Author Archives

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Any occasion to be critical—judgment as an outline, barrier, a boundary, a border. Feelers—putting them out—feelers—putting them out—for something special, something so impulsive with intelligence or generosity, that HEY, I leap in that direction.

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Inconclusive, in conclusion.

Abusive, people under pressure.

Sometimes I can take it.

Other times I start to have a breakdown.

Sadly.

Sometimes—no, not sometimes. Why vagueness?

It’s better to be March.

It’s better to be rain and snow in March.

It’s better to be best in class.

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Ovoid aftermath
smug somethings of her afterbirth
no stories please
especially no photos
I can’t bear it
thinking of her
trying to breastfeed
little ones failing to thrive
on the diet of America
perpetuated
how could she rise above
how could she contemplate
the fingertips of
Else Lasker-Schüler

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Restful inconsistencies
emerald generalities
tawdry perpetuities
garbanzo beans and
phony etymologies
a bunch of garbage

Failure rate;
how to increase it

Shake it out the funny duck
the incompetent
with hair of feathers

Fragile—something
she cannot avoid

Secret secret sad sad secret
secretions

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2nd Prose Poem conference
Something I’m not writing anymore

the disintegration of
the diary

on purpose
the relaxed alignment
of destructive tendencies

and all those names
those names for things
far-reaching Adams
wrestle in the garden
double Adams
double Garden
and there is no Eve
on daylight savings time

something made of ill repute
that catches up with you

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Dear Alex,
I am getting very interested in meditation.
Although I am shy.
I want a Zen teacher. Buddhist teacher.
I want to speak freely. I mean really.
I hope I can live with some humility.
I hope I can exhibit. Color.
I hope to make frail notes at my mother’s bedside.
Step 9 says: whenever possible.
I think that is funny
This smart-aleck
always ready to move on
The dharma makes it hard
to say anything you see
I am getting
Back
on
Track

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Formats:

  • job description
  • résumé
  • glossary
  • budget
  • workplan
  • agenda
  • questionnaire (survey)
  • chart
  • table
  • note
  • formal note
  • comment
  • list
  • TBD list
  • calibration powerpoint (7 slides per hour)
  • knowledge base
  • query
  • GUI
  • HTML
  • manual
  • FAQs

No matter where I set my sights, your language cannot reach me.

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She would like to be more formal but she needs to trample on the Styles and Formatting first. Hello Auto Format hello button hello program hello nice to meet you and make you she wants to read an Art Book. Nothing appropriate in her reflection.

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march 11, 2007

Genres of note. Choking out syllables of gemshit. Murderous eyes on the sly. Poetry magazine induces epilepsy. I am relaxing into awful afterday of Security BRD—how unpleasant is your name Alleluia who is Shakespeare after all and what did he enable
Hark hearken harken herald
The back door of relief
the deck of equanimity
the roof of aloof
the sink of basin
the rug of rolling over
the kitchen of wishes
do not underestimate the pluses of poverty—I am seeking poverty, so wretched without you and what can I do about it—
yoginis in spiffy outfits
yoginis in stretch suits
yoginis dancing in rags
pale as rags pale as dust
Gayatri

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No I am not under stress, not menopause or lupus, not gall bladder or any other pain—

I am livid with the unsatisfactoriness of it all. I wish

I have desires—well I would like to find out—before I die—
if liberation is really possible and in order to do that it appears that I have no choice except to sit and sit and sit and you see, I really don’t have time to sit especially because I can’t negotiate that with my boyfriend and I find it very embarrassing to be “sitting” in the house when someone wants me and before the house is clean and meals and water and the computer/sewing machines—
but—

why shouldn’t I SIT and
here is the alternative

forget about any liberation
until the next life and
there is no next life
and

I don’t believe in God either so I can’t pray for the resolve to make my “growth” possible.

I really don’t care to know about any purpose or meaning to life I believe in nothing I can point to that is self (right now I sit here writing what is that)

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There was no cultural bullshit yesterday—maybe just a little—the trendiness of “raw” food cost me $180. I have $1200 to pay to Stamford Hospital and $200+ to hand therapy and then I’m ready for the next emergency.

I have to follow up on Blair’s college loan acct and see if my prepayments posted.

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I am strained at work, straining to get enough time to concentrate on Next Gen work which is much improved with concentration. But now I’m in charge of training K and—hell, I don’t know—it’s for the best—but it hasn’t been that easy. I’m going to give her my work in duplicate and see if she does the same things as I do with it. Case studies.

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Someone needs to go out and buy thread. I feel the coils of my brain relaxing sometimes Sam’s presence just fosters such reaction, such aversion—I am not coping with it very well, or Stephen Batchelor’s pompous question How would I live my life if I acknowledged I was going to die and Dudley did die February 6. Let’s have some rice and stir-fried vegetables for dinner, except there is no rice, no tofu, and a minimum of greens. Ginger, Yes. Food is still a friend of mine. Last night, at pompous vegetarian Ahimsa fuck I can’t get over Eli’s bicycle and how impossible it is to fix this—how little I really want to talk to anybody

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This is not worthwhile, is it?

Meanwhile, it’s always someone’s birthday, I would like to race away so far and demand a year in cloister only one outfit, one bowl, one word—sometimes the complexity of extroversion slays me—this is a tired story, isn’t it? Am I busy self-making? Did I have a moment when the rug was pulled out from under someone who I thought was so familiar? Ski jacket, ski jacket, ski jacket, sunglasses—how it is in here. I am not in Sunnyside. And Poetry is Impossible to Learn. (So I Say so I say so say so say) Oh say so, so you say.

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Why struggle with this at all? I am insecure with anything that requires any level of resolve.

I can work a Program, show up, practice feebly on and off—I can read and write and work on software engineering. Fitness is not part of my routine. I’d let Sam work on his truck, the house, the computer, I’d let anyone do anything. There is very little I can figure out.

Holding Separate—here is where we are reckless holding ourself Separate—because there is a lack of dharma friends.

K—Starbucks and her husband—Burger King.

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Here are characters—Chikeola, the African Queen whose body bending like a snake gets up to chant Gayatri mantra—

There is handwriting on the wall in this location.

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Reading today about a Stone Coast MFA and a Prose Poetry Conference #2 in Walpole, but it’s August 3-5 and that’s Sam’s birthday, plus $650. Still—I want to go. But really I am flailing, floundering, utterly without direction—just feel a hole inside.

Hello hole who are you I mean how are you? Drastic, raggedy, misused? Absolutely.

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I am really struggling with a lot of questions—

  • WRITING (I crave my eerie freedom)
  • Relationship—how much is too much
  • Dharma friendships (Batchelor)
  • The coffee doesn’t taste like coffee
  • America
    • and where to go from here

Maybe this is the tail end of my tenure working I am certainly chafing under all the structure I felt Linda closing the lid down on my dear chaos Friday and I wanted to cry especially since there was no way to explain EXPLAIN—

pressures pressures decompression after Eli’s birthday party yesterday my eyes my eyes my moon

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march 14, 2007

Unashamed evaluation. Here in Starbucks, tears behind my eyes unreasonable. Feel pressure to make phone calls—Kristin, Lorna, Margaret, and I don’t want to do it. Feel the competition of Stamford, everyone is out. Feel a freaky drama starting in the house, so tied down, so unhappy, so oppressed, so much by what who knows the lack of private time, the restriction on my inner life my meditation my suffering over inability to recharge? Yes, I am an aging Ipod mini battery so

Thirsty and so suffering—it’s been coming up for hours, weeks, and months—I put it down (PUT IT DOWN) you see and there it is again this vagueness this unease the only solution that I want

Luckily no tears—K stopped by to say hi—my friend—oh well.

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Visualize. Visualizing. Visualizing Kilimanjaro. Visualizing the bright shreds of sun carved off Vivasat. Visualizing nails in the floor. I took a washcloth, wiped the dirt fingerprints off the bedroom door. I arrested qarrtsiluni. Exacerbated. You can tell there is no channel carving here. You can tell the bird is disturbed and fluttering on the nest. Puffed up down against the cold. Chilly nest, someone might have to fly again. Taking care, how dare, not fair. She puzzles, then allows. A dream of behaving differently. Nice things for others, not to get found out.

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At the next table, the woman drones into her cell phone in a monotone. Sad face and sad words. Manicure. Hairstyle. Family. You know, what am I getting in return? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And maybe expecting something is my problem. I just thought things were going to be a lot different. … skiing with Megan…

Vague wish to go skiing.

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Traveling back and back, remembering oh yes, failing to see the point. What is this? The pale awareness leaks, someone who really wants to make it work, solve it through all sick thoughts, solve for x, for him, for her, solve through all, something to be made right.

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A need to relax the mind, heal the interaction. She is a poet. He is dressed in second-hand clothes. She resists friendship, the contaminant of it. He is studying in the hot, in the cold. She is working on images not words. He is dreaming of the garden. She is assembling her questions into a marble monument, he is handling rotten fruit and leaves.

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50 x 365—unique work. I don’t know. I’m exhausted by it. I want it to be over. It is a huge meditation on interpersonal relations. I tried to exercise lovingkindness—could not succeed at times. I don’t know how much to reveal. I’d like to WOW people with it. That’s not such great motivation. I’d like to let people know they have touched my life. I’d like to open the door to an intimacy—but this is not very mutual. I grabbed all the power and authority by writing these things.

I found a source of motivation. I was not going to let D see me stop. Ha.

It’s not that big a thing really.

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I am interested in Artist’s Books. I really don’t want to publish an ugly standard book. I designed an ugly standard book and had it produced by Thomson Shore. That’s good. I learned a lot. I made some mistakes. It was good though. No way to teach you how to do this. I don’t want to be generous, don’t trust myself. I am not that generous. Not sure you have aptitude. I do not want to work with people without aptitude.

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I am interested in—

  • online poetries
  • blog as poem
  • applied poetry, particularly in the office
  • poet as one confronted with the unknowable, unspeakable meanings
  • primitive rhythms
  • experiments with art
  • how to make digital art look non-digital
  • splotches of watercolor (ink on top)
  • daily practice
  • gardening/writing intersection
  • spirituality/writing intersection
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I could write some Kerouac-like bluesy pieces, they would be about the past they would be about woman the wife the mother at home they would be the Al-Anon version of the blues, something tells me it would be awfully hard to write these blues honestly

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9 of swords (rev)

I am not raising kids anymore.

I can use Linda’s logistical skills and networking to make things easier.

When I feel in the grip of clutching fear or annoyance at work—I can take a walk. Take a breath.

I want to

  • Read Moby Dick
  • Ulysses
  • Gravity’s Rainbow

I want to

  • Sew again—some elegant drapey tops

I want to

  • Make meals in the crockpot

I want to

  • Be in the CSA

I want

  • a Buddhist teacher ? ? ?

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Demons into Allies—

money -> beauty -> clothes
home
  -> sharing -> Blair, Kiva?
  -> saving -> 401K, pay off debts
impatience
resentment		 -> my koan.
My obvious
opportunity
to yearn
for liberation		  

Buddhism really figures in here.

my passivity
at work		 -> don’t get involved in tempests, gossip. Step up to motivation. Spend time with the winners.
two days a week
at home		 -> Discipline. Housework? Chores calling me? Exercise? Errands? I don’t think I can work 8 hours at home. Maybe that’s not the point.
Creative time -> most rewarding projects have been in fragments.

Sam deserts me often in the evening, sleeping. I can do a lot with a short period of time every day. The daily effort is my ally. I fritter away time on Tues and Thurs, flounder.

I know I’m going to do this.

I am afraid.

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december 13

Discs—Physical Earth energy

Grounded. Material needs. My body. Not being able to take care of myself. Not being able to defend myself from the demands of a project.

Priestess of discs—She’s doing Yoga! Can I still take my Tuesday morning yoga class? I would dearly love to be able to do that. Physical—trainer setup? What about a zafu/zabuton in this room?

Working can be bad for my health, bad for my mood. I don’t want to reach out, make connections. I don’t want to feel over my head again in an extroverted analytical culture.

Six of discs—reversed. Is about this. I don’t want to participate in the madness. I try experimental remarks with Linda, jumping outside the box of her behavior. When I think about healing/leadership, I think—BIG. I want to modify the whole extended team so that we can work well together. My intuition screams at me to modify other’s behavior in situations. I can’t. I avoid participation to a great degree because of this trap.

Son of discs—Goals. One of my fondest dreams is to improve the house. I would love to gradually transform this space into something that would feel good and livable. I don’t dare to wish for what. Seems materialistic. There are poor out there. I am no good at home decorating. Etc. First step—money. Could I feel good about this? I don’t know. I might feel like Michelle or Richie. I might be susceptible to Sam’s criticisms, bound/engaged with his actions or lack of action. I don’t want that.

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Next day at work, Linda, who likes to try to be my guardian angel, asks innocently—how was my drive home last night—I stare at her for moments, at an utter loss for inspiration as far as what to say—I don’t even know if my own mind how to say how my drive home has been or if I’ve even reached home yet or ever will and can’t begin to explain why I’m driven to do things like tour New York City in a car one-handed delivering warm clothing and unwanted poetry on thankless nights where no one’s looking almost not listening no stars no shining and no stop for meals. Lisa offers to go get some negra modelo, me and Josh say yes. He has a new job, he’s a kid, he’s going to work for Wiley in Hoboken, just starting out, I say Good night Good luck we walk off in opposite directions.

Next semester—Finnegan’s Wake, Gertrude Stein, and the Cantos, oh my god, I want to take that, I can’t help it, I can’t justify it, there is no explanation, but I’ve been broken down sufficiently okay it’s insane okay I’ll cooperate I don’t believe in vengeful angels but I’ve sustained enough damage from the New York School and San Francisco Renaissance that I dare not tread toward giants of literature like that. No I won’t be jounced by Joyce, stunned by Stein, or pounded on by Ezra anymore it’s over I’ll stay here in bed contented with my diary and my jottings, what intact bones are left, sipping supplemental vitamins and breath, applying gratitude medicinally and daring any New York angel poet student policeman to come find me here in this suburban garden of post post post avant avant fragmentariantude.

So there.

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So then last week was our last session—postponed until after Thanksgiving because so many in class were going out of own or otherwise couldn’t make it and it was my first day back at work in Jersey after the long weekend and the previous week’s hiatus because of surgery on my aching wrist I had to work from home. Huh—I was cutting everything pretty close, had some goods to drop off with Blair, not urgent, just his vest, his coat, his soap—well, what if he gets COLD, he’ll need this stuff, my drive to deliver it to him got the best of me and almost hyperventilating after leaving work at 4 pm under gloomy skies I drove with one hand down into Manhattan, 87 South from Westchester over the Third Ave Bridge, onto the FDR, 23rd Street exit just like usual and then I think I’ll turn on 7th Avenue and work my way back to Union Square along 16th Street—well I turned at 5:30 pm onto a street I shouldn’t have turned onto until 7—goddammit, do I really need such pointed reminders that somehow my timing in this life is really OFF?—red lights in my rearview mirror and I get two fucking summons, one for unsafe turn and one for not seeing a sign or something like that and my heart is pounding and I’m trying to hide my broken left arm because God knows the fines for driving with a broken wrist are probably more than Astronomical, but the policeman doesn’t really seem that interested in me anyway and this too hurts my feelings, thinking a different sort of poet would have engaged him, spurred an action, wriggled out of it, into some grace at the last minute, a reprieve, but no I limped away, now afraid to drive, delivered Blair his package, followed on to class and found a place to park in Queens and participated in the small group, just Josh and Lisa (and the cats) and shared some feeble poetry from the past and made it home and paid my fines plus surcharge within 15 days—$180.

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Here are my projects—

I write a series about rivers, it feels really forced, much less interior than I’m used to.

I’m doing book design, an anthology. I feel like curling up in shame for the uneven obstreperous (bluntly) badness of this poetry and get defensive at the awes of horror over awkward typographic dumbnesses in Duncan’s Selected oh yes it is a bad book and—well, mine probably is too.

I’m writing a gigantic Hallmark card to 365 of my closest friends, a project which I never once get brave enough to mention because it’s absolutely a faux pas in circles like this to write about real people in a dumb form like “50 words,” not to mention being 50 which is also a mistake too grave to mention, so I shut up even though I secretly admire myself, if only for the year-long discipline (its roots in stubbornness).

I have a blog. Lisa acknowledges my blog on hers, kind words; we mention it once in person, then this contact sinks again into the pool of anonymity, mutual lurking. I decide I want to put more energy into my blog, I have sort of a grip on it as an aesthetic project so I post something almost every day in November, although this is quite strenuous, and sometimes, it’s only photos/fragments.

Lisa’s interest in plants helps me acknowledge that I have a yard, a garden, even a sort of love for certain specimens. I bring two plants indoors for the winter—parsley, rosemary—and plant cilantro seeds. The sage survives outside. I think of bringing Lisa some sage bundled as a gift, maybe wrapped in some embroidery floss. No thyme at the moment.

Umm…can’t get there from here. Can’t go to Naropa, can’t spend lots of money on classes when I’m 50 and Blair’s in college, can’t generate a poetic community like the Beats or the New York School springing up from the wasted garden void around me, can’t make contact, can’t begin to get excited again about an online journal project, any opportunity to publish or be published, any sights set higher than retirement sooner hopefully rather than later after I finish paying for the college education of my favorite anarchist who would never rub elbows with an institution unless the term was paid for by a foolish parent (yup that’s me).

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End of October—I blurt out in an email that there’s a reading from In Pieces, an anthology of fragmentary literature by Impassio Press in the city on October 29th. I’ll be there (but not reading). Of course, no one from class shows up, it’s not that kind of group. I’m quite excited by this gathering—there’s Guy, and Jason, Audrey, Ellis, Mary, and lovely Roy, and afterwards, I collect signatures like a giddy child and drink wine and talk of fragments and connections. It’s a lovely gathering. Outside on the plaza, in a windstorm, I fall down and break my wrist.

I miss the next two classes. Halloween is just two days away, can’t really navigate, I stay home becalmed (uncalm) in an utter slump. Unable to celebrate in any way with Sam, a masked witch in a bad mood.

The next week, I’m in New York, but entertaining Geno and Michelle after the marathon. We’re eating at Pure Food and Wine, with Blair, and baby Harry. It’s a good time although I feel phenomenally stressed by the logistics of meeting people in the city and the baby and the driving and the wrist and the expense and the phone call saying I won’t be there at class and the what the hell of all of it. But I like Michelle. She tells Blair stories of the squats in London and Berlin. Geno wrangles Harry pretty well, and Sam takes him out for little walks into the rainy courtyard. We even stop for coffee (terrible) at a nondescript, nonrecommended deli (Greek joint). Returning to my car something like the sound of a loud gong, in the Gong Show, loud and deep and fatal—parking ticket, $65, I parked at 5:40 pm somewhere where I shouldn’t have parked until 6. Just suck it up.

I catch up with the next class. I think I’ve lost the thread of Duncan’s life completely. All I know is that I’m envious of his household, alive with art and poetry and avant friends, community with all its prices and its costs. I’m envious of his ego and his correspondents. Him. Levertov. How to come to terms with what is past. That was then, you see, and this is now.

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Well, dammit, I signed up for this, I want to say I rubbed elbows with the New York School, yes I did, and yes it was rewarding, yes I elevated my discourse and my craft.

Beating my head against the wall
And Sam at home alone on Tuesday nights
And disrupting placid waters of routine
my Al-Anon, my district meetings, and
the Yoga Book Club.

Poetry is the biggest irritant in my life right now.

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I never gather Duncan. I try to read the poems assigned, I never get them. I buy some of his books, don’t think I’ll crack them. I pay $300 for this class, I’m not sure why. I pay it in installments once a month, and I get shy about my childish checks with purple swirlies on them and a Comic front. I think I should have soberer checks like a real poet.

Trying to contribute. I translate a poem of mine into Olde English. Enjoy this exercise. I’m asked to read it aloud, a fairly strugglish effort. Seems okay. Better in Olde English than it was in New. Lisa picks out phrases in our poems. Well, should I toss the rest away, enshrine that phrase? Who knows.

I learn some techniques, puzzle over leading vowels. I want craft but I don’t want it. I am interested in the other students. I’m interested in shaping the interactions. The environment is so subdued, inhibiting. I ask a lot of questions. One dominates. She seems suitably irritable for a teacher of poetry. Poetry teachers swimming daily in bad words. THere are no highlights. I observe the women’s clothes. I’m familiar with an odd fact or two, like Ian Hamilton Finlay’s death this year or fallout on the Hanford Reservation.

Somewhere I don’t bloom. People very sparing with email, commentary, keeping their vast opinions to themselves. Closetsfull of opinions, jamming in on the shelves.

One of my thematic exercises highlights the word Intimacy.

I go to Bernadette Mayer’s reading at St. Mark’s. Appreciate it. I read Winter’s Day from cover to cover on my 2nd try.

I drop Ashbery’s name a couple of times, get a small sound of acknowledgement from Lisa, but no more.

Incomprehensible.

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One of the first sessions, we are asked who writes as the “I” in their poems. No one says Yes but me. Should I defend this practice? Is it passé? Have I stepped in it?

Thenceforward continuously tainted by my I, which shows.

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Lisa is subdued. The whole group is almost utterly subdued. They don’t write emails, they don’t open pdfs. We don’t bond or do I just mistake what bonds there are for something else?

Lisa provides a small spread of snacks each night. Sometimes hot cider, occasionally beer. Food is good.

The cats fight. Harry, Mina, and Bela. They frequent the poetry salon and get pet, as long as they’re relaxed and noses kept out of the food.

People have busy lives. They interfere. I try to gauge how diligent with my homework I should be. I produce some writing I guess each and every time. I’m eager to contribute also eager to unlock the secrets.

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We eat—places like Red Bamboo, Mamoun’s. We drink—the tea shop, the Angelica juice bar. Potent ginger flavor seems recurring. I never learn my way in Greenwich Village. I do learn how to zero in on Union Square from any direction.

The Queensboro is a very attractive bridge with her own set of turrets and a suitably tortured manner of approaching her. I think I had to wend an underground exit like escaping from a conch shell off the FDR and rise up then at least two blocks, maybe 3, to 2nd Ave, where a hard left led me to her skirts. Lower Roadway. Don’t know if I ever accessed the upper, not sure if it exists. As the frame of fall progressed sunsets off the bridge grew more inflamed to less, then stopped.

39th Street in Queens. Parking was a challenge every night, except the first, when I stopped in a spot right outside the building.

I don’t know whether to pull or push the doors. I don’t know how to get in. I don’t know I can enter the little lobby and push “7D” to pay the magic entrance fee. I don’t know any of this stuff the first night. It’s exhausting figuring this out. I get better at it.

I don’t live in New York.

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So the history of poetry class—

here I go—mapping, a serious challenge which bridge how to navigate Manhattan how much time to leave I’m determined to visit Blair each time so head out early 2pm on Tuesdays—

discover rules—

  • don’t cross town on 34th Street
  • Madison—a park interferes
  • No 14th Street exit off the FDR
  • No toll on 3rd Ave Bridge
  • Parking is a separate task that makes serious demands
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december 5 1:45 pm

Uneasy, writing in bed on Tuesday.

First, take some conscious breaths. Expel on the exhalation. Expel the instructions. Intentions.

A monument of agendas inside.

Try to arrive. Get here.

Wanted to write my Godamifesto.

Discovering Anne Waldman, turning pages of her Vow with my long haggy-fingered hands and damaged wrist.

Not much can I do. Limited.

Au revoir.

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This is a woman who has to come up with her goals. This is a woman who has to update her will. This is a woman who has to complete her insurance elections for the coming year. This is a woman with a secret life.