check out oni buchanan's amazing animated poetry.

visiting emily

damn, dave letterman just laid into mary cheney. satisfying.

image by mark woods

Rest in Peace, Stanley

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

Stanley Kunitz 1905-2006

grain, emulsion

Saw Jennifer Reeves' The Time We Killed yesterday at the Whitney.
It made me want to make films; it made me want to write; it made me want to look up at the world from a childs' gaze, notice the rhythm of trains, the tremble of hands, tell the truth...

monsters

Malinda Markham writes from Japan that she found the monster alarming.

I didn't mean to alarm.

I think we all have our monsters, beasts that gnaw at the edges of our happiness.

My monster is a scab-picker. He likes triangles. He likes to replay pain. He gets nervous when things seem easy.
He prefers jealousy, shame and isolation. He likes pessimism and distrust and he and I are good at finding malintent.

He likes it when I read about card games people play across the country, or about celebrity gossip or check which of my exes are posting personal ads. He savors the critic in me.

He enjoys schadenfreude, freudian slips and slippery slopes. He gets wide eyed and wild at night. He likes to knock and knock on locked doors. He likes to knock things over. He wants me to know what people say about me when I'm not there. He wants me to wonder. He wants me to ask. Then he likes it if I pick some more at a scab.

He likes to see my childhood as an unhappy one, my failures as signs, my successes as accidents. He craves whole days without work.

He was born out of alarm, actually, the middle-of-the night alarm of my parents shouting. He gave me claws to survive, and for that I am grateful. But I am going to stop feeding him if I can. I'm working that muscle anyway. He's whimpering.

There are some good things going on that I'd actually prefer he not fuck with this time. He doesn't need to shrivel up and die, just rest like a tired dog in the sun...