Sunday the 15th

Today I had a very tiring day. I stayed over at my friend Caitlin's house last night. Her and her roommate Susan made lasagna and cake and had me over. Caitlin and I got drunk ( well, not really for me, wine apparently affects me much more then liquor does.) We spent the whole evening talking to Susan who is much older then us; discussing such things as optimism vs. pessimism, aborigional rights in canada and digital cameras. It was actually quite the evening. Caitlin and I didn't get to sleep until almost 6 or so, and then we were up at 11 and I dragged myself out of bed and out the door officially, around 12:06. I had to walk the whole way home from downtown because I had no money for bus tickets. So the walk took about 50 minutes in the freezing cold (something like -30 with windchill in this goddman city and the whole place is coated in a sheet of very slippery ice). Anyways, after I finally make it home I have to leave again immediately to get to the Bywords reading at Chapters because my friend Adam was reading and I just plain wanted to go.


So I finally get there late after eating a muffin and cookie (yes my breakfast and lunch for the day, folks) and watch some really good readers. Adam did an excellent job even though he was sick, and I was interested to hear Jamie Bradley read again, although I think I would like to read his poetry more on paper then outloud. I also picked up a chap book by my fellow inwords comrade David Emrey which I am looking forward to looking through. I also saw some people knew there like Jesse, John McDonald, and Stephen Rowntree, and of course Amanda and Nathalie and Charles. I was glad I got to hit up at least one reading while I am here.

Tonight I spent up in Sock and Adam's apartment reading some Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I copied out a bunch of lies and entire poems that I liked. I think I'll post one just to show everyone how wonderful he is. Such an interesting poet, I really like his style.


25. ( from A Coney Island of the Mind)


Cast up

the heart flaps over
gasping 'Love'

a foolish fish which tries to draw
its breaths from flesh of air

And no one there to hear its death
among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by
in a blather of asphalt and delay.

1. (from Pictures of a Gone World.)

Away above a harborful
of caulkless houses
among the charley noble chimneypots
of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines
a woman pastes up sails
upon the wind
hanging out her morning sheets
with wooden pins
O lovely mammal
her nearly naked teats
throw taut shadows
when she stretches up
to hang at last the last of her
so white washed sins
but it is wetly amorous
and winds itself about her
clinging to her skin
So caught with arms upraised
she tosses back her head
in voiceless laughter
and in choiceless gesture then
shakes out gold hair

while in the reachless seascape spaces

between the blown white shrouds

stand out the bright steamers

to kingdom come



8. ( From Pictures of the Gone World)

It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light

'We think differently at night'
she told me once
lying back languidly

And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am constantly shocking'

Then she would smile and look away
light a cigarette for me
sigh and rise

and stretch
her sweet anatomy

let fall a stocking


Now something dave suggested:Chris Dewdney


Poem Begun With A Line From A Dream ( from Demon Pond )

The windows of your shutters halfway down
cried to me the life of the child.
You are not so old
that you cannot lie naked
in the autumn leaves.
Even now, in such raw spring
as conjoins the end of winter
with the first flowers
we speak of the dread pools.
For the sun is a windy object
and its poetry free of device.
In my mind the leaves
have already opened.


I'm hoping all this poetry will force me to write. To be creative in any sense. that would be nice and I would happy if at 12:00pm I could start something amazing. We'll see. I'll most likely just fall asleep.