notebook: 2/18/87

Ham, let
Omlette
I'm let

I'm led to believe
Omlette to believe
I'm led.

Poetic mathematics:
All things end (things have their trick)

A beginning is a measure of an end.
This is the end,
Or, like any substance
The end is a trick.

This is a measure.

"May 25

Carrie brought down some of my
shirts and advised me to take them to
Trillip's round the corner. She said:
'The fronts and cuffs are much frayed.' I said
without a moment's hesitation: 'I'm *frayed* they
are.' Lor! how we roared. I thought we should
never stop laughing. As I happened to be sitting
next the driver going to town on the 'bus, I told
him my joke about the 'frayed' shirts. I thought
he would have rolled off his seat. They laughed at
the office a good bit too over it.

May 26
Left the shirts to be repaired at
Trillip's. I said to him: 'I'm
*'fraid* they are *frayed.* He said,
without a smile: 'They're bound to do that, sir.'
Some people seem to be quite destitute of a sense
of humour."

George and Weedon Grossmith
*The Diary of a Nobody*
(first published 1940)

notebook: 2/13/90

My dear world

How can I ive and still be left alone?

Can I care about you, and want to be at home with you
-and still have a part of all this be just for me?

I can't figure out where you end and
I begin- and conversely

Where I end and you begin.

And, as you know, I can't leave
you to go figure things out.

And, God knows, you never go too far away
from me-

That is, except when I need you.

So, can we make a deal that I'll enjoy

you in the gentlest manner possible

and cooperate with as many of the dictates of this
reality that you've presented me with

and you'll give me just a bit more elbow room?

Equanimity (Jordan Davis) {click here} commented today:
"Spent between three and five minutes
wondering whether this culture more
resembles Rome circa say
50 AD or Berlin circa 1935."

Great point. Phillip K. Dick frequently compared
US culture to Rome around 50 AD.

from Diaryo (Jean Vengua) {click here}
There is a colloquy/
of the iron maiden/
there is a question/
of the torture word

notebook (poem: *The Beginning of The End*); circa 1986

The permanent measure is temporary
All this for a singular experience
Lying next to
A book (fill in the letters)
Mr. P.- an obvious limitation
Portentous
Pretentious
Yet an expediency (space for the letters)
Advertises escape from embarassment-

"Now I understand"
Indeterminacy of cause
Lunatic "fringe" is a
Blur out (dismissed
Long ago- by then Amigo,
Coarsened-)

Sooner or later you have to listen to
Somebody or you're all alone
Somebody else if you're all alone
Boom-boom
Boom-boom
Boom-boom

.......(I knew you'd get around to it
sooner or later)

Thank God they don't understand

Ahem,

The permanent measure is democracy
Such that the circuits of clear amounts
Feels nascent slipping into the ordinary
Which is NEVER and has NEVER been anything else but
"All's fair in love and war"
Another way to say Shakespeare (Shakes clear,
Lakes sphere, makes clear)
And all of this is borrowed
Mr. P was accusing
All of this was borrowed

Making a big deal about a lot of things that most people don't care
about at all.

This smacks of the end right away.

Shakes appear.

Excellent surrealist journal LIFT
issues 1& 2, poetry, art, essays
available in pdf format from
Christina Strong's
project page
Download each issue
1 minute each
includes Cid Corman, Aime Cesaire,
Joe Torra, Lori Lubeski, many
others

Musician/poet/disc jockey Tom Kelley
introduced me to this fine band which opened for
his band *Stay Fucked* last year
at the West End Bar near Columbia U

Timber {click here}

An emerging trend in blogging apparently involves
the voluntary confession of lax or
thinly stretched reading habits.

First, we see from Brand New Insects {click here}

Pretending to keep up
Purchased: Vanishing Points of Resemblance by Tom Beckett
Received: The Two Coat Syndrome by Erica Jane Kaufman

7:37 AM | Comments by Squawkbox.tv - Comment

and then from Mappemunde {click here}
*Bad Reading Habits*

The Elsewhere
Golden Treasury of
Pompous Windbags {click here}

Perhaps a great love is never returned.
--Dag Hammarskjold

I remembered this, reading a
friend's manuscript and thinking
of the poet's relationship to
poetry.

Caterina {click here} says
The Italians have (had)
a word for it

Finish Your Links (Brother Tom Murphy) led me to
Pelican Dreaming {click here}

The Poetry Society of America's {click here}
on Monday responded to our
"Lightness" post with a
meditation reminiscent of Francis Ponge.
Thanks also
to Wood s lot {click here}
Never Neutral {click here}
and The Ingredient {click here}
for linking to this piece.
**

"Goodtime Jesus"

A pungent slice from the
Limetree {click here}
for your morning tea (Monday, May 3rd)

notebook: 1/3/88


It is harder to stay with
being a poet, than it is to
keep writing poetry-
just as it is harder
to stay human rather than
just keep living.

1/12/88

Mars distance
varies widely from Sun
right now
its perihelion
closest now
we are flying near
Mars in 47 days
Mars closest to us
in Sept than it has
in 2 decades
Sept- Mars-
a fiery beacon
in the sky
Bright red star in
the East after
midnight

University of Texas
McDonald observatory
Austin, Texas
78712
free publication

I hate writing so called.
You might wonder
why I'm here-
in that case

I hate writing so-called
poetry. I hate the
phoney pretentiousness, the
self-conscious aspiration
of the writer to become
part of history, the
oohs and ahs- the prizes,
awards, the readings.
I probably like only the
clean, crisp books themselves,
not even the words, just
the useless objects- the
lack of pragmatic usefulness.

Blogger Josh Corey wins literary price {click here}

Equanimity (Jordan Davis) {click here} for Friday, April 30th asks:
Why aren't more blogs called "Hamlet's Soliloquy."


Perhaps this comment could more readily directed
towards books of poetry.

In fact, it seems the majority of blogs are more interactive,
dialogic, that is to say, responsive to the literary environment,
than most books of poetry or poems are for that matter.

Reading *Cuban Journal:
A Poet in the Venceremos
Brigade* by Joel Sloman
Zoland Books, Cambridge Mass, 2000
today

"I didn't know/ what the fuck they were talking about/
discussing formal organization/or the need for it/
I guess people's good intentions/
can't be taken for granted/self-discipline/
confused with authority/of leader or
institution/ refusal to discuss reality/
immediate leap to vague abstractions/
mystifications/axes to grind/
my impulse to say/fuck it/
I came here to cut cane/
but that's the deficient way/
I've acted in the past/
no longer acceptable/
current imperative/ to articulate my perspective/"
**
New Blogs Dep't

Due to moving, we've been remiss in publishing our
(((((HOT)))))(((((BLOGS)))))
feature but this new title is irrisistable:

electronic libretti of obscure poet x zen trick {click here}
now (Tuesday, May 4th) known as
xzentrick libretti {click here}