Ridiculous Human Things

Dear Poets,

2011-11-28T19:13:00.000-08:00

As poet, Camille Roy, recently said,

“LANGUAGE IS THE LAST COMMONS THAT THEY HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO ENCLOSE. YOU CAN SELL PAINT BUT YOU CAN’T SELL WORDS.”

So, in that spirit and inspired by the poets and the radical poetic thinking of the Occupy/Decolonize/Liberate movements across The U.S. and around the world, we invite you to contribute a piece of your own poetic thinking to an Oakland Commune Poetry Anthology. Please interpret this as you will. Whether you've ever set foot in Oakland let alone Oscar Grant Plaza, your thoughts about our collective historical moment are welcome.

Steven Boyer and Filip Marinovich have created an Occupy Wallstreet Poetry Anthology and we want to do the same here. Steve Orth and Lindsey Boldt will act as point people for this anthology and work to coordinate with you and with Occupy Oakland librarians to make the anthology available. Additionally, we hope to create monthly poetry zines including recent work that we’ll make available as a downloadable pdf and in print form. All are welcome and encouraged to contribute and to (yes, please!) help with the process of compiling the anthology.

What part can/does poetry play in these burgeoning movements? As Aaron Gell wrote in his article in the New York Observer,

“Occupy Wall Street is actually, it turns out, occurring in the realm of poetry and spirit. It’s a sort of waking dream. Which is why it’s so strangely powerful and cannot be sneered away or shoveled over with cynicism (not that we didn’t try) or kettled into history, and may even survive the winter in New York.”

So, to start, “Poems from the Oakland Commune” will consist of a 3-ring binders and an email account. As you may know, our camp was been raided and dismantled three times as of the writing of this letter. We had planned to make the anthology available at the commune’s lending library, but we are as yet unsure what the state of the library is or will be. We’re working with commune librarians to make the anthology available asap. We’ll also keep a digital archive of all contributions that are sent to us via email. If people are feeling saucy, we can type up the handwritten poems too. Successive binders and locations may be added as the anthology grows.

All contributions will be accepted. Please spread the word!

To Contribute:
Send a Word Doc or PDF file to oaklandcommunepoetry@gmail.com
OR
Bring a hardcopy (typed or handwritten) to Oscar Grant Plaza lending library (If/When it is re-established). There will be a box marked “Poems to & from The Oakland Commune”.
OR
Come down to Oscar Grant Plaza, hang out and write a poem directly into one of the notebooks provided (inside the anthology).

Sound good? Let’s do.

yours,

Lindsey & Steve

Wishlist or: What you Can Get Me on Black Friday

2011-11-22T21:14:00.000-08:00

1. I already mentioned this, but I'll say it again: An MC Hammer led flash dance at Oscar Grant Plaza.
2. A van with a Blue's Brothers style sound system (that means huge) strapped to the roof touring the streets of Oakland, blasting greetings, news, b.s. and poems. For example: "Helloooo, Oakland! It's a rainy Sunday morning and if you're not in church already, then welcome to it because the Lord is speaking through me this morning just to say, "Hallelujah, the rigtheous revolution has come. Hop on the party bus to liberation town..." and then someone would read a poem or announce the mind-blowingly productive upcoming news & events of the week.
3. A bail fund
4. An adult & youth literacy tutor training involving the expertise of both the Second Start Adult Literacy Program and the L'il Bobby Hutton Literacy Project. (I'm going to get on this, but here it is as a reminder. Lindsey, you owe me.)
5. A movie night in which we watch "Robo Cop" and "Blues Brothers" at least. (I know second mention, but that car chase scene that ends in piiles upon piles of cop cars is truly sublime.)
6. A masquerade ball in the streets at nighttime with candelabras and maybe...contradancing?
7a) A boycott of the BART and Muni transit sytstems, since they killed two people (just lately).
7b) The replacement of all ads within the BART and Muni transit systems with alternative messages such as, "What would happen if BART cops didn't have guns?" followed by "What would happen if there were no BART cops?" followed by "What would happen if there were no cops and it was our job to hold ourselves accountable?" OR
"If there were no ads, would you still know what you want?"
8a) A 24 hr free medical clinic
8b) A 24 hr free mental health clinic.
8c) A 24 hr free veterinary clinic.
9. A permanent location for the Raheim Brown Freeschool and "As-yet-to-be-named-Library".
10. One of the highrises in downtown Oakland (how about the Wells Fargo Building) filled floor to ceiling with people who couldn't give a shit about how the stock market is doing and a gangload of medics, teachers, artists, poets, musicians, dancers, carpenters, therapists, community organizers, librarians, cooks, photographers, journalists and anyone else with something they want to get done all busy doing what they do without interruption.
11. And other things that defy but ultimately rely upon the imagination.

Things My Mother Told Me That May or May Not Apply to the Occupation Movement

2011-11-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

1) "Look like you're having fun and they'll join you."
This statement feels very applicable. Remember the student protests in Chile in which it looks like thousands of students gathered (on June 24, 2011 in Santiago, Chile. Outside the presidential institution "La Moneda" to protest for improvements to education) and all simultaneously busted out in a coordinated dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". WHAT?! So fun, so striking, I so wished I was there just watching it on my laptop screen. How could you be anywhere near that demonstration and not want to join in, let alone smile?

So, Oakland, I was up late watching MC Hammer videos last night, and had a thought: what if we could get MC Hammer to come to Oscar Grant Plaza and lead the Oakland Commune in a choreagraphed dance? To which song? We'd have to consense on that or leave it up to Hammer, I think. To what purpose? Remind folks how very organized we rabble rousers can be and how dang much fun it is to usher in the fall of Capitalism!

2) "Kill 'em with kindness."
This can be a tough one. Depends on who the "em" is right? I'm trying to think how I put this into use as a kid. This was not one of my favorite methods because it felt disingenuous at core, or at least required me to swallow my ample pride and idealism to work the system a bit. I still have trouble employing this method in my life, but do find myself "shining it on" a bit for my bosses. Although, there's something truly unique about my mother's approach. Usually when she demonstrated this method, I don't think she was "shining it on", I think she was genuinely trying to connect with the person who was making her life difficult. She would introduce herself, use the person's name, ask how her day was going, and say things like, "This must be very frustrating for you." or "So, Dereck, help me understand this..." I'm thinking of a video I recently watched in which the videographer approaches a group of OPD right before a raid of Occupy Oakland. The speaker notices that one of them has covered his name badge with black electrical tape and very calmly and inquires why his name is covered. "Simple question, just a simple question." says the speaker. The cop ignores him, so the speaker moves on, "Excuse me, Sargeant, Mr. Wong." Note the use of the officer's name. Then asks, "May I speak with you, sir?" then, "Is it against policy to hide their name badges? Shouldn't it be in plain view?". Mr. Wong, walks over to the first cop, sort of plays eye tag with him, while the videographer continues to ask, "Isn't that against policy?" and peels the tape off of the cop's uniform revealing his name. Much has been said about how fucked up it is that this cop covered his name before the raid, but I haven't heard anyone remark on how skillfully the videographer worked that situation.

I'm not personally interested in attempting one on one conversations with cops, trying to persuade them that what they're doing is wrong. That feels like a waste of energy, honestly, but addressing a cop directly, using his or her name, and pointing out that what they're doing is illegal, that might be affective. I don't think I'll be kissing any cops anytime soon, but also, kuddos to Russian performance artists 'Voina' (or War) who focused their efforts on reforming Russian women police officers via guerrilla smooching. I don't know how affective the "killing with kindness" tactic can be in terms of really winning over the person who you are trying to "kill with kindness" but it might win over some people watching by making an already dialectical relationship even more obvious.

Also, important to note that this tactic probably works best in relatively low-risk, low-stress situations, not for example, during a direct confrontation with police, while doing potentially "illegal" things or when cops are violently raiding your encampment.

3) "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Mmm...now this one is especially tough. At first, I want to dismiss it out of hand, BUT, I think there is a useful tidbit buried here. Clearly, this phrase sets itself up as almost diametrically opposed to the entire concept of protest, but, BUT, here's how I choose to apply it to our current situation: what messages do we tend to hear or read most in protest movements? "Stop___", "End ____", "No more ____". Why? Because there's SO MANY things that need to STOP & END. But, BUT, I would advocate for some messaging that explains what we're doing well, what's working, what we can do MORE of. Why? Because people want to be part of something that's working, that's making real change. Questions I would like to ask each committee at "Occupy/Liberate/Decolonize Oakland" is: What are you doing well? What are you most proud of? What are you doing that's most effective and how are you doing it?

Getting angry, getting fucking OUTRAGED is so important. Expressing that anger collectively can be incredibly liberating and galvanizing too. My point is just that we need to remember to recognize what we're doing well and what other movements, organizations, etc. have done or are doing well. Build up. I feel like a cheerleader here, I feel like my mom, so I'm just going to try to rock it.

4) "Ignore."
Everyone hates to be ignored and they may fuss and fight at first, but my mom's theory was that they will eventually either leave you alone or decide to play nice just to avoid being alone. I would like to add to that the possibility that "they" may become so frustrated that they will make a mistake and then, BAM! you have instant recourse and sympathy.

This strategy seemed to work well with my older brother, Chris. We'd be in the back seat of our car and my brother would get bored and decide to harass me for entertainment. He'd be poking me or telling me I was adopted or something and I'd yell into the front seat, "Mom, Chris is bugging me!" and she'd tell him not to touch me, so he'd just hold his hand about 1/4 inch away and wave it in front of my face or around my head or near my arm or leg, and I would just try not to implode. I would close my eyes and ignore him. He would wave his hand faster, get closer, start saying things like, "Lindseeeey, Lindseeey, I'm not touching you, Lindsey." and I would stay cool, burrow deeper into the darkness of my brain until I couldn't hear him anymore and one of two things would either happen a) he would get bored and stop or b) he would get frustrated, screw up and touch me, then, "MOM, Chris touched me!"

So, how does this relate to the occupation movement? Autonomy. Ignore the city, ignore their "eviction notices", ignore, ignore, until they get so frustrated that they screw up and brutalize their citizens with tear gas, flashbang grenades and rubber bullets. Now, clearly, this is not the result we hope for, the brutalization of citizens, but, BUT, the city had a choice and their choice won us some serious public sympathy. Just sayin'.

That's all for now. Thank you, Mom.

Germans Telling Stories to Children

2011-08-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

This is Werner

This is Wolfgang

These are their stories:

Beneath the BART the Beach

2011-08-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) platform is a nice place to sunbathe.
Bring a parasol, a beach blanket, some sunscreen.
Sit/Lie on the platform - relax.
Sit/Lie behind the yellow safety strip.
Keep hold of your personal electronic devices : portable fan, boombox, dunebuggy
Sit/Lie.
But there's no eating, drinking or listening to loud music within the BART system.

The Oakland hills are beautiful.
The blue sky is beautiful.
Downtown San Francisco is bustling and beautiful.
Cars go by above or beside the platform.
The people within them enjoy expressive activity.
They are without the BART system.

Lay on your beach blanket - catch heat.
Notice how The Heat warms your body.
A tip from BART police:
"Remember to hold your personal belongings close to your chest."
Remember to wear your sunscreen.
If your skin becomes too tan, this may mean that you have been exposed to too much heat.
Some people have died of exposure to too much heat within the BART system.

If you are hungry within the BART system - hold it.
Hold it, there's no peeing within the BART system.
Bring your bike, scooter, skateboard, dunebuggy to the BART platform.
But don't ride it.

Take BART to Pride.

Bring activities to the BART platform : paddle ball, playing cards, etch-a-sketch, Monopoly.
But do not express yourself through these or other activities within the BART system.

Wolfgang Puck : Rough for Rough

2011-08-06T15:14:00.001-07:00

Wolfgang Puck
that's gourment upchuck

he's throwing up
his hands
those tools
that fashion foods
into S shapes
with a double II
passing through and
changing everything to gloss

like Mom with my name
L's in pancake batter
and Mickey Mouse's head

I wonder what it would be like
for Puck to buck the system

to say fuck-it
to enterprise
his shining pink face on a can
his grinning red cheeks on a box of frozen Puck (lunch)

Puck-y, I want to swim in the pool of your latest
signature restaurant
gurgling salt water 'stead of sherry
cuz my throat is sick
from all the gourmet sandwich de merde
I've been spreading my gums for
I'll be naked but for fish scales
spouting treacle like a chocolate fountain
my bust all perked like that
ice sculpture of Charlotte Corday on the lawn
she's a counter revolutionary badass
I can't help but respect

should I be bloody too
covered in hand pummeled tomato catsup
a perfect gore-met : je me gore met
I put gore on myself

Daily Rough for a Rough Present

2011-08-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

8.6.11

Everything is super fucked
not just me
I have learned
and though it makes me queasy
it makes me long for it coming faster on

Things will break down and explode
they will, it will, we will, sera, sera
and is it sick or bad to want it?

But it is like - I think - the heaving of a sick stomach
puking until the sickness is rid
knowing you'll feel better after
so you puke
don't hold your hurl in

the sick before
which I feel inside of
the rising temperature
the shaking tremors
the sweating out
then wretching-puking wretching-puking
dry heaves too like after shocks
and then - i hope -
exhausted rest

This is a good riddance

8.1.11

welcome to my earthlink
no place like
galactic water works
tear jerking black holes
if we run out here, can we get it from there?
does the internet shine?
billions of screen clusters
lighting up
faces turn blue in them
absorb rather than emit
gamma rays from the man on the moon marigolds
whatever your cat thinks
about the internet
goes

7.27.11

Kittycat puke a thon
therapy
teaching
stability
love on regular supply
objects appear shiny
and are shiny -- in fact
the pain that ceases to interest
goes deep
flies under
fear of the good
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
but the brain does nothing interesting anymore
it's so quiet
it's oh so quiet
no place for art in it
fear of loss of self
fear of loss of self
fear of loss of self

7.26.11

I don't know how to write about work
I can't think straight

The work is weaved into the life
I take it home
It happens at home
and out in the world
in not just one place
but all over
and I want it to happen more
more on the sidewalk
more on the BART
more in my living room
more in your living room
more in the school
and in the anti-school (prison)
and how about the office too?
and all together now
and all together now

deep breath in

7.1.11

To be as big and bright as...

Kathleen Hannah
Angela Davis
Kathy Acker
Nina Simone
Eileen Myles
Goldie Hawn
Julia Marshburn
Steve Orth
Morgan Levy
Salem Peterson
Sara Larsen
Margaret Tedesco
Pam Martin
Ted Rees
Patti Smith
Mick Jagger
Bruce Springsteen
Clarence Clemmons
Beth Ditto
Brandon Brown
The Tight Bro's From Way Back When
Kevin Killian
Holly Golightly
Michelle Tea
Dodie Bellamy
Nomy Lamm
Beth Ditto
Ariel Goldberg
Jackqueline Frost
Honora Considine Cortelyou
Persephone Lewis
David Hilliard

7.1.11

Totallyfuckinguseless
eyes broke from too much sleep
with contacts
what a disappointment
to Angela Davis
Kathleen Hannah
Kathy Acker
Mother
Dad
really wasting
Maybe I am the biggest loser
today
Hiding out from domestic issues
Head in a pile of international
but really nothing
dreaming up big ones
taking no kind of ones
all clogged
and eyes broke
white space too glaring
screens flashing bright white
I'm red on the inside
Get me outta here.
Can't event see the bus let alone ride on it
Perfect semi permanent grimace
Splashing angry
Shitty, shitty, shit box
Today
listening grumpy
to Horror Core Hip Hop
and Electronic Indie Sulk
talk of jamming cocks down white bitch's throats
and what it's like not to exist
I want to be Parker Posey
in Party Girl
but I am her --
slightly elder twenty-something
pouting, bewildered sister
I want to be Parker Posey in anything
add P.P. to my list of
Angela Davis
Kathleen Hannah
Kathy Acker
Eileen Myles
Sara Larsen
Patti Smith

Taking names
trying them on
dressing up in productivity
what if I wasn't a giant fuck up
Today
My airstream trailer waits for me
chilling in a bleached out field
rocking highlights of bright white light
blaring off her big round hide-back side
I have a dream and she is it
Imagine me unhinged
a door released, flipped and cruising
parallel to the earth
but higher
stopping only, alighting
to blow minds with my antics
I exist only by hovering - disconnected
Fantasy
Today
I don't want to affect anything
rather want to embrace my floating looseness
shithead floaty
laying frontside up in a pool
engorged, soggy, full up w/
Today
I don't want to feel good
I can do that tomorrow.

From the Vaults

2011-07-28T20:56:00.001-07:00

A story written back in 2006 when I was living in Grass Valley and being 22 or 23.

The poet went for a walk in the snow. It was Christmas Day and he and his family had just finished eating dinner. They set out for their traditional after dinner walk, some in new sweaters and all in galoshes. The road was covered in snow at least a foot deep and their steps crunched through with that perfect sound of snow compacting on snow. Everyone joked and laughed about personal family things, the dinner conversation, the presents, someone’s old nickname, an uncle. The poet began to lag behind as he often did, musing on things as he passed them: the evergreens that shot up through the steely grey winter sky looking like rips in silk fabric; the way the light played on the snow; the way the snow covered everything so judiciously. He was just considering the equal distribution of snow over the landscape when a line arose and took hold of him, a perfect line, an inspired line, a line not created but delivered from elsewhere one that he felt he could not take full credit for but knew he must record and pass on. He remembered the words of a famous visionary poet: “Get off the bus”. He couldn’t remember the whole phrase just that nugget of wisdom which was enough to send him rifling through his many winter layers and pockets for a pen, a crayon, a lipstick, anything to write with. He played the line over and over in his mind so as not to lose it, muttering it under his breath as he searched. At this point his family was far ahead, a grouping of black lines in a field of white. “Shit!” he growled, finding nothing to write with and no paper either. “How does one get this far without learning to carry a pen!” Realizing that these remarks were only pushing the line further to the margins, he thanked God or whomever for what had seemed at the time like an unexplainable and inordinate thirst during dinner which he had none the less indulged. He did the only think he could think of. Upon seeing the line scrawled in bold relief against the white snow, the edges tinged in yellow that lent them an almost haloed look, he was able to heave a sigh and take in the staggering profundity of the words. “Ah sweet relief.’ he said. ‘Get off the bus indeed.”

Etel Says it Well

2011-06-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Weaver : You also write that the truest love is to love the Stranger in opposition to your own brother.

Etel Adnan : That's it. There is a big misunderstanding in the 20th century. You have so many liberation movements that don't understand each other. Each one loves his own kind, and they don't work together. Because the whole of politics is really a dialectical relation between what you call you and the other. You see, to love your own kind is a very natural thing. It's even dangerous because it can get tribal. Because liking your own kind can give you real strength, and that make syou even more capable of aggressivity against whoever you consider the other. In this case, Lebanese Christians against the Palestinians. It could be the Americans loving themselves or the Jews or the Arabs. But it is when the one loves the other which is the difficult thing. This is the marriage. It is to get out of your boundaries. The tension is a good thing because it makes for the possibility of what I call marriage, like the coming to terms with the impossible...

*From: The Non-Worldly World: A Conversation with Etel Adnan by Kathleen Weaver. Poetry Flash, May 1986 (no. 158).

We have so much to talk about.

2011-05-05T22:27:00.001-07:00

How to honor my dead father
on this the lucky 17 anniversary of his death
Seventeen years ago today, May 5th
you died and you knew it.
Cinco de Mayo, which it will never be.
For me it will always be May 5th.

I don't know about rituals.
I wasn't raised that way.
I'd light a candle
but I wouldn't know
what to do with it.

Dad, you'd be pissed
things are bad here
in the land of the living.

If you were here, I'd make you try Thai food.
We'd discuss politics and work.
You'd express concern about my jobs, how much I make
and I would explain my reasons.
I'd feel better for having articulated them
and I'd probably change some things because of what you said.
I'd stand up for myself.
I'd admit that I deserve better.
That it's okay to notice that you deserve things.
Everybody deserves some things.

San Francisco feels like it's been encased in a digital fog
the marketing experience is complete
the net's been dropped
Everything in its place
under a hipster gloss.

I think maybe you would hate it.

There are so few diners anymore.
or 24 hr greasy spoons
places to have pie and coffee
and sit and talk for hours.
I guess we do that in bars.
We're trying to do that less in bars.
More around eachother's tables. I think.

Am I being nostalgic?
or just pissed that it feels like
my life is being sucked up
and sold back to me.

I feel angry at my age group
my young, mostly white peer group
who keep getting it right
when they open another specialty coffee shop
hair salon, vintage clothing boutique, record store
bike shop, repurposed Victorian knick-knack emporium,
etsy e-shop, restaurant that sells only Macaroni & Cheese.

We all have, they all have, we have
impeccable taste,
remarkable window dressing skills,
curatorial sensibilities,
sense of irony.

We learned to sell to each other
to sell ourselves to each other
to sell an idea of us back to us
creating an air of exclusion
on the free and open market
anyone can buy in
as long as they get it too.

You can even be not-white now
just as long as you get it.

A glass bottle
filled with water
with a succulent plant stuck in it
For sale.

Hand-me-down cowboy shirts
For sale. For lots and lots of money.

Something you do for free
for pleasure
now for sale.

But get out of my head, please
San Francisco
the idea of San Francisco
stop feeding
on that tender part of my brain
that wants to exchange goods
and services for goods and services
give freely things that I don't need
and use things that are no longer of use to others
to make things that don't cost money
to quit badgering the ledger in my head

Dad.
It's okay.
It's going to be okay.
I'm going to make it okay.

But the irony is complete
just like the fog
I'm writing by way of ritual, a poem on...my blog.

YEAH BUDDY

2011-03-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

What? I'm psyched.

POETRY TIME
March 26th

WILL EDMISTON
STACY SZYMASZEK
CA CONRAD
LINDSEY BOLDT

READING POETRY

VIDEOS BY BRANDON DOWNING

AT SPACE SPACE
390 SENECA AVENUE
CORNER OF SENECA AND STANHOPE

Poem

2011-03-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

I can only do as much as I can at once
You can take BART to Summer
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
What I did in my sleep
The cat and the bag
Strictly emotional
Forever pictured as a saint among men
It's not corny to believe
My cow nose bleeds
at the ringing entry
led about with horns aloft
Fanny means cooch in Britain
I smell and I'll keep smelling
I've got my soft pants on
like Jessica Simpson
like Britney, with my
double barrell baby carriage
two-seater tot rocket
My zombi poison puts you down

I have a hard time understanding that I can be packing my possessions into boxes today here while others possessions are strewn, gone, taken out by water in Japan. Equally hard to think that I will be moving into a new home this week while others homes were broken, exploded, swept and wrenched from foundations and taken out by water in Japan. And I don't know how to think about how still others want their government to change and are being shot for it in Bahrain, in Libya, in Yemen, in Morocco, while I am here knowing I want my goverment to change but feeling at a loss for how and how to show it, and not being shot at all. In Wisconsin, which is in my same country, still others are asking for change, or rather, the lack of change that has been imposed, their rights being taken away, and are struggling, while I am here not knowing what to say or do or how to feel, how to think. Now also, down on Haight St. I bet it's come time when the police have begun to enforce the sit-lie law and I'm over here on Divisadero St. with a place to sit, and laying in bed. I want to write up pamphlets that tell those effected kids who call me a bitch when I don't give them spare change what their rights are, and how to interpret this law that makes no sense, because even though they're idiot-kids, they should know just how fucked they're getting. Also, hard to know that my roommate one room over, behind the doors that shut to make our shared wall, he's struggling, feeling down I think, frustrated and unsure, while I am not today. I know that I have felt down so many times, even this morning when I woke up and everything was gray, and missing buses, and running on little sleep, feeling jammed and wedged into myself, not ready for exposure. Then watching the water slowly fill the Youtube box perameters on the work computer screen from minute 1 to minute 6 and in that space houses slid down their road on water. While I haven't checked Aljazeera today, I know I would see things there that would make the Middle East feel very real. It's hard to understand. I don't think it matters at all what I say or think about any of it, just that I do. I'd say my thoughts are with you. Everything corny and real at the same time.

Pulling flags from giant noses

I'm a fragile human being and you are a cunt.

Boy Howdy

2011-03-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

I hope some of you can make it Sunday.

The New Front Row reading Series brought to you by the lovely and talented Erin Morrill (cause Erin's place ain't huge).

1445 Lakeside Drive #202 Oakland

google map

5pm doors (homemade soup)
6:30pm reading

sing along to follow

Come hear poetry and some sing along style in this laid back lakeside house reading. There will be soup. BYOB (for real) BYOB

Julian T. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches in New York. gowanus atropolis=new book from ugly ducklingJuan and the Pines=new band

Lindsey Boldt lives in San Francisco, CA but will soon be migrating to the East Bay, does work with Post Apollo Press, runs Summer BFF chapbooks w/ Steve Orth.

Both these humans will likely have guitars on hand.

Responsible Human Things

2011-03-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

Kinship

2011-02-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony.

--James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Whistler defended this painting, his "Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket), in court when he sued art critic John Ruskin, who accused Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face" for libel. He won the case, but received only a farthing in damages and got stuck with the court costs, which ended up ruining him financially.

Now, doesn't that just make you want to go and scandalize someone with your sensualist ways? Maybe I shouldn't implicate you, but I bet I'm at least partly right. Maybe don't take your hater to court, maybe that's part of the lesson.

YES!

2011-02-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

Friday inter-office seated dance party
of one

Get to work,
kiddo

Celebration station-ary

Who else can I tell?

Fuckin' everybody

Hang on...it's boogie time

Don't bust the britches,
but yeah

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I wannabustthebritches BIGTIME

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I wannabustthebritches BIGTIME

Did the hero keep it in the pants?
Mine didn't

Sit down dance party

When all you want to say is really, BOO

FUCKIN

yeah.

DUH Poems in Abraham Lincoln #6

2011-01-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

Hi friends,

Some of my poems are in the new issue of Abraham Lincoln. Hooray! And they are in such good company. Here are the details:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
issue the sixth
winter 2011
50 pp.
$5 + $1.50 s&h

Later, awkwarder, stickier, and number-sixier than ever before, the new issue of Abraham Lincoln wants desperately to be held tight to your heaving thoraxes (thoraces?) as you get so excited by the poems it contains that you gnaw the staples out WITH YOUR TEETH and commence slobbering at the moon. Can you afford NOT to throw away your hard-earned shekels on this splendid rag?

featuring work by

Sandra Simonds
Catherine Wagner
Marie Buck
Ish Klein
Lacey Hunter
Estee Schwartz
David Brazil
Sam or Samantha Yams
Ton Van 't Hof
Uyen Hua
Lindsey Boldt
Brian Ang
Micah Freeman
Anna Vitale
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Adam Katz
Nicole Taylor

I feel...

2011-01-25T21:28:00.001-08:00

I feel depressed about tomorrow's class, meaning I feel discouraged. I do not feel excited. I am not looking forward to it. I wish I could take a shit and type at the same time, but I don't think that would go well. Now I am thinking that I should put this on my blog because the part about taking a shit while typing is funny.

I feel depressed about tomorrow's class, meaning I don't really have anything planned and I have little to no interest in thinking of something. Now I am thinking that I should not post this on my blog because my employers might find it and think that I am not dutiful. I am dutiful. I just don't want to teach tomorrow. It's probably not going to go well. It will be my 2nd to last class there and that affects the way I feel about it. I feel confused. I don't know how to feel.

I feel sad. I feel relieved. I feel worried. I feel conflicted. It feels good to use short declarative sentences to describe the way I feel. Now I am thinking that I should put this on my blog because it is funny and insightful. I think I will put this on my blog.

This should be helping me come up with an idea for tomorrow's class, but instead it is making me want to post this on my blog. I should be processing my thoughts and feelings about teaching so that I can make use of them. I had hoped that I might think of a way to connect with my students visa vis my confusion and bewilderment about the upcoming end of our meeting together. It just feels confusing. Maybe this is the real heart of the problem I have been facing whilst teaching: I would rather be writing and thinking than thinking about how to teach writing or how to get my students to think about writing or just get my students to think. I shouldn't try to get anyone to do anything. I should encourage them. That is a better use of language, I think. I should encourage. Still, I would rather encourage myself, because I have things that I want to accomplish. I am pretty sure that makes me selfish. I think my employers would think that I am unfit for their organization were they to read this. I am fit. I am just also fit for myself and my projects. I have something to say, I think.

It is my job to care a lot and I do. I care a lot. Still, I cannot think of a way to have these last two classes. It feels strange. It feels awkward. How can it feel awkward in advance? It does. I feel akward sitting here, writing (typing) with no ideas springing forth like brain geysers. What can I do? I want to do the right thing. Now I am worried that the readers of my blog where I will most likely post this will not be interested. I have veered in the particulars. They are not interested in the particulars. However, it is necessary to get into the particulars if I am to discover anything.

I still have to take a shit. I may also take a shower. I feel afraid that these actions will result in my feeling sleepy and a desire to skip the whole lesson planning thing and just, yunno, wing it. I like to think that I am smarter than that. I also know that I have a strong and deep seated desire to avoid struggle and discomfort. It causes me discomfort to attempt to find a solution to this problem. I want you, readers of this future blog post, to know that I have not always been so remiss in my work. I have most Tuesday nights, worked diligently to prepare an interesting and well crafted lesson for my students. Tonight is different. Tonight feels useless.

Now I worry that I have completely lost my audience. Each time I feel that I am nearing a breakthrough, I am interrupted by the thought that my writing about such a breakthrough or the writing leading up to the breakthrough will not be interesting to my readership. What am I to do? I will leave this forum and proceed elsewhere.

I will go to the bathroom. I will perhaps post this on my blog. I will consider my class.

Thank you and goodnight,

Lindsey Boldt
1/25/11
9:26 pm

Poets, Sound Familiar?

2011-01-20T14:41:00.001-08:00

The Olympia Riot Grrl scene in contrast to the more outwardly political Washington DC scene:

...Everybody in Olympia's tight-knit punk scene knew who these girls were. And in the political isolation of the Pacific Northwest, it was easy to be satisfied with that instead of immediately trying to push a broader political agenda. "There was a possibility that I could change punk, 'cause I belonged there," Michelle said. "It didn't feel possible to change the rest of the world--because I didn't feel part of the rest of the world." If your scene was your whole existence, then the politics of that scene became supercharged with significance; changing the world could be as simple or as elusive as changing the scene. Similarly, if the revolution was a group of friends, then living the revolution could be as simple or as elusive as making friends with the most intimidating girls you'd ever seen.

--from Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

Summer BF Press

2011-01-17T09:47:00.001-08:00

Steve updated the Summer BF Press blog with photos from the recent book release party for Dodie Bellamy's "Whistle While You Dixie". It looks very handsome, I think. That was such a fun night. Dodie brought great snacks and fizzy water. All of these great friends showed up. Bruce Boone who was wearing this incredible multi-colored knit sweater fell asleep on my bed, or at least closed his eyes for a while, and my cat, Miette, curled up next to him. Neil LeDoux, the artist who drew the cover image for "Whistle" hung drawings in my hallway, and there are a few nice shots of that. Dodie read from the second half of the chapbook, about hitchhiking from Georgia to Indiana, which I hadn't heard her read before. Lucky me, lucky everyone. Dodie gave another great reading last night at the Condensary Reading Series in Oakland. Everyone was in such a good mood. Anyway, let's all plan for more of these kinds of occasions to come.

The Disinhibitor: My favorites of 2010

2011-01-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

I wrote about some of my favorite things of 2010 on Michael Cross' The Disinhibitor blog.

I really wanted to add the name Steve Orth to the list and write an embarrassingly long explanation of why I loved that particular item so much in 2010, but I had to hold myself back. No one wants to know about how in love you are, at least not on a year-end favorites list. Still, everyone should know that Steve Orth, whether you're in love with him or not, and I wouldn't blame you if you were though I might feel a little weird about it, is really REALLY worth your time. He's writing all of these great poems and prose pieces too and you should know about it. So that is the most concise way I can manage of telling the internet that I love Steve Orth. He was my favorite thing about 2010. What the heck.

Happy 2011 Everyone! It's going to be a good one, don't you think? I'm excited.

My Ham Fist

2010-12-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

I will carve my ham fist
I will go back to school
to learn how to better carve
the ham at the end of my reach
into a human fist
or just a human hand
I haven't decided yet
what major gesture
I want to make

We Had Better Recognize : Find your Illusion and Shatter It

2010-12-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

"When the multiracial power of the working class topples U.S. capitalism, it will simultaneously break the Yankee stranglehold on the rest of the globe. It is here, at this point, that the strategies for both racial and national liberation come together."

-Viva La Raza: A History of Chicano Identity & Resistance by Yolanda Alaniz & Megan Cornish

I would also add to that the question, do we still have a functioning working class? When a family can no longer be supported by a single income, let alone by two and it is no longer possible for that family to hope of owning a small house, let alone an apartment, I'm not so sure. These were not extravagant hopes for our parents or grandparents generations. Beyond that, when an individual working 40+ hours/week struggles support him or herself (pay rent, buy food, pay medical bills, get from place to place) something is seriously wrong.

How wrong is it? Here is what Chris Hedges thinks. He is new to me so I welcome counter arguments or critiques.

Chris Hedges talk on "Death of the Liberal Class".

And here's my current two cents:
If you're barely making it in this country, it's not because you're not trying hard enough. It's not because your desire to work a job that you enjoy that affords you time to yourself, time to travel, time to rest or to have medical benefits is extravagant. Your desire to go to school, to study what you love and are truly good at and not what might (emphasis on MIGHT) get you a job that pays enough when you get out is not extravagant. Your desire to learn and grow as a person and to maybe help others do so is not extravagant. If you're barely making it here, it is not because art is an extravagance of the privileged. It is not because you are making bad decisions regarding prioritizing your art practice above your work practice. Art-making is not a privilege, it is a right.

We're Fucked: for Steve

2010-12-06T00:49:00.000-08:00

You may tell I'm a worker
by the size of my bag
by my number of keys
by my reportage
to the Office Max
for supplies:
envelopes, file folders, pens of various colors, sticky papers of various sizes and colors, papers for printing nice things and papers for printing whatever.

I am excited to fill the needs of my office
with supplies --> provisions:
butter, salt, dried meats, bullets, a new wagon wheel, cattle, calicos and ginghams, buttons made of bone, etc. sewing needles, etc.

I am not an Indian, so I don't have to worry about genocide
It is important to know that my work is better
than some others' work
you can tell because I work in an office
because I am also a school teacher
my hands are not often dirty, but I do ride the bus.

What your poems say about you
is this much
I am the fingernail
and your arm is the rest of pre-history

willful cataloguing of hurts and slights
I'm sorry my people killed your people
how many people could I say this to
and it be true?

At least when I was in jail
I was fed
is this something that someone might say?
if I sell short the prison system
thinking anyone in it could feel
thankful for it

I don't know.

Maybe I'll ask the kids at Juvi
are you thankful for this place?
My captive audience,
aren't you thankful for me?

Who walks in and out
I'm curious
how much you hate me

My (simple) desire to do something
I am skeptical of

Me and my language
we come in here
and we say what is what

How bad would it be...

2010-11-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

If we opened the reading on Sunday with this Jock Jam:

I just want people to feel really pumped up and this song makes me feel really pumped up. I like to listen to "METHOD MAN" by the Wutang Clan before I give a reading but I think I'm going to start listening to this instead or in conjunction with.

I just really feel like people don't get that it's okay to be SUPER PSYCHED for a literary reading, just as one might feel SUPER FUCKING AMPED for a sporting event. Poetry is like baseball: slow-paced, methodical, calculated for accuracy and impact with moments of startling, revelatory, sublime excitement and I want to change all of that. Poetry readings should be like a basketball games, just like full on intensity and breathless engagement from start to finish, plust cheerleaders and a mascot. No time for thought, no time for reflection, just FULL ON IN YOUR FACE LITERATURE for 20-30 minutes and then BAM! it's over and we go eat pizza and talk about how tall the readers were.

Hot Little Flyer : For Hot Little Book Party

2010-11-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

For Hot Little Chapbook : "Whistle While You Dixie" : by Hot Little Dodie Bellamy : published by Hot Little Summer BF Press !!!

* Flyer by Neil LeDoux, artissimo excellente de cover artwork!

Keeping up

2010-11-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

I watched about 5 episodes of the reality show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" last night. Thanks to Netflix Watch It Now I have watched all kinds of crap I would never otherwise watch. KUWTK is a terrible show. It's clearly scripted and the Kardashians are terrible actors and actresses so you know, you notice and still, somehow I found myself crying during the 5th episode. Khloe Kardashian flies of the handle at her sisters then goes on a bender and winds up with a DUI. All of this on the night of the anniversary of her father's death. Everyone describes her as "Out of control", "a freak", "crazy". Even the scripted discussion of each family member's grief over losing their patriarch, the neat pacakage of explanation for Khloe's bad behavior and Khloe's terse, jaw gritting admission that she has not properly dealt with her father's death but that she will now, at the close of the show, still tapped my seemingly bottomless reservoir of personal grief and/or empathy for those grieving.

Crying about the Kardashian's packaged loss is admittedly much easier than comprehending the grief of two third graders in the after school program where I teach poetry last week. There mother passed away from a sudden heart attack. There are four kids, including a six month old. I ran into them at Walgreens 30 minutes after their father told them and about 20 minutes after our program's director told us teachers. Seeing the shock of death on an 8 year old's face is I don't know, it's awful. Seeing the fear, grief and bewilderment on their father's face was, awful.

Brain can't hang.

Louis CK - an unfinished thought

2010-10-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

Louis C.K. should write and direct a feature film a la John Cassavettes. Steve and I have discussed this. He is doing something really great, I think. Hard to put my finger on what that greatness is. Have you seen his show "Louie"? It feels very timely, very right on the money for his specific white middle-aged American male experience. Maybe that is what is so satisfying about the show and his stand up, that he has his particular experience dialed. He knows where he is at, he's not deluding himself and he is perfectly willing to admit fault to a ruthless degree that I have not seen matched in comedy and XXXXX, and does so with confidence, without relying on solely self-depricating humor. There is a lot of self-depricating humor, okay, most of his humor is that, but it doesn't end up in the shallow end of self-pity. He's able to express a truly complex and bewildering experience with candor and self awareness. Maybe it's easy for him to go out on a limb and say risky things because he is in a fairly safe position to do so, being a white American male, still GOOD FOR HIM for DOING it. I'm not saying that what he's doing is revolutionary but it is incredibly thoughtful, self-aware, really smart, really sublimely funny stuff and not like any stand-up or "sit-com" writing I've ever seen. It is awesome.

I appreciate too, that Louis (first name basis?) recognizes his position, privilaged as it is, and will remark on its privlaged nature (see "Louis CK : Chewed Up"). He says, yes it is awesome being white (and male), not because white people are inherently better but because it is an objectively good (beneficial) situation to find oneself in, and if you don't admit that it is great to be white in America (or anywhere for that matter), then you are an asshole.

I appreciate that Louis recognizes that he's in a privilged position and still chooses to take risks, maybe that should be a given, but it really isn't. Most people take risks up until the point where they are comfortable and then stop, only choosing to continue to take risks when necessary to secure and maintain that comfort.

CK (feels less awkward), as a character/persona is slightly pathetic, but only I think because it behooves him to be so. His posture, his self-depricating humor, all kind of say "I'm sorry for being alive and taking up space." but not really. A lot of white, American men, if they're at all aware of power dynamics and the fact that they are in a pretty sweet position from birth, often feel the need to apologize for this fact and efface their power. I think this is necessary to a degree, the acknowledgement bit but I also think it can get out of hand and get to be pretty unhealthy.

As a caveat I would like to say that in my experience, watching straight white men loudly pronounce how fucking awesome they are either literally or in embarassingly transparent attempts to mask an expression of the same sentiment, effectively and simultaneously drowning out any other voices in the room and sucking the energy and will from everyone present is one of THE MOST obnoxious, infuriating, embarassing and exhausting sensory experiences a person can have, one that I thought didn't happen anymore because of the company I tend to keep, but I can tell you from recent experience, does in fact exist and it's a bummer. I would also like to add that this experience would be awful no matter who was doing it, but that generally the only people that can get away with this behavior currently are straight white American men, with exceptions I'm sure. This expression of unlimited confidence can feel incredibly unsettling, more because of its obvious reliance on an overabundance of delusion which lends the character and/or actions of the person in question an anxiety producing level of precarity and unpredictability. However, it is important to note that behaving this way is just as delusional as its extreme opposite: self-pity and victimhood, which is equally if less obviously exhausting and frustrating. Everyone, EVERYONE needs to erect certain amount of delusional cordoning within one's psyche just to function--I imagine a sort of rabbit warren of tunnels and hollowed out dens for friendship, romance, family, work, etc. I also like the image of a giant office space maze of cubicles, with moveable, foldable walls. This is why regular wash cycles of critical self reflection are necessary.

What I enjoy about CK is that he lets us in on his process of self-reflection. He walks us through moments of psychic inventory. Such as, Whoa, I just had a really upsetting thought about my child, who I love but also hate right now because she won't go to sleep, but if she doesn't sleep then tomorrow is going to suck and I will feel like shit and she will feel like shit and I know this but she doesn't and etc. etc.

I think one of the reasons why new narrative writing like Dodie Bellamy's, Bruce Boone's, Bob Gluck's and recently (the new new narrative) of Dana Ward's book "Typing 'Wild Speech'" has felt so satisfying to me is that these writers like CK (odd comparison maybe but apt I think) provide a model, flawed as it may be, of how one might practice the art of critical self reflection, how one might mine one's own psyche and how its products and one's analysis of them could even become useful to others.

xxx this is where I stopped realizing that this should continue but realizing that won't be happening anytime soon. Still, holler at me if you want to continue the conversation. There's little bits of things in here I want to pick out.

Love,
Lindsey

does tend toward what could be called the self-depricating this some, yes, but by being a performer, writer, director etc. and very successful ones, he legitimizes his position and says, Yes it sucks that mostly only people like me get to be in this position (especially in comedy) but I know I'm good at this, I'm going to do this better than anyone else, and I'm going to bring my intelligence, self awareness and critical brain to it and make a real impact.

While waiting for my roommate to rise so that we can commence an earnest talk

2010-10-21T10:13:00.001-07:00

about how he should, please, let me know, check in, ASK, before inviting 5-10 Whole Foods employees over to our apartment with no living room only hallway to congregate in the kitchen and talk loudly about the vagaries of being a Whole Foods employee right behind the door my bed abutts, where my head rests on its pillow. Yes. I should and will move my bed. Yes. Yes. He should let me know also if he friends from San Jose (specifically, the GIANT man who can never find the bathroom and a) once wandered zombi into my room and pulled my bed out from the wall to get to the door behind it, thinking THAT was the bathroom door and b) peed on my roommates stuff during the night this last time) will be staying with us, in our apartment with no living room only hallway, kitchen, bedrooms.

While I have been waiting, I have seen and read some great things including:

Butt Magazine : Interview with Dennis Cooper (thanks, Ted via FB)

Dodie Bellamy "In My Defense" (thanks, Dodie via FB)

Review of John Colleti's "Mum Halo" (thanks, Dana via FB)

but now I can hear him, first in the bathroom -- pisssss TOOT pisssssss -- now in the kitchen, now here he is standing in my doorway, waving with one squinky morning eye.

- Hi buddy
- Hi buddy, I made some coffee
- Awesome
- Have some coffee and then we can talk.

Will I express myself well? I have rehearsed this conversation many times in my head over the past few days and discussed it too, with my sweetheart, who ironically maybe, is also a Whole Foods employee and co-worker of my roommate(s) (both roommates are Whole Foods employees). I will try to be direct. I will use bullet points. I will not discuss the complexity of feelings and experience, but focus [...]

-Mmm...coffee
-Yes, mmmm
-So, what's up?
-Uh, let me get some more coffee and let's go sit in the kitchen
-Okay

5 minutes later...

-Well, that's perfectly reasonable. I'll talk to (other roommate) and we'll get right on board!
-Yeah, sorry about making you worry yesterday and everything I just wanted to have the chance to really sit down when we both could and talk about it and...
-Yeah, totally, I thought it was going to be something big like, "I'm moving out!" or something.
-Right and I...
-Well I'll talk it over with (other roommate) and we'll get right on board!

...

Now i feel silly. That was way too easy.

Collabo

2010-10-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

Stop Surfing and Start Dating
by people who can cop to it if they like

You're President ain't black, he ain't Chuck D.
escalated to this platform
after riding in the way-back
lots of gossip after raising
my hands at this concert
I got lost in a city called Liberty Bell
but it was a street, no it was a river.
Look--I don't even know what to do
with the sarcophages I have
my tongue up Alec Baldwin's ass
and I'm thinking "gravitas"
Gravitas of the crude vaturs
and Bogart mesmerizes while any
splendid sip of this makes a fist of my
mind sketti - that's short for spaghetti - it rhymes
with Yeti. My bangs rock blunts like a skater
Betty. Sing me a song, call me cute hon' I'm ready.
I'm chillin on the escalator eating a
grilled veggie burrito. Child rap slave.
Child Black Survival Guide, Tourist Guide
Survival Guide. We all need more SALT!
Lightly sweetening the natural
Flavors
Pissing on the 3rd rail
SFO/Millbrae
"Invincible" stenciled on a pistol
dramatically cool, sylvia plath shit
I think there's some drama, but I'm not sure
if it is Steve, Brandon or Diane di Prima. I also
have to pee but it's not really bothering me.
but there I go, peeing Britishly
peeing pounds into a hole
rip of rate
pee. reading Diana di Prima
and...okay I'm peeing.
and ok I piss and make my way to
Utopia I make my way to my Kairos and
so toss a magazine to you, dearest Stella,
love, your Astrophel
love, your only ever god-like friend, sick w/
lots of pathos spread all over nice bread.
What's that? What's my heart say? Oh yeah, it says
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE....SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. VROOOOOOOOMMMMMM
Clack-it-a-clack-it-y-clack.
Chug-uh-chug-uh.

Weekend

2010-10-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

1.

sexy overload of sunday laze-factor
live large outside of life's dress size
maxed out girl time over bottomless evervescents
into the wilds and sex shops for gear
to drop dough hunks on sex gear
for later dates with loved ones set
simple doo-hickey change your life up
win yourself over and over til upended
the bike ride puts sweat in the kecks
and haighters are listless, too pekid to sp-ange

sexy slipping
foot into shoe
DUH

workable sex experiences at the Goodwill
looking forward to
nabokov in the workplace
fat colors in the mouth
oversexed and hi def fuckable
def fuckable
winny
winny
winny, winny uh-oh
Po-po on the rally
sexperts on the numbers game
shipping back and forth
finite good hair
aeroles of good hair
maxed out good hair
when the sun goes down i know its time to
tickle my ivory fingers
against my black keys

2.

jangling off rings, so important
I have the most keys
my tusks are long
i have the most keys
more keys than anyone
this is how you know that i am important
'cause who has the most keys that you know?
janitors and janitors get the most respect
DUH
I have no keys
and THIS is how you know I am important
i don't make clinking sounds anymore
i have no keys

keys to convertibles
keys to garages
keys to closets
keys to broom closets
keys to offices
keys to houses
keys to airstream trailers
keys to classrooms
keys to pantries
keys to cities
keys to indoor aquatic centers
keys to Key Arena
keys to Arco Arena
keys to Cow Palace
keys to The Great American Music Hall
keys to The Millenium Falcon (bleh)
keys to The Death Star (bleh, bleh, bleh)
keys to fancy cocktail joints
keys to whatever

and keys to the castle gate
the castle gate key
is winging, whipping round my left tusk
i'm breathing heavily
and someone wants to know
how i know who to let in
and I'm all:

what gate key?

oh this gate key

and my Giant Eye watches the key whip around my tusk
1-2-3-4-5
but what gate key?

i can't admit to this person that there is a gate key
i can't admit that there is a gate
i have no such key
i have the most keys because i am
the most important
but i have no keys at all
cuz, that's how you know who's
the most important
the one with no keys
i don't open anything anymore
it is opened for me
i don't even open my emails anymore
my keys have transformed into people

butler
chauffeur
door guy
elevator guy
nanny
secretary
receptionist
personal assistant
personal chef
personal trainer
therapist

but this is a poem about my community
and the tusks i use to defend
what gate?
if you ask me where the gate is
i will deny the existence of the gate
but you will know it by its position
behind my back
it'll be easy to spot
because it will be closed
and when doors are closed to you
you can see them more easily
because they are positioned perpendicularly
to your line of sight
in this position doors are planular (hack)
when they're open, all you can see
is a an oblique shape, a rhombus perhaps
or if its really open
only the line running parallel to the rectangle
of your open space

so that's easy

'kay?

3.

if you show up looking
to get past my bouncer shoulder
slip me an attention twenty
and we'll see what "we" can do
we're sexed up and broke
but we might be able to recognize your personhood

Blog

2010-10-08T11:42:00.001-07:00

This jerk of a blog needs a revamp. What's a girl to do? Maybe the blog is over, but I am so attached. This blog has been my blog for some time now, probably years that I don't feel like calculating yet even as I type I am calculating. A while. What's in it for a blog? This blog has lost its joie de vivre and I feel the need to inject it with raison d'etre, yunno? Doof. It's like, all been done! I've DONE EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING person could do on a blog I HAVE DONE IT. It's so frustrating. I've really just out done myself and now I find myself with no way to EXPRESS myself. Myself. What's a girl to do? I want to blog about my literary experiences this week but a) feel that it would feel tedious to type out my notes from the events b) data from the focus group held last week indicates that readers are NOT interested in reading about literary events c) I want to make my posts funny and I don't feel all that funny right now d) time spent blogging could be time spent...doing lesson plans or some crud. All terrible excuses for depriving you of my insight into Bay Area Literary Culture outside and beyond the AVANT GARDE POETIC COMMUNITY. Boff. Also, there is a jackass dog belting his (too jerky to be a girl dog--SEXIST) guts out outside my window (beyond my window). He sounds like someone is forcefully squeezing him over and over forcing harsh, pained air from his body, like when I squeeze my cat just to hear her squeak. He stopped and now he's going again. It's a machine that's squeezing him. A pneumatic press with two paddedpaddles. His eyes bulge *SQUEEZE* BARK! *SQUEEZE* BARK!

Anyway, this blog doesn't know what it is. It doesn't even have a gender, unlike the dog. It's identity politics are all out of wack. I can tell you that my blog is not a lady from Marin County, at least not one who recites verses of Rumi or Leonard Cohen or Stanley Kuniz (poem about Salmon life cycle for instance) with hand held mic in hand, working the crowd, making eye contact, all to the soundtrack of electric cello (which I did see happen 3 times Tuesday night at a fundraiser for California Poets in the Schools at which I performed as The Human Jukebox and hung out with my friend Dana Teen Lomax and her fantastic daughter Una). See, I DO want to write about that event and also the reading at Radar Reading and how completely charming and hott Michelle Tea is, but my blog is confused about itself, so today is not the day. Maybe this weekend, although my friend Persephone is coming to town and we will probably do girl things. I am excited for girl things. I mostly hang out with boys: Steve, Matthew, Brandon, John and Morgan (female) if I am lucky because she is in grad school and very busy. I am open to changing this dynamic, but it seems to take lots of work. That said, let's have a date. I like tea. I enjoy museums. I often have lunchtimes free. I enjoy walks. I like to chat. I like you, you maybe like me, let's have a date.

*SQUEEZE* BARK! again and again without any discernable *SQUEEZE* BARK! cause. Cause is not the right word to use there.

So, have a good day. I'm thinking of you. Take care of yourself, drink lots of water, pee after sex, have a glass of water for every cigarette you smoke to avoid dehydration, don't smoke it's bad for you, go for a walk, turn OFF the pneumatic dog press.

MONSTER

2010-10-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today I will teach two poetry classes, one to 3rd graders and one to 5th graders. The theme is MONSTERS. They are to write poems from the point of view of a monster of their choosing and there are so many to choose from. At some point in the lesson I should probably play "The Monster Mash"

"The Monster Mash"and Screamin Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" were my favorite Halloween jams as a kid, but then are there really many others?

Screamin' Jay is sexy, eery and straight up scary. The sax in this song is so dang sexy, it alone makes you want to shed your human skin and join the ranks of the monstrous. I know it's a silly song, I get that, but still, it's unnerving, right? In a really good way.
Later on this month I will teach a similar lesson at Marin Juvenile Hall for a class of 14-19 year olds. I'll use Nicki Minaj rap from Kanye West's "Monster" as an example and will probably play the song somewhere toward the end of class.

I'm not going to break down why this song is awesome right now because I don't really know how to talk about hip hop and not sound like a total chauncey. I will say that Nicki Minaj's contribution to "Monster" makes me feel immense heaps of hope. There hasn't been a lady-rapper on par with Missy Elliot since, well, Missy Elliot, but here she is. Nicki Minaj's style is as tight as Missy's or Jay's but with moments of sublime messiness a la ODB. It's just really, really creative writing. Shoot, you guys. It's exciting.

My brain isn't quite up and running yet or I'd try to say something articulate about the nature of "the monstrous" and and all that jazz and how we're all monstrous etc. etc., but I'm not going to right now because I sincerely feel like the living dead a little bit this morning.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION

2010-10-04T22:04:00.001-07:00

Focus Group

2010-09-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hello! Thank you for coming. As a moderate to frequent user of this product we are eager to give you the opportunity to tell us how you feel about it! We hope to be able to put your feedback to good use in future endeavors. Please feel free to peruse our catalog as you answer the questions below. Your feedback is valuable. Please answer as honestly as possible. If you select "other" please provide suggestions in the comment box. There will be juice and cookies available for you in the break room.

We thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,
The Ridiculous Human Things Team

2010-09-24T16:36:00.001-07:00

I don't know how to contribute but I want to. Computers make me tired. Sitting makes me tired. Check out the captions to photos on the Talking Heads record "Stop Making Sense" they will surprise you. I'll write them out here but not today. My friend had a life crisis and I wanted to be part of it. My friend went to grad school and studies math every day. Teenagers like to have fun too. Why orange and blue? My friend Darwin has a blog. He's in 4th grade. I miss writing poems. I'm not sure how to coordinate. I have a to do list. In Steve's drawings of people, and they are all of people so far, the mouths are dislocated, like someone socked the back of his person's head and their dentures popped out the front. I feel very very lucky. The song "Monster" by Kanye West featuring Rick Ross, Bon Iver, Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj is the best thing I've heard since "Plenty Money" or "Lemonade". I don't know how to enjoy a beautiful day every day. I'm on the bus so much. Sentimental things about my boyfriend. Do I dress like a teacher? Thinking about my book finished when it is definitely not. I don't want my book to end. How can you stop writing something that moves alongside your life? Time to go. xxo.

"Food on Face"

2010-09-10T16:02:00.001-07:00

This one turned out rather happily and colorfully, except for the shrink wrapped heads I guess. Who knows, maybe they were bad people--serial killers murdered by other serial killers. Ha! That'd be something, a serial killer who only killed fellow killers. I could get behind that.

I tried to fit this into a Facebook status update

2010-09-10T13:41:00.001-07:00

but it wouldn't fit.

I'm trying to fill in cultural gaps with internet videos and library books: Ayn Rand interviewed by Mark Wallace, and again by Phil Donahue who brought me to his show on "Moshing" featuring the very articulate Marilyn Manson. I wonder where Marilyn Manson will take me when I pick up where I left off. This is a fun game.

I found Victor Hernandez Cruz via poets.org while looking for poetry by Latino Americans. He led me to PEN sound in search of readings by Latino Americans, then to the library and an anthology of poetry that he edited called "Paper Dance", then on to "Reversible Monuments" an anthology of contemporary Mexican poetry edited by Monica de la Torre and Michael Wiegers. This made me want to read Dolores Dorantes, but the library doesn't know about her yet, so I'm planning a trip to SPD next week. I want to build a collection of poetry that my current students and potential students might relate to. I've been learning that James Schuyler and the poetry of my friends is not universally interesting or relatable, not without a certain amount of context anyway, that is hard to cover in the length of a class. This is making me a better reader and discovering new poetry is helping me like poetry again and think that I might like to write it again. Victor Hernandez Cruz will also lead me to Puerto Rico, to New York, to the Nuyoricans and to Boogaloo music, when I pick up where I left off.

Dear Friends,

2010-09-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I don't have another story for you today, though I am working on one that I think may be promising. I've felt conflicted about the writing of these stories as I'm not used to writing such straight forward prose, especially not about my own life and especially not so quickly. Thank you for all of your encouragement.

Instead, I have a few poems to share. I haven't been able to write poems for months. Lately I've been feeling that uncomfortable ticklish feeling that sometimes accompanies or precedes a poem, and by that I mean that I have been feeling ANXIOUS like I might puke about %25-%50 of everyday. So these are the first stuttering Ah-choos and I think they're mostly snot, but felt like sharing.

I hope you are all well. Gezundheit.

1.

practice skilz
practice on puppies
genuine sampler stitchery
all over everything loops and dit-dit-dashes
municipal pattern drafting
all over muslin and paper thin paper
practice on you her
whip stitch her multi-layered approach
fast action whittlin'
down puppy down
masterful reading comprehension
curvaceous signature classic mode
acting, like, when they, like...
when they pretend to BE someone else
but more than usual, like, they use a METHOD
like in real life they're dressed up
in weird shades and polyester pants
and they're way intense, like more than usual
and everybody's like, whoa, what's up with HER
she's acting

I'm tired and have a weird skillset
I'm tired and I feel anxious a lot
and that makes me feel nauseated
not nauseous, because that would mean I was nauseous
would have the quality of nausea
in my person
which could be true
maybe I make others feel unwell
but also, I feel sick
in my body, specifically
which is maybe the same
mind, body, spirt
that jazz or whatever
nervous illness
days at the beach
--sea side--
with writing tablet/pillow-thingy
writing in bed
hair in a swirled up bun, poofing, mushrooming
my sleeves blousing too
everything blousing and poofing in the seaside air

the air will cure my:
anxiety
lymphoma
kidney infection
uritus
back pain
carpal tunnel
gluten allergy
cancers
tumors
big, shiny, chewy tumors
anxiety
deperession
nervous illness

i'm looking for a curative
something i can take

hey don't give me that
i can't take it

i'm tired and freaked out, like,
fuckin' ferget it.

i feel shy and i overextend my sociability
on a tri-weekly basis i become effusive
gesturing bigly during daylight hours
as if i were a drunk at night
and it's dark and my audience is funny
funny ha ha and funny pervy, funny queer
i'm method acting
when really they're fucking TIRED
and they distrust my enthusiasm for POETRY

shoot

and the poems need more images
bring me poems with more images
bring me poems that my students can relate to
bring me poems by authors who are not white
and fine, I'll go get them myself
because I'm like, instituting praxis and like, making it happen
so i should feel good about that and you should feel good about me
and i should feel good about that
and sometimes i do.

i'm skillful
get HORNY
i'm skillful
get ON me
i'm skillful
get me a JOB that is rewarding and doesn't stress me out
and make me feel like my stomach is turned inside out and that
there were spikes on the inside and now they're on the outside and
poking all my other shit on the inside and making me feel CRAPPY.
i'm skillful
get me to a dang ol', mother-of-god-loving NUNNERY
or something

2.

my emotions are high right now
my emotions are so fucking high
they're running high and stoned and drunk
tripping and rolling
all over themselves
sniffing up the undersides
of ferns for powder
getting mud on their high kicks
crossing hairs
honing in and boning on TARGET brand sheets

gosh, guys, like, i really just wish i had a GOAL in life, junno?

Aaack, but seriously,
my emotions are way high
they are geeked out
on their shared experience
of my life

hey, do you remember that time?
wait, wait, wait, wait, waaaait, wait, what?

d'ya member that time when she?
no but, yeah but, no yeah, but wait
ya-but d'yamemberthetime she-ws all, HEY
you guys should really come out sometime and say, "What's up?"

but they're playing hide n' seek in
my back yard, you know, the back part of my BRAIN
douglas firs and western red cedars
the ferns are so high that
and the firs are so high that
you can't really see through all of that green
which is the good part

there's so much water everywhere too
that your skin turns dry and you develop excema
from just being overWHELMED with WATER all the time
but chill the F out, right?
(chill the fern out. man.)
(chill the fir out. guys.)
get out of the water, get back in the green
and watch go all inside and outside
all WUBBA WUBBA

3.

Do people rub apples on their sleeves in Europe?
In other countries is that a thing?
Do they want their fruit to be shiny?
Do they think that their shoulder is a good place to make that happen?
Or maybe that's just a wax thing
I haven't been
it seems like longer than years
the punks could and should
pilfer this yard fruit
but punks don't go to Sausalito
therefore I am not a punk
I have a ring in my nose for pulling
like, take me by the ear
fetch me off-stage w/ your hooked cane
stretch me ears out to the principal's
or two finger grab in my boogers
then BONK! me like a Marx Bro
No, crap, one of those guys w/ the
NYUK, NYUK, NYUK, NYUK
those assholes
Wup! Wup! Wup! the hand waves across the face
brutalizing
Wubba wubba
Wacka, wacka, wacka
I don't feel normal
I'll let you in on all my jokes
I think life is funny and scary
I think that I am not sure if it's happening
I am affecting a voice--you should know.
I want you to know about it.

Whiney Wilma

2010-07-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

My Dad called me "Whiney Wilma". It was a sure fire way to get me to at least stop for a minute and reconsider my tone of voice, to have a moment of self-reflection. Am I whining? How's my posture? Am I in fact bent over in mock beggar pose? Am I stretching out the syllables of my requests and turning them up at the end. "I don't waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant to go saaaaaailing!" and these were the kinds of things I remember whining about most. I didn't want to go do some family activity like sailing or hiking. I wanted to watch TV or sit on the carpet and make my barbies walk around in high heels and kiss each other. I realize that this made me a brat.

Another great way to give me pause in the midst of a fit or pout session was to say, "Hey, Lindsey if you're not careful a seagull might poop on your lower lip." I loved this, as much as it screwed up my pout session by making me smile. I loved the play on the usual "Watch out or you'll trip on your lower lip." This was the Northwest version and often suited the situation perfectly: I'm dragging my feet, making my 4-5 yr old body as heavy as I can, Dad is holding my hand so that as he attempts to walk like a normal person across the boardwalk at Martin's Marina to the boat, I'm making it really difficult to make much progress without noticing that someone in the scene is not happy, seagulls squeal and circle above always threatening to pelt a person with white splashes flecked in brown.

I remember standing in the driveway of our house on Donnelly Drive, holding my two carpet bags, one with clothes and travel necessities and the other stuffed FULL of barbies, barbie gear and barbie catalogs that I would pour over, imagining the sensation of slipping tiny shoes on tiny feet. Ahhhh, something about wedging a rubber foot into a white high heel gave me this incredible sense of satisfaction. It was better than pulling sleeves over their stiff plastic arms, perpetually stuck doing "the robot", their fingers getting stuck in the lace of wedding dress sleeves, better than running one of the completely out of proportion Barbie brushes through a sleek fall of hair, better than slamming Barbie bodies together so they could "sex", better than positioning a Barbie in the Barbie elevator in the cardboard Barbie mansion and yanking the chord that enabled the up and down elevator action so hard that the faux white wrought iron elevetor shot through the roof of the dream house, flinging the Barbie across the room. I felt finally satisfied. We were going to go on one of our long sailing trips (probably 2 days) but I could hang because I had my gang of barbies, all crammed together in one pink and blonde orgy.

At this time we still lived "In Town", which is a term we only started using when we moved "out" to the country when I was six. We lived in a neighborhood called "Woodsmuir" in Lacey, Washington, but we would only ever say that we lived in Olympia, because no one wants to be from Lacey. The houses in Woodsmuir must have been built in the 70's because every house in my memory had that bizarre honey colored, chunky looking shatter proof glass in the front doors, the glass that both my brother and I obliterated: Chris first by shoving our giant wooden rocking chair down the flight of stairs and me second by pushing the giant Indian Guides drum down the same flight of stairs each of us doing this at the same age (3 or 4) but 4.5 years apart. Plus shag carpet in at least one room of every house, and dark earth toned paint jobs or rough wooden shingled roofs and it was the 80's.

Chris went to elementary school with a boy from the neighborhood named Wally and Wally had a little sister my age named Wilma. Wally and Wilma will always be burnt into my mind as sort of one and the same, the male and female version of a child-trope: reddish-brown straight hair cut into a bowl, a face full of freckles covering pale, moony skin, and thick glasses, really thick glasses, the kind that magnify the eyes and make the wearer look like their eyes are drowning or that they're just always sort of moist. Wally and Wilma always seemed moist. They've become the kind of kids that would have perpetually runny noses. I can see Wally running his nose along the entire length of his sleeve and then snorting the remaining snot back into his nose, looking up at you, having no idea that what he's just done is super gross. I have no idea if Wally ever did this or if he even had runny noses on a regular basis. Wally them had the kind of voice that is just annoying by nature and poor kid could never do anything about it, at least not til puberty. His voice was naturally whiney. Ridiculously, Wilma's voice has become a low monotone, equally bizarre but on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from her brother's. Which is probably not true either, but that is who they've become for me. They were nerdy too. I recognized them as having nerdy qualities from watching "Revenge of the Nerds" many many times, but I don't remember Wally and Wilma being especially smart as I knew nerds were supposed to me. This disturbed me because at this time in my development I was learning to categorize and they weren't fitting my newly acquired category: Nerd. Wally was maybe the kind of kid that would know a lot of random facts and tell them to adults without noticing when they'd run through their patience. Wilma seemed actually a little slow, or at least kind of dense. Granted we were five but all I remember her doing is standing, peering through her impossibly thick lenses, mouth maybe kind of hanging open and not really responding to whatever I was excited about.

My brother and I played with Wally and Wilma, not a lot, we weren't super buddies with them but we did play with them because we were nice kids and Wally and Wilma were nice kids too, and Wally was a little weird so that made him fun. I should ask my brother for details. It's hard to tell if this is a retroactive memory or a true memory, but I feel like Chris and I knew even then that life was going to be a little rough for Wally and Wilma, because that's how life as was for nerds, so we should be nice to them and play with them. We learned from the Revenge of the Nerds movies to have sympathy for people like Wally and Wilma. Maybe our Mom explained that they were a little different but...I don't know. I don't want to put words in her mouth.

However, when Dad accused me of being a "Whiney Wilma" I knew that I did NOT want to be that. I'm sure he wasn't referring to our neighborhood Wilma (Woodsmuir Wilma), although I wouldn't put it past him to have made some crack about she or Wally somewhere along the line. I knew that being a Wilma was not good, just by its placement in the phrase "Don't be a Whiney Wilma" or by his use of that mock mopey baby voice. I'm sure you know the one. "Oh, I'm sorry, Whiney Wilma." Of course I loved the alliteration too: Whiney Wilma. Weak, wimpy, wet (moist), wonky, weird, wussy whiney woman. Bad. His invocation of the icky, myserious Wilma archetype both cracked me up and reminded me that I was not that, that I was expected to be something else.

We Boldts were bright, attractive, clean, healthy, athletic, successful, upstanding, well rounded and productive middle-class citizens or at least that was the expectation, or my received expectation. I was five so I was mostly pretty nuts and if I was five then my brother would have been nine and half. While he had a leg up on me when it came to behaving like a civilized human just by benefit of age, he and his friends were still peeing on each other in the showers at swim practice and he was still terrorizing his little sister, me.

We were not underdogs as my Mom would later call that societal dezignation when explaining to me why that she worried about my desire to always "champion the underdog". She inferred that this meant that I had internalized the idea that I was an underdog too.

I felt like my compiled idea of Wilma a lot of the time then and still do sometimes especially around people that appear to be bright, attractive, clean, healthy, athletic, successful, upstanding, well rounded and productive middle-class citizens. Especially on the bus after work, 5 or 6pm, when my hair has flattened, my posture slumped, my clothes stretched from the day's activities so that they hang wrong, sitting next to a pretty blonde girl who somehow still gleams, whose hair still has that just brushed look, whose clothes still fit, who has somehow managed to go about her day with her feet wedged into high heel shoes. I sit up straighter, think about how people think I'm pretty, how productive I'd been at work that day, take stock of myself, find myself lacking in some way and slump back against the window of the bus. I scratch my head in the way I know makes me "look like a crazy person", as my Mom says, and imagine myself first as a frumpy, runny-nosed kid, then as a growling, slobbering beast wreaking havoc on the pretty, pastel city outside my window.

The only other instance of "Wilma" that rivals Whiney Wilma in my memory comes from the Where's Waldo books. I know, Wilma Flintstone, but really, who cares? What a doormat. Bleh.

I received my first Waldo books in the early 90's, when I was about 7 or 8 after we had moved out to the country. In his later books, Waldo has a girlfriend named Wilma. She's kind of hot. She's tall and skinny like Waldo with these great black framed cat eye glasses that always make her look like she's smirking a little bit. She wears the same striped shirt, skinny jeans and striped beenie uniform. I knew that Waldo was supposed to be a sort of nerd (goofy, skinny, glasses-wearing) but he somehow carried none of the social stigma or moistness that Wally and Wilma or the characters in Revenge of the Nerds had shouldered.

Waldo and Wilma were the proto-hipsters for me, right down to the striped shirts and black framed glasses. Their nerdiness somehow slipped off the edge of pitiable outcast and over into cool. DUH. Ironic hipster nerdiness, right? Remember though that this was the early 90's when these books came out, just as Nirvana was making it cool to be weird.

If you're not familiar, Waldo is this bewildered goof who keeps finding himself in situations in which he is lost in a disorienting crowd of people and/or barbarians, vampires, etc. The publisher entreats you, the reader, to help him find his glasses, his shoe, his socks, his scroll (?), himself. You may pity him to an extent but there's also something compelling and brave about Waldo. I could relate to him as a beleguered sensitive artist type lost amidst a world of homogenous wackos. The homogeneity changes with each page but nonetheless Waldo never fits in, until the last page (of the first book) when he finds himself in a two page sea of Waldos and it's our job to find the real Waldo, the one missing a shoe. Wow.

I would later find myself attracted to just this type of man. First the character "Trent" in MTV's chartoon show "Daria", then in the real person of my best friend Julia's older brother's friend Peter, a skinny, hapless musician with terrible posture and an incredible ear for pop music who I harbored an unrequieted crush on for most of highschool. I remember a certain photo I took of him wearing a black and white striped long sleeved shirt. Sheesh. My current boyfriend, Steve? Forget about it. A blond version of Waldo, with that perfect "Aw shucks" charm that just kills me. Do I sometimes have the urge to sheperd him through life? to help him FIND himself? Yes, admittedly, I do. Do I imagine myself as the Wilma to his Waldo? I am now, that's for sure.

Where is Waldo? Where is Wilma? Can you spot them a in the Castro Theater at a screening of "Metropolis"? Here they are at an outdoor music festival. Here is San Francisco, can you find Waldo? Can you find Wilma? Can you find Wilma's keys? Can you find Waldo's beenie?

Okay, that's all a little too perfect, and maybe a little cute, but shoot, if I have to choose a Wilma to associate with, I choose the sexy one with the goofy boyfriend. Yes, please. That Wilma doesn't have to whine to get what she wants. I also realize that Whiney Wilma is alive and well hanging out in my psyche ready to stick her giant petulant lip out for a seagull to poop on should things not go my way. One Wilma leads to another. There can be no might, sexy Wilma without first the grumpy, pouty Wilma whose only recourse is to drag her feet and make a scene.

Everything

2010-07-20T12:05:00.001-07:00

I'm reading at The Condensary Reading Series in Oakland this Sunday

I'm so happy that my friend Morgan is back from The Netherlands. She makes me so happy.

Morgan and I went to a reading at The New Reading Series at 21 Grand on Sunday and saw Catherine Meng and Thom Donovan read. I have to recompliment the evening's hosts Michael Nicoloff, Alli Warren and Erika Staiti for their programming choice. Pairing these two took a real insight into the ways in which these two poets approach poetry with maybe the same goal in mind but with very different routes to getting there. Meng via the senses, personal experience, and imagination and Donovan taking the theory route Donovan. Both paths produce attentive and arresting poems that encourage us to engage with life rather than retreat from it. Yes! I fully enjoyed my poet friends company. Yes!

On Saturday, I went to the Mission Creek Music Festival with Steve and met John there. Steve and I rode the #24 bus to the #9 bus to Mclaren Park, traveling through neighborhoods I had never seen before (Bernal Heights, parts of Outer Mission, Visitacion Valley). The people going to the music festival were easy to spot: young, white hipsters. I realized that we were young, white hipsters too. We were the only ones left on the bus by the time we got to the park, all of us looking at each other sort of sheepishly, having known where we were all going from the start, but now wondering if we had made it to the right place. We walked through the hills and eucalyptus together like an unlikely band of what, pioneers? Pioneering white folk in the outskirts of San Francisco, tromping through the woods in fashionable footwear, carrying tall cans of crappy beer.

Steve and John and I hitched a ride back to the city (proper) and spent the afternoon at Molotovs where we made this: (john already put it on his blog because he's much quicker than I am but I'll put it here too for continuity's sake).

Yesterday...I worked and cooked dinner. My roommate Matt and I are looking for a roommate if you know of anyone, holler, okay?

Today, I go to the Jewish Contemporary Museum with my sweetheart, Steve, then get ready for my class on The Language of Money at the Marin Juvenile Hall (full of super insightful and sharp 14-19 yr olds) for tomorrow, then go to Dodie Bellamy's workshop, which is full of just mind-alteringly stunning minds. I love talking about writing with visual artists especially. More on that later, I think.

Good week to you all! More stories to come also.

The Black Houses of Olympia

2010-07-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

If you ever happen to be in Olympia Washington, where I grew up, keep your eyes peeled for black houses. There are at least five black houses, some say upwards of ten or twelve and the number may very well have increased. I've never counted. I haven't even seen all of them but you definitely know one when you see one. They're all black, top to bottom, window sills, doors, any porches or railings, all painted black. Some are matte finish, some glossy. They are fairly simple architecturally--usually two stories, peaked roof, with some kind of porch in front and made of wood. I believe there may be one condo. All of the houses are older and a little run down if not a lot. They're honestly spooky, some more than others, but they do have a way of putting a little hint of doom in your day, enough to make you look over your shoulder and expect a crow just by passing one by.

Dennis owns the black houses. He is a dentist and a satanist. He is a satanic dentist named Dennis. Dennis the Satanic Dentist. You can't make this shit up. He is known to be an asshole and a notorious slumlord. He's younger than you'd think, younger than I always picture, probably around forty. I remember hearing about the Black Houses for the first time and immediately thinking of an orthodontist in town to whom all of my friends were sent when it was time for braces. They all condemned him as an evil, sadist, though they wouldn't have known the word at the time. They described all kinds of oral tortures involving gagging plaster and metal aparatus that I was lucky to miss out on, having teeth "with character" as my mom called them, but no major structural problems. This orthodontist's name was Dr. Grim. When I heard about the satanic dentist I thought, "This must be the same guy! How Perfect!" Unfortunately, they are not one in the same, but their mythological statures as distillations of that lurking "darkness out in these old woods", and their penchants for light sadism still causeme to conflate the two and I like to think that at least they might know each other...through the tooth biz or maybe through a Satanic reading group or something.

I say at least five black houses because it is said that if you plot the positions of each black house on a map of Olympia and connect the dots, the houses spell out a pentagram. I've never done this and I'm not sure anyone ever has but it fits in nicely with the rest of their myth.

According to hearsay, as most of this story is and will be, Dennis bought rundown houses in Olympia, mostly sticking to the East Side of town. Does East have some special significance in Satanism? "The Witches of Eastwick". I just googled "satanism and east direction" and turned up some great stuff about how you can map out pentagrams in Washington D.C. too, how fun.
Anyway, Dennis would buy one of these houses cheap and paint it completely black so that he could then drive down the price of real estate in that neighborhood, buy more houses and paint those houses black. What was the real motivation? To acquire as much Olympia real estate as possible? Or something more sinister...to spread his goth vision, to paint IT black, to mirror the presumed blackness of his soul, to make tangible and plain the otherwise unseen forces of evil ? It's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. Maybe he was just a clever businessman who happened to be really into Satan. Hard to say.

Whether it was part of his grand plan for the soul of humanity/Olympia or not, he then rented the houses to young bohemian types, probably because who else would be interested in living in a completely black house and willing to deal with a literally Satanic landlord? The kids that lived in the Black Houses were usually artists, musicans, activists or a combination of these with well developed DIY punk rock aesthetics. They threw great parties.

I did not live in a black house. My house, The Phoenix House, was a flaky beigy-puce house with a giant blackberry vine perpetually sprouting out of either it or the holly bush next to it. Its owned was an elderly man whose name I can't remember though I wrote rent checks to him each month for two and a half years. We never saw him except when he came down from Puyallup to haul his eighty year old body up a 50 ft. ladder to patch the spot in our roof where rain leaked down into one of the upstairs bedrooms. We would always offer to climb up there ourselves but he always refused us. I assume we did not appear like the types that would know how to patch a roof. I remember feeling slightly superior to the denizens of the calibre punk house that the Black Houses occupied. My roommates were older, we vacuumed, we partied but it never seemed to reach the slurring, mud-smeared tutu, drinking out of giant plastic liquor bottles, blotto level that some houses achieved. I also remember feeling inferior to the kids who lived in these houses. They always seemed to be living at a higher intensity than I could muster. I felt pretty rock n' roll but they totally had me beat. They were way more punk rock than me.

The only Black House that I remember ever being in was "The Track House", named for its position near the train tracks. They threw great parties.

The tracks began in the log yards of the port, ran past the glass piles, through downtown, through the overgrown yard of The Track House, through a tunnel burrowed under Capital Blvd, then along the edge of Capital lake past the old brewery and on into Tumwater. I walked through this tunnel with Clair and Julia one Summer during a bizarre convergence of Lakefair (the annual town fair w/parade, rides, food, and Lakefair princesses populated by a lot of people who didn't spend time in downtown Olympia) and Yo-Yo A Go-Go (an indie rock music festival full of greasy-haired, stripe T-shirt, Black high water pants w/ white belt wearing, sallow-faced artsy types.) We walked our sixteen-year-old bodies in the sunny Lakefair end of the tunnel and out the still sunny end nearer Yo-Yo A Go-Go where a drug deal was taking place. I remember hitting the midpoint of the tunnel, the darkest spot, where no direct light could reach from either end, where we could no longer pick out the glint of bottles and cans along the sides of the tracks. Someone could very easily have been crouching in the musty dark on either side and we wouldn't have been able to distinguish their figures from the tunnel walls. We found out later from our concerned parents, to whom we had for some reason related our adventure, that a man had been bludgeoned to death in the same tunnel a few years previous. Newspaper articles confirm this fact and add to it that he was an Asian man in his 30's and it was a hammer. We should not have been in that tunnel.

Apparently, Dennis lived in his own Black House. Someone had been inside and reported seeing an iron maiden setup in one corner of the gothic styled living room as decoration. Maybe it was Emmett who told me. Emmett was a friend of mine from high school. He was a friend of my friend Ally who I had met in Drivers Ed and who took Clair and I to our first Transgender Film Festival at Evergreen. Emmett gave me my first Bikini Kill CD in the cafeteria at lunch one afternoon and pretty soon I started seeing Ally and Emmett who went to Olympia high school and their friends Gabe, Sam, Mona and Allison who went to the high school across town pretty regularly. Later, when we had moved out of parents houses and into houses with names like "Phoenix House", "ABC House"and "Red House", Emmett lived in one of the Black Houses. He is probably the source of most of my information about them. According to Emmett, Dennis was such a terrible landlord that at one point, the residents of all of the Black Houses banned together and began holding organized meetings to what? I don’t know what they would have discussed. What to DO about Dennis? How to confront him? How to report him to the authorities? I’m not sure what their complaints were, but they must have been significant.

However, it is important to know that this is a very typical and common occurrence in Olympia: the holding of meetings to discuss possible actions against such and such power that be. I detect cynicism in here. I did feel a bit cynical about these kinds of activist gatherings at the time. People of a certain community, to which I loosely belonged (many factions within and not all in agreement) 18-35ish, creative, food co-op shopping, food not bombs patrons and organizers, politically conscious, punk-inspired etc. etc.—that ilk, were big into organizing and often it was awesome and sometimes it was misdirected. When people were on, great things happened: indie record labels, independent film festivals, Yo-Yo A Go-Go, Ladyfest, Homo A Go-Go, letterpress printing, ecstatic life affirming rock shows etc. etc. but also, Olympia was kind of idyllic in a lot of ways in its liberal bubble and small with small town problems and sometimes people wanted to get up-in-arms about something, anything, and we would blow things out of proportion because the proportions of the town were small and events needed to fit to size.

For instance, my ex-boyfriend Keith was once approached by an acquaintance and food co-op employee and told “I could kick you out of here for wearing that,” when he came in to buy his organic carrots and Veggie Bootie wearing a thrift store Harley Davidson T-shirt whose bald eagle was depicted holding an American flag in one claw and a confederate flag in the other. The confederate flag was the issue. Somehow this detail became enough of a political priority for this woman to approach Keith and make him feel like never coming back.

Were the meetings of the black house residents inspired by this same tendency? Maybe. Were they right to be dissatisfied with the care of their landlord and to take action? Certainly. Were the meetings productive, resulting in change? I’m not sure. What I do know is that somehow Dennis found out about the meetings and sent spies.

At this point I have run through of my personal stock of black house lore. Lets now refer to my friend Sam. As I said, I've known Sam since highschool. Sam is poet now, mixing in the same poetic milieu that I often do and I consider him a very reliable source.

Okay first, Sam says his name was Dwayne. Dwayne the Satanic Dentist. I can’t tell which is better: Dennis or Dwayne. Sam also confirms that Dwayne would buy houses and paint them black but adds the detail that he would “paint them at night without warning and often dripped paint all over people’s gardens.”

Weird, granted, but I want to know whether he dripped black paint on people’s gardens on purpose, like painting the roses black, “We’re painting the roses black!” or whether it was just a product of painting at night. Also, whose gardens were these? How cavalier was this guy?

The next piece of information Sam gives us compliments Emmett’s story about the black house resident meetings. According to Sam, Dwayne "sent a pig’s head in a bag to the porches of all his properties in the middle of the night.” Pigs heads.

I want to know how this was done. Did he have them delivered by a service? Did he hire people to deliver them? Does Dwayne have minions? I have so many questions.

That's all I know. That's all I've heard. If anyone is feeling up to it, if anyone has the good old fashioned DIY chutzpah to do it, I would like to recommend that someone take on the task of becoming a Black House historian. I'm thinking oral histories, photography, data collection and investigative journalism. I would help you write the grant.

For more information on The Black Houses of Olympia, I recommend googling “black houses Olympia” or “the dark dentist”. There is a Myspace group for people who have lived in the Black Houses. For my part, I will try to collect more information and pledge to share it with you here.

Boxed Wine

2010-06-15T21:12:00.001-07:00

We woke up at Brandon’s house. I had slept on the floor of his room in a pile of blankets, Brandon in his bed, Steve either in The Reno Room or in someone else's bed or on the floor next to. I had mostly slept through my hangover, so I felt pretty okay, standing up and venturing out into the "Pussy Pad" at large.

For the record, it should be stated that Brandon started saying that things he liked were "pussy" around this time. “That is so pussy”, he would say. I think it started on a group trip to Jenner around Easter weekend. John patented the phrase and B ushered it gracefully into the vernacular. It was one of those things that maybe should have stayed in Jenner but us girls (Morgan, Persephone and I) wouldn't let it die and Brandon probably liked it a little too much to let it go anyway, and now he’s unhappy that I’m telling you about it, right? Sorry, B. I am so sure. Surely, this is not the origin of the "Pussy Pad’s” name, but I like to think I was maybe remotely involved.

I walked into the kitchen and found Steve holding a pot of coffee, or maybe just a cup of coffee, but when I asked him how long he'd been up and what he'd been doing, he said, "I drank a pot of coffee!" in this way he has of sounding completely surprised by himself, like he's revealing the information to you and he both for the first time and yes, it is baffling, isn't it?

This quality is incredibly endearing and no one can resist it, no matter how hard you're trying not to like him (because he's your friend's ex boyfriend), let alone fall in love with him.

He poured me a cup of coffee, or I think he would have if he hadn't drunk the whole pot already and somehow we got to the subject of boxed wine. It was about 11am, maybe noon. We had stayed up ‘til at least an hour after sunrise the night before, belting out Kelly Clarkson songs and crowd surfing one another to punkrock music, the Ramones and The Descendents, in a crowd of 5, stomping down the matted, brown shag carpet and slamming our floppy bodies against the Reno Room's wood paneling while it was still dark. Then talking all kinds of stupid shit and chain-smoking on the back steps as it began to get light, before stumbling off to beds and floors.

It was uncomfortable how easily Steve and I joked together, one line after another. We were...riffing. Isn’t that what comedians say? Ugh (maybe). I was enjoying myself a little too much. I knew I should not be enjoying the company of this person but I was, to a surprising and overwhelming extent and that was confusing. I wanted to look around and ask, "Are ya gettin this? Are ya? Cuz this is solid GOLD!"

He was still wearing the white wife-beater with the phrase, "something something.....ROCK" scrawled across it in sharpie. I can't remember what the shirt said exactly, probably something inspired by Bruce Springsteen. In one of the photos documenting the night there's Steve glaring at someone off camera, with scrawny arms crossed in fake displeasure, super pale and then rosy pink at the elbows, hiding all of the message but the word "ROCK". Someone, a girl, had drawn it on Steve's chest the night before. I remember feeling a pang of jealousy and quickly battling it back into the nether regions where exasperated, feral cats dwell and pace and chew repressed things into chimeric, figgity other things that then become gobs of expectorated poetic business.

I'm in the foreground wearing this 60's mini dress, all white & brown & pink like neopolitan ice cream, more girlie than what I’m used to, mascara smeared, eyes half-lidded, gesturing, probably making some slurred pronouncement. Terrible posture all around.

I got in so much trouble for that photo. It went up on flickr and burnt its way through the internet's bowels all the way to New Mexico where my friend was living temporarily in a stucco house in the desert, having left San Francisco behind "for good". She was upset, what was I doing in the same frame with Steve, the one who...? It's not fair to say that I got in trouble. My friend was legitimately upset. On the other hand, I was legitimately sure that I was very happy about everything that was upsetting her--this association with her past--which confused me. Something that had brought me joy was causing someone that I cared about pain.

Brandon and Alli were broken up, Morgan and David had just broken up, various combinations of people were maybe still messing around, all the poets were messing around with all of the poets, Persephone was back from L.A. attempting to scrabble her way up the side of alchoholism, I hadn't had sex in 9 months, unless my timing is off here, and thought I might tear someone apart, while generally trying to recover sanity after immersing myself headlong into a narrative of what? the scorned lover? Eh, something more many-headed than that, I think, though in the end reducible to simple, common, traceable feelings related to repressed material from my childhood, as I would learn via my newly acquired and soon to beloved therapy. Honestly, describing the narrative of my actual winter and the narrative I was attempting to construct, takes getting back into a thought process, which thankfully is difficult to sink into now, partly because of it’s way of doubling back on itself, moving too quickly to notice holes, jumping from pained moment, to swooning remembrance with only a dots of ellipses to connect the two. I know that rage filled in the gaps in its subterranean way. The gaps were silent, spaced out chunks filled only with the kind of vertigo inducing anxiety that reminds you that you are not allowed to have that thought, and so you don’t. I didn’t. Let’s not dissociate just now, Lindsey.

Everything was a mess, really a mess, but there was this weird sublime quality to it, I think because I had friends and we were all being a mess together.

This was the lesson of the year: People cause other people pain, what's worse, some action or decision that gives, nourishes and excites one person can depleat, discourage and ravage their loved one. The summer previous to the present of this particular story, two summers ago now, BB and I had been drunk in his and Alli's kitchen, after one of the after-after parties, sitting at the wooden table and smoking out of the window. I was telling him about my hesitations about dating his friend (our friend), Matthew. The conversation went something like this:

Lindsey: I just don't want to hurt anyone and I don't want anyone to hurt me, yunno?

Brandon: Yeah, word. (Sigh)

(pause for meaningful look)

Brandon: But that's what people do.

Lindsey: Hurt each other.

Both: Yeah.

And that is what happened on all sides with it seemed like everyone I knew at once and we came to know this well and to understand things about it and etc.

The time stamp on the comment that John left about the photo of Steve and I on flickr, "Steve's arms", reads "Posted 12 months ago". That's so much later than I thought. I was so in love with my friends.

I did not buy into my friends’ care at first. These were relatively new friends. I was afraid to love them all. At some point it became clear to me out of stark necessity that I had little choice but to accept it, to buy into it, to bank on it, to put all my stock in it, to invest and to have faith in its fluctuating economy. I knew that as dramatic as it sounds, I might die without. If I continued to hold the wall, only venturing what I knew for sure would be received and reciprocated, I’d be back in Olympia, a denizen of the downstairs half of my (and here I stumble on the correct phrase) folks’ house, slithering in complacent depression, having given up.

So, in the kitchen, Steve and I were jabbering again, this time in contrast to the picture of the night before, less slurred, quicker and gesturing, waving our scrawny arms and disproportionately large hands or long fingers, in my case, to describe the space of the refrigerator that would hold the boxed wine.

I had devised a meal plan built entirely around boxed wine: white for breakfast, rosé for lunch, red for dinner. I described to Steve a refrigerator filled with boxes, organized into four shelves, one for white, labeled "breakfast", one for rosé labled "lunch" and one for red labeled, "dinner", the last shelf was Steve's idea: boxes of 7up, for...mixing.

The whole thing cracked me up. I couldn't get over it. I thought I was a genius for thinking of it and that Steve was probably a genius too. I pictured someone opening the door of their refrigerator and explaining to a friend or relative their “meal-plan” in a very matter of fact way that just killed me. This happens to me a lot. I think I am so hilarious and crack myself up. There are certain jokes that can only be fully appreciated within the context of the entire scope of my life and ridiculous being, or so I think. The jokes aren’t really that funny, objectively. You probably experience this too, with your own inside jokes—the truly inside ones. You can’t get more inside than that. The addition of 7up seemed at first incongruous because it had not come from my own brain but then perfect.

I felt uncomfortable. A number of things: Steve might be funnier than me, or that we might be really funny together, and how would that work if we were supposed to be so off-limits to each other. The off-limits problem would make it difficult for us to enter dance competitions and write vaudeville acts together.

We scrounged around the kitchen and found a paper and pen, cleared a space of half empty beer cans on the counter and began to draw first the refrigerator, having to run into the closet where Brandon and the ladies kept their refrigerator (behind a beaded curtain, mind you) to get the proportions right, then Steve adding the 7up box at the bottom as Brandon emerged from his room, still wearing the Vivianne Girl's band T-shirt from the night before and rubbing the sleep from his no-glasses eyes. We began explaining our drawing, "Look! Brandon! Boxed wine!"

In the picture of the night before, Brandon and I stand next to each other. Brandon leans into the frame, his face and ears impossibly pink, from drink? or bad lighting, sorry B. He’s holding the camera and closer in the frame and therefore bigger-- with that awesome Rihanna pin on his lapel, looking into the camera, all gently, like “Hey, what’s up? I’m Brandon. I’m from Kansas City and I like poetry. I’m a real nice guy.”—all of which is true. I’m holding a coffee cup, peeking over the top in the way I learned looked best from flirting with musician types when I was a teenager, crouching into my sip, affecting a bashful huddle.

I don’t remember, but I think it’s safe to say, and friends you are welcome to correct me here, that Brandon was not especially interested in the caffeinated creative produce of his more wide-awake friends.

I don’t know where that drawing is. Shoot. I thought I would have kept it, rifled it away in a back pocket at least, but I think I left it on the counter of BB’s kitchen, feeling a little ashamed of my exuberance over such a silly joke. Brandon didn’t like my joke, “Waaa.” I vaguely remember looking for it casually when we returned to the apartment after a gluttonous breakfast at St. Francis of savory green onion and cheddar pancakes for BB and I with both syrup and a side of gravy (yes!) and eggs benedict for Steve, plus a bit of cavalier flirting with the waiter wearing cut-offs and a bewildering (for Steve, amusing for me) interaction with a woman who knew Steve, whom Steve did not remember knowing, in which she left the conversation with the impression that she should put in a good word for Steve with an old mutual friend of theirs who had recently become single.

I didn’t find the picture and I remember feeling a loss, like it would be an important artifact, which might just be hind-sight mythologizing the past and somehow comforting the present, but I do wish I had it in front of me now. It would still probably crack my shit up.

Did we at any point buy a box of wine and drink it? No we did not. Did we consider it? Probably. Did Delano’s Grocery have boxed wine? No. Would we have bought a box of wine instead of a bottle of champagne and a quart of orange juice if they had? Maybe.

From here on the story would get awkward, because its point of departure, the boxed wine, has passed, leaving me with plenty more to say but lacking a structure. I want you to know that things turned out very well for everyone. But yeah, I don't want to make things all neat and quaint because they're not.

I have learned not to turn life into stories too much. There is a lot more that I could say that would more perfectly setup my present for the reader. It is much easier to view life as a story if one does not want to face the full experience of it. Turning pain into inside jokes with myself and my intimates was the best way I knew at the time of this story, to frame otherwise bewildering, vertigo inducing experiences. Yes, of course it should have happened that way, because the narrative arc would go just so, the punch line would go just there. What am I doing now then, I wonder? What am I avoiding? My present? My present seems to always be very slippery.

Aack, though you should know that nearly everyone in this story ended up at David and Sara's that night for their house-warming party in Oakland. When asked if he would want to BART over with Brandon and I to the party, that morning over mimosas, Steve had said, "Oh HELL no. I'm not going to no poet party. Fuck THAT!"

But he showed up with John and Cat and we snuck more than our fair share of chicken finger sandwiches and Steve put one in his shirt pocket while eating another one and I thought that I never would have thought that someone could love chicken fingers as much as I do, and there was much dancing and merry-making and awkwardness and hijinks.

The End.

Crud

2010-06-15T17:29:00.000-07:00

*Dear readers, I want you to know that I have not forgotten you. I am working on my story of the week, just for you, right now, it is in the window behind this one. It is, however, sprawling out of control. The truth is, I do not know how to end stories. I do not know how to shape them. When I began college, I thought I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I had no follow-through with plot and no interest in character development. Now, I find myself interested in every detail of my story, because it came from my own life, but with no hooks to hang its many hats on. It has a kernal nugget, and am trying to surround it in interesting padding, but the padding is getting out of hand.

Do I include the part about the waiter I hit on?
Do I give away the ending that exists outside the confines of the story?
Do I attempt dialog?

Eh, I apologize. I'm processing on you. I am not currently in therapy. I apologize.

Love,
Lindsey

R.I.P. "The Hammy"

2010-06-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

* Dear Reader, I plan to write one story from my life each week for...a while. Here is the first. Names have not been changed but hopefully nothing will be deemed too incriminating. I have tried to and will try to incriminate myself as much as anyone else in this and the stories to come. Don't worry, there will be more from our resident sex blogger, Elle Bonin, again soon.

My roommate Eryn, that's a weird boy's way of spelling Erin, not Aaron but a sort of a mid-gendered spelling, had a hamster named "The Hammy" and we called him Hammy for short, the hamster not Eryn. Eryn and his ex-girlfriend Stephanie got Hammy together, named him together, raised him in a cage together, though I don’t think they ever lived together, and when they broke up, Hammy came to live in The Phoenix House with us. Hammy lived in this wire cage shaped like an old-fashioned bird cage, with a series of colorful plastic tubes and platforms running through it for Hammy to traverse. The cage lived in a small room off the kitchen, that we called the "dining room" because in Olympia irresponsible, broke, twenty-something kids could afford to live in real houses because the houses were real run-down and real cheap, hence The Phoenix House.

I feel like I didn't pay much attention to Hammy. When an animal lives in a cage, in a room labled "dining" in a house full of people who "dine" on the couch while watching reruns of "Friends" or "The Simpsons" or whatever was on channel 13, FOX, that animal doesn't get a lot of attention, at least not from me. The other animals in the house, Lucy the dog and Miette and Spark the kittens, got plenty of attention because they were mobile. If they needed attention, they walked up to you and asked for it. In Lucy's case, threw her body at you. If they didn't get enough attention, Lucy pooped on the carpet near the front door and Miette peed on your laundry. Hammy had no such recourse. This is not to say that Eryn did not care for Hammy, he did in both the emotional and physical sense. I just felt like admitting that I did not do much for Hammy. Hammy and his cage felt a lot like sculpture, something you might look at with interest sometimes but don't touch and the more you pass it during your daily routine, the more it becomes a cabinet and less a piece of art.

When you live in a real house but don't quite have real lives yet, you tend to collect a lot of really useless stuff. For instance, there was a dead yellow car in our backyard, left by a previous resident who had promised to "take care of it". At this point, it had been spray-painted red and had grown a hornet's nest. Our roommate Amber complained that, "No, we can't get rid of the car!" because she wanted to smash in its windows with a baseball bat first. This resulted in a big conflict with my boyfriend at the time, Keith, who wanted to have it towed so that he could sell it or some part of it or make money off of it in some way. If Amber smashed the car, that would render it unsaleable, hence the dispute. In the end, I think we rolled the car into the street and left it, but I might be making that up.

The crawl spaces and basement of the house were full of years of delinquent roommate detritus: prom photos, photographic equipment, motorcycle parts, a motorcycle, dead amps, lamps, cords of all kinds, bench seats from cars, ironic thrift store art, ironic self-made art, gear of all kinds, rusted things, moldy things, things that people had at one time thought they wanted or needed but turned out they did not. When you finally have a space of your own, a house of your own, or the tenuous belief that it's yours and belongs to you because no one else cares about it, you want to fill it with things and when you don't have money or taste or any sense of how to make a life for yourself you fill it with crap and in our case pets too.

That's not to say that Hammy was crap. Hammy was great. Hammy's coloring resembled a muted dreamsicle, mostly dusty orange with some well-placed white splotches. His nose was pink and wiggled and his whiskers wiggled too. He was cute--he was a hamster. I couldn't detect much personality, but like I said, Hammy and I didn't spend a lot of time together. I was more concerned with my new kitten, Miette, my newish boyfriend, Keith, my newish life as a college student, my old existential crisis and my new ways of describing and extending it thanks to college.

One day I came home from school, I think, and set about doing one of a few things that I did a lot during that time: either making a salad, doing dishes (there were always a ton of dishes and the sink never drained), guiltily watching TV instead of reading critical theory, staring into space with a book in my hand and a notebook on the table or some other activity that's been lost to memory. Honestly, I didn't spend that much time on the internet then. There wasn't much to do besides check my Friendster account and send emails. No one was home but Eryn, and the animals. I looked in on Hammy who was lying on his back in the cage, limbs waving slowing in the air above him.

"Eryn, I think something's wrong with Hammy."

We pulled him out of the cage and he didn't look well. He was a little chilly too. I remembered a story from a book by James Harriot, about an English country veterinarian who goes about the countryside making house calls to farmers and their families that I had read and reread as a child. I was thinking specifically about the story of a sickly newborn lamb. I had to google various combinations of the words "English" "country" "veterinary" "children" and "stories until the phrase, "english childrens stories about a country veterinarian" turned up the right name just now. James Harriot, the kindly country vet, had put the lamb in the oven to warm it, which even as a child I found ironic, and the lamb had quickly regained health.

So, we put Hammy in the oven. We layed his weirdly contorted body on a round, mesh pizza tin and set the oven to "warm", and hesitated about whether to close the door. We closed the door. After about 5 minutes we checked on Hammy and he seemed to bit more perky and less contorted. I thought of the snow-white newborn lamb and how happy the children in the story had been when it had revived. I pictured their rosy cheeked faces beaming and clapping their chubby hands together while their mother looked on with mild pleasure, her rough farm hands folded in her white-aproned lap, either that or I'm just picturing it now.

We shut the door again for good measure. Eryn and I looked at each other hopefully and said something about how he looked a little better. We decided we should probably still take him to a vet, but who would treat a hamster? As Eryn held Hammy in his cupped hands and Hammy started to move a bit more normally, right side up now, I hauled out the phone book and started making calls. I was ready for veterinary disdain--these city vets were nothing like James Harriot and wouldn't think to care about a thing like Hammy. I was such a writhing ball of anxiety at the time, prone to panic attacks, especially when tasked with writing straight-forward, analytical prose essays in my college poetry classes, that my level-headed practicality in this situation was beginning to impress me. Not to be gruesome or to make use of Hammy's pain for dramatic and figurative affect, but psychologically, I felt like Hammy looked a lot of the time: both frozen and flailing. But here, in my kitchen, phone book in one hand, phone in the other, I thought of myself as the best person for the job. Eryn needed my help and I was being helpful. I came to one veterinary clinic that seemed sympathetic to our cause and jotted down the address. It was a ways away, out in Tumwater, the most remote of the three Thurston county towns Olympia-Lacy-Tumwater. It was the most rural of the three, with a somehow more pronounced feeling of quiet gloom and eeriness than the other two. Sometimes Eryn, Keith and I would venture out to Tumwater to go to an all-night diner called Cattins for their all-you-can-eat fish n’ chips special that we would try to sereptitiously share between the three of us. One of the waitresses’ there, Betty, had a fake nose and you could see it’s rubber starting to peel off on one side, which was fasciniating. Other than that there wasn’t much reason to go to Tumwater but I offered to go along because I was being helpful.

Eryn and I were friends, but didn't spend much time alone together. He and Keith, were more buddy-buddy, for instance, Keith had to tell Eryn not to look at pornography on my computer when we discovered his indiscretion because the photos were downloading directly to my desktop, using that brilliantly subtle way that men have that I will never be able to accomplish. I imagine it went something like this:

Keith: Hey dude, you know how when you click on a link to a picture on the internet and it downloads to your desktop?

Eryn: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah...

Eryn: Uh....oh.

Keith: Yeah, so...

Eryn: Oh, totally. Won’t happen again.

I would later bust Keith for the same thing via the same technological oversight and my twenty-one year old self would be full of righteous indignation and try to refuse to see the connection between his interest in pornography and our my disinterest in sex.

And Eryn was tall and handsome and kind in a humble sort of bashful way, not cocky like most of my musician dude friends were, which is probably why I felt a little uncomfortable around him. Yes, that is why I was uncomfortable around him because honestly, we probably would have dated if I hadn't already been with Keith and maybe all three of us knew it. But I wanted to help, so we piled into the giant Ford van that he and his band mates used to pack gear into for shows in Seattle and Portland and the odd West coast tour and I held Hammy while Eryn drove. It would have been better if I had driven and Eryn had held his hamster but I didn't have my license at yet, due to the same anxiety that kept me from doing anything normal and productive, partially due to a fear of becoming normal and productive, and wouldn't get it until the following summer when I turned 22 and moved to California in an attempt to escape the very same anxiety.

We drove mostly in silence, maybe chatting a bit, maybe listening to the radio or more likely an old tape, Eryn reaching over and petting Hammy’s belly with a finger every once in a while, but Hammy was starting to look a little beleaguered. His tiny pink feet clawed the air in slow motion, super slow motion like that really awkward way that people look when we’re trying to imitate slow motion on film, and I could feel his body clenching and unclenching in my hands, as his mouth opened wide, showing his pair of top and bottom teeth, long, thin,yellow, and paired to look like one big baby tooth on top and one big baby tooth on the bottom. I looked at Eryn, then back at Hammy.

"Um, Eryn, Hammy isn't looking so good."

Eryn looked down at Hammy then back at the road and we both said things back and forth that amounted to:

Lindsey: Uh...

Eryn: Uh.....

Lindsey: Uh......

Eryn: Uh...

Maybe Eryn sped up, I don’t remember but for dramatic affect let’s say that we peeled into the parking lot of the veterinary clinic, or the opposite of peeled because we were parking and hopped out of the van and half ran-half walked into the clinic, trying to look sort of normal but also trying to move fast because Hammy’s life was in our hands and he was maybe dying and kind of burst into the entryway of the office and looked down into my hands and Hammy was dead. He had frozen in one of his contorted slow motion swim strokes. We looked up at the woman behind the desk who might have been the sympathetic voice I had spoken to earlier, with her look of expectation and readiness to serve, and looked back to Hammy in my hands still dead, and sort of smiled weakly, shrugged our shoulders, and headed for the door.

“Oh...” I heard her say and then maybe, “Too late, I guess.”

I think I patted Eryn’s shoulder as we walked back to the car and said something like, “I’m sorry, dude.” or hopefully, “I’m sorry, Eryn.”

At some point I probably transferred Hammy to Eryn or maybe I held him in my lap on the drive home as we discussed the proper burial proceedings in that practical way that people have of going to logistics for comfort. Eryn would call Stephanie and what time would he probably do it so that I could make sure to help and maybe the evening would be best so that Keith and Amber could come too, but once we got home I was exhausted and a little overwhelmed and went straight to my room upstairs, the big one with the bathroom even though I was the youngest in the house, that cost $250/month, which is crazy to me now, and fell asleep. I slept through Hammy’s funeral and I think Eryn ended up burying him in the backyard by himself that night after dark, which sounds pretty maudlin. I know I felt guilty for missing it and the guilt seemed to somehow outweigh the good feelings of having helped earlier. Some of the guilt came from exactly that, the fact that I had felt so good about myself earlier. While Hammy was dying and Eryn was upset about his pet, I was feeling proud of my level-headedness and kind-heartedness and what a good friend I was and no I wasn’t attracted to Eryn because that would mean I was bad when I really wanted to be good and then I missed the funeral and was automatically, irreversibly bad. Bad all around. Bad friend, bad student (having spent valuable study time helping), bad girlfriend for feeling close to Eryn, which once you’re there you might as well just go all the way to bad daughter, bad sister, bad person, which is what my therapist at the time called "The Parrot" and "The Bug". The Parrot is good and The Bug is bad. You're either one or the other but nowhere in between.

In any case, Eryn was sad for a while, visibly depressed, but everyone seemed to be pretty mopey, not just in our house but generally speaking. If you weren't making ascerbic, cutting remarks about some jerk and their perceived over-enthusiastic attitude over a can of Pabst in a semi-dank semi-dark interior space, you were one of those jerks, which probably meant you weren't from Olympia.

But Hammy was a good Hamster. He did all the things that good Hamsters do, including die within his approximately 3 year lifespan of natural causes. Yes, I just googled the phrase "hamster lifespan".

R.I.P. "The Hammy". I don't know why I thought of you today.

Love,

Lindsey

Cool Sex Moves

2010-06-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of starting my very own SEX BLOG but I thought I'd try it here first. Here are some cool new moves to spice up your time in the bedroom! I hope you like them!

1. "The Figure 8". Once you've mastered this one, try flipping it horizontally for our next move...

2. "Infinity"

3. "Morse Code". Nothing says, "I love you" like saying it in Morse Code with a body part.
That's: .. .-.. --- ...- . -.-- --- ..- for any of you who don't know Morse Code.

4. "Flossing"

5. Try writing your lovers name in cursive. OR for an extra challenge, try bubble letters! Don't forget to dot any I's with a heart!

6. "Cub Scouts Honor"

7. "Scouts Honor"

8. "Eagle Scouts Honor"

One of the teachers at my school retired and I reaped the benefits

2010-06-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

DUH.

2010-05-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

1.

Duh, I luh yuh
we could have a baby
name her Duhiluhyuh
call her Duh for short
sing to her: duh-duh-duh
my my my
Duhiluhyuh
little duh
be the product of our love
Duh, the foregone conclusion

2.

Boo
Duh
Bah
Aaack
Shoot
Balls
Crap
Crud
Dang

3.

Duh - Morgan
Bitches be buggin'
scatter and collect

the powers that be
could be in you and me

4.

coupla fools abreast
where to cut? coup la
slap your wrists togeths--
like rubbing on the stink sauce
parfum de sauce
smell like special sauce
all day eau de toilet
eau de Cologne--that smelly spot
a francais--sil te plait
kiddo, you can tutoyer me
you can you me
please do you me
you-me. Duh.
Duh. I luh yuh.
Duhiluhyuh, Dear.
Duhiluhyuhs--All yuhs kids
(dickheads all)
Duhs upon duhs.

Twaddey-Winks

2010-05-13T13:29:00.001-07:00

I have not been writing poetry lately. I haven't really been writing anything lately. Today I decided to give myself a little exercise to see if I could do it. Choose 5 words from the SF Gaurdian and write a 5 line poem using them. The poem quickly took on a maritime theme. I think I passed my test but the problem was that afterward I still didn't want to write poems, okay, that's not entirely true. I did want to continue dicking around or more positively, playing with words but I came up against that infernal useless feeling: so what? What good does rearranging words into silly combos do? What am I doing besides amusing myself with twaddle? I am not here to play tiddly-winks, damnit! I am not Gustave Flaubert. I will not sit around describing things beautifully without a nod to their socio-political or emotional significance! I am here to...and then I was distracted by something. So, the conclusion I reached, that I always reach when I feel like I will never write again is that I need to keep reading and brewing and waiting because clearly my desire to write or rather my need to expel collected and compacted information has not yet surpassed my crappy attitude. All in good time. In the meantime, here is some twaddle:

5 Words: smutty, esplanade, bubbles or bivalves, bottom, busk

Smutty-bottomed bivalves
languish along the esplanade
blowing hock bubbles (for kicks)
their tubal-libations cooking
busk in their gullets for passersby

Locally-owned hookers work weapons
in their mouth parts
those slutty prostitutes accomodate
acquisition accessories
for the ol' ball n' chain
studs and bawbles balanchine-style

New from Post-Apollo!

2010-05-12T11:00:00.001-07:00

The New Make Believe by Denise Newman

Oh, Dear

2010-05-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

OR "Gustave, why won't you just get a job!"

Flaubert to His Mother
-Between Minia and Assiut
23 February 1850

...Now I come to something that you seem to enjoy reverting to and that I fail to completely understand. You are never at a loss for things to torment yourself about. What is the sense of this: that I must have a job--'a small job,' you say. First of all, what job? I defy you to find me one, to specify in what field, what it would consist in. Frankly, and without deluding yourself, is there a single one that I am capable of filling? You add: 'One that wouldn't take up much of your time and wouldn't prevent you from doing other things.' There's the delusion! That's what Bouilhet told himself when he took up medicine, what I told myself when I began law, which only just failed to kill me with bottled-up fury. When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard esistences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds--like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.

In short, it seems to me that one takes a job for money, for honors, or as an escape from idleness. Now you'll grant me, darling, (1) that I keep busy enough not to have to go out looking for something to do; and (2) if it's a question of honors, my vanity is such that I'm incapable of feeling myself honored by anything: a position, however high it might be (and that isn't the kind you speak of) will never give me the satisfaction that I derive from my self-respect when I have accomplished something well in my own way, and finally, if it's for money, any jobs or job that I could have would bring in too little to make much difference to my income. Weigh all those considerations: don't knock your head against a hollow idea. Is there any position in which I'd be closer to you, more yours? And isn't not to be bored one of the principal goals of life?

*From "Flaubert in Egypt"

Sherlock Holmes

2010-05-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

And now Doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A sandwich, and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums. (...)

"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."
"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he remarked. "L'homme c'est rien--l'oevre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand."

-- 2 from Adventure II. The Red-Headed League

For My Homestash, Gucci

2010-04-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

Haters want to hate
Lovers want to love
I don't even want
none of the above

I want to piss on you
Yes I do

love,
Bang-luh-desh

SFBay ---> NYC : A Belated Rehash

2010-04-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

We upped our clothing game: knee socks, suspenders, mixed patterns, bright colors, boat shoes, beards, bare feet, shades, slip-ons, kentucky ties, bowties etc.

We showed boss

We rowed boats

We lurked hipsters

We lurked everyone

even homeless people

look good in New York

We did day drinking

We had made it in strange places

We were pusher-men and women

We mixed

We strolled

We saw familiar shots

We were in a montage

We were in love

We tried to start a dance party

Succeeded once

Failed once

We ate famous

We ate meat

We saw classics

We met internet entities

We made friends

We saw blasts from pasts

We sat in airports

We got drunk and told our best friends that we didn't like their exes (Okay, that only happened to me)

We apologized

We did not have any porgies

Sorry

We had transcendent reading experiences

We missed things

We debuted

We met cats named Gucci (Just me again)

We managed public transit

We Dunked Donuts (tm)

We introduced

We did not eat any greens

We were pleased to make your acquaintance

We owned that shit

We ran that shit

The Post-Apollo Press BLOGS!

2010-04-14T10:03:00.001-07:00

All the up-to-dates: http://postapollopress.blogspot.com/
Currently repping the Sakkis(es)

TYPING " WILD SPEECH" by Dana Ward

2010-04-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Summer BF Press! announces! publication of! the chapbook! Typing "Wild Speech"! by Dana Ward! Now available at the Summer BF Press BLOG.

Summer BF Press is a chapbook press that my BF, Steve Orth, and I started this past year. Read all about it at the BLOG.

HUZZAH!!!

New York

2010-04-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Ah hell, I'm still processing y'all.

Pardon my language...MUTHA F&#@*$ SPRAAAANG BREAK!

2010-03-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

WOOT! WOOT!

Shirts off
T's up
Tacos in
Blended drinks
New Shoes
Haircut
Airplane
NYC
Fried Chicken
Dunkin Donuts
Day Drinking
Whitney Biennial
Jewish Deli
40-40
Supermachine
Blowin' Minds
Poetrytime
Mind-Blowing
Maxou
ORTH
BB
AWs
DW
Zeecee
Sara
DZ
Glug glug glug
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Poet-Orgy Plural
Porgies
Ewww
and more
I hope

P's Text

2010-03-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

At wrk. Stop. Be down
early sunday. Stop. Will
shop when u busy. Stop.
I like to shop. Stop.
WW2 style bitch. Stop

I'ma Gonna Read in Brooklyn, NY

2010-03-18T13:54:00.001-07:00

S U P E R M A C H I N E
R E A D I N G
S E R I E S

FRI, APRIL 2, 8PM

ZACHARY GERMAN
LINDSEY BOLDT
KOSTAS ANAGNOPOULOS
LUCY IVES

ALL READINGS TAKE PLACE AT OUTPOST
1014 FULTON ST (GRAND & CLASSON)
C TRAIN TO FRANKLIN
G TO CLINTON/WASHINGTON

and y'all should come!

Lost and Found

2010-03-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

I thought I lost my nasal piercing retainer in my sinus this afternoon. I blew and blew and thought, "Am I going to have to go to the emergency room for this?" I was reminded of the time I stuffed a cherry pit up my nose when I was four. Honestly, I don't remember this happening but it is a popular story in my family because of all of the hoopla that resulted from this choice of mine. We were on a sailboat at the time and had to find a port, moor the boat and find a doctor. Once at the doctor's office, sitting on the exam table, I sneezed and out came the cherry pit in a gob of snot. I have to say that if it weren't for this story today I might have thought, "It's probably okay up there. It'll work it's way down." but with this previous story setting a precedent of action, I was truly prepared to call my health clinic and admit to losing my nasal piercing in my own body. Thankfully, the nasal piercing retainer had only fallen onto the couch and I only had to tell you all about it, instead of some unfamiliar medical personnel.

2010-03-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

Eating is one of the less disgusting things one can do in public. This Twix bar was made as I was and you were--not like we were made but made nonetheless. It is unique in all the world as you and I are--not like we are unique but unique nonetheless. Even from its fellows in the 4-pack, it is unique. Though you or I might not detect the differences between them in our mouths, were we to study each, shuffle them and re-examine, we would find our Twix bar and know it by its unique qualities.

In this red plastic net bag are many tangerines. The label does not tell us how many tangerines are in the bag. Could we count them all cuddled together still in the bag? HOw would we know which had been counted? How would we know them as individuals without holding them in our hands? Touching them through the mesh sack, we cannot know the full experience of holding them. We see them but not entirely--there's mesh first, then tangerine. We feel them and feel that we are holding them but our experience is only an approximation of the real event. Can our hands isolate the feeling of the tangerine's skin from the plastic mesh of the bag? Within the bag, we can hold all of the tangerines at once. This is not something that would be possible without the bag. Still, we are not actually holding all of the tangerines at once. We are holding a plastic mesh bag full of all of the tangerines at once.

The man on the train completes a Rubix Cube. I witness him do it. I have seen this happen once before and that time it was done by a young man on a bus. This time, I did not know that he was working a rubix cube until I looked up seconds before he completed it. When I looked up and saw that he was working a Rubix Cube, I wondered if he would complete it while I was watching (as the other man had). Three turns later and he had, then moved the completed cube to his lap, looked to his left and then back. I looked away, wanting to see the possibly proud look on his face but afraid he would see me looking and avert his gaze, or guess my reason for looking and look back. I did not see his look of pride because I looked away. I don't know if he had one. Now when I look at him I feel afraid that he knows this, that he saw me not see him. He sees me writing and must be afraid that I am writing about him. I avoid looking up so that he will not think that I am writing about him. When I look up again, he has left the train. The young man who completed a Rubix Cube on a bus, did so in my home town. My friend and I sat and watched as he quickly manipulated the cube's sections. Though young, college age, he wore a gray suit, gray argyle sweater, leater shoes, black framed glasses and wore his hair slicked back into a fifties-style do. He wore matching gray gloves, the kind with a layer of leather that lines the palms. He turned the Rubix cube quickly in his hands while listening to music on headphones. We timed him and each time he solved the Rubix Cube in under 2 minutes. We wondered what kind of music he was listening to. Techno, we guessed. It was a crowded bus so we knew that he must know how conspicuous he was and we knew that if he had an sense of self awareness, that he would know that we and the other passengers watching him must know that he knew. He probably did know how intriguing he was. We hoped that he did not, of course. I was dissapointed when my friend told me later that she had seen him performing the same feat in a bar downtown surrounded by girls.

When I was young, I would press my two index fingers together and try to differentiate between the sensation of touching and being touched. Could my left finger feel my right finger pressing against it? Could this left finger feel itself pressing my right finger? and vice versa. The answer was usually, no. The four possible sensations that were no doubt happening: right finger-pressing, right finger-being pressed, left finger-pressing, left finger-being pressed, simultaneously registered as one sensation--one throbbing that seemed to happen somewhere both between the two fingers and in the center of each. How sad, I thought. I could feel the difference between the sensations only when I moved one or both of the fingers. Did you ever press your index fingers together and move your hands side to side to create a rubbing between them to simulate kissing? "Oooh, kissing." you might have said and this might have been accompanied by some kind of tease. At the time you did not know how similar this action was to the real thing. When you kiss, how does it register? as kissing or as being kissed? Can your mind feel both at once? What I mean to say is, can your lips feel both at once or can your brain register both at once but it amounts to the same thing. It makes me sad that we don't have the potential to feel the quadruple sensation even though it is no doubt happening all at once: lips kissing, lips being kissed, lips kissing, lips being kissed.

CA Conrad

2010-03-10T11:26:00.001-08:00

Frank's sister grew long blue feathers

she said it was worse than cutting teeth

she spent a month screaming in the cave
pushing them out

Frank would lie in bed at night
touching his back

crying

praying it wouldn't
come to him

but the day his sister flew to the house
he stood by the window in awe
giant blue spread coming in across the lake

he heard the hunter's shot before she did

Fan Fiction Poetry

2010-03-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

A Freudian Reading of Avatar

Earth was our mother but we shunned her
We sublimated our inability to fully possess her
which resulted in a desire to wreak havoc on civilization
Now we have come to demostrate our prowess
by demolishing the largest tree in the forest as if
it were our father's dick

Sexy Alien Fan Fiction Poem

Put your muzzle on my muzzle
fat straps wrap my noggin
batton down my ear flaps
Which brand of alien am I this time?
You be bumpy, I'll be gilled
You be winged, I'll be unable to breathe
Your planet's air works spores into my fatty lungs
Cover my mouth with filters
Stare me down with your infrared gaze
Show me what it's like to have tentacles

ABBA

2010-03-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

Don't go wasting your emotions
Lay all your love on me

What is Happening to Me?

2010-03-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

My life is weird.

I just made the "Yes!" gesture, arms raised above head, fists locked in triumph and hissed, "Yesss!" , after successfully loading a toner cartridge into the printer here at the Post-Apollo office.

Just before that, I got all pleased and excited when I found return postage included in the new cartridge so that the old cartridge can be recycled. I think I actually said, "Oh COOL!"

James Taylor somehow managed to get onto my Bob Dylan pandora radio station. I thumbed it down but still.

I felt annoyed by second hand smoke earlier today while waiting for the bus. I'm pretty sure I made that "ick" face.

I spoke with a tax preparer over the phone about whether I should be considered an independent contractor or an employee.

I comparison shopped for postage scales.

I put on sensible rain-proof shoes this morning.

Thankfully, I dreamt of tigers and foggy bridges and poetry last night.

Poets or Just Me Continued

2010-03-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

(originally written in comment box but got all long so I decided to make it a post and that is what this is)

Hey, brother! I'm not sure exactly what I was aiming for with that post except to encourage folks towards engagement with their work through positive means. I am not so interested in the possibilities of self-promotion as I am in developing confidence and self-assurance to go forward rather than hold oneself back out of some kind of guilt or misguided allegiance.

I think poets especially tend to be afraid that to be ambitious or successful might mean supporting or colluding with a society that we deem corrupt and oppressive in many ways. By success and ambition I don't mean monetary success or career-oriented ambition although I do think that I have made the mistake of conflating my negative associations with that idea of success with any possible ideas of success.

For the poetry community that I am a part of (this is in itself a generalization), money is not often an issue. As my friend John pointed out, it is a gift economy. Money is of course an issue for every poet in many, many senses but it is not often seen as a marker of "success". Success tends to be marked more by popularity, which can mean both popularity of one's work but also socially. Success is also measured by the literary achievement of the work, of course but I think it is important to note that in the absence of validation through monetary gain, social validation will often suffice. This is not to say that it should not.

I think too that poets/artists/PEOPLE often make the mistake that to celebrate any aspect of a potentially corrupt society is to support it as a whole.

I want to make clear that many of these motivations and associations, are or can often be unconscious, or at least had been for me to a degree for quite some time.

I was inspired to write my previous post and this one, in part because of an incredibly exciting and inspiring poetry event that I attended a few weekends ago, which was a benefit for Try! Magazine. Without getting into too much detail about the event, I would just say that it incorporated everything I love about being part of a poetic community including more than anything the celebration of an incredibly "successful" venture. One, I might add, that has never made anyone (I am pretty sure) a dime.

I am in the process of trying to understand where my own associations with success come from and fully realizing how they have affected the choices I have made. I realize that it is unfair to project my own worries about success onto my friends and colleagues but do feel that as we share many positive reasons for engaging with poetic (especially avant gard) communities, we may also share some that come from places that are hidden from us as well.

Poets or Just Me

2010-02-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Here's my beef with poets, and maybe this is specific to Bay Area poets and maybe just to the ones I spend time with, but I'm going to make a grand general statement about poets and you, dear reader, are more than welcome to disagree with me. In fact, please do. We poets (gross generalization) are afraid to express our personal radness for fear of being criticized for being: arrogant, self-promoting, fussy, having diva-like qualities or worst: collaborating with the enemy--Capitalism.

...okay I just realized that I'm talking about myself. I am projecting onto my friends and then extending that projection to others in my social sphere and then beyond to poets in general. Wow, it's really hard to build an argument when you realize that it's based on your own insecurities and neuroses. Shoot.

Still, guys, I want to reassure you (if any of you are struggling with this too) and in doing so myself that there are ways to express engagement, excitement and positive feelings about your work, your community, etc. and still practice the values you hold dear (consideration, kindness, professionalism and a well-balanced ego state, for my part). That last one kind of cracked me up. Well-balanced ego state...that's a good one, but HECK, isn't that something to strive for?

Also, beyond being positive and and excited about our work and the work of our colleagues and friends I would extend this hope of possibility. I'm going to say that it is OK to defend your work. It is OK to be assertive and it is possible to do so without being aggressive. It is possible to practice the values you hold dear and still stand up for yourself and your work. In fact, it should be expected and should be supported.

I have much more to say on this topic and welcome discussion. Please, think about this, friends. I know that I may be projecting here but I also know that I am no alone in this.

Bust out! Get shiny!

Holler.

Try! Magazine

2010-02-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

Steve just got up from the couch where we were sitting and reading through my collection of Try! Magazines, each of us with a stack on our lap.

I need to choose a piece from one of these issues to read aloud tomorrow at the benefit for Try at 21 Grand. I have a few ideas so far. In the stack of Trys were a few stowaway programs from The New Reading Series at 21 Grand. It's really so nice. Maybe it's an obvious thing to say and I know that this was probably David and Sara's intention in putting together Try, but as I was reading I honestly felt this sense of continuity creeping in the backside of my head, reminding me that time had in fact passed, something(s) had happened within that time and that I cared about all of it and that it had and currently does mean something to me and here was a record of it in tangible paper form sitting in my lap.

"Oh, I love this one. It's fucking weird."
"What? Gross. This one is super gross!"
"Aaack! This one is gross too."
"Is that the gross issue?"
"Whoa, I really like this. Oh, duh, he's awesome. Ron Palmer. His brain is so weird. It's awesome."
"Oh that's the cover of the record."
"I think it's Candy Darling."
"Here's an email from Dana to David."
"Here's Anne!"
"Is this you?"
"Yeah, that's me!"
"Some things are so beautiful when they're photocopied."
"Yeah"
"Like this one, I can't even tell what it is but it's beautiful."
"I always feel like I'm sucking Brandon's poetry dick but it's just so good."
"Oh, this is Logan. I like that. Reading something you like and then turning the page and thinking 'Oh, I know him.'"
"Oh, you lost me."
"Aaack, boooring."
"I mean what the fuck? I hate it when people sit down to write a poem and they're all 'Okay, it'll be about stars and have the word abyss in it and..."
"I'm such a jerk."
"I like this one. Remember Joseph Mosconi from L.A.? He did this one. It's super weird. I wonder how he wrote it."
"Here's a poem by Dana."
"Oh I love this cover!"
"You got anything good over there?"

I felt like I was looking though a yearbook. These things are striking. They make me feel sentimental and miss my poet friends. Luckily, I will see many of them/you tomorrow. Thanks for being part of my life and having me in yours, all, and thanks to David and Sara for making tangible a very important (and on-going) time in my life.

love,

Lindsey

2010-02-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

Pop pop, fizz fizz. O what a relief it is--in my mouth. Cheap thrills on a Friday night. Look out for this guy. Are you rollin'? Nah, I'm cruising. One can't just

get away with
line breaks.

Overdrafted. Does that mean extra conscripted into military service? Skipped over by the gov't for being too 4-F or too gay or too openly female? Too much time spent commanding and shifting? Control C, control V. Them apples. It means purification by fire and I am both the eagle and the eyes--asunder-ing and suffering both. Which myth has the guy with his guts out, served up for eternity? Vittle vitals. Tasty 'testines. Give it up! Give it up! Give up for Miss Sweet-thing over here.

Decimated.

Wasted like desolation time's come and gone, super gone, hammered, out of hand, off the chain. Off the chain and the rock floats the brain from the eyes pecked to pieces, goes to elsewhere for thoughts on smartstuff. My pleasure is too mighty and I flee. Forgive me, I am only now learning to be here. If I split, it's because the chaos got in and my guts can't differentiate between the good kind and the bad kind. I may pee all over the place. I may be ripped in twain by your generosity. By your generously sized generosity. I swear.

Fire and wrath and no money. No money.

I step down from the bus, saying "pardon me" and leave teeth marks on every metal surface behind me. My shit is on that bus. Because I lost it on that bus. My hands folded in my lap. Like, here is the church and here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people... and your fingers are inside. That's the surprise. Open the doors and your fingers are inside and they there are people. Possible people. People make people. People make people by opening up and seeing what's inside. Was your upbringing slightly religious? but just out of laziness or lack of a better system? like the best preschool is the Catholic one and bible stories teach good values. Wait. What?

Even now, when good stuff shows up saying hey, check me out, I'm super interesting and worth noticing. Don't be afraid. I entertain self destructive fantasies. I swear. I could bite through that hand rail, no problem. Lose my teeth on a diseased bench seat. Bite through bottle necks. Froth, big time.

So we work it out. And much of it is not fit for public consumption but process is like really "in" right now so maybe we put it out there, erring on the side of people generally like what I do and think I'm an okay person so...

and that is how things continue to happen.

2010-02-18T21:51:00.001-08:00

All of a sudden I find myself editing things. In any given week I will edit at least one piece of writing but often times more. These may include: books, chapbooks, elementary school newspapers, poetry, essays or my own writing. When I say find, I mean that particularly because I do feel like editing just showed up in my life one day and decided to hang out for a while, rather than its presence in my life existing because of a slow accrual of engagement, on my part, over time. It's as shocking as looking to my left and seeing someone I'm in love with sitting next to me on my couch or looking to my right and seeing a gaggle of talented, thrilling, creative people that I can and do call friends milling around. Where did you all come from? How did this happen? What else can happen if this has already happened?

"MARIBOR" STATUS: PUBLISHED!

2010-02-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

Whew!

I'm too tired to say much of anything but yahoo!!! and check it out!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, February 1st, 2010

Maribor

by Demosthenes Agrafiotis
Translated by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis

Poetry 86pgs $15.00 ISBN: 978-0942996-70-8

As a North American I can only nod in awe at the dark mystery these poems offer, and the chastening, steel-eyed precision of European thought. In the hands of a master poet like Demosthenes Agrafiotis an old world emerges that is both bone-tired and on the cusp of renewal…

The Europe of cafés, fashionable clothing, insane nationalist wars, & razor-edged critical thought is crisply present; while beneath it all beats a spiritual pulse as archaic as the Magdalenian caves. Into the tiny fractures of modern economy, philosophy, personality, and history, leak the structures of myth. Maribor is Slovenia’s second largest city, riddled with beauty & tragedy, & one site of the ethnic conflicts of the twentieth century. It is also a city that sits at a spiritual center—a center this poem, composed during the tumult of the 1990s, managed to reach. John and Angelos Sakkis are to be congratulated for having brought us a living poem in American-English. They manage to navigate not just contemporary Greek, but French, Italian, Latin, German, and such stunning lines as “the sparrow comes and perches / on the chair and leaves a dropping / all words are available / and suitable.”
⎯Andrew Schelling

“who assigns names? // the name itself” Demosthenes Agrafiotis’s name assigned him a superb origin myth. He was born in the Agrafa, a region historically so remote its inhabitants eluded conquest and were thus undocumented or “unwritten” in the records of the empire, a place that consequently became a refuge for forbidden Greek literacy. Agrafiotis translates the paradox of his inheritances into poetry that collaborates with the autonomy of the sign, animating its multiple lives and orchestrating the resonances of its indeterminacy. Maribor gives us both artifact—of the ephemera of communication, institutions, power—as well as blueprint for imagining an “alphabet of the future.” A master of the c contemporary hermetic, Agrafiotis can bring to light in one stroke both the evanescence and endurance of the writing on the wall.
⎯Eleni Stecopoulos

Demosthenes Agrafiotis is a Greek poet, visual artist and performer living in Athens, Greece. His book Chinese Notebook, also translated by John and Angelos Sakkis is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2010.

John Sakkis’ is a poet and translator living in San Francisco. He is the author of the book Rude Girl (Blaze Vox 2009). Angelos Sakkis is a translator and painter living in Oakland, California.

Order: online from our distributor, Small Press Distribution www.spdbooks.org or directly from the press by phone: (415) 332-1458 / mail: 35 Marie St. Sausalito, CA 94965 email: postapollo@earthlink.net. / Publicity contact: Lindsey Boldt lindsey@postapollopress.com

Duh. 1/27/10

2010-01-27T22:29:00.000-08:00

O' puppy, s'okay
s'okay, puppy, s'okay
Haiti fall down
(go boom)
I fall down
all the space goes
wubba wubba
dissolve
sand from the face
chunks
pass
I pass
I'll pass
No, thanks
Baby makes good
no comparison
don't compare 'em son
parts fall
and this is uncomfortable
Good job, that was uncomfortable
not yet feeling
quite right
my friends
are good friends
and your friends
are my friends
so that makes us
good friends
i am shaken in bad taste
we catalog events and versions
of ourselves
and make them new
i make that wubba wubba
where there wasn't
wubba wubba before
Duh.
I don't get it
I'ma smile, kay?

"My Breakup" : A Power Point Presentation

2010-01-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

Watch it tomorrow at the CCA Writing Center as part of SPT's last day of Poet's Theater.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Lindsey

ACTING!

2010-01-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be in some things tomorrow. Poets Theater.

"Turn on the Heat" by Dodie Bellamy, directed by Kevin Killian

and

"The Impertinents" by Rodney Koeneke, directed by Lauren Shufran

O Tannenbaum

2009-12-22T15:44:00.001-08:00

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum
Heffeiweisen weisenheimer;
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
bratwurst, nachwurst, Franziskaner;
weiner schnizel eiderdown,
gezundheit schlep unt edelweiss.
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
Ubermensch schnoz doppleganger

O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
Mutter vater raus mit zu;
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
zeitgeist Freud Kant Hegel Kline;
Heidegger Herzog Fassbinder
Ich bin ein berliner Alexanderplatz
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
elbonin Reichstag Luftwaffe.

O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
schlep Kraftwerk Autobon Oktoberfest!
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
Boldt Orth Kraut Sausage Weimaramer
Hindenburgh Fritz schwartz milche Todes Fugue
Nietzche dirndl Wittgenstein
O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!
Wagner gesamtkunstwerk lederhosen

The Happier We'll Be

2009-12-21T19:23:00.000-08:00

and my friends are cobras and your friends are airplanes / and my friends are sitcoms and your friends are romcoms / and my friends are digital and your friends are analog / and my friends are wicca and your friends are dragons / and my friends are civil-servants and your friends are cultural-workers / and my friends are women and your friends are gypsies /and

Happy Together

2009-12-20T19:39:00.000-08:00

Your friends are my friends / and my friends are your friends / the more we get together the happier we'll be / and my friends are animals and your friends are junkies / and my friends are aestheticians and your friends are beavers / and your friends are dentists and my friends are othodontists / and my friends are dill-holes and your friends are jagoffs / and my friends are sketchy and your friends are out-sourced / and my friends are exotic and your friends are whimsical and

Just in case

2009-12-15T22:50:00.000-08:00

you missed the flarf poem that arrived in my comment box a while back, here it is for your enjoyment. For the record, I have never owned a pair of Ugg Boots and were I to be caught dead in them, I can assure you that they would have had to have been crammed onto my rigor mortified feet posthumously as some kind of sick "fuck you" to me and my sense of decency. They're not cute, gals, they just aren't. They make you look like a rhino.

No, no, a thousand times no!

Flarf Poem:

hxr said...
ugg
ugg boots
Fashion Ugg boots
Classic Ugg Boots
wholesale Ugg Boots
ugg sandals
cheap ugg shoes
Bailey Button UGG Boots
Ugg Bailey Button
Classic Cardy Ugg Boots
Ugg Classic Cardy
Classic Mini Ugg Boots
Mini Ugg Boots
Classic Short Ugg Boots
Ugg Classic Short
Classic Tall Ugg Boots
Ugg Classic Tall
Infant Erin Ugg Boots
Baby Ugg Boots
Nightfall Ugg Boots
Ugg Nightfall
Short Metallic Ugg Boots
Sundance II Ugg Boots
Sundance 2 Ugg Boots
Tall Metallic Ugg Boots
UGG Amelie Suede Sandals
Amelie Suede Sandals Ugg Boots
UGG Fluff Flip Flop
UGG Tasmina Braid Sandals
Tasmina Braid Sandals Ugg Boots
UGG Tasmina Sandals
Tasmina Sandals Ugg Boots
Ultra Short Ugg Boots
Ultra Tall Ugg Boots

p.s. Anyone see the season finale of Project Runway Season 6? One of the designers actually wore some dang ugg boots with a dress to present her collection at fashion week. Straight up. How does that happen?

PRB Reading Report by Mr. Apps

2009-12-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

Super thoughtful reading report of my reading with John Sakkis at The Poetic Research Bureau in L.A. by Stan Apps. Thank you, Stan!

Mwa

2009-12-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Axl Rose sounds just like a Skexis on "Welcome to the Jungle". Don't tell me you never noticed.

MWA! WwwaA!
Mmmm, Gelfling. Welcome to the jungle!
Your're gonna DIIIE!

Don't take my word for it:

*I was going to have a clip of "Welcome to the Jungle" here from Imeem but apparently Myspace just bought them out so we won't be having any more of that free music nonsense. Boo.

S.F. --> L.A. Road Poem

2009-12-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

by me and my boys (Steve Orth and John Sakkis) unawares

Pubes are a present
pubes are a privilage
suspicion is your game (your honesty's to blame)
Viper Room
I'll have a French Racetrack
horse tranqs & red wine
Remember guys, 2 rootbeers each, that's it
East Bay extends to Livermore
Benicia, Vallejo, that's North Bay
stoked, super stoked
get some headshots
book a commercial, work on getting a SAG card
the jukebox affect--playing music you know
Where the fuck are we?
I can't imagine living there
Can you imagine living there?
I can't imagine living there
but these fucking hills are beautiful
This is the Altamont pass
Power pop (Cheaptrick)
Are you equating [redacted] people from Oakland
w/ Uruk-Hai?
That's what that girl said right before we [redacted]
write that shit down
pub cheese--it's pretty fuckin' sweet
yer gonna love it
Rotten Robbie

Cowsies!
Cowsies!
Giant clouds!
Sky....
Yosemite! Yosemite! Yosemite!
Nat'l Park!

I got a jug a dat
"No water, no jobs"
La Pinocha--pussy sweet bread
work that clit

Heart full of love for you
brothers
kissing cousins
my ambiguous and multiple thought--all at once
all at once
low flying clouds
rocking the hills
like twilight zone
turn to smog
the atmosphere--flattens
we're winding through
workable line
it deals w/ you
I can see the sauce
I want the sauce
all down my mouth/chin
like a guzzler
the shock of persimmon in everyday life
winding up w/ a mouthful
when you thought you were just eating fruit

Heck yeah, the lights
neighboring neighborhoods
Is Glendale a neighborhood or a city in L.A.?
Ok, we don't have to listen to The Doors
the whole time but it has to stay L.A.
Guns n' Roses, Beck
OK
Totally
Is Bon Jove L.A.?
No, that's New Jersey

Hemlock Rock N' Po..?

2009-11-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

Reading/Rock Show tonight @ The Hemlock Tavern

More fun than packing before you go away for Thanksgiving--Andrew Kenower, Lindsey Boldt, and Jennifer Manzano read! With music by Soft Shells, Them Hills, and Neal Morgan! (says Jen Manzano and she's right)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 9:00pm
End Time: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 12:00am
Location: The Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk St, San Francisco

**Stay tuned for an L.A. report and road poem but real quick, it was so much fun.

LA Reading w/ JCS @ PRB

2009-11-20T12:21:00.001-08:00

Check it OUT!

John, Steve and I are taking off for L.A. on Saturday. John and I are reading at The Poetic Research Bureau at 4pm on Sunday. You can expect a report and a road poem upon our return. Things I'm looking forward to:

Hijinks! Celebrity sightings! Cat petting at Mathew Timmons' apartment! Late nights! Discussions of psychoanalytic theory with Mark Wallace and discussions of German film with Joseph Mosconi! The possibility of Steven Boyer and cocktails from tiny cups! Trying not to smoke amidst clouds of smoke! In n Out burgers! Getting head shots for Steve! Canoodling!

Anyway, I'm excited.

Brain Dick or Your Hallowed Halls

2009-11-13T12:57:00.001-08:00

Sent at 12:48 AM on Friday
me: my brain dick is HUGE
like it hardly fits
i can't wear hats
i sufffer from migraines
because my brain dick is constantly throbbing in my skull and pressing against my eyeballs
Morgan: i want to apply with that
me: you don't even know how much you want my giant brain cock in your school
your school wants it so bad
me: your school is a little slut who wants itbad
Morgan: lets get dirty and apply to grad schools
me: we can sexually harass everyone
me: Dear Wright Institute, my name is Lindsey Boldt and I am interested in studying psychology because I would like to someday use my in depth knowledge of the human psyche to start a cult based around making me feel good.
Morgan: because someday, i want your slut program to have my big brain dick bump up against your faculty walls
me: I will cultivate transference with as many people as possible until they all think that I am both their mommy and their daddy and then I will exploit them.
me: You, admissions councelor, you know you want it.
me: forget what the deans want
what do you want?
me: do you want a big juicy, hefty, healthy brain in your institution?
one that's sensitive to your needs
sensitive to your mission statement
Morgan: a big thick brain tearing through the panties of cold institutional thought?
Morgan: sensitive to the funding challenges faced in our new economy? this big dick is not only big, but comes loaded.
me: fully loaded
Morgan: ready to pour forth academic, fecund academic product, all over your eager admissions face
me: What does interdisciplinary mean to me? It means flexibility and confidence in a multiplicity of positions and departments.
me: It means that I can and will go and do ANYTHING
Morgan: it means bending over backwards for my intellectual passions, and the forwards, to meet the needs of the university as well
me: yes, forward little by little and then back, back and then forward and then back and forth and back and forth and back and forth
Morgan: i throb with an intellectualism that desires to explore every nook and cranny of my discipline, to taste every academic flavor that your program has to offer
me: my desire for knowledge and intellectual rigor is equaled in intensity only by my discipline and stamina.
Morgan: I am a person that's deeply concerned with how deep my big intellect can penetrate your institution
me: i am in it for the long, long haul. i take the phrase "masters program" very seriously. I will strive to achieve dominance in my field.
Morgan: When i say that I put the pedal to the metal in my academic pursuits, I mean that I will be putting my metal to your petal
me: I find rigidity of thought to be, yes exciting but I strive to enact a firmness of position while still maintaining the nubility and flexibility necessary to both challenge and please my institution
me: maybe we should write some from a female perspective
Morgan: the kind of academic experience I seek results from an intensely personal and exciting exploration of the most hidden and secret parts of myself. I hope that your faculty will recognize the unique position in which i now sit, ready, to receive.
me: i feel exhilarated by a kind of openness that i have never experienced before
Morgan: its almost as if revelations and realizations flood from somewhere previously untouched, a vault of pent up intellectual exhilaration, simply waiting for the seasoned hands of an autumn institution such as yours.
me: My mind needs stimulation
Morgan: by old man acadamia

2009-11-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

reflecting on primary heartbreak and it's persistent reverberations. first love is one of two people depending on gender and sometimes they die or leave or ignore or misunderstand or screw up or have differing priorities and desires. second heartbreak is one of two people depending on gender and sometimes ditto. the numbers can vary as can the genders but watch it not matter. everyone henceforth is one or the other or not of interest. what happens if you only have the one? or half a one? or have two for half the time and then only one? or more than two? watch it not matter. heartbreak.

which is the best metaphor for that sneaking up behind and tapping on the shoulder and the shocked look of recognition: rings in water, spiral arms, feedback loop, plenty others. funny to realize the one sneaking up and tapping is the one looking shocked, the one with the shoulder, the one with whiplash from double-taking.

sorry, but that doppleganger is you, silly. DUH. DUH. sorry.

I've been thinking

2009-10-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

About what Dana Ward said about the "radical possibilities of friendship" and how both friendship and poetry could have the potential to be radically benevolent forces for good. How Dana should write a treatise outlining how this. The same Dana Ward's thing about "creating presence" with friends via the internet and how completely necessary it is do that sometimes when our closest loved ones are very far away. This makes me think about how much we dream our lives anyway and why not dream ourselves together? How strange and radical it can be to be really physically in someone's presence, to share space with someone, to be very very close, sharing eye contact and air, to allow them to affect you without mitigating mediums--how truly terrifying this can feel. Intimacy on a grand scale. Sex too. Parapraxes: forgetting, losing, misplacing, slipping, falling, dropping, typos, saying the "wrong" word, saying the wrong name, the wrong time, the wrong place. The way we know how to protect ourselves from the outside but we have no defenses from our own inner worlds. How the psyche kicks the inner "excitations" out to look at them straight and fight them off that way. My friends. My dad. Smoking. Cancer. My childhood. My dreams. Babies. Kids. The compulsion to repeat. Physical pain and how it is necessary to strengthen after mobilizing. How I should start leaving 15-30 minutes early for everything to compensate for Muni and for my inner world. All the the things I've left out. How I should've left that out and most of the other things.

Real Quick: I'm doing this

2009-10-27T23:24:00.001-07:00

November 1st- Suzanne Stein and Brandon Brown reading from their novel @ 2nd Floor Projects (I'll be holding cue cards)
November 8th (Sunday)- Reading w/folks from Dodie Bellamy's prose workshop 4pm @ ATA on Valencia St. between 20th and 21st (Going to be so good. So Much good stuff.)
November 22nd (Sunday)- Reading w/John Sakkis @ Poetic Research Bureau in L.A.
December 6th (Sunday)- Reading at SPD Open House

Behavior Management Strategies

2009-10-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

When speaking to a group, keep directions simple

Use the "When Before What" strategy: tell them when then tell them what.

Offer positive reinforcement to those participating and following directions ie: "I really like how so-and-so is doing such-and-such" or "Thank you so-and-so and so-and-so for doing such-and-such".

Stickers and other small prizes or gifts are a great way to show your appreciation and remember that a heartfelt "Thank you" goes a long way.

If it becomes necessary to offer criticism, do so using a compliment sandwich: one compliment--your criticism or problem--and a second compliment. Ilustrate for him/her/them a generally positive picture of the situation and allow the unwanted behavior to stand out.

Projection and Conceptual Projects

2009-10-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

Projection:

Can I just take a minute to talk about how conflicted I feel about most of things that I end up posting on this blog? For instance the post previous to this one titled "I'm in this". In that post I attempted to appear flippant about my publication in Vanitas when I do sincerely feel proud to be published in it. I hoped that by stating the fact of my publication in the most blatant way I could think of "I'm in this" my awareness of self-congratulatory and self-promotional acts like this would be apparent, that the irony of my doing so would be apparent, that you might chuckle and forgive me for wanting to: share my pride, make you aware of a publication that I respect and even convince you of my importance, that my goals would be met and none of my fears realized. I was afraid that you would think one or more of the following things: that I was bragging, that I was playing coy, that I wanted to show you that I've been published alongside names you might recognize, that this is a desperate attempt to establish my validity and necessity in a community that I have neglected, that it's a wonder that anyone takes me seriously, or nothing--that you wouldn't care.

I was just telling John Sakkis on Monday how being published in magazines like this doesn't have the same satisfying impact on my personal sense of self-worth as a poet that it used to but then the very next day I get on Facebook, see that Vanitas #4 is out and that I've been published in the same issue as, I'll be honest, some names, and I felt reassured. I felt like maybe someone out there who didn't take me seriously before mightl take me more seriously now. I wish I didn't care but I do. One poem in one magazine and that is where my mind goes.

Let's take the piece that's been published in that magazine too. It's problematic. I translated the traditional Vietnamese folk song, The Ca Dao, homophonically from a recording by John Balaban on Ubuweb. The results are very sexual and scatalogical. Questions follow, right? a) what's this white girl up to translating a Vietnamese folk song? b) is she making fun of the Vietnamese language? c) does she just have a super puerile mind? d) would I hear the same thing? homophonic translations, who cares (that's SO been done)?

What am I doing here with this post? Why do I feel the need to expose myself? I should save it for therapy. I should save it for a real piece instead of barfing it out half digested onto the internet. I should consider my audience. I should stop considering my audience so much. I should stop considering myself a blogger with an audience (I mean, really). I think of specific people as I write, knowing to some extent who might read it and drop a line or two in for them. Maybe one will like me more because I've exposed my neuroses, maybe one will like me more because I am being vulnerable, maybe one will be reminded that I do think about these things--that I am not a ditz, maybe one will like me more because I remind me of her/him, maybe one will respect me more because, maybe one will like me less because I am being vulnerable, maybe one will respect me less for second guessing myself, maybe one will like me less because I am not like her/him.

I want to be the person you want to see and that is a problem. Thankfully, I want you to mirror me too. I'm not so totally screwed.

I was going to post some conceptual projects below but this post has got long enough, I think, and I don't think anyone would read them if they were all the way down here. I want you to read about my conceptual projects. I want you to think that they are smart and in turn me.

I'm in this

2009-10-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Vanitas #4 : Translation

Magazine. Poetry. Art. The fourth issue of VANITAS embarks on the large topic of translation. At the current moment of mutual suspicion and intolerance, translation seems to have taken on a new vitality in the worlds of poetry and poetics. Translations, versions, adaptations, homophonics, riffs, fragments, experiments by Tim Atkins, Mary Jo Bang, Lindsey Boldt, Charles Borkhuis, Ted Berrigan, Brandon Downing, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jack Hirschman, Jen Hofer, Ron Padgett, Charles A. Perrone, Ed Sanders, Monica de la Torre, John Tranter, Stephen Vincent, Paul Violi, Anne Waldman, Laura Wright, Bill Zavatsky, and many others. Critical texts are provided by Charles Bernstein, Michael Lally, Jonathan Mayhew, Mary Maxwell, Luiza Franco Moreira, Yuko Otomo, Kit Robinson, Raphael Rubinstein, Michael Schorsch, Eileen R. Tabios, and Lewis Warsh. Cover by Francesco Clemente.

I Do Me Right

2009-10-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

I found a mix cd with the words "For My Love: Pop Music for Cruising" scrawled on it in my handwriting in green sharpie. I'm pretty sure I made it for myself.

I recommend doing this for yourself. Make a mix cd of all of your favorite songs of the moment and stash it somewhere or just happen to lose it like I did (easy for me). Then find it again at least 3 months, preferably 6 months later. You'll feel like you've found your one true love. How could anyone know me so well? you'll wonder. Somehow you've managed to make yourself swoon, laugh, beam, hit the nostalgia button and dance solo-kitchen-sexytime-danceparty-style.

You know what? You're a damn good listener. You're sensitive to your needs, considerate of your feelings, fun to hang out with, great in bed and really, really attractive. You're a catch!

Tonight, I made myself dinner, served myself some crappy merlot and ate some chocolate cookies and listened to the mix cd. It's Friday, I'm not even on my period and I have a darling, angelic, doll-faced gentleman friend in my life and I still know how to show myself a good time. Things are good.

Do yourself right, friends. It's important.

p.s. I was really especially pleased when "Waterfalls" by TLC came on.

Blog, I don't know what to say to you right now so...

2009-10-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

Best/Worst Insults (used to describe a person or his/her work):

1. Ubiquitous
2. Utilitarian
3. Hella MFA
4. Benign
5. Redundant

Musical Collaborations With Which I Would Like to Have Been Involved:

1. The Breeders
2. ABBA
3. The Ronettes (only if I could sing Ronnie's parts)
4. Cocteau Twins
5. The Cranberries
6. The Bee gees (early not disco)
7. The Beach Boys
8. The Tight Bro's From Way Back When
9. Wutang Clan

What Should/Might Happen to/with this Blog:

1. More lists
2. More lack of direction
3. More thinly veiled poems about my emotional life
4. More self-depricatory remarks
5. More jokes
6. More thoughtful and articulate remarks on the state of poetry/music/art/life/fashion/psychology/our modern world
7. More references to the outside world and its goings-on
8. More interior burblings
9. More stuff about Ponies and Cats
10. More blog posts from my mom
11. More links to your blog
12. More short poems on the subject of boobs
13. More poems that use people's names that you recognize
14. More weekend reports
15. More google image searches
16. More poetry by children
17. More announcements about your upcoming reading/party/gallery show/show/benshi performance/screening/wedding
18. More posts about how brilliant my friends are
19. More YouTube videos
20. Less of the above

Titty Poem

2009-09-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

Zero Gravity: Just Think About It

9 months of celibacy
gave birth to sex
pendulums swing
from zero to fucked

smelling of workshop
welcome to my smithy

low-rent version of a mother
low-res version of another
MFA as adjective

Morgan Levy

2009-09-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

Check out Morgan's new blog chronicling her Fulbright exploits. I have no words about this woman. It just comes out like ecstatic gargles. Watch. Out. For. This One.

http://nontechnicalpublic.blogspot.com/

White Light

2009-09-10T21:03:00.001-07:00

ANNOUNCEMENT: Reading/Show @ Hemlock Tavern

2009-09-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hey Friends,

Come see readers read and bands play at The Hemlock!

When: Next Tuesday September 8th @ 9pm
Where: The Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco's Tenderloin
Who: Karl Blau, Neal Morgan, Casual Fog
John Sakkis, Lindsey Boldt, Steve Orth
Cost: $6

This will be a great opportunity to see and hear John Sakkis' new book, Rude Girl. I may have more copies of my new chapbook Oh My, Hell Yes printed by then too. I'll be reading something apropos of the evening ie: music related?

Drinks after, DUH, it is a tavern. Much friendliness too.

Wyethtown

2009-08-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Miles in Charge,

I am full of nothing today but still feel like writing to you. There’s something about having a close but distant interlocutor that is incredibly reassuring. Do you find that? I wonder sometimes how these letters feel to you.

If you were here, which I wish you were, I would just have to turn my head and out the insides would come—almost the same as thinking—that seemless and unselfconscious. Or I’d stand in our metallic doorway and holler at you out in the field like some kind of futuristic housewife landed on the moon.

Speaking of, I was thinking of rigging up a tin can telephone between the tree house and the trailer. We could chatter to each other while still maintaining the illusion of distance. I installed a telescope up there and would have in the balloon. All of this so that we can wave at each other in various forms. Sometimes that’s all this all feels like, waving. Me to you, you to me, me to myself, me to the world. Sometimes I use both arms and that’s when you know I really want attention. The tin can telephone though, what do you think? Too much?

I feel things edging towards overblown. Our lives fairly glow with sepia tones and seventies color saturation. The rainbow pattern of the balloon against the sticky blue sky against the blonde fields abutting the green and purple hills and then the spark of the Airstream glinting like some kind of distress signal. Sometimes I can feel the creep of affected vignetting closing in around camp. Who’s escapist fantasy are we living in? It used to be yours and mine but now I’m not even sure the tin can telephone idea was mine.

Everything’s so good, I wonder when the bitch slap will come. There was menace in things, in small ways and maybe we cultivated it to make life interesting but now that the menace is gone and the colors just shine instead of hiding out under dullness, I feel more afraid that something is going to give or worse, that it won’t and I will have become something pretty yet quirky but all around benign.

Anyway, I don’t know what brought on the melancholy but I’m sure it will brushed aside by something totally ridiculous tomorrow.

Tell me about Virginia. I have no sense of it whatsoever. And after that, call me on the real telephone, none of this tin can bullshit. I want to chatter at you.

Love,

Sandy

***

Dear Miles,

Please don’t worry. I’m sorry. I’m fine. Everything’s okay.

The balloon’s completely cached. Donezo. Darger is probably dead somewhere. He flew off, dragging his leash after the chamber exploded and he didn’t look good.

Danzig may never get over seeing his mother nearly catch fire and fall through the air. I had to bail out just before the crash.

You know how I am when I listen to metal when I’m driving. I put the pedal to it. I was dropping sand bags like cartoon sacks of cash over the hillside. I must’ve looked like a banshee up there.

First off, I shouldn’t’ve installed that radio in the basket. I was rocking out to White Zombie, getting way too excited. I wasn’t paying attention. Big surprise. Details.

I wasn’t watching the flame.

Then I go and do this. You know how I’ve always wanted these things, how I had to work hard to bring them out of my head and into the world: starting with the airstream, then the land, and Darger, the little D’s and lately the balloon. I learned how to be a grownup so I could have what I want.

Today I realized how much I still live in my head and how actually dangerous that can be. My daydreams affect more than just me now. They cause accidents. My bird is gone. My kid can’t sleep.

It was a beautiful day. The wind picked up from the west and I figured it would be a good day to take her up.

Love,

Sandy

This week is NUTS

2009-08-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday: Eileen Myles read @ Moe's
Tonight: Owen Hill and Eileen Myles read @ Books and Bookshelves
Wednesday: Eileen Myles book party @ David Buuck's place
Thursday: Stan Apps and Douglas Rothchild read @ Books and Bookshelves
Friday: Lara Durback (et al) read @ The Knockout (Rebel Series)
Saturday: Bill Luoma Baseball and Poetry Workshop for SPT
Brandon Downing and Lindsey Boldt read @ Brandon Brown's place
Sunday: Clark Coolidge and Laura Moriarty read @ The New Reading Series
John Sakkis and Steve Orth DJ @ Cassanova

Whew!

On Saturday I'm going to read from a new chapbook and from the Pony project and then we'll act like young people in the city. Holler!

Wyethtown

2009-08-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Miles,

Something is wrong with the weathervane because I can't get it to go. Looks like the whirligig has rusted over and the cock's just stuck facing due Nothing. If you were here, I'd ask you to scramble up on the roof and fix it but you're not. You're all the way in Delaware with a mouth full of saltwater taffy watching the gays go by.

Anyway, I"m sure it'll be fine. I may take my oil can up there this afternoon and give it a little treacle--see what happens, but all that will have to wait till I've finished cleaning the traps and scraping the crow hides. Say hello to Samson and Eloise for me and let Eloise know that the cats are fine but they miss her, of course.

Love,

Sandy

p.s. Darger rode out the leash yesterday for the first time. It was beautiful! Still, I think I better get his hood fitted a bit tighter. He keeps twitching like it's uncomfortable for him.

***

Dear Sandy-Bottom-Gal,

The crowds here hate me. If it weren't for Rehobeth and sticking my feet in the sand I'd probably skip Delaware all together. Widgets and ecolocation didn't go over--not even tesseracts have so much as raised an eyebrow. Delaware must be stuck in some kind of past I don't know about. They wanted me to be Jerry Seinfeld or Brian Greene or somebody, somebody else.

I don't mean to be a bummer, dearheart, just missing you just now.

Try kicking the dang weather vane and telling it to step up its game--that always works for me--talking down to appliances.

Eloise and Samson say hello back. They're out putting divots in the boardwalk with their sensibilities.

Love to you,

Miles

p.s. Glad to hear about Darger. How's the balloon?