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lately i've been in a funk. i hate everyone and i hate myself hating everyone when im supposed to be loving everyone and bonding and shit.
i hate everyone.
the only reason yesterday was passable for decent was because i wore a floaty blue mermaid dress and that made me happy.
beyond the dress, everything can go to hell.
NAMING YOU
BY ALI ABRAHAM
Naming You
grave
i'll wait somewhere forever
for you.
they dug me six deep
and I was a hole
to fill.
corpse
snowdrop water sunk and then cracked these bones.
a daisy seed sprouted in my nose hole
weaving through the mouth cave with spindle sewn
lace finger roots. soil absorbed the rich soul
and much became planted in the cool roast
rainbow chocolate of earthstuck flesh clumps.
from dirt, blooms sprung about my gross black ghost,
penetrated and pinned by the cross stump.
prison is not coffin, but tomb marker,
here lies spirit stamp iron wrought etch.
i don't exist, but still suffer darker
purgatories: merely the starring wretch
of the loving epitaph. i exist
in stench, resist god fists of fixedness.
baby
the bouncing beats sound softly. woven hearts
interlope cross body territories.
stillness, not easy, as i am both part
and within movement, our sordid stories
of plump bobbing apples, incarnate Eve
or Newton's trembling fruit. it’s for you i wait,
weightless within the thrum, to be received:
naked date with the pearly silk slick gate.
i seem to inhabit, it all becomes
me, within you, housing me, snake pulse
and dark, thick, milk fog swirls, bthm bdm,
en-wombed so, by universal forces.
fluid sack bursts, tornado squeeze contracts,
sucked forth by breath til' void, again, takes back.
mother
i waited for you for months,
it was like they say
about boiling water.
i was a big globe swilling
thousands of tsunamis.
what is your name to be,
little death?
Remembering Japan
1. San Francisco
it is cherry blossom season in San Francisco.
a wimpy one, but still cherry blossom season.
the trees populate the city shyly, a couple
stationed in front of a crumbling Italian church,
the border of a park, sidewalk planters—
reticent heralds of a foreign loveliness.
they thrash in deluges of our cruel April. street sog
absorbs the frail bursts. and with cigarette butts, petals
drift about gray mire, drown in gutters, become impressed
by rain boot heels and smeared on welcome mats.
it calls to mind the greater season: goddess
of springtimes, glorious Shinto gardens Zen burst spring!
bloom lit playgrounds, schoolyards even. O to stroll
among the sprawling groves of Japanese country side!
and i remember the pagoda roof cowl curves,
crowns stacked like nesting dolls, protruding from
breathing blush swirl of blossoms and their limbs.
sighing lavishly, i blink
black the dream and it breaks
by chills of a different vision:
splintered and coagulated mulch of broken earth,
limbs and bubbling sog and mud where our earth
could no longer hold our trembling
and her trembling and broke.
bodies and blossoms and pink and blush and flesh.
2. Great Wave
nearly midnight, a gas fueled fire glimmers.
it’s soporific sputter drowned by electric TV glow
and HBO announces Touchstone’s Pearl Harbor.
contentedly reading Robert Hass’ “Time and Materials”
as Pearl Harbor’s drama unfolds, i bask in the weak heat
of little fireplace flames. After the Winds unfurls
in words, but absently, as i become sucked
into the Hollywood world of love triangle
set in cardboard California-hawaii. and i perform
perfect cries and vicious bursts of tears, huff shallow
wisps of breath, muttering heatedly, things like
bring that plane down motherfucker!
i’m thinking, i want to fight! and i think it with
the full outrage of my heart, gasping because
i can smell death-smell from the screen as
ships sink and the harbor swells with bodies,
splinters, smoking.
i sip my whiskey lemonade and smolder.
the liquid is puss colored amber on the rocks,
chatters as i sip, thinking, Japan
Japan where i lived as a kid!
how beautiful and how brutal
Pearl Harbor—
my Tateyama,
streets swollen with bodies,
splinters, smoking.
movie sob chokes in my throat.
becomes a swell, Great Wave
smoke of helplessness.
Our Shanghai
here is Xintiandi:
here are the bullet holes in the bridge at Xintiandi,
here is the second tallest building in the world
where an absurd fun house mansion stood
once. legend told the mansion was built
for a rich man’s sick daughter,
her recurrent fever dream, the blueprint
for its mad dimensions.
here is the Pearl T.V. tower:
here are the purple and blue iridescent hexagonal domes of the tower,
magenta pink nipple dome at its top. shabby and dwarfed now,
but five years ago, the most famous attraction.
here is The Bund,
still it wraps itself like a mama snake ‘round
few remaining scrap bungalows, the Yuyuan trading market, wraps
‘round the new buildings, even, as they crop up like untreated shingles
on the tired skin of this sinking city, tallest of all sinking cities.
aluminum shack peasant shanties went down
and sepia toned monsters went up and up and up,
disappearing into the dishwater gray smog, springing
up and up until they were the tallest in the world,
but empty.
we were once guests to this hungry, humming Gotham,
voyeurs to its history, a culture that swallowed itself.
in a place that never existed
my first kiss tasted of breakfast dumpling and MSG.
lasted 10 seconds.
then i woke up
a thousand years old
Shanghai was gone,
vanished entirely in the gray smog that crept off the ocean, into its streets,
the sunken city, sinking, sinking
into its forgotten wrinkles.
Eye Bags
easiest way to see
your mother's face
is to concentrate on them.
i kissed yours,
but they stayed sunken.
after all, love is not like sleep
or water
THANKS SCIENCE NEWS DAILY. I'll keep my two eyes on the armadillo watchout. god forbid leprosy.
"the only thing thicker than water is the ink on page 6"
FASHION LADY WILL CUT YOU INTO PIECES AND SERVE YOU FOR DINNER!!!
| Alexander the Great | [Apr. 23rd, 2011|02:14 am] |
| 1 I'm working on it says the robot self to the self. The self is untrusting, but will not speak up--the robot self has many lights flashing, and looks as if it does something very important. My goodness, every pulpy human convention cannot be a big enough tool box. 2 What if we are already dead? Acting, shadow puppets to some more real world? I know enough to know a gossamer sense of soul. A sound wave is not the same as the shivering bell. 3 The latent world: when falling, the moment it feels like flight. 4 To those who already eat the dead: this knot in you is Gordian. No swords as sharp as those you have in the human ability to restrain your self. 5 I am boxed. Quiet sorrow, look for your dead in the water shadow, that earth and sound you know is there inside your skin. your epidermal fear. A car rolls by your home in the stick of night, sliding by like a wet turtle back, slick flower petal riding down the street stream pulsing a bass, a giant passing impossible heart; It is his heart. You grieve. You cannot help but grieve. 6 See that? Saturn has taken a liking, and floats, like a boxer, around your heart. He is as earnest as Orpheus; That life in you was once his lover, imagine that. Will you give you back? 7 a poultice: god's own beak broke down my lover. she upset his belly. Now she comes back. 8 But am I ready? |
|
BUSINESS ADVICE FROM DESIGNER AND OWNER OF WENDY BRANDES JEWELRY AND WENDY BRANDES BLOG,
Wendy Brandes:
"I’ve tried to save money for my very small company by doing things myself, using volunteers, and hiring affordable people instead of great ones. All of the above should be emergency measures, not long-term strategies. I’ve made these mistakes with graphic design, computer programming, photography, public relations, sales, wax-model making, jewelry manufacturing, stone setting … and those are just the examples that immediately spring to mind. I’ve tried that thing where you hire someone less experienced for less money because that person will be “hungry” and work harder. Not! The hungriest people will get themselves an internship or an apprenticeship or an entry-level job at a quality organization, even in these hard times. And if they can’t manage that, they’ll be too smart to sell their services for nothing. They’re the ones who know that you don’t move up in the world by selling yourself short. I’ve thrown away years and thousands of dollars on all kinds of bad work that got me nowhere. When I’ve finally dug deeper to hire the best, I’ve realized exactly how much I wasted. Money that paid for a three-year-long effort might have only covered six months with a better vendor, but I would have done better in those six months than I did in those three years."
EAT CAKE
(the people who matter are those who recognize quality. Commit yourself toQUALITY.)
When I feel fucking drained (which is all the time) I just drink coffee and read more poetry, which, for me, is like eating cake. absorbing voices.
I write and I write and I write.
and its the one thing nobody can stop me from doing unless they kill me.
and if they try to kill me and fail, I will write about it.
mark my fucking words.
On Teeth
found in sour oysters
you're meant to suck on
On Pearls
found in sour oysters
you're meant to suck on
On Eyebags
easiest way to see
your mother's face
is to concentrate on them.
I kissed yours,
but they stayed sunken.
After all, love is not like sleep
or water.
On Poets
to be one
take up a pen, crack it open,
finger paint ink to paper.
crumple the paper.
swallow it. two hours later
take a shit in a flower planter
and pray that some bird
or irreverent wind is
benevolent with a flower seed.
If a season passes and
your offering is beset
with weeds, slit your wrists
and leave behind a note
written solely in words stolen
from a beautiful dead one.
or smoke a cigarette
and kick the dud planter
and its bad dirt.
(we decided if we ever learn to sew...we'll name our label ALISON AND SEBASTIAN)
also starring: LOgan and Olivia (trio-livia)
also starring: my dirty basement (these bitches kept me company while I was cleaning) (in the last picture i kinda look like a basement dwelling troll asking the camera for the basement visit fee, sebastian channels daisy head maisy, olivia is a happy mean tiger and logan looks like he is 8 years old and peeing his pants as a bully steals his lunch. or something. maybe im reading into things. i hope you enjoy my commentary because i enjoy my commentary every second of the day until maybe i fall asleep at last. and by enjoy...i mean suffer.)