A Poem About Werewolves

My day today started with spilled compost and multivariate calculus and sharply improved from there. Here's a poem about werewolves.




Richard Brautigan, yo.

Cop out - coming into LA

So these "shit I like" posts are a total cop-out - cut, paste, comment - but here's my favourite Arlo Guthrie song, with footage of Woodstock-goers blowing their minds, man:

Notes from the Greyhound - Missouri

This summer, and for that matter throughout my life, for whatever reason, I've spent a lot of time on public transit, in the plastic seats of various waiting rooms, watching the people around me eat burger king, rolling through the night having eaten nothing but overly packaged and somehow unsatisfying 100% orange juice. There is a various viral search for America in these long treks from A to B, I guess, a search that has been undertaken one too many times at this point and which for me anyway has traditionally ended disconsolately. Anyway, here are my notes from the Greyhound, aboveground, from the ground, fairgrounds.


It's 12:07 am and we're at some small stop in Missouri, U.S. of A. The seat next to me is open and the line is long, so I know I won't be alone for long. The man who ends up sitting next to me is Amish. He is tall, a pillar of a man, with a bright red beard and straw hat and piercing eyes. He looks like a figure from a book, almost too real to be real. He looks completely like the Honest Abe who you learnt about in your 4th grade history class, back when history was cool hats and good guys and bad guys. He smells strongly of pipe tobacco and he's going to visit his brother-in-law in Arkansas. He eats some crackers and we talk about his carpentry and the travel restrictions imposed on the Amish, - they can take the train or the bus but they can't fly. I want to be able to really talk to him but it's as though something's preventing me - I feel almost awkward and I can't for whatever reason transcend the bridge, and then I feel awkward for feeling awkward, for allowing this man's lifestyle to obstruct his fundamental humanity - our human experiences have little in common taken generally but everything elementally, yet my fear of seeming rude prevails. And the bus rolls on across the state line.

A supermarket in California-A. Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

This was my first performance piece ever. I love the overly vibrant imagery junxtaposed with the air of faint disappointment. An acquaintance of mine once wrote an inspired piece called "A supermarket in Pennsylvania" which distinctly lacked the artichokes of the original.

Best Business Letter Ever

Then comes the flood:

You good lads who went to destroy
With defiance in your hearts and fists raised high
Wishing to create for men worlds of joy
It is to you I sing this last goodbye.

My defiance has been tempered by the sands of time,
Rust has eaten both the sword and the sheath.
But the brutal, singing brave mobs of grime
Are those whom I love and this I bequeath.

My friends in symposiums today discourse
While tomorrow they may fall into perfidy.
At night they look from the balcony, voices hoarse
And smile and remind themselves: Diem perdidi.

They are not those who with respect kiss the maiden;
They see no interest in the childbearing hips.
At night near the tables that with wine are laden
They are the knights of the cocotte who strips.

I have friends in these bohemian men;
For a short time our veins course with blood.
In our hair is braided the rose from the glen,
And after us, well, then comes the flood.

Po nás potopa

Vy dobří hoši, co jste vyšli bořit
se vzdorem v srdcích, s pěstí sevřenou,
co lidstvu nové ráje chcete stvořit,
vám zpívám píseň na rozloučenou.

Můj vzdor se zchladil volnou sprchou času,
rez s pochvou srostil meče rukojeť.
Brutální, zpěvnou, lehkovážnou chasu
v svém srdci jsem si zamiloval teď.

Mí přátelé se v symposiích baví,
by zase zítra klesli do bídy.
Navečer z loží zvedajíce hlavy
se v duchu těší: Diem perdidi.

Se zbožnou úctou nelíbají holku,
je nevábí zpěv plodných samiček.
V kavárnách nočních u politých stolků
jsou rytíři pochybných dámiček.

Mám za přátele marnotratné muže.
Z nás každý rád svou hřivnu zakopá.
My do svých vlasů vplétáme si růže,
a po nás, což - ať přijde potopa!

Original: František Gellner, 1901
Translation: myself, 2008

a conversation about math and your mom

-Yo, you look like a space cadet!
-That's cause I am in space.
-Euclidian 3-space, what?
pause
-That was terrible.
-I know.
-I can be in any space I wanna be.
-So n-space, n subset all integers (-infinity,infinity)?
-I love integer math. It's so pointless.
pause
-Your mom's pointless.



Good old Euclid.

But I'm gonna try for the kingdom if I can

Night bikes and breweries and badly brewed coffee in a jar from what seems like long ago.

I like my balcony

It harmonizes at resonant frequency with the tree whose branches encroach harmonically, in all good intentions. There are little bundles of helicopter-seeds weighing down the boughs. When we were little we used to put them on our noses - the sap made them stick and for a while there in 1995 everyone was Pinnochio.

But I've seen the way the earth throws its aces with a curve,

George Harrison shot by Martin Scorcese - my favourite portrait

e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis