IT! IS! FUCKING! TIME!

Here's where I will be this weekend.
http://www.midwestsmallpressfestival.org/?page_id=6

THERE IS SUCH GREAT POWER IN THE BLOOD

From UFC 146. Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva has the bridge of his nose crushed by a short elbow from Cain Valasquez.

WARNING to the INTERNET

There are a lot of things I want to write about in this blog that I can't write about in this blog, so now I have a super secret analog blog. Some things I can, though. But I am thinking about blogs now in a posthumous way, which is to say that there are a lot of things I'd like published about weird shit I was doing and feeling that I can't express to beloveds now but that upon my death in 1000 years I want unearthed so that our steely robot overlords might use the pages as toilet paper for mercury-colored poops. What I CAN say is that I am listening to endless Death Grips because it's totally hot and desensitizing, and that I walked around with my mom--who called me "curvy" today when I tried on a shirt she bought me for my birthday that I wouldn't ever wear (it was one of those button up bro shirts with weird faded gray patterns and sleeves that you roll up and button with a hidden strap)--talked about how her business was failing and how she isn't ready to throw in the towel but doesn't know what to do. It was heartbreaking; I was a kid again trying to think of solutions and struggling to keep my head there with her and not in outer space. I thought about that Sebald classic Rings of Saturn and the stream-of-consciousness walk and how my brain wanted to be in every available subspace atmosphere but the street where we were walking.
When I get super down I have a hard time reaching out to people. If you are a friend, a foe, or a friend I've never met, let me say now that on May 25 of 2012 I would like you to think of me as a friend thinking really fondly of you but not really able to peak my head over the barriers to wherever you are.
I have this really good idea for LOVER MIXTAPES where I'll post on here insane songs/music videos to go along with the romantic (as in time period) poetry I'm reading. So I'll start with this one:

LOVER MIXTAPE 1

It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

A Note to the Difficult One

poem

This morning I am ready if you are,
To hear you speaking in your new language.
I think I am beginning to have nearly
A way of writing down what it is I think
You say.  You enunciate very clearly
Terrible words always just beyond me.

I stand in my vocabulary looking out
Through my window of fine water ready
To translate natural occurrences
Into something beyond any idea
Of pleasure.  The wisps of April fly
With light messages to the lonely.

This morning I am ready if you are
To speak.  The early quick rains
Of Spring are drenching the window-glass.
Here in my words looking out
I see your face speaking flying
In a cloud wanting to say something.

W. S. Graham

I don't like to do this so here's the thing I don't like to do.

I absolutely hate when teachers post mean things about their students or make fun of the way they write. It infuriates me. But I was going through old files trying to clean up my hard drive and I found this. At some point in my career, a student wrote this as a response and I wrote it down in a text file. Now I'm going to delete it from my hard drive, but it will be here in the bloggy void of we're-all-artist-producers-producing-an-endless-documentation-narrative. I should also end positively and say that this stood out to me, and while it totally strips the gravity from the atmosphere and leaves you careening through outer space, it's memorable and clear that the student has some passion behind (their) voice.

Walking around downtown a favorite city. Find a cute bar, go in and everyone has a beer, glass of wine, or mixed drink in their hand. Everyone is happy and friendly. There is a local band playing. Some college kid takes off his shirt as a result of his first beer. This is a place where a bear wearing a fish costume could walk in the door and be welcomed. Next door a husband beats his wife as their children watch scared they are next. He takes the family cat and strangles it in front of their eyes. Finally he heads back to the bar for another drink. So what would it be like if all the alcohol was gone, replaced with water.

27: A FREE Online Nonlinear Autoaugering

I have had a great run and it isn’t over. I have gotten to find a job I love in a profession I am passionate about. I have seen so many funny and interesting and beautiful things. I have been madly in lust and madly in love. I have been complimented a lot and published poems. I have acted a fool early and often. A lot of shitty things happened while I was 27, but in a few days I turn a new age and what is a blog but a buried crypt of sometimes memories? So I am going to exhume this crypt here and talk about some of what was age 27, which began with a SICK party last year and ends in Madison, WI. These are anti-random reflections of what stood out from a collage year in nonlinear non-order:

I started the year with a nutso party at my house. And the fucking guinea pig cake! I got SO into the idea of demanding a complex drawing for a cake and leaving the just-pubescent HyVee bakery employee to draw it up. My friend Hilary wanted fishes on her cake to go with a sushi-themed dinner, and they drew what looked like heavily medicated fish crackers with radiation poisoning. So I asked for a GUINEA PIG THAT SAID USA! USA! USA! on it! And what did they do? Print one off google image search and then put it on some kind of edible paper over the cake. And it cost a LOT of money. So I had a small cake for a party that 50 or so people cycled through that was expensive and had some other person’s guinea pig on it. Not even my guinea pig! That was a funny and awesome way to start the year. I ended up being very hung over for work the next day, but I straightened up pretty easily. I spent a lot of time during meeting breaks writing bios for The Nøsters. 

The cake. Age 72. Brown guinea pig too thin to be my own.

It was insane to see security confiscating drugs from very young hipsters and thin white boys in cargo shorts/thin white girls in tanktops who keep fixing their hair compulsively at Pitchfork in Chicago. But what really blew me away was when one girl came up to the bulldog-faced, tree-trunk-arms-crossed security officer and demanded her pipe back and to see his supervisor. And he yelled at her and said HE WAS THE SUPERVISOR and he can go grab some cops right now because he was an off-duty one. And she started texting while he yelled at her and stormed away. This is a future. This is the human equivalent of dead, polluted seas and rubbled cities. This is a consciousness so jacked on entitlement, hyperspeed, and bottom-shelf energy drinks that it’s like an astral plane of mini-black holes sucking away at each other vacuously. I think I watched 10 people lose their plastic bottles of booze and trippy pastiche cheap glass bowls that day. I got to watch one kid get his bag of weed thrown in the trash, then watch a couple gawky, tall white boys with their boxers riding up try to slink over, fish it out of the trash, see security watching them like a hawk, and then slink away. It was a lot to watch.

CAConrad. Man oh man. He is such a force online that I absolutely love him, and such a kind person who comes across like someone who really cares about people, who really likes to share, and who can really listen that I absolutely love him even more. It was a starstriking experience to drive through Philly—which is a place with lots of railroad tracks and turns that feel like alleys where the furthest interior wall is the edge of the earth and thin between-building streets that remind me of places cool fights happen, like in the Ninja Turtles or in Jackie Chan 90’s movies—and then have him welcome us in, cook us dinner—I wasn’t hungry at all but when CAConrad cooks you Adzuki beans, you fucking eat them—and talk to us about flash mobs, poets, awards, and general retrograde. What I learned at age 27 about poetry is something Gabe Sapolsky, the former guy who ran Ring of Honor wrestling and now runs Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE, told me about pro wrestling: the internet let in a lot of people who have no business in the wrestling business, but also let in a lot of people who are amazing and totally need to be there. CAConrad’s web presence is the real deal. He lives in the interdimensional gateway between being a published, beloved poet embraced by the academy and being a cutting-edge new media poet all about the right-now. And he’s super brave. He stands up for what he cares about. And I believe poets SHOULD do that. It shouldn’t be that you write poetry because you want to. It should be because your spirit makes you write poetry and you get signals in your satellites you can’t shake loose, no matter how much you hop on one foot with your head tilted. People like Megan Boyle, Steve Roggenbuck, and even the oft-maligned Tao Lin are people who love writing and have the hustle to get out there with it. I’ll never balk at a fun Facebook poetry presence. If you love poetry, friend poets and journals. If it makes you feel insecure, cut off feeds. If it makes you feel inspired, write about it. Be for real, or don’t, and if you choose don’t, find something to be for real about and for real it. Do. Do. Do. Do. DO.

I secretly snapped this photo of CAConrad playing Wild Flag for us right before dinner. We ate those nectarines and drank that bottle of wine and had some of the water.

I took a long, long walk from the R train to where Patricia Spears Jones lives in Brooklyn, NYC, USA, EARTH. She's super cool and one of the best poets I saw read when I was in grad school, and I'll never forget how fun it was to talk to her about Project Runway, then in its baby 2nd season, after she read. She was so fun and easy to talk to and smart and annoyed at poetry and in love with poetry and is a great person to talk to and an even greater person to listen to. She also introduced me to Erika Jo Brown, who I hadn't met yet but who became an Iowa City friend and who is also a supremo talent. Walking to find PSJ in her neighborhood was almost as cathartic as hanging out. It really felt like some kind of mini-vision quest. I was so far from Iowa City and navigating all kinds of streets I hadn't taken before. It really puts how absolutely huge and enveloping the maw of NYC is.

There are other readers who killed me beautifully this year. One was Scott Butterfield, who I hang out with sometimes and who read with Karl (on bass) at Strange Cage’s second reading. Holy fuck to this reading. Look, blogosphere: Genre is a bunch of glaciers. Genre is melting. Genre is pumping up the ocean. Genre is flooding us. Genre is Scott’s poetic turbo-narrative and Karl and Co.’s musical accompaniment. Where Scott was the ape that threw the bone at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Karl and The Zodiac Trio were the space station that lifted it into instant myth. The poem fell and floated into music. The music was the walls that bled. The walls were the window mouths of the people in their skins. Belief was everywhere for about 20 minutes. It was fucking magical.

But then I read The Necropastoral by Joyelle McSweeny at a late night pie restaurant on the spinal cord strip of shithole motels in Davenport Iowa while staying overnight for jury duty. I read Adam Fell’s book, too. But Joyelle’s really hit me hard. Then I saw her read, and she rapped, she was the best kind of alive: ready to die on stage, ready to lose absolutely everything, which was nothing. And then she told me I should try to write a play! So that’s an age-28 plan.

I never really had any poetry mentors. I was loud and abrasive and could have been a better learner. Joan Larkin felt like one, but I saw her at the AWP Conference in NYC in 2008 and she didn’t remember me and it made me so sad. Now I understand a lot better. She’s a lot older than I am, and a lot smarter, and has met a lot more people. A zillion people. She didn’t remember me among them. I saw her on the train when I lived in NYC a year after that and she DID remember me. So having Joyelle—and her husband Johannes, both fucking idols of mine whose poems cleave my heart—tell me to try to write something means I write that thing, mother. fucking. period.

And more poemy things! I got to hang out with Nick Demske and his dad. Let me say this about Nick, besides that fact that he’s nice beyond nice, funny, talented, sweet, the world: Have you seen Amadeus? The Milos Forman movie? If not, just understand that Nick is the best in the world and walk away. If so, understand this thing: Nick Demske is Mozart, and you are Antonio Salieri, who proudly proclaims at the end of the film from his new home in an insane asylum that he is a “champion of mediocrity.” He was partly responsible for driving Mozart to death by overworking and overdemanding from him because he was jealous of his genius. Easy plot summery spoiler alert tornado warning. Nick isn’t dead. In fact, he doesn’t even seem unhappy. But he’s so much more brilliant than most published writers that he makes other writers look like occupationalists, not people whose blood is poetry. Nick has IT and the fact that he sent Strange Cage a manuscript is so fucking cool. I know my talents as an inspiring poetry salesman and even someone with a major crush on adolescent decay and retro analog technology that leaks into my poems. But I’ll never be the kind of genius Nick is. It’s sort of like being in tune with the force. Look at Han Solo! What an ass-kicking cool dude! But he doesn’t get the force like other people do. He’s a good learner, and he DOES kill, but he’s not born to kill.

Let us love and appreciate Nick Demske for killing so wonderfully, as he was born to do.
And here's his book!
http://strangecage.org/store.php

Reading at Anthology in town was really special for me. I got to go last and for the days leading up to it, I felt a lot of pressure to do a really, really great job and put on a memorable show. This pressure was self-imposed. I want to do more readings; when I started this one, I felt ok. But by the time I got to my last poem, which was long, I felt really comfortable, really in the zone, like I could laugh and people would laugh, like I could scream and people would reel in terror. Like I was wearing a costume of the audience. Like I was not putting on a show for them, but among them and having a fun time. I have to do more readings like that. I would rather perform that read. I learn a lot about reading poetry by watching pro wrestling promos.

I got to see Animal Collective play, and it really was ethereal, meditative, powerful, et. al. There were apparently a lot of haters. It makes me sad that people can’t overcome the trash-pile mountains of their own expectations and demands for control. Again, regular people are macrocosms of pro wrestling. Those indie fans of that particular form of entertainment are so involved in critical assessment that the magic dulls to a tinny listlessness instead of a chrome luster. Animal Collective came to do their art. I appreciate that. I don’t think The Beatles got to be The Beatles by playing the hits. They did what they did. Strong recommendation for that live show!

Strange Cage was conceived this year. Lesley and Karl might be leaving at the end of the summer and I love them beyond this blog. We really DID make shit happen. We really DO love poetry. But my favorite Lesley and Karl memory of a year we spent together on endless, loving repeat was when we judged a contest for an art gallery in Karl’s hometown of Stevens Point, WI. We read over 250 poems and picked the top 40, which was insane and so fueled with caffeine that I couldn’t ride my bike afterwards and tried to read CAConrad’s The Book of Frank after and was totally unable to. Luckily I could the next day, because WHAT A READ! We’ll be at this reading in 2 days, May 18, and see the paintings that were made of the winners’ works! It was a cool, fun responsibility and a real test of stamina and dedication that we passed like runners crossing the marathon lines, leaking diarrhea and wobbling their bones into paste.

I dragged Becky to see Battle: Los Angeles. I’m such a sucker for alien invasion anything. What a piece of shit! Brutal brutal brutal. Would not use watching this as torture on actual alien invaders trying to kill everyone.

I love UFC so much. If you ask me what the most fun thing in the world is, I’d have to go with the lame-ass answer of having sex. It’s really fun. But if I had to pick a second thing, it’s watching MMA fighting, which is so dramatic and theatrical but can also be totally boring so the theatrics really stand out. I mean, the night sky is cool. It’s big. It’s dark. But you see a comet every now and then. WOW! COMET!!!!! I got to see Frank Mir snap Antonio Nogueria’s arm at Buffalo Wild Wings in Iowa City, live on PPV! What a moment for MMA! So brutal and disgusting, so dramatic. It was in December, which was a very good month for me. I took a long road trip with Becky that made me feel really confident about the fact that we could weather school together and hopefully get married and blort out some lil’ babbs. And regardless of that happening or not (not), I felt good and strong. I was straight edge and not drinking or taking any drugs, and that means not even Tylenol or Advil. I was finding a groove with my Mad Libs poems. I don’t like Robert Pinsky. I think he’s an old, white, gas-bag erudite popsicle stick anus. But he DID say something I liked when I saw him read: he said try to find something you love that you don’t see other people doing, and do that thing. It’s interesting. It’s not being a gimmick. It’s filling in a gap you want filled. Anyone can identify with that. I was like, I like fun. I like games. I like participation. I love being in charge. I love leading. I love facilitating. I love sharing. Mad Libs can blend all those things into a techncolor poetry slurry. Drink. Also, look up Edson Barboza’s SUPER SPINNY KICKY TKO of Terry Etim, who I was all but ready to bet my life savings on.

KO is at 4:30

In January, I decided that this was the year I proposed to Becky and told her that I never wanted our adventures to stop and that I wanted to get pregnant and have her kid, Rosemary’ Baby style. But it didn’t go well when I hinted at this plan. I ended up taking off for Seattle for a head-clearing brother visit. And I played a LOT of this insane X-Box game and got really drunk and sick by accident when I didn’t eat all day and played bar trivia with my brother and tried to keep up with his friend Brook who dresses like a cowboy from an anime fansub. He wears a trench coat and a black cowboy hat and has long hair and is thin like a telephone pole. I matched him whisky for whisky and ended up barfing in trash cans and my brother had to send the pizza man I had called back into the spinning apartment complex night with the tomato and spinach pie I otherwise would so enjoy. I drank a lot of espresso that trip. And I went to Open Books! Holy fuck! I spent $O  MUCH CA$H ON POETRY BOOK$$$$$$$$$$$$44455555555****((^(^(^(^((^
Nothing but love for the best in the world Becky, even (especially) now that we aren't a couple no more. She's the toughest, funniest, and smartest person I know and not one of these memories would have happened without her involvement in some capacity. 

I got to meet John Waters, who is about as much of an idol as I can think of during a stream-of-consciousness entry. I went with Becky and my friends Zardon, Eve, and Angela to the top of the Hotel Vitro, a massive penthouse that was clean and modern and filled with tiled things and African sculptures and catered, small, pastel colored pastries. Angela fell down out of her chair at a corner table and then again in front of God Emperor Waters and a long line of people who wanted his autograph. Eve wore dark sunglasses and played the accordion endlessly. Zardon filmed the whole thing grinning. We were the weirdest people in the room. It just happened that way. I don’t remember planning it. We went to a fire at John Engelbrecht’s afterward. As of this writing, I haven’t seen John for over a month and I really miss him and his fires. He’s a “jam-up guy” (Bret Hart once said that as a compliment to another wrestler) and busy as fuck crazy. He’s a good friend and was a big part of my age 27. We made monster buttons together and talked about poems. We wrote poems and popped balloons. He wrote a Facebook status about In Watermelon Sugar and I read the whole book on my porch one afternoon. I owe a lot of my chapbook (accompanied by pushpins and balloons) to him. I hope I can be as memorable for him as his wild old days are. Iowa City would not be, period, without that rascal.

Lesley is in school here and DA Powell is her teacher. But for me, DA Powell is the man, a foundational name who helped me understand poetry in new ways. His stuff helped me be brave. And when I got to meet him and he painted a heart on my face at the Mission Creek lit festival, it really hit me right in the blood. It was a huge night, March 31. Lesley and Karl told me they were pregnant and I had to go to the bathroom, tear up in front of the mirror, and be like, oh my fuck.

Then, half an hour later, the clock hit midnight and they told me APRIL FOOL’S. Haha, I am filled with such vitriol. I will get you yet, Gadget. –Dr. Claw

This is not a place to whine about Kirkwood and them not interviewing me for full-time. But it is a place to talk about how that rocked me like a spin-kick to the skull. I wrote the application of my life, and when I didn’t get that interview, it made me think about a lot of things. I love to teach. Should I be at college? Should I be more involved in administration, and if so, how do I assuage my urges to cut down bureaucracy into chewable, swallowable strips while also being able to take on that role of the oppressor—the MAKER of policy? The institutionalist? The revolutionary aristocrat? I thought about the flaws of the institutional model. About sounding better on paper. About the business of education and what my role is in that business. About working for myself and getting off the “your-system-is-already-set-up-oh-please-accept-me-as-a-part-of-it.” My mom called me a controversial nonconformist when we were eating pesto pasta in the den and watching TV. I feel like one in good and bad passiony ways.  About using my passion engine to make a difference somewhere. Somewhere. I could go anywhere now. That’s super sad and super amazing. I have a lot of space and a lot of time. I’m in a terrifying, sweet, introspective, dissonant, enviable, unenviable position finishing out 2012.

Thanks for playing!

From FRIDAY THE 13TH for NES

Fuck

I am not going to complain about any of the following:
-That Kirkwood Community College won't give me a full-time interview despite good reviews from students and professional development work. That going to work feels away from the breeze and the lemonade.
-That I am living with my ex girlfriend and trying to be friends during finals week.That I am torn between being an understanding friend who knows how endlessly cool she is and desperately needing my own space to clear my head and develop a new lifestyle tempo.
-That I am not hanging out with most of my friends in Iowa City and that reaching out to them to tell them that I need friends right now makes me feel super weird. That I am torn between running away from Iowa City just to be around people who I know really like me a lot and drilling in to Iowa City's art world, something I care a lot about and feel like I can contribute so much to.
-That my poetry class has 2 students. That I got way too drunk with them last night. That I don't even really like to drink.
-That the Strange Cage co-editors are probably moving to NYC and that I love them so much I am ripped into shreds wanting their success and wanting them around here, wanting them to see what I see in Strange Cage and wanting them to recklessly pursue dreams as I would. What do you say to the best people in the world when they want to live not where you are? Yes? Don't? Please? A blended slurry of all of those?
NO. I am at peace with these things because it's a big universe and I am but a grateful speck in it.
What I WILL be complaining about is the fact that I excitedly told a student who just walked into to my empty finals time class that he was getting an A, slammed my hand down on the desk, and pulled it up with a thumbtack deep in a vein. I don't know if he saw. I cupped my hand at my side, shook his hand with the other, let him leave, then opened it:

I think I'm going to get a shot for this today.

I am in the process of writing the NEW NEW APOCALYPSE MANIFESTO

PREVIEW INSPIRATION NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES
http://www.ofluxo.net/the-internet-in-your-closet-by-dora-moutot/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apocalypse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nCRP8Vjl4Q