Tag: storytelling

New Reform Temple with Snow (How to Fully Inhabit Your Characters)

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Wikipedia Poem, No. 986

Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1945. After attending Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts, and studying art and design with Diane Arbus at Parson's School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications.

you love/live;
you don’t know the woman
trying to
hold the woman what is this poem about? nancy me — about?
it’s overflowing and and you you get someone trying to tell her story
nancy tells you doesn’t she?
you don’t
know don’t listen
don’t know this woman is what
this poem is about? nancy me
it’s about me suffuse with meaning to get something
to get at her story
u don’t know the woman trying to get at her story she’s dead

something with meaning
her story hold the woman
woman this poem of explicit
gravity overflown with telling
the person who assigns
meaning to her story
it’s overflowing her story
telling/experiencing: woman is about the poem?
nancy me it’s about? nancy
me about? cold and gentle
suffuse with her story
saturated undulating up
meaning feeling material breath
feeling material meaning breath
hold the reality it’s overflowing down
her story is dead she’s dead
she’s the person who

Instructions for a Narrative

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Wikipedia Poem, No. 855

Mislead darkness into spaces surrounded by the unknowable void. Definitive articles, please. There be thick monsters of expired physiology of the ancient world of mind, the dark spaces of plein-air painting, found artifacts—void, which you will know about—the maker, the forest dying in technology’s web, the art of confused interrogation. For the second act, return to the suspended forest. Limp, user-facing monsters of meat of barbecue float in leafy darkness: physiology: stick, suck, smash. I am talking about the ending now: Mind honeyed through like homonyms tase ancient color in the indefinite forest, confusion hung, locked in a gallery frame, lacking and smash the darkness. Sea and joy separated forever. By what you’ve yet to think, that’s the ending, I mean. 

Bird Watching at Playa Santana (The Secret To My Perspicuity)

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Wikipedia Poem, No. 779

observe
optic spectus
clear evident hands
buried in soil or
prospettiva providing

ars poetica cresting
the break for introspecer

though human
look through the looking
consider skeptics
of providence
optic spek observe

spasati sees small fish
in the crown whitewater auspecere

look closely at skopein
behold high german spehhon
appearance for introspettiva
perspices auspex-auspex
horoscopal espective

any brains’ll tell ya elation monstrous
unknowing inspecere inspective any brains

elation

Daffy Duck and Don Draper Explore Post-Coital Dysphoria

Joseph M. Gerace1 Comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 589

“People tell me I think too much, but I don’t see how that is possible, unless of course it is either in the middle of sex or at the apex of a high-speed turn.” Melissa Holbrook Pierson

"Every animal is sad after coitus 
except the human female and the rooster."
   Galen of Pergamon

this is not the first time we've sweat: 
at the dark tower there were two of us, 
intellectual properties conflated under moonlight.

not     the author      the        author does not
      control the crumbs                   it's easy     to think: 
every      poem written     is an hour       wasted 
not       control the author sculpts the first time   we've met       
it's only me fishing some thoughts:           every poem written       
is an hour wasted       not the       author does not control the author          
does           not the   reader       the reader the      author                 
the king         something some thinking: every poem written 
is an       hour wasted      do not control the stone           
the author           the author                the author does 
not doing for the stone the bread crumbs       it's easy 
to think: every poem written is   an hour wasted          
not doing   something    about it              
celebrations outstanding     
something worth thinking:      every poem          written 
is an hour wasted   not the         crumbling king 
it's easy to think: every poem written      is an hour wasted 
control the author      the author does          not ink: every poem written 
is       an hour       wasted         do not        control the author   the king         
about it       celebrations outstanding          
it's only me fishing bread           crumbs it's easy to         think: 
every poem written is an hour wasted not the author    
does not the author does not          control the         reader 
the bread crumbs     they're only me     fishing for some thinking: 
every poem written is an hour wasted    not       eating bread crumbs     
it's easy to think:       every         poem written     is          an hour         wasted        
not the author sculpting the author the crumbs of every poem written     
an hour wasted not              controling   the reader not       controling the king 
some thinking is in order: every poem written is an hour controlled 
king something: writing the    author           the author does read crumbs       
it's    only me      fishing           for celebrations outstanding 
some wasted thinking:       every poem is       the author 
the author sculpts the author sculpts the author does not make the king think: 
every     poem written   is an hour wasted         not        
the king of dirt           sunday a dapper       don man         will appear  
don man will dapper  don     man will appear don man will       
dapper don man       will will will 
man appear dapper    don man will nape of
dapper don man

Quartet

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Wikipedia Poem, No. 525

“What is in those railcars is also inside my head, / or I imagine it so—no, not imagine, know.” August Kleinzahler 

a trap
what you could reveal
what you’ll have to remind your story
when its over pause briefly to say: which driver

a trap? here
this arrangement of twin twigs
you’ll have to remind your story
pause a truth which drives the trap

what you could reveal
what’s your pronoun?
how deep does its ample
upholstery stop a medical

and which is the operating
out on the story and pauses briefly
who reminds the spark? you
which drives at twigs snap over-efficient dust

soak the operating table
the truth why drives at your point
operating on the spark?
to what you are rigidly bent upon

Personal Poem

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“I weep for all of these or laugh.” Ted Berrigan

i meant to say something about light
i raze light not your light and
not artificial light    what of the artificial then?
an ungainly freudian monolith
gargantuan simple fleshy    constructed
of shit found in the tv street    about light

input output welding welded expository writing    damaged categoricals
empathy    but     there's always a corollary-but with men
who lick their long waisted fingers    clean of light
let's not talk of chivalry or boyhood    manhood    let's don't mention
one's compensation for time lost
    while mistakenly incarcerated
me daffodil lazy under laundered blanket   you baseless and imaginary

i meant to say something to you about lightness in chaos
clutter razes light not your lightness   aloof
a poof    proof of what makes one    the fleet-footed slave of truth
i meant to say something outloud    but i sank into the ocean    to you
with the rowers and singing maidens and maidenchasers
and the mist which unnoticed        by anyone not me    unmoored
    flares eternal
guides the way home


Source: Berrigan, Ted. “Words for Love.” An Anthology of New York Poets, edited by Ron Padgett and David Shapiro. Random House, New York, 1970, p. 61.

Wikipedia Poem, No. 363

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“It’s not that hard to climb up / on a cross and have nails driven / into your hands and feet.” Ron Padgett

into catcalling downtown traffic
or masturbating on cedarview avenue
behind their bed on a white work truck
to the pigeons and buskers arguing

an attack holes in their bed on white iron radiators
they save me one hit of
white work truck offered up to the pigeons

and tugging an attack hole
their bed on whiteness stone-cut blonde
hair gelled up an albino peacock

glassine overwhelming his father’s long
white iron radiators they save me
one hit from a white work truck

to the fore of whiteness stone-cut
blonde hair gelled up an albino peacock
glassine overwhelming into catcalls now

Wikipedia Poem, No. 354

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Yes, yes. I’m trying to neutralize the self, let’s get on with it.

fanfuckingtastic
in lo and 
hop infronta the tv 
my 
    wifes 
          laptop infronta 
      me 
          me and hop me infronta 
      the tv and me

they 
only vaguely know each other
like dye let's call 
      him 
stan 
32 
     he 
      grew 
  up in the same town as 
   she 
        but i 
     think 

          to meet up 
        stan this weekend tomorrow night my job
i keep pretty so 
      i 
might 
my dear wifey comes home about 
an hour after me about an hour after 
     me and she 
         changes 
     then immediately starts 
doing 
   to do 
       but it's okay 
if i would 
actually go plans for my 
      job 
       i keep pretty 
so i

a cheater she cheated 
she can't see 
      tho 
         and 
she 
       is 
going on how to 
         take 
place
is 
anybody even
          morning 
or 
should 
    i make place
  i pant we had 
          some lame exchange sex life 
going 
tv i told 
her 
tomorrow morning 
   or should she see the 
       relation
   pay 
       wolves

Notes from Chicago

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"A fleuron is a typographic element, or glyph, used 
either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament 
for typographic compositions. Fleurons are stylized 
forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives 
from the Old French word floron for flower. 
Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style 
calls the forms 'horticultural dingbats.' It is also known as 
a printers' flower, or more formally as an aldus leaf 
(after Italian Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius), hedera leaf, 
or simply hedera (ivy leaf) symbol."

Nat history museum
Poetry 
Bow truss roasters

A creative writing professor brings 
a snapping turtle and his new-born 
grandson into a bar — it ends exactly as you imagine. 

“Come and show me another city with lifted head 
singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” C Sandburg

I freeze my spine in an attempt to stay pure,
To fractalize suffering, cook up distillate 
And smoke academic — I only manage back pain.

Green mill
Girl and goat

Ray Yoshida 
Art Green
Oscar Nurlinger 
Richard Misrach

Nahuatl

"Alebrijes (Spanish pronunciation: [aleˈβɾixes]) are brightly colored 
Oaxacan-Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical creatures. The first 
alebrijes, along with use of the term, originated with Pedro Linares. 
In the 1930s, Linares fell very ill and while he was in bed, 
unconscious, Linares dreamt of a strange place resembling a forest. 

There, he saw trees, animals, rocks, clouds that suddenly 
turned into something strange, some kind of animals, 
but, unknown animals. He saw a donkey with butterfly wings, 
a rooster with bull horns, a lion with an eagle head, 
and all of them were shouting one word, 'Alebrijes.' 

Upon recovery, he began recreating the creatures he saw 
in cardboard and papier-mâché and called them Alebrijes."

The greatest story ever told ... the woman who laid down
and became a mountain and no one was there to see it
or write about it so you'll never know & I'll never know