Ringo was ODB’s favorite Beatle (Who Survives?)

10 Mar

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Why don’t we both sleep on it tonight?

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It’s still not nearly done. But here’s a…

PREVIEW

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What’s pain? What’s comfort? What do you consider soulful or arbitrary? Who’s the tertiary character here? What if I am all of it?      

           

In my early twenties, I believed that maintaining a healthy death wish was all the creative stimulus I needed. Like Edgar Allen Poe’s “irreclaimable eater of opium”, I was always pale and divided, a morning away from not waking up. But yet, every morning I did and it kept me motivated to create for that one morning when I wouldn’t. Eventually it passed and I started drinking more, caring less, and the work suffered. Got longer. Then longer still. Until eventually I started forgetting to number the pages (I did it some time later across the span of several days, making sure that the lines ending each page matched up with the beginning lines of the next one). Now I was just desperate to get it done. The years have been weighing heavy on me and I’ve started to think that if I kept losing the want that I would eventually become a literary cataleptic. And I missed her, and the way she inspired me, but I found others and they were also uninspired and eventually I found my way to this party. Cruel. Lively, nearly. There were people and light from the windows, everything reflected and jumbled inside them. But I still didn’t see myself anywhere.

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No Matches (The Last Poem on the Other Side)

08 Mar

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I believe if something in your life is causing you to start cracking, you can take temporary control of it by letting it pass through you – as a writer, drink, or imbibe your preference, to the point where you are so nihilistically light that you become a vessel for your art, and though you are not functional within any other facet of your life (nobody walks much anymore anyway), this state allows you to not care. You have to put the work in though, don’t misconstrue the difficultly of taking in enough where if someone was to stick a barrel like a telescope to your eye, you would simply sigh and shrug your shoulders. Hopefully this doesn’t happen. Hopefully you’ll simply stumble a bit and write what comes. The following piece was my experiment with that nihilistic lightness found throughout last night. I corrected a bit this afternoon, but it’s much the same as it was born – I know I liked it so much more yesterday, but a new day makes things take upon next meanings. That’s inevitable.  

“The Party (The Cruelty of Sol Invictus)” should be coming sometime this weekend.

An updated Official Material section should be here around the same time.

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Diminishment (Music on Fulton Street)

 

“awhile,

awhile

senseless with a sense of style…

Ny chto kletka, kakaya kletka?!”

                         -  Andrey Bystrov

 

 

I’m seeing it

fascinated again

it is a cold morning

around, surrounding

it is neither rain nor sleet

nor us

it is smoke

from angry throats

crimson, criminal and still burning

we creak and crack like coal

becoming

slowly becoming

the childhood of illusion

memory made impotent

a prelude to a play that never takes place

(a bang, bang bang

upon a window pane)

Eliot and Hughes sharing ribs

an emigration from sentimentality

a heart that does not need to beat to explain itself

too destitute to buy a medical text book

 

My teeth hurt so I know I’m close to death

this is the time to write

the next

diminishment

drinking yourself out of life

like a holy sacrament

or bartering for an indulgence

you become the landlady

of the soul

a casual, curving lunacy

a blade next to a pop song

(a sing, sing sing

slung along a midnight sling)

either a genius or a drunk

complicated only by time pretending to be jewelry

and lips used for divergent bliss

a death that lives again

erasing grammar and good taste

 

Does is make sense

or is it a withering

since?

Should it be shattered

broken

busted

dismembered

discounted

demolished

done

broken

disassembled

exposed unto nothing but light and cages

stages and massive trucks

that haul stooges like myself from chopping block to block

in mockery of my profession

of lifting drifting pneuma unto natural progression

but all of it in such amused terms:

and I say that all this pretentious bullshit had to go

I hope that you’ve all enjoyed the show!

(Off the narrative strip

she dances off the page,

beguiled,

and did you expect

to end

this fascination

my frenzied frontier of self-annihilation

the dreaded father of deathly self-invention

all ends

we stir the strip

we slip awhile

we slowly languish for the call

of nothing deadly

only a ditty, some years

in a full imagination

with color full as August lips

and then I mentioned them again

again, again again

it is a close succession closing)

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strange call

03 Mar

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Great artist (after he finally decided to leave the much overrated Fleet Foxes), great song, and a great video with Aubrey Plaza. There is also a great live version of his song, done beautiful and slow in some girl’s basement, “Every Man Needs a Companion”. Definitely worth checking out.

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repeat

 

barefoot

along

the mist

she, she, she

breathes

frees herself from all constraint

one, two, three

another breath

repeat

barefoot

along

the mist

a neurosis

counting

four, five, six

she

believes

that one day

scientist will explain

love

using pi

and stardust

another breath

repeat

exhale

she, she, she

free

from the mirror

from his arms

a seven comes next

free, free, free

repeat

the mist

along

her bare feet

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Lessons

02 Mar

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Pedagogics

 

This is why I write

(hopefully why most men get into that lamentable incontinency masquerading as vocation)

so that long after I’ve succumbed

to my last piece:

my last demarcation, my last trip

my last quip, some self-eulogizing words

funny, dry, finite, all vowel sounds and heavy breath

so that long after

a woman like her

can passionately pick apart my catalog

banging her delicate palm on her desk

for attention, for understanding

that I might mean something –

in my most obscure I am most obvious –  

she’ll opine, with ancillary generosity

about how handsome I had used to look

licked onto a dust jacket in a black and white finish;

she’ll lean against the blackboard

upon which she drew out the metered dactyls

of single silver sentences lyrically smuggled into prose

“tonkost, tonkost” – gently, gently

(like my carbons covered in coffee)

the back of her black blouse covered in chalk

my subopaque, fugitive imprint

soon to be caressed away

by that same delicate palm

(lily and sublime, of heavy lifting)

that was its emperor and its midwife

bringing forth kingdoms and children to fill them

all through my words

all through her hands

all for some perspicacity

that still nurtures its own stargazing vagary  

this is why I write

to die

having written

something worthy

 

(for M.)

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Just a Flutter

27 Feb

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Defenestration and the Little Fool

 

Fly, fly

out of the window

zephyrean

all blue eyes alive

she becomes a room with a view

where the wind hums

and she listens as I softly burn

a pretty little patsy

who interrupted my toast

and my awful day

with red hair

and a lovely, coarse remark

about the despotism of the petticoat

she didn’t allow me to remain self-satisfied

but instead argued

that we know very little about it all

(oppressed by the figures of beauty)

and that whiskey never helps

to find a winter sky

agreeable

for flight

 

(for Grace)

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From A Different Hitchhiker All Together

24 Feb

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Jimmy, Who Found Dinner

 

When,

New York had places

to which you could only get to

by service elevators

Jimmy carried a lot of dollar bills

swaddled by a thick yellow rubber band

and he sneered

at the businessmen

who wore ties

at four in the afternoon

when the sun couldn’t make up its mind

and a drink was close by

in the cherubic robes

of a Times Square dancer

who Jimmy fell in love with

as soon as the street lamps

called out to the dawn

which came a fleeting decade later

in warm ephemera

winking

and found Jim

across his bathroom floor

at a dusty single room of the Belvedere

which ate men who thought themselves adventurous

who thought little of immortality

a monster not daring enough

to waste the day on

because each moment seemed too late

running comatose

through birth and death and a tip at the end of the night

when solace can’t be found

under the awning of old buildings

build by Carnegie and other noble crooks

who knew that serving time

in quiet steel

was all us damned could dream of:

no people,

not anymore

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From a Hitchhiker

23 Feb

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southern syrup, southern dust

 

she told me to say it twice

but I’ve said it so many times

more than that

I’ve lost my voice

grew hoarse

blood lubricating the throat

aging

an old soul song

in a black Lincoln

roaring down a country road

and then her lips find my neck

and she pulls her dress up

I pull over to the side

Lucinda Williams sings

like a young sickness

her thighs tasted

like a hot toddy poured over the brim of the glass

and we couldn’t speak again

for quite some time

because once passed by behind the last exit

a rest quickly kissed along a smile and an escape

and twice turned us sweeter

nectarous like a sentimental chemical

along a foggy highway

somnolent and pleased

saying it a third time

saying it a third time

saying it a third time

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Fear (No One to Drive the Car)

21 Feb

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No Fear for the Self-Assured

 

Being offended is a choice and not an obligation

I’m tired of being patient and polite

The new generation becomes sterile

But politically correct

so I ask, outshouted

Leave William Carlos Williams alone

an idiot

a lout

a dunce

a modernist

a doctor

an asshole if you choose

Who are we but out words

and if I didn’t ask your permission first

you wont read what I have written?

in a hole of poverty

and a darkened past surrounding me

where doors open to a world the same for all

a question must be asked

how sensitive your middle class ethics really are

and how many special interest groups must stamp their approval

upon every stanza

eventually –

wisdom becomes staid wit

satire turns to drollery

and we’re all just Jack’s and Jill’s

coming down the hill

looking for sunrises from the bottom

as though from a faulty scarp

with no even footing to be found:

we are

none of us

dying

but all

just going sedately into a dreamless sleep  

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Notice

17 Feb

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Don’t ever go to one of Joseph’s parties. You might find yourself nonplussed, and your dignity and modesty tested.

New short story, “The Party (Sol Invictus)” is coming soon. I promise that it’s worth the wait.

 

Also, look out for the new Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album coming this month:

Push the Sky Away is available for pre-order, in the deluxe edition, here:

http://www.nickcave.com/music/nickcaveandthebadseeds/push-the-sky-away/

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Hunting the Haunted

12 Feb

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Saturday on the Bowery in 1982

 

Wearing his torn Joy Division shirt

he was stabbed in the gut with a golden shiv

his hair fell across his brow, tangled, amber

and then he slouched

grabbed his stomach

and tried to walk away

but they wouldn’t let him go

he was fumbling in the wrong direction

and they wanted to ensure that he got home

where he would find his vodka condensing in worried beads

shivering in the freezer  

eager to welcome him with a searing gulp

and a hug across the open wound

so they grabbed his shoulders

ensnaring, each one took a side

and they led him to where he was wanted

where he was supposed to go

after last call

and they reminded him

that “generally, even Isadora Duncan is only known for breaking her neck”

it won’t hurt much

until the drink turns to an opalescent promise

and the colors begin to laugh

like synesthesia growing senescent

but it’s all alright

because it all becomes

as long as you have friends

who’ll stab you in the front

and then walk you home

whistling the guitar line of “She’s Lost Control”

humming along

as the stubborn night creaks with condonation

 ——

Jack Tsoy Tumult

Morose Pontifications and Other Poetic Ramblings


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