shout, waking everybody.

listen to this band called yacht - a bit electro, a bit psychedelico, along with pronounced bass - a very pleasing mind trip altogether. use proper headphones!

i wish i had friends who dont care about getting enough sleep or assignments due, and can drive.

its age not infatuation

o blighte me again - im your little splintered sapling - but one who pines without reason, without effort not to. not for your body your sex or your irrational spiellettes but only a smile yours and your mind, your cult force.

its cold here on the periphery - noone else in my orientation to camp and conquer withdrawal. slowly i must hv to fade out of your oriental suzerainty concentrics, back away from the barricades - into the better part of forgetfulness - dovetailling perhaps into i will forgive/you whos alive to me in figment bulbs fragtion - the lacko-iron dot spectre you get when just standing up, a splash wash pinhole photograph, flash abuting features. flash hate. these they record itself over the same reel now and again(actually everyday. every fucken day.). handcranks through jittery film loops stop starting screech to a -. time is a dying battery.

handsome furs, l8r, 9pm, home, $25

i dont speak on saturdays

saturday night yellow lines
devoidoid hdb carpark aglow in diffused street lamp light lone
old man dragging cart of cardboard along
by,
the world away, in city proper - in the proper city, perhaps bumpy bass
electronic music and female electric shrieks,
cinkling glasses and photograph flashes,
signs
of a night as a night
should be tonight

but in its stead emaciated lethargy
f5 upon f5 on gmail, fb and even the weather page
in dim wit room, mine
waiting for something anything maybe a storm to happen
then traipsing again downstairs finding out that (true love is blind?)
the refrigerator has not changed
pressing face to window grill peering down tock ticking,
waiting for the weekday

actress and singer baroness léonia cooreman (aka annie cordy) covers the sons of the pioneers' 1940s country classic, cigarettes and whusky, in french in the early '60s with crazy, crazy eyes.

via hollister hovey

... and together with manu and pamela, the friend formerly known as follywop, we sqoze thru the huge racuous crowd and just tried for about an hour or so to fend off every other strange boy - half naked sweaty teenagers just kicking and stumbling around, eyes closed in stupor, flailing arms and flailing limbs - manu got elbowed over the forehead, and he after the initial shock cutely told the boy to "please be careful". surrounded by the ambient suffocating exponential trap of body heat i stood grimacing for 3/4 hr until the band deigned to come on, and lo heavy semi screaming mock rock, not my favourite but a gigs a gig, and have music will bop, and everybody already moven somehow someway, pulsing, hurling up bottles, slippers and bouncing blown up condoms (which the security man caught when it reached the front and took away - his own version of censorship? we all booed) plus lots of excited but lacking attempts at body surfing. also lots of passive aggressiveness going on around with bottles hitting girls on heads and they in indignant huff throwing back, hitting other innocent person - ..|.. and then subsequent cowering, hiding face. i, avoiding the violent moshers for life and limb, but at the same time enthralled by their antics. ex post facto everyone slowly trudging away on gravelly paths, i hobbling, manu smoking post-coitally, memory mesmerize, lingering, glad to be out of the smoken pit but also bummed tt its all come to an end, all in the stare of hard fluorescent searchlights - jangling eardrums still - i worry about the people staying across the bay, would they complain again and ruin it all?

Shadowplay (2002) from Dan B. on Vimeo.

on what happens in hiroshima after the atom bomb drops and everybody turns into shadows.

on editing

im not quite sure why editing (anything -writing, photos etc) has gotten such a bad rep lately - its almost asif if you edit something, you're confounding the essence of your work - or that youre faking it, it being artistic talent. all that would only be true if your first-attempt voice was the perfect voice, most honest, most accurate one musterable, and lord knows that takes years of cultivation. jack did it tho, writing on the road in a feverish 2 week spell and didn't edit just sent it to publish - i guess thats the writing utopia everybody aspires to - the ultimate truthful voice - but he still admitted that that voice took years to grow out, "cultivation" - that would i suppose include a not insubstantial portion of editing. but anyway that's jack - for the rest of us - me - my first attempt voice is always stoic - naturally so, but doesnt give for good self exploration, and also murky and dishonest, and that's why i edit - it doesnt steal any essence of my anything but actually helps me intro-inspect better for increased honesty.

the same goes with photos - you cant trust that unwieldy camera thing to capture exactly what your eye, or your mind's eye remembers of whatever scene - editing then helps to alighn the image with the image envisioned. but of course theres the editing that crosses the reality line and becomes dishonest - the photoshopping plastic surgery - making your eyes bigger, pimples away - dont like that

while she’s gone

it's too late to change you with language
your boundaries are always too narrow, and you bury
yourself beneath a shallow grave of artifice, flesh and perfection

look up above the mountain, to the right
of the castle's turret, that's not a gull
that's a heart.
and of course it's tattered
swooping too low crossing
the atlantic to find you, its stomach
was slit open on the horns of a caribou in greenland.
many species of birds have feasted on its eyes.

so, having come this far, i can now barely see you

it's two weeks since you've gone
the fragrance you left
still remains in this apartment
as if it were bracketed to the wall like a shelf

it remains sweet yet somehow stale
the pressuring scent of expedience

how i hunger to devour it to devour you
slowly, gently, vicious.

i chew on the pubic hairs you left on the sheet
like a country boy chews a blade of grass as he walks
near a pond, skimming flat rocks across the water.

if the angels knew, were kind,
that is where i'd be.

instead, i have been been sitting down by the hudson
at the end of the gansevoort st. pier
reading schiller on the sentimental and naive

melville was a customs clerk there
the streets are still cobblestone

i'm hoping for an experience that pre-dates you.
for example, being chased by a dragonfly.

what is not perfect, you deign to destroy.
when you find your idea of perfection
you relax on well-cut grass leading down to the stream.

you make a stranger a lover and a lover a stranger
you isolate the curve of longing
then accelerate the flow.

it becomes the curve of binding energy.

under different circumstances,
i could admire that.

i keep finding your long straight hairs
in the blankets in the carpet on the arm
of the chair where you were working
perfecting your calligraphy
the lavish tyranny of words
now i watch the red in each long strand shine, twisted
between my thumb and forefinger in the window light
i tied one around the neck of an alabaster bear
the rest i just continue to drape across the roses
in the wine bottle beside the kitchen window
it's beginning to look like a spider's web. it seems
that each symbol possible, in time, finds its way back to me.

i put my faith in i put my i put mine in i put my faith in you

while it rains outside through the night
through the twilight of the gods
i want to watch the rain falling with you inside
inside you i want the rain to fall inside you
lap the drops that drain
lost, i remain inside you

when i took off to swim the river last week
i left the wine glass on the table beside my bed
the one you drank from here
near full with bottled water, as you asked

the capricious symbols are turning cliche and wet

when i got home it was five days later, the humidity
in the city heavy that week but still
when i held it up there was something left, just enough drops
to wash down a pill to fall asleep
then i filled it again and left it to the sun and defiance
there are times i hate you there is no question
but an unforced grace remains. your generous silence
listen,
with our tongues we could tie the laces of angels,
light or fallen, no matter
your thighs moved smoothly as latino gangsters

it's hard to walk from a love that never ended
the fury is deadly, as if i were locked forever
in a room with movies of bridges collapsing
too rigid for the quick wind

you see, your leaving occurred without
the foreplay of anxiety which is essential
before one flies through the window of a car
out of control

unprepared, only a certain yet vague prescience which didn't
seem to concern me much i left it in your hands
as i took you at your word. now i see the only means
i had to heal the burn was to replay again and again each permutation
in all its bitterness, and illusion.

it becomes tedious
as the tedious becomes essential apparently

cassandra: that's you incarnate
sweating the details of a future bliss
as if you could control it

the angels are more confused than ever

for once they call out, and there is no one to listen

you called from a phone by a lake
deep in the canopy of black forests
the entire country deciduous, leaves rotting
among the fresh angel skin a heart flown so far, it's fallen
it's grey among the leaves like a dying frog
and, seeing it, you step away, glad you avoided it
i found another of your hairs on the floor
this time i just threw it away it's becoming old

gravity
it keeps us from floating away.
yet presses down. we stumble and fall.

i thought dusk was the moment dividing
night and day, all things possible.
yet, tonight looking out from this terrace
twilight is filled only
with red taillights moving away, to bridges or tunnels

yet always water, above or below, red taillights
and the mercurial sadness of another darkness descending
a thicker gravity. so many lost loves
your boundaries were too narrow
everything planned assiduously
within surgical thin perimeters.

now and then you would test the borders you defined
but never too far, inside the fear of finding yourself
even for a moment lost. at times you did
step beyond, paler slightly from the risk,
to burn in the wilder sun, yet always returning
in time for the mail and the certainty and the phone perhaps

inside those boundaries assurance and fantasy blur and merge
inside those boundaries, thought and action become one
without distinction. those outside
get spun, unravel. your arms shrink in the cause of embrace
what you try to comfort you can no longer reach.

and i've done everything i'm accusing you of.

all the while i was staring straight
into a wavering blue flame

among the flaws, i watched
your necessity bloom

like careless crawling orchids

so imperceptible
i didn't really notice until the first petal fell
and a strange arboreal wind blew it away

i was always seeing you on the move
as if passing in airport after airport
the smell of jet fuel, vanilla, fancy soap and ambivalence
without an hour hand, a minute hand emblazoned
on its heat and glow, i could have
watched the dew in these days reveal you as you opened

perhaps i could have unveiled my own hesitations, washed the poison
from my lips, held you down by your wrists and watered you
in all resistance. once again build myself a thirst and drink your overflow

i could have taken you to the dark gods
still getting us back home on time
to sleep with the anorexic angel
who i would pin motionless, radiant
between your breast and my hand
my hand unyielding
extended outward as light, the light

you learned as you lost it in a single moment

it's months now since you've been gone
and what i feel i'll tell you what it's like
it's like a last glass of spanish champagne slipping from my hand
taking months to reach the carpet

it's like a slow hanging
this city is a scaffold my room's a trapdoor beneath
not rope but a long red scarf a silk noose
tightening slightly more day after day

even now as i type
my feet are dangling a foot or two above the floor
breathing only through vanity and my fingertips

the time hasn't changed since you left
that moment in front of my building throwing your suitcase
into the trunk of the cab, a hindu driver. i check the airport route
he has planned for you. we kiss long and sad and i
watch you drive slowly off, your head craned back at me
i watched until you turned at 19th st. and were out of sight
leaning my head to the side and feeling the cool of a marble pillar
against my cheeks making one last wave one last

i went upstairs, called her, and slept
forcing myself not to wake until daylight the next day.

you're in amsterdam.
you know,
if they took those reinforcing beams away
from the old wooden houses along the canals in holland
they would most likely have fallen into the water by now.

that is your art form
creating vestiges
out of lace and lashes.
everything just fell away.

the bridges over the canal
they're quaint and banal
tourist boats pass beneath.

i was a tourist

to your body.

why do you smile so widely in every picture i have of you?
sometimes it makes me feel like slapping you

in this room everything comes as a whisper.
so what did you say?
why do i want to know?

because that's the way it is for me, and always has:
to be amused, bewildered, bemused, and fucked
without the slightest aspect left out.

i thought i had been floating with the tide easily
these last three years, not looking ahead yet waiting
for some small island
even a rock would have done
to land on and survey how far i had come
and if it was worth going on

and all the while i now learn you had somehow fixed, shifted the natural flow
and i have been swimming upstream against those vacuumed years.

salmon are an endangered species
man, and the paws of black bears

i'm tired too tired for conjunctions.
having reached land,
are you worth love in any form?
an old story getting older
you may not possess irony, but you carry it like a silk purse
now the mute fog rolls in off the river
and i can't speak.
it makes me listen too hard
with an urge to believe.

why couldn't we find a love in that too-american exhaustion
melt into each other as the hour that moans

in europe how you have reached a mountaintop
whose scent is things dead a thousand years
that is the fragrance of betrayal.
a cologne you took years to create
a chemical pun you mailed me in a white envelope
a white wedding envelope
the chemical wedding of c.r.
child bride antelope
collide and elope

this cologne is what you would have me press
in two subtle drops around my neck
like a noose of splintering tears.

i flew straight through that car window
without the essential anxiety
and the only way to recover
is to play it over and over
on a screen too small
for the curve of time in this ward where i have been waiting

it makes everyone a fool, awake and in dreams. i wound up
loving something i was forced to reinvent, deconstruct
though i know you so well now
come to understand your meaning

that's the worth of a lifetime
everything else collapses
or repeats often enough to forget

conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us
it's hard to find comfort
in this world.

you brought that to me
that's hard to let go.
only you and i know only you & i

see

you have always been so far away
you have always
been right here


jim carroll

on governing for $, from plato's republic

socrates: "you dont understand how the best men must be paid if they are willing to govern. you know that to be over-ambitious or mercenary is reckoned, and indeed is, something discreditable? - so good men will not consent to govern for cash or honors. they do not want to be called mercenary for exacting a cash payment for the work of government, or thieves for making money on the side; and they will not work for honors, for they aren't overly ambitious. we must therefore bring compulsion to bear and punish them if they refuse - perhaps thats why its commonly considered improper to accept authority except with reluctance or under pressure; and the worst penalty for refusal is to be governed by someone worse than themselves. that is what i believe, frightens honest men into accepting power, and they approach it not as if it were something desirable out of which they were going to do well, but as if it were something unavoidable, which they cannot find anyone better or equally qualified to undertake. for in a city of good men there might well be as much competition to avoid power as there now is to get it"

if socrates' logic holds, this is potentially embarrassing when we are then presented with how our dear leaders keep demanding better and better pay. but i guess this phenomenen isnt really unique to singapore (unique and singapore - 2 words that should never again be used in the same sentence) - o whither goest thou, human standard of excellence