for sappho
April 2013
4 posts
"eros shook my
the punk poets were a bunch
March 2013
2 posts
November 2012
1 post
August 2012
1 post
July 2012
7 posts
california eviscera
i. needles
slurping the baked bean
juice from a spoon
out a cold can, leaning
against
the façade
of this grocer
just across the border
into california.
i must look a mixture
of hipster
and a homeless person.
david bowie
plays intermittently
as the doors vacillate
between openness
and closure
and the overeager children
bite their ice
creams next to me
in this desert.
ii. los detectives salvajes
it wasn’t until i parked
by the truck stop
beyond the forest
north of l.a.
sitting in the driver’s seat
wrapped in a
paraguayan variation – i don’t know
the proper name – of a poncho
staring at that one
bright star
over the stream
of trucks in the night
that i realized
i want to be a mexican poet in the 1970s
but i speak no spanish
and i’m anglo
and time travel doesn’t exist
yet.
iii.
nothing closer
or colder
than the pacific –
nothing
cloudier
than san francisco.
but the sand is warm
and the sand is warming.
tho i am not from here
the low glide and
cry of the sea
and the gulls
smell as wonderful
as any home.
who cares if
there is dehydrated dog
shit all over this beach.
my feet dry in the grey
grains, seconds
after they wet
in the salt
water. farther up
the beach
closer
to the cars
the sand rubs off
and my denim jacket
cuts the breeze.
iv. red fire hydrant
it’s funny –
these clouds
this fog
cindy sherman in senoma
i mean the sfmoma
baggage drop off, bright
red fire hydrant
the sand and ash
in the tray next to the water-
front benches
upon which we
eat gluten-free
bread, spread
with cashew butter
v.
there is a limit to this
something but this
is not it.
this limits something, itself, but is,
in itself, not it.
this is it, this is something, this is the limit
of itself.
there is a limitation and this is it. this
is in something finite.
vi.
1.
this isn’t
an argument
what is
the definition
of what
we do
who writes
about it
2.
no one
is counting
no one
exists more
surely no
one lies
3.
no nest
(
one misses
the beginning
)
of nothing
4.
made scarce
or worse
Play
June 2012
1 post
Play
September 2011
1 post
“In popular culture and commerce, “banana” usually refers to soft, sweet “dessert” bananas. By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called plantains or “cooking bananas”. The distinction is purely arbitrary and the terms ‘plantain’ and ‘banana’ are sometimes interchangeable depending on their usage.”
—Banana, Wikipedia
July 2011
2 posts
aping
arc of the arch, twin
pedestal
rise, rise, riser
& ape of no small memory
begin a story
end with a period
of rest
whats best for delusion
sun
light or truth
its been no small mistake
to confuse the two
arc of arch, twin pedestal
rise, risers
us apes of no
small memory
guilt, god
of discomfort
go, will you
we pray
light, truth
to guilt
& hope
for some sort of tension
of what
scholar of animals
A scholar discovers the animal in books much like columbus discovers america, in motion toward that which he does not know, that which is unknowable, for him especially, but already familiar to many. In other words, not at all, though this will not stop him from trying.
This discovery of the animal, made by this bespectacled homo sapien — the scholar — is made as one discovers the next page in a book, already read by others, hidden by what they’re looking at in that very moment, vaguely aware of it’s specific existence — faithful, in point of fact, to this belief in being — always striven towards & impossible to be arrived at, a tome of infinite pages, where this page always hides the other behind it, no matter how far is read. The animal is only uncovered when the infinity of pages is abandoned — perhaps not forever. Even then, we would not dare not use this word, “uncovered,” for the animal is by definition bare.
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
4 posts
This is a smallness
This is a smallness. And this is a bigness. This is a truth and a falsehood. This is concurrent and this is a current. This is a blossom, a cherry blossom, a flower.
Bark me the wind, won’t you dear? Loan me a spirit, I’ve lost mine. Give me a feeling, a feeling of something, give me a feeling, a shiver.
I knew out there. I knew I was out. Out there. I knew out there, I was watching. And the fox, it longed for the smoke of our longs.
A porch is a porch and a torch is torch, and a house that burns is a painting. Not abstract, not impressionist, not realist. A painting of painting of paint. There could be layers, and levels. There could be a thick golden frame. But there needn’t be. No. There need not. But if one was necessary, we could conjure it. We could have it made, by the makers – and paid for with the payment. And it would be stolen by a famous cat burglar. Not a cat-like burglar, no. A burglar that was also a cat. A cat with good taste. Which is every cat.
A cat cannot make money in this world for some reason. Like a slave, a cat is property. And like a slave, a cat cannot own property.
One asks these questions, on a quiet day, on a quiet night. In a quiet room. One asks these questions because to ask is to wonder, and to wonder is to light a candle in the dark. The dark does not have need for a candle’s illumination, but it can make room for it, if it must. A candle in the dark near an open window, it wavers. It wavers like a flag in the wind – uncertain of itself, as all nationalism ought to be.
Dear Dean Bergeron; re: ROTC
Dear Dean Bergeron,
While I was looking at Brown’s website on the Committee on ROTC I noticed something fairly problematic. Of several Brown Daily Herald opinions recently published on the subject, only one has been published. This one, entitled “The ROTC Answer” is clearly written as a response to Chris Norris-Leblanc’s “The ROTC Question” (http://www.browndailyherald.com/norris-leblanc-13-the-rotc-question-1.2450693). While there are other recent opinions not included on the website, this exclusion in particular is problematic because it is the only voice calling for ROTC not to return to campus, and is thus crucial to be included if we are to even begin calling this a discussion.
This is not to mention the fact that, while the elimination of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell does remove formalized discrimination against homosexuals, it had no effect on the remaining policy discriminating against transsexual and genderqueer Americans. To suggest that the question of formal military discrimination is over is to fail to recognize these excluded people as people. That the dominant discussion of this issue brings no mention of this reality is unacceptable.
This is not to make any mention of the many forms of documented informal discrimination directly or indirectly connected to the military. Nor the fact that 65% of Americans oppose the Afghan war, according to a recent CNN Poll (http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/03/cnn-poll-u-s-opposition-to-afghanistan-war-remains-high/). This is to say in other words, that despite claims of the distance from the date of ROTC’s original removal things have not significantly changed in terms of American support for military interventions abroad.
We should also not forget that nothing has truly changed about ROTC academically. ROTC still provides serious challenges to academic freedom, its program is directly vocational, and would be akin to permitting any outside corporation – imagine McDonalds – have privileged student access, and its educators are not similarly accredited to our university’s.
The move to reinstate ROTC at Brown, which this Committee is a first step towards, is clearly a political move to affirm military legitimacy in an already too militarized society – the sort of move that I would have thought outside Brown’s liberal-arts education mission.
Two years and a half years ago I was a freshmen involved in the University Community Academic Advising Program. During a pre-orientation discussion and presentation of yours to the group you invoked Mario Savio’s famous 1964 speech for the Free Speech Movement. That a Brown administrator would recite those words to us, I recall being absolutely astounded. Happily and hopefully so. On this occasion, I will merely point to one particular moment of that speech. “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part!”
For Brown to consider so bluntly endorsing militarism makes me sick – I consider it odious.
with respect,
Julian Francis Park
Undergraduate Class of 2012
p.s. – we need to listen to every voice on this – where have been the voices calling for ROTC to return, because they want to participate?
i need to do some updates,
i just havent been writing as much lately. i want to start up again tho! i had a conversation with somebody about the poems as photographs of typewriting, i really like the idea of that. there is something about the aesthetic that digs deep into the body, at least for me. my fingers prefer to type on a typewriter, my eyes are opened a little wider, i find the page more interesting. it makes a reader conscious of the page as page. i think its why people also like old movie and still film, etc – it draws attention to the medium itself. with graffiti, you can’t ignore the wall.
hope you are well! peace and love,
January 2011
1 post
spatula
i.
were it that tree were
the only term for tree
specificity un required
is there
a
more beautiful word
than tree?
i lick bark
ever i speak it
i smell sap when it’s written
hear it. rustle.
in dreams
ii.
i have never used a dowsing rod
they call it also
a
divining rod
always wanna read all the i’s in that word like divine
iii.
there is no such thing as holy water
all water is holy
iv.
shake my branches but do not rake my leaves
v.
see a word ona page
springtime
what do it?
what do it do?
fall
autumn
what difference does it make?
winter summer
not santa’s workshop and antarctica
not god and the devil but
words
just like spatula
December 2010
46 posts
when an imal met type writer
before-and-after-face
these are in no specific order.
false.
the order of these is not the order i “wrote them in,” though it is closer to that, for the most part, than anything else. the order is not in significant for the very reason that they ended up this way.
that is to say, they ordered themselves.
i encourage you to disorder them, it will inevitably make its own sort of sense, one that none of us could have ever predicted, and therefore all the more exciting.
if something or someone need be held responsible for this mess, i am happy to be that being. otherwise, let’s let them do whatever they do.
(i could never really explain them, but this is something like a poetics – an elaboration of a poetics of listening)
click these texts, you sexy monsters you.
