MILWAUKEE TRAVELOGUE

Patches Again

2011-02-28T13:54:00.000-08:00

Anyone want one?

$5 for WISCO PRIDE

alworman@gmail.com

?

2011-02-17T21:32:00.001-08:00

We must certainly have ideal futures

Where we capture the developing phenomena

Of our own self awareness

That cannot find a path to follow

Because normality is the expression of defeat

And it will run our sensations numb

Because we have made a compromise

With the invention of our self

You must either have nothing

Or be able to pay for all of your wanderings

To be the proud owner of physical freedom

In this world recent humans have created

If, there was never obligation

we would stare at earth

and pass the imprecise hours

absorbing the sensation of existing

Waste

2011-02-17T21:26:00.000-08:00

We walked to the lake

To be reminded

Of what we have to rely on

If the structure of our society fails

People are so satisfied

With unnatural nature

Uniform and saturated

Shaved and malnourished

Several blocks ahead

The lake is constantly

Reflecting the sky

Purer and unclear

The rocks that have been placed

On the side of Milwaukee

Seat sculptures of finished soda cups

And the waste of a million people

You are greeted with the smell

Of the colon of Milwaukee

That is heated by the sun

So that bacteria can thrive

As well as anything

That can survive in thick poo

We must shift our waste

Or that will be me and you

Unsatisfied with open sewers

That swallow up the breathing

We head north to find beaches

But are greeted with barbed wire

Between the city bustle

There are patches of earth unpure

That remind the urban people

That their lives are strange

Being so close to one another

Walls are erected

Going against our natural instinct

To travel where we intend

We are caught in our own zoo

Unlike other animals, it is what we choose

All of the sudden

2011-02-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

All of the sudden
There is a break in the constant dullness
That has hit us like a flood
That cannot come out of our carpets

The conversations this evening
When looked at as a whole
Form an incomplete weave
Of personal history and idealized futures

When we form a circle
We combine
And become unstable
When there are more people

They have all become silent
And one looks up from it
To see why nobody has spoken
And you make eye contact
With old friends-become-mute

They agree in silence
“I will not say a word”
Some shift
There is giggling
“come on you guys”

Some drink their drink
Light new cigarettes
Put out the old ones
Become interested in the dull scenery of life

Some are empty
And wait in the silence
Some have become self-conscious

to the worst degree
Because they have nothing to say

and neither do their friends

Someone breaks the silence
Some find themselves
In a dumb interview
Or in a museum
Because we have all become plastic dolls

There are no words that

will sustain indefinitely

If you can recognize silence
It is always fleeting
And is broken when
We become less concerned
with who we are

Been a while

2011-01-19T21:57:00.001-08:00

In between the times that it is O.K. to die

I am unsure

I get lost and I see everything nothing

Wear white if your into that

but know that

Your glimpses of reality are the same as mine

rare, and I’m glad that I know you at all

even if we don’t talk

and we are both embarrassed.

Gym Membership as a Cure

2010-11-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

I wasn't born a nervous man

hanging out in the bathroom mirror
rehearsing lies for grandma

but because I am there
and because I am younger

the naked CPA hangs the question
of my own personal future

if the whale inside of me
would only roll from the beach

What Time Is It

2010-11-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

I’m in the shower and I don’t know
what time it is.

I find peace in moments of
personal hygiene.

I have a million things to do!

How's It Going

2010-11-02T00:37:00.001-07:00

Nothing has happened for a while.
Except a couple dead leaves flew at my ankles
while I was going to buy a mop.

As of Late

2010-10-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

The lake rising above me, the steep ground pushes me closer.

I womp when I walk.

Stride leaning, cowering, swaying. The trees, branches crack. Back curves, try to be flat. Hope not to slope as the ground does. Tide, no tide, although it tries.

No salt to satisfy. I’d rather it that way, why?

Left, flap, right.

The light leaves some shadows. The leaves leave, crack, drift, like my mind.

Where are you?

Hallows await, the gate. My gate, yours. Symmetrical, we try.

Here is where i’d like to run, now though, no. I will not, for the predictability sets in. Possibly, causable, probably, possible, I wish I did.

Sometimes I am here with you, or her, or him, who used to be IT.

Trail, then, lead me to the rocks, where my feet loose their footing, where I wobble and clank, and keep my head to the ground,

stuck in the color of the sand that once was, and now is, formed.

Seagulls squawk ahead and overhead. With jet tails from planes mistaken as their exhaust and eyes to the lake for a catch.

How do they see from up so high?

I cannot see the end, though If I were to fall in, splash, I would surely know it.

I sit where I shouldn’t, I am not scared.

Remembering what doesn't exist.

2010-09-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm on my first plane ride home.
I picture he and I in Wisconsin.
I picture us in a cranberry lake.
He is forcing my head under water
and the little tart hard red berries
are going in my water logged throat.
He's aware of it all, so clearly,
even thought he is him,
he's not himself. My head
in the cold crisp water. The berries
filling every area of surface.
They gather in a mob around the fight
and attach themselves to our
submerged waists. My head goes
under again- this is not voluntary,
the water is splashing and dead sticks
are rising to the top, above me,
as my kicking feet try to find
and push off the sodden ground.
Am I drowning or swallowing?
Cranberry bog for time and
some woman above me
is reminding my struggle
I am alone in this
red berry ridden water.
Of course I can see that I am,
I can talk and touch that I am.
But under,
I sense his hands, some hands,
I swear,
holding my shoulders down,
hands pulling hand fulls of hair
and a pressing palm
Against my skull
with one goal-
My body to fill with this tart crimson fruit. Little berries to make a basket of my lungs, and a jar of my throat.

I'm alone here, of course, with my reachy arms.
When she reminds me, and I remember, it's clear;
Despite my fear, the girlish cries and gurgles,
the suffocating confusion
all I can really make out of this location
is it's absolute sacred beauty. Never mind the rest.
Always never mind the rest.

I haven't written in a long while..

2010-09-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

lost in age and gender

role and goal

sitting sometimes

next to the mudslide of algae

she sculpted

transcended year after year

season after season

into the island it is now

her island in the city

always too loud

lilly pads sprout up

ask where they are

so rare in this vicinity

fish circle her

sometimes

but not as much as the bark

the moon, Luna, howls near by

with a bite that put the other one down

modestly, shamefully

we will always feel guilty

a splinter, a toothpick hangs from her mouth

she looks nervous

her teeth almost grinding

she looks calm

her eyes close and feel the sun

they squint too tight

and she moves to the shade

checks the watch on her belt loop

picks with the splinter

and these soft teeth came from her

these thighs didn’t

not these legs

only this year did she begin to feel old

wishing she could move rocks like she used to

pondering the boulder from her stomach

sometimes she plays the piano

and cries

the ivory battered

striking her fingers

talking back

and i’ve listened

danced sang hummed along

one long song

the end not concrete

variations of the same story

she thinks this way

2nd Decade Retrospection

2010-07-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

I remember my mint-condition soul,

the color of dinosaur skin

(I miss my foreskin).

Ever since sin tarnished my semigloss

complexion I've been

so sensitive.

And my sense of inner goodness

is loose.

If not for a few well-placed rainy days

and a hyper-extended guilt receptor,

I would have forgot my mother.

Lost on a cloud, lounging

nine lives from

holy or wholesome,

I intend to wash my hands of these moments

since I've been my name.

Peripheral

2010-06-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

Marlene wasn’t concerned with any one but me.
She always preached to the back wall of the room,
switching her gaze from the windows to the tops of our heads.
But she was an excellent speaker.

And she started to solve all of our problems.

This was the fourth time Jeffery had been here,
he is very over weight
and his tiny sickly wife hasn't engaged in any form
of sexual activity with him
in over ten years.
He cries all the time.

Charlene’s daughter was murdered.
There’s something not alright in her head,
they think, sometimes I think, sometimes she does.
They are trying.
She wants to move away from her negligent husband.

Terry listens to the goals we set.
Terry gets upset when
my mental self esteem
becomes visible on the outside.

Terry has white hair, Marlene is tougher.
Marlene is a hardcore recovering alcoholic;
25 years sober.

Missy is very pretty.
When you stare at the sun and close your eyes;
you’ll see the color of her thick curly hair.
She’s heavy, on crutches (due to her amputated leg),
has two little kids, an affair, a husband in the military,
and a suicide attempt.
She’s incredibly kind.

Molly is nineteen and her mother died last August of cancer.
They were very close. She has two older sisters. She has brown hair, brown eyes and a round face. She drank too much after the death. Whenever she talks
she says “situational.” She has really bad panic attacks
that scare some of us. She’s always had them and some kind of depression, cutting and such. She’s very caring. And she’s very oblivious.

Rhonda is frail, bony, thin, toad like.
She speaks softly. She smokes.
She quit drinking,
she kicked her husband out of the house
and bought his bus ticket to California.
He’s still a drunk.
She doesn’t have any lips
and her hair is thin, short and caramel grey.

Robert has a deep, resounding african american voice.
He’s horribly depressed, but still somehow demands your
respect with his presence.
He has five children, he has been a good father,
they are grown and love him.
He has depression. He’s in a lot of pain.

And we just kind of come and go based on insurance companies.

Hoan

2010-06-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

Strangers

2010-06-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Nothing gentle about it

Some assholes

Piercing the witching hour

One fatal fall below my window

I listen up once they leave

The land

Silent out to the freeway whispers

An accident may be

What I'm asking for

As I watch secrets hover

Beaming through the dark

Swelling and dropping

Off the face

Of a rearview mirror

up_date

2010-06-11T14:40:00.001-07:00

http://imthatalso.blogspot.com/

Aftermath

2010-06-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

I am unsure
Everything has changed.
If you question my response to the current,
So do I.

Is this transition, or is it the aftermath?

I follow;
a fact I have been disregarding for years.

I attempt

but I don't know how hard I try.

I listen to a silent heart break.

I hear things

but I can't recognize them.

Regardless of my desperate search
for a truth in love,

I have my family, whom I take for granted. They are love, surely.

But how many people is enough?
How many loves is enough?
How many different kinds of love are enough?

And why are there variations?

Oh I don't know,
and if everyone in this selfish 'generation'

claims

their own
then we have some new, refreshing , terrifying breakthrough.

The First Summer

2010-06-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

It’s hard.

Yes, I know,
Thank you
Sir.

Anyone else outside of ourselves
climb and wind
up smooth stone
magically

reaching another platform.

No solidity.

I was brushing into
"in love"
Again.

But aren’t we all
just a little silly.

Having our glitches, our obsessions,
our failures and our families.

I can only speak for myself,
In this time
especially.

We communicate,
but we all misinterpret.

Perhaps thats love,
an end to miscommunication.

Oh I have no idea.

I would have called it defeat
in months before,
in years;

the absence of understanding.

I’m beginning to lean,
without belief or intuition or logic,

tipping into an explanation
that has no explanation.

Injury

2010-05-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

I can only see you in full color
your fat assed syllables dying
in the straight faced air
with the wild aromas

gin and peppermint

chapped lips
in the rearview mirror

robbing the world
of its daydream

perverted memories
of beatified cold sores

heavy
and too soon

they yield

to my ankles

crooked and hung
meaty out the back door

Later I know

the minature borders
drawn deep into the femur

a fractured continent

lit

Dick Cheney or Chuck Chaplin

2010-05-17T00:21:00.000-07:00

At some point last Tuesday
Kris returned from the Dead

then two days later
went back.

He stuck around long enough to recall his former area code
to push the buttons, talk into the receiver
and leave a message on his home machine
announcing the finalists for Halloween 2012.

There was also something
about a check for last month's rent

an apology
and promise

legitimized with the news
of a Subway around the corner

interviewing applicants
for part-time positions
for third and second shifts
for the summer or forever

New Work

2010-05-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Wallet

Storefront

Study for Storefront

Landscape

Photo for Landscape

Eyes on the Street

2010-05-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

This is the proposal for a permanent public project I am working on this summer at College Court, which is an apartment complex for the elderly run by the Milwaukee Housing Authority. Any feedback/criticism you guys might have would be great, as the piece is subject to change from the proposal as I begin constructing the benches.

Eyes on the Street
a proposal by James Pederson

Introduction: A book by urban theorist Jane Jacobs entitled The Death and Life of Great American Cities, discusses the idea of “stoop sitting” and how it insures that there are always “eyes on the street”. This phenomenon is a critical component of the self-regulating urban street. According to Jacobs, when people spend significant amounts of time sitting on the stoops or in the front yards of their buildings, they not only enhance the sense of human presence and community in a neighborhood, but also insure that attention is paid to the conditions and activities of the neighborhood streets and sidewalks. These vital conduits between the various residential and commercial buildings and the people who occupy them make up a neighborhood. The benefits of this can include better awareness of the need for street repair, crime deterrence, and an overall awareness of changes and developments within a community.

Concept Statement: In talking with Bill Goodrum, I was very interested when I was told about how much time residents spend sitting outside the front entrance on lawn chairs watching the neighborhood during the warmer months. Bill described how there is space in the back area of College Court, yet most residents seem to prefer the front specifically. He also mentioned that even during the colder months many people like to sit by the windows and just watch what is going on outside. It seemed to me that there must be something about observing the activities of the neighborhood surrounding College Court that interested the residents.

In light of what Jacobs has to say, I see the residents who spend time sitting out front as doing something much more than simply passing the time. They are keeping an eye on things; and it is happening naturally without the need for some sort of organized effort. I truly believe this has a real social value. It seems fitting then, that it would be useful to the residents for me to create something that would facilitate the activity of street-watching more substantially than the lawn chairs they currently use. Additionally, I wanted something that would create a relationship between the street and the residents who are seated and watching it. It is also my hope that the
benches will catch the interest of passers-by, and they might take note of the residents sitting outside, as well as College Court and its presence in the community as well.

I am proposing to build three benches designed to to be placed underneath the awning adjacent to the main entrance, in the spot which usually has the plastic lawn chairs. Each bench will respond to the Highland Boulevard street-scape which it is facing by depicting a mirrored-image of what occupants of the benches would be seeing across the street. This will be accomplished through a combination of sculptural relief and painting directly on the bench. Each of the nine buildings across the street will be recreated as a sculpture/armrest, and the space in between each building will be depicted in paintings on the backs of each chair.

Front View

Side View

Installation View

2010-05-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

we are not what we were.

Nightmares

2010-05-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

I’m too serious of a lier

to be taken seriously.

I don’t understand,

and that’s a confession.

My ideas are almost

almost always

about love.

Burn your tongue,

you don’t even know what that means.

Child, she wishes under her breath

to a portrait.

She sees someone unfamiliar;

A catapulted story

sent over a bridge that’s

loosing it’s sacred foundations.

I dream about burnt nun’s

resulted from a war.

I am identifying bodies.

They are all so small

and still dressed in ashy nightgowns.

The smell is repulsive.

And the sight is

honest;

In all it’s disgusting truth.

Stages

2010-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

I have no idea if I will be blamed for this.

My mother died last August, two weeks before my 19th birthday.

Does that have anything to do with it, nothing at all,

Or does that hold everything.

I have become

I don’t want to discuss that.

I don’t write often enough anymore.

I have nothing to write about.

They would disagree.

How could a community, a You, have a response to these

personal statements.

Is it weak writing?

What is weakness?

Is it breaking up with your girlfriend

or boyfriend or lying to your parents,

who you love or is it failing at your dreams

or is it not getting

just what you expected, what you craved.

Craving, desire,

tell me it is not selfish, tell me it is survival.

I am as confused as I have ever been,

trapped in a very short spiral

that ends in

found this on the internet

2010-04-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

Good Riddance, My Friend

2010-04-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

It's raining like the dickens outside

It is enough to make me cry like that

time, well, I guess all the times,

you kept your boob brain

in a jar

And it was scary,

The lightening was disney and where is walt?

And it is scary,

The lightening is realer than it ever has been

I'm worried about my windows,

Should they be crying like this?

Oh Dear Gog,

I meant you, Dear God,

my mouth is full of spit and tears dear god,

Is this what you meant dear god by suffuring dear gog?

It is okay dear god, I'm getting over the rain now dear god,

It is now background noise dear god,

How long did it take for you to get used to it

Dear God?

Amen

I've been thinking,

I have been thinking,

when I finish the book you gave me,

I know I'll throw it in the gutter,

and you might just find it

while you smoke on my stoop

I'll be watching,

In my midnight stupor

while you raise your right hand

taking an oath of tweedle dee

tweedle dum,

then next weekend,

you will someday surrender your body

like you suck your thumb

like somebody's buoy bobbing gently

So now

I will write this God Damned paper

And God dammed it I will make this

college experience the best gog damned time

of my life

and then tonight

before bed

I will lay quite still

I breath in and exhale

little thoughts about tomorrow

and the next day

(Again, I'm sorry

I'm sorry, I'm sorry you can

have any exorbitantly priced luxury you choose

and disregard the cost

It is not my concern right now) and more rap lyrics

- not my own words

So a few days, weeks, months, years from now

Again, we drive to Wendy's

where again you'll only get fries

and I know you like that

because when I look at you

I am your dopey door knocker

I am your bent bristle brush

I am the last thing you breath on

before you shut your eyes

and sleep

sleep

a long sleep

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Frozen in Waiting

2010-04-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

Standing at the bus stop like stone guardians

Too cold to look up, too bored to shiver.

Resisting the urge to glance down the street, for

It will not change Time.

Parents' peers exit parking structures and,

Keenly aware that it is Friday Night,

Walk casually to bars and restaurants

Rarely paying attention to these grave keepers of the corner.

Hooded cement faces,

Absorbing all the mundane excitements

Doomed to a fate of waiting forever

Because it just went by like two minutes ago.

Nothing but time...

Now, who are these ladies with amazing legs?!

Invading the crosswalk and turning the head of at least one statue

They march briskly in heels and

Shiver at the stronghold door

Until some boyfriend lets them in.

Unfinished thought

2010-04-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

I can’t get over the lies

they run now

in my river as salmon,

against my natural stream.

But I’m just a river lying to the ocean.

And I will come clean with salt ridden wounds

eventually.

Not today.

Today I sell bouquets on the curb,

presenting blue, red, lavender, pink

in plastic buckets.

I count, I choose, I pick, I occasionally

dare to be indifferent.

But they sit.

Please buy.

The cost is still in question.

What are they worth?

What are you worth?

The sun is behaving

behind clouds,

I take a seat on

an overturned bucket.

Suddenly realizing

these silly plants I have for sale

are my soul.

Are in my veins and my arteries,

pumping vital green juice back to my

contradiction heart.

I tell my customers

Drink them, drown in them or simply say

“No Thank you, Miss.”

I will always ask why

but the passer

will only wonder

what kind of saleswoman asks so many damn questions.

At this point, I often step away,

allowing for theft.

Just to leave them,myself, unattended.

Except from Heaven #1

2010-03-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

a blackbox recorder
would've remembered us better

I see

the chewed off head
of a babysitter

the stars and the stripes

and our laughter
struck across the neighborhood

***
During the Lord's Prayer
Irene would take smoke breaks

Grace and I stood alone
in the quiet of the rectory

watching crows
fly into the glass

****

The Street

2010-03-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

The Un-Vacation Times

2010-03-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

O’, the good God, he has been having those

dreams again: all Technicolor and gold.

“Her hardest hue to hold,” he did suppose,

which was true, as it turns out, and he knows

now for certain: hurting like the sick dog.

All those dreams again: gold and Technicolor.

The dreams: fraught with girl ass, which is hard like

Zeus’s one true living ass: marble rock.

It is this only, never anything else.

So you see why the dreams weigh down his cock?

O’, but someday he will make a great splash.

Someday they will make movies to explain.

Yes, we all know that piss can’t warm a bed,

but on those cold nights thoughts get to his head.

The Post Life Times

2010-03-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

‘Só ready to die’: everyone says that.

For instance, take in, a look, around you:

‘I’m a psychedelic nuisance; I’m fat;

I’m got no pussy; I’m got eat by rat.’

Too much: heaven would never stand for such.

For example, just take in all the looks.

And so it is that he wonders about

these things: to die and be dead forever.

Eternal recreation feels like: lack

luster; basically, it’s just whatever.

And we are now climaxing to the point,

right on time for a late-life conversion:

Hallelujah and holy, holy shit,

things get heavy babe, be ready for it.

I'm going to miss the trees that don't have leaves.

2010-03-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

To write freely

of course

without shame.

6 o’clock in march.

growing wings...

dropping bombs...

accepting defeat...

realizing there is no such thing.

Risk. Fear. Risk. Fear.

Black against grey

or was it black against white.

Against, that is ridiculous.

Clarity, void of battle and petty games,

that love stems and

lasts

for a moonlight.

But by noon I just

taste a memory.

And when was memory

anything more or less

than imagination.

This must be where trust

becomes the truth.

Or fails.

Some More Joey Boi

2010-03-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

8
Oh Radiant Owie!
Broiling owtward w/
Molten ow vestments and
Halo ow burns Joey-shaped
Hole in futon ow ow “Poor
Joey!” Mourns the dove he says
“Ahhhhh SHOO if you can’t
Love me”

14
Da Joey Boi dreams clouds
Like creamy midriffs and
Lets loose his pearls sigh
Into again blink-blink 3 AM
Perverted Wilderness.
“Nodda pup nodda hound just
A God-damned dawg.”
Good night, Joey Boi.

18
Joey Boi kissed a hundred
Clammed-up Katies
Who claim
To not remember.
Now
A few go blush-blush,
Confess
We do recall
But we regret
Joey does some
Quick math:
His lips were chapped
About half
The times

I-94

2010-02-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

This was a video installation I did last semester. The video in the center is just a view out of the front window of a car going east down I-94, and the two videos on the sides are the right and left passenger windows of a car traveling east down Wisconsin Ave. The Wisconsin Ave videos are sped up so that they run for the same amount of time as the freeway video. They start and stop frequently at traffic lights, while the car on the freeway runs at a consistent speed.

I hold that a sense of place is critically affected by the particular vantage point from which we view the place. The same can be said for the way we perceive changes in our surroundings as we move through space.
It follows then, that changes in the ways we move through space also change the way we perceive the places we travel through. The changes that have been brought on by the development of the Interstate Highway System traversing our landscape are physically apparent; it is no coincidence that the expansion of metropolitan areas has paralleled the expansion of highways and expressways across the country. Widespread usage of highways has also changed the way we understand the dynamics of metropolitan areas. Expressway commuters often lose awareness of the places they travel through, not only because of faster travel times, but also because expressways are generally either elevated or shrouded by a buffer of trees or a noise-barrier wall. Travelers cannot fully experience the diverse locations they are passing through; instead they experience the monotony of eight-lanes of traffic and endless exit ramps. It is a very peculiar vantage point from which travelers' ability to observe changes in the landscape is greatly diminished. As a result, commuters who use expressways on a daily basis can lose their understanding of relationships between the places they travel to and from, and the space they travel through to get there.
I do not mean to suggest that we should abandon the use of expressways, but rather that we become aware of how they have changed our understanding of our surroundings.

wishing stones

2010-02-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

I can feel my body

throwing sparkly stones

into blue wavy water.

I bend at the waist

and place my hands around

a daydream, heave that rock

into the waves.

I was longing first, I'm sure,

and I'll be longing last.

I was the one who walked

down a sidewalk

convinced it had turned into

a yellow brick road.

Could you please remain,

despite my foolish collection

of wishing stones,

piled high and towering over us both.

It was my fault.

My skin may change from red to blue to black

and back again,

but promise you won't notice

these phases.

Cling to your ideal

and wield it into a kind of love.

You would tell me to stop it,

but it's in my nature to keep going.

It's quiet here, on a simple shore

where I am keeping company

with silent horizons

and the rocks in my hands.

I would walk into the water

and let them weigh me down,

finally sinking to a floor

where the only friends

I would find are dreams I tossed.

Nothing but hope separates them

from the surrounding stone.

It's not lonely here, but I miss you.

I'm letting my ankles get wet and muddy.

And I'm trying to throw all those

idilic plots and plans

back into the sea.

It's hard to both wish when you throw

and let go when the stone disappears.

I'm watching them splash and sink.

Hard as it may be to watch them drown,

I know it's either them or us.

Awwww Man

2010-02-17T10:32:00.001-08:00

Fragment of Joey Boi

2010-02-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

Q: Why is da Joey Boi stupid?
A: Drunk with
Eternal Hope Fueled By
The Last Episode Of Every Sitcom He’s
Ever Seen Joey Boi Has A Stupid Dream
And When He Wakes Up He Breaks His Jaw
Against His Jaw Biting Down On The Long
Sweet End

Clothing

2010-02-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

She doesn’t know what happened,

He was here one second

now he’s

Orange, highlighter pink

down his arms, across his chest.

Child,

she yells.

Boy,

she screams.

To understand her proportion

to his relative sadness

she swallowed a potion.

And he decided

while she was guzzling

liquid, that none of it mattered.

How could she compete with indifference?

She wondered what it would take.

She couldn’t handle

this new improved

kind of deception.

He chokes

so she swallows for him too.

She couldn't make it up

and take in his half

at the same time.

She couldn't dance

to things he wouldn't play.

She couldn't

and that was enough.

So she placed the glass

on the granite counter,

and dressed herself.

coda

2010-02-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

the laughter of children
on black box recorders

at Six Flags
Great America

you can fake it

over and over

Again

New Painting

2010-02-09T21:12:00.001-08:00

Installing Arms in the Snow

2010-02-08T16:09:00.001-08:00

what do you think?

Weight

2010-02-08T14:46:00.001-08:00

Dethrone yourself

pick up your wooden arms,

let your wrists snap like twigs

and take it off.

Dethrone yourself.

Let your fingernails

scratch at golden paint

you rubbed under your florescent eyes.

Let yourself become unwanted, unneeded.

Dethrone yourself.

Remove the responsibility of respect.

Take that heavy set off your head,

dethrone yourself.

It will be lighter.

Castles

2010-02-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

I anticipate

bright red eyes

in the black

but they don’t come

unless seduced. Cautiously taunted.

I watch them arrive

like servants. And their support

makes me an unfortunate queen

whose own power

is stolen by some reflection

in the nighttime

that can barely be seen.

She wraps herself in a paper crown

then metal, then silver, then gold.

She removes them all

and bows to the sun.

No competition between jewels

and light.

Defeat rings

and this is what it

She will say,

stuck in her tower,

of her own making,

let me down

and perhaps

we can climb through that thistle and thorn

You a modest king

and myself, simply a maid.

Advocation for the City of Milwaukee

2010-02-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

I wrote this essay for a class I had last semester, and I think I want to keep refining it. I've really become interested in the idea of essay-writing, especially essays which interject personal accounts, or perhaps fictional elements to help reinforce their factual points. Let me know what you think...

Advocation for the City of Milwaukee

Walking back from work late one night, I come up the alley on my block and up the back steps of my home to find my father sitting on the stoop reading the headlines of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The standard “what's news” chat we often engage in segues into slightly more serious conversation. “Did you see this?” My father says pointing at an editorial in the paper entitled “Careening Down the Road to Civic Suicide”. I look over his shoulder to skim the the first few lines of the article.
We're running out of gas, folks. As city and county officials finish their budget deliberations in the days ahead, Milwaukee is poised to take a historic step backward in its pursuit of the common good. Previous budgets have sliced away fat and cut into muscle. This year's versions go all the way to bone. (Gurda, “Civic Suicide” 1)
“You know, they're not even close to paying off the cost of snow removal and salting the roads from last winter.” my father adds. I thought back to last winter when they didn't even attempt to plow many of the city's side streets unless it was absolutely impossible to drive in, simply letting the weight of passing cars pack inches of snow down on the road.
My father is a Captain on the Milwaukee Fire Department and often catches wind of news of the city's government from friends who are city employees before it appears in the paper. “Our department is probably taking budget cuts too” he adds. He does not have to remind me that this is a red flag for serious trouble; he has often explained to me that budget and wage cuts for public safety officials are basically unheard of unless things really get bad. He shows me where the article reports that for the Fire and Police Departments, the mayor proposes “cuts of 5% and 6% in their respective budgets. Nearly all city workers would be subject to both a wage freeze and unpaid furloughs, and all city taxpayers would face a 4.4% increase in property tax bills and higher fees for sewer, garbage and water service.”
The article prompts a discussion about more general problems in the city. My father begins to relate experiences he had while being stationed at firehouses in blighted inner-city neighborhoods. I do not take his thoughts on the nearly insufferable crime and poverty rates these neighborhoods deal with lightly. The list of challenges facing Milwaukee included in our discussion goes on: a failing public school system, declining public services, and the overall inability for Milwaukee's leaders to come together and bring about progress. All of this amounts to unsettling suggestions about Milwaukee's future.
“Milwaukee is on the fast-track to becoming another Detroit.” says my father. As unfair as it might be to the people of the City of Detroit, it has become the embodiment of declining quality of urban life and the diminished viability of the American city. To have the city I call home labeled as some kind of degenerate felt akin to a personal attack. I knew that prospects for the city hadn't always seemed so hopeless, and I wanted to know what had changed so drastically.

In 1904, many of Milwaukee's voters had become fed up with the sloth and corruption that had plagued the politics of the city's Republican and Democratic leaders, and elected members of a growing Socialist party in Milwaukee to 9 of the 46 seats on the Common Council and a few other minor offices in municipal government. They quickly gained a sterling reputation amongst their constituents for their honesty and unwavering commitment to civil service. In 1910, largely because of popular support and assistance in their campaign, Milwaukee's Socialists were elected to 21 out of 35 seats on the Common Council and Alderman Emil Seidel was elected the city's first Socialist Mayor, along with Socialists Charles B. Whitnall and Daniel Hoan as City Treasurer and City Attorney. The fact that voters chose to elect Socialists for the majority of municipal offices didn't indicate that the populace was made up of hard-lined Marxists. They elected them on the basis of their ability to produce results; for their honesty and pragmatic commitment to increasing the general quality of life for Milwaukee's citizens in the most efficient manner possible. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 214)
The Socialists quickly went to work improving the quality of life for Milwaukee's large class of laborers. Minimum wage was raised and an eight-hour day became the standard for all city employees. Health Department inspections of industrial complexes, processing plants and schools were expanded. A city quarry to provide building materials for public works projects, and the municipal street-lighting system were established. The Milwaukee Vocational School was established to provide workers with the chance to gain valuable job skills and thus better paying jobs. City Attorney Dan Hoan worked to improve the transit system, which was monopolized by the privately owned Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company, by waging legal battles against their tendency to skirt their obligations to maintain streetcar tracks and pay licensing fees. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 214-215)
The Seidel administration balanced its expanded program of city services and publicly-owned enterprise with a commitment to meticulous fiscal responsibility and efficiency in the mechanics of municipal government. The city's budget items were scrutinized to eliminate any waste, and department budgets were precisely allocated to prevent overspending. City property was carefully inventoried. No measure was considered too small to take if it could save the taxpayers money. During efforts to improve voting procedures, Seidel's administration went over the polling lists and removed enough dead voters' names to save $500 in printing costs. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 215)
We wanted our workers to have pure air; we wanted them to have sunshine; we wanted planned homes; we wanted living wages; we wanted recreation for young and old; we wanted vocational education; we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness.
And, we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that: playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all. That was our Milwaukee Social Democratic movement. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 215)
City Attorney Daniel Hoan was elected Mayor in 1916, and summed up his approach to municipal government by saying: “The objective is to give the best government possible, and, though not necessarily at a low tax rate, at the lowest cost that can be paid.” Hoan maintained and elevated the financial prudence of his predecessor Emil Seidel, and put the city's departments on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. As an astounding result, he was able to eliminate the city's entire public debt. At the same time, the city was able to fund innovations in public services; in 1925 the city's first sewage processing plant was established, improving water quality and, as a result, public health. The plant converted treated sewage into a unique fertilizer called “Milorganite” which was sold to the general public and the profits increased city revenue without increasing taxes. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 260)
Hoan made vast improvements to the lake front, creating both a modern port for the shipping industry and public access to the lake front with the development of public beaches and parkways along the shoreline. The nation's first municipally owned housing project was established in Milwaukee to ease the post-World War I housing shortage for working-class families. City planning was improved with the introduction of zoning regulations. The Health Department established neighborhood-based vaccination programs which extended the life expectancy of residents. The park system was vastly expanded from being meager and inadequate to one of the best in the nation, featuring as much public green-space per square-mile as nearly any city in America. Even during the Great Depression, Hoan was determined to preserve the strength of municipal government, saying: “A business may quit- your city can't.” During the 1930's Milwaukee was awarded over 12 first place awards for public health, fire prevention, and traffic safety. Mayor Hoan was pictured on the cover of Time magazine in 1936, which touted him as “one of the nation's ablest public servants” and said that “under him Milwaukee has become perhaps the best-governed city in the U.S.” (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 302)
I do not mean to paint the Milwaukee of yesterday as a Utopian city. A closer examination of Milwaukee's history during its Socialist administrations reveals that problems and challenges were plentiful, not unlike today. Milwaukee's Socialists had to be engaged in a constant struggle to improve and maintain those things that were essential to quality urban living. “If you take a longer view, if you try to put the current crisis in its historical context,” says Milwaukee historian John Gurda “some facts are painfully apparent. Milwaukee has never been a wealthy community. Blue-collar workers dominated its population for well over a century, but those workers demanded a level of services consistent with their idea of the good life: plentiful public parks, nearby public libraries, solid public schools and a sound public infrastructure.” (“Civic Suicide” 1) There is no doubt in my mind that holding these services as high priorities were essential factors in understanding how Milwaukee functioned so well as a city back then. Even more crucial however, was the level of commitment to civic responsibility shown both by the city's leaders and its residents. What set Milwaukee's Socialists apart was that they were simply good, honest people who were intensely devoted to the idea of being true public servants. I cannot help but wonder if that same quality of character extended to Milwaukee's citizens. Citizens had to be deeply engaged in political and social issues at the local level to confidently elect third-party candidates to municipal offices. It is likely that this type of engagement in addressing the challenges of the urban condition, on both the part of citizens and elected officials, is lacking in contemporary politics in Milwaukee.

III

Despite the fact that he has lived in Milwaukee since moving out on his own at the age of 18, my father would hesitate to say that he is attracted to the qualities of urban life itself. He grew up in a semi-rural town just outside the Milwaukee metropolitan area, and says that he is more attracted to the sense of independence and freedom that comes with the territory of living in a place where the population is more spread out. My father was attracted to the idea of becoming a firefighter because he wanted to help people, and he chose the Milwaukee Fire Department in particular because the need for firefighting is greater in an urban area. I find it interesting that his attitude reflects the way that I suspect most urbanites feel about cities. Despite the fact that urban areas have always had great challenges to overcome, an attraction to the vivacity of cities, whether it lies in greater opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship, or entertainment and cultural attractions, seems to drive them to accept the challenges and shortcomings of city life.
Truly loving a city, like loving another person, is an incredible amount of work. In most cases, growing attached and committed to a city is probably not something that can be rationalized in terms of investment versus output. Writer Nelson Algren's essay and prose-poem Chicago: City on the Make, echoes the mixed sentiments and feelings residents often have about their cities: “It isn't hard to love a city for its greater and lesser towers, its pleasant parks or its flashing ballet.” wrote Algren “Or for its broad and bending boulevards, where continuous headlights follow, one dark driver after the next, one swift car after another, all night, all night, all night. But you can never truly love it till you can love its alleys too.” (25) It seems strange, but maybe developing a certain level of intimacy with the more frustrating side of urban life is necessary to become genuinely attached to it. “Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies.” Algren continues “But never a lovely so real.” (23)

Since cities aren't easy to genuinely love, it follows that some people are not going to be able to fully commit to life in the city. Years ago this would have meant that they would have sacrificed the benefits of urban living in favor of rural or small-town life. The relatively recent development of suburbs has changed all that. Suburbs are designed to give residents the best of both worlds; close proximity to the city and other surrounding municipalities combined with personal automobiles and the interstate highway system gives suburbanites greater ease of access to what lies beyond the borders of the place they call home. At the same time, the place in which they reside is still considered an independent municipality, freeing them from ultimate political and social responsibility in dealing with the problems of the other areas which they are so connected with, particularly the central city.
“As recently as 1950, 72% of the metro area's residents lived in the city.” says Gurda “The comparable figure today is 39%. Suburbanization has created an enormous class of people who no longer feel a vested interest in the welfare of the city. The results are dwindling financial resources, diminished political clout and a splintering of the consensus that once underpinned our common wealth.” (“Civic Suicide” 2) This condition of the contemporary metropolitan landscape has sapped much of the strength out of American cities.
“America is an urban nation” wrote former Milwaukee Mayor Frank Ziedler in the opening lines of his political memoir A Liberal in City Government, “More people live in cities than in rural areas.” (1) In fact 84% of Americans live in a metropolitan area consisting of a city of 50,000 or more, plus surrounding suburbs which share close economic and social ties with the urban center. (Bradley, Katz 1) People who live in suburban areas might not consider themselves “urbanites” in the typical sense, and understandably so. It is important to note however, that since suburban communities are vitally connected, particularly economically, to their urban centers, the welfare of urban areas is really inseparable from the welfare of America as a whole.
Frank Ziedler, the last Socialist mayor to be elected in Milwaukee, dealt with the consequences of these changes throughout his mayoral career from 1948 to 1960.
Inside American cities subtle changes in living patterns were taking place that required changes in public plans and policies. One of the most important changes was the flight to the suburbs by middle-income people as well as upper-income people... This flight was prompted not only by the proliferation of the motor vehicle but by the hard-surfaced road and the electric power line. Many people found it more attractive to move to the open spaces of outlying areas than to live in the cities which had become so congested...
This outward movement left the lowest income families in the center of the cities. The population in the central cities therefore tended to be smaller and poorer. The core of the cities began to decay because many of the families could not pay enough for good shelter for themselves, nor could they supply the necessary purchasing power to keep the central business district thriving...
With the flight of many middle-income people... the more upscale merchants departed also... As if this were not bad enough for the tax base of the central city, industries also moved out to newly incorporated suburbs where taxes were lower...
An increase in prices and the demanded increase in public services brought a greater strain on the public treasury. These increases forced a rise in many types of taxes, but especially in property taxes, the mainstay of city government finances.(Ziedler 45)
All of this amounted to a city which faced greater and more numerous problems than ever before with less resources to fuel efforts to address these problems. The city also faced hostility from suburbanites, who, despite the fact that many of them had previously been life-long city residents, felt no empathy towards Milwaukee's dire situation.
Too often, suburbs would pick and choose which instances they wanted to be connected to the city, and which instances they would distance themselves from it based on what was most advantageous for them. In a letter to a suburban newspaper, the West Allis Star, Mayor Zeidler pleaded with residents and leaders of the community for “a yielding of 'sovereignty' to solve metropolitan problems” pointing out that metropolitan communities were not absolutely independent from one another. He cited the fact that “West Allis itself was dependent on Milwaukee for water and on the Sewerage Commission for sewer service.” (108) This picking-and-choosing on the part of the suburbs continued to define city-suburban relations. “Most galling was the suburbs' obvious desire for city resources, particularly water, and their equally transparent unwillingness to share responsibility for city problems, particularly those associated with poverty.” says Gurda. (“Milwaukee” 341) Mayor Zeidler focused a great deal of his efforts addressing the growing problem of overcrowding and structural decay in inner-city neighborhoods. Before the slums could be cleared and renovated however, he needed to provide alternative residencies for people living in these neighborhoods. His solution was to build low income housing on open land in the city's outer areas. This proposal was met with great hostility from the outlying suburbs who were nearby the proposed sites, even though it was questionable whether they should really have much of a say in a decision that takes place outside their municipalities' limits. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 342)
I don't mean to try and place all the blame for urban problems on suburban communities. I am more concerned with pointing out that the suburban tendency to create a lifestyle which attempts to select the perks of urban life without sharing the responsibility of its burdens won't work in the long-term. This misnomer not only impedes upon the quality of life for people living in the urban center, but will also catch up to the suburbs. The symbiotic relationship that cities and suburbs share means that what is poisonous to one will also spread to the other.

While driving east down North Avenue in the City of Wauwatosa, which borders the west side of Milwaukee, a co-worker of mine was recently involved in an car accident in which he was rear-ended by a car which failed to brake quickly enough while he was stopped at a red light. After being hit, the driver quickly backed away and sped around and ahead of him. A police officer coincidently pulled up behind him and checked to see if he was okay. “This happens a lot a few miles down the road, a lot of uninsured drivers on the streets once you get into Milwaukee” the officer explained “but it isn't uncommon over here either.” A few miles east down North Avenue takes you through the inner-city, which was the direction the driver sped away towards. My friend was surprised by the incident. Part of the reason he chose to live in Wauwatosa even though he attends classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is so he wouldn't have to deal with this sort of thing.
"The slums get their revenge, always somehow or other their retribution can be figured in any community." (Blanton 430) warned the Chicago poet Carl Sandburg. Problems in the inner-city and other urban areas are truly everybody's problems, not simply because of some sort of responsibility to insure social justice for our fellow human beings, but also because if these problems were left completely unchecked, they would only spread and grow, and no imaginary municipal boundary lines could completely contain them.
The City of West Allis, another city bordering Milwaukee's west side, which was mentioned earlier as one that during Zeidler's day seemed eager to distance itself from urban problems, has experienced a steady increase in crime since 1999 to 2007. In 2007, statistics show that the crime rate was actually slightly higher than the national average for US cities. (West Allis 1) A friend of my father, who is a West Allis police officer, mentioned to him that she had noticed the increase, and that much of it seemed to be concentrated around large apartment complexes that were developed as the population has grown. The city of West Allis, as well as other areas bordering large urban areas, will likely become more densely populated as the population of the metro area continues to sprawl out from its urban center. As it continues to become slightly more urbanized, it will likely begin to experience the same types of problems often associated with urban areas, problems which residents of the West Allis of Zeidler's day would have probably thought themselves immune.

In the metropolitan age, Milwaukee has in some ways moved away from what it was during its Socialist hey-day. While the Socialist era in Milwaukee stands as an example of the city's, and hopefully Greater Milwaukee's potential to unite under the pursuit of the common good, it cannot be viewed as a blueprint for renewing a larger sense of community in the Milwaukee area, simply because so much has changed since. Milwaukee's future is uncertain as we struggle to adapt to the new dynamics of metropolitan life, especially because the particular mechanics of those dynamics have yet to be fully understood.
Between the pseudo-Victorian trophy houses going up in Mequon and the aged duplexes coming down in the inner city, there yawns an all-but-unbridgeable gap in social status and economic well-being... Traditionalists might be inclined to view the recent changes as Milwaukee's death knell...
It is much to early for an urban obituary, and it will always be too early simply because change is the one inescapable fact of urban life. (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 440)
Even if looking to the successes of Milwaukee's past doesn't produce a cut-and-dry recipe for quality urban life which can be applied to Milwaukee's current situation, it can provide us with something even more essential: a timelessly valuable attitude of mutual responsibility and concern for our collective well-being. In order to ensure the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, this idea should always be at the heart of the decisions we make in creating our community, regardless of the particular concerns of the here-and-now. “Although it may seem imperiled in an age of shrinking government and endemic selfishness, that quality offers Milwaukee its best prospect for the future. Conflict will not cease and the way ahead will never be clear, but a sense of civic possibility endures.” (Gurda, “Milwaukee” 441)

In the morning, In the dark.

2010-02-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

I am perfectly assertive in my discomfort.

You as the bomb.

Induce me wolf.

Bright Black.

When I was kinder...

Funeral No. 12

2010-02-06T00:18:00.001-08:00

Now in the day I was pushed out into world suddenly and fully embracing this ever forewardness and nowness stuck between prediction and memory when far enough only black...

Almost Enough

2010-02-05T23:09:00.000-08:00

You don't have to tell me you love me

even if you do.

It's almost enough

It's enough

If dimes can be worth more than nickels

Then we can be worth more than friends

Even if we feel like less

It might be a matter of giving up,

it might be a matter of what I want

and what you need

I can't be biased

So I can't make sense

But I can almost see it all

Said Ben

2010-02-04T19:21:00.000-08:00

2010-02-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

work by bas jan ader

http://www.patrickpainter.com/editions/artists/Ader_BasJan/work-11.html

Vanishing Act

2010-02-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

http://vimeo.com/9109809

My friend Sebastian helped make this...Ya'll should check it out.

Face Value

2010-01-31T17:31:00.001-08:00

A Study

2010-01-31T16:17:00.000-08:00

I pace back and forth.

This doesn't belong to her anymore,

all of her things stopped

belonging to her.

Is that what it means?

When she curled up on the hospice bed

and decided enough.

Things stopped belonging to her.

So I sit on the sofa she read the paper on

and I take naps

in her bed

with her pillows

that don't belong to her anymore.

How not to make death a cliche?

It happens all the time.

In calculating this constant loss the world suffers

I decided it meant a few things,

your body goes useless and with it all your senses,

and your things become some else's.

That's all thats been collected

as clear cutting fact.

Where do we go?

And when will everyone realize

that we have to leave? We have to change.

It's the burden I notice now above all else,

stuck with my senses and frustrated at

my frustration with them.

I want to praise my eyes and my fingers

for there work

but with such inevitable losses

how do we keep from cursing what keeps us here.

It may sound pessimistic

but we have heard

we are all dying, since yesterday and the day before.

I only wish it made every moment precious

instead I find even my love stagnant,

waiting

when there is so little time.

So I pace forth

under life and love,

the impatience screams.

Taking a calm breath will

not crete grace,

not when

you are carrying

a loss that makes your shoulders weigh uneven

with gratefulness

and absolute despair.

Such imbalance, and contradiction. It touches everything.

After studying death

I have no conclusion.

Sketch of a Plane Crash

2010-01-27T18:40:00.001-08:00

milwaukee parks

2010-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

She is a tree branch in the night

hanging with the stars

afraid to become fluorescent.

She cowers

against her trunk

but she is no coward;

every moment

her reach extends

and what she finds, past the centimeter of despair

is simply

beauty.

She grows on, steady.

Beauty, more.

And now she is glowing,

black against blue,
light had changed color.

And she is.

belonging

2010-01-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

She said I miss you. He said be quiet.

So she was.

And then

They didn’t mean to draw lines.

He tiptoed on it like a draw bridge

despite her

exhausted swear,

This was a solid structure.

It was the line she twisted around her waist,

and it’s tight pull was a comfort

learned.

Beauty in it’s immobile strength.

She was nothing more than a root.

And he walked precariously on her.

His leafy tendencies,

to fall and sway, to quiver and stay calm would explain

his turning green and orange and brown again and again.

As she lay stuck in the ground,

surrounded in meaningful dirt,

her extended branches feel his potential.

Spring will come but he will find

Some form of removal,

an excuse on justified repeat.

“But this is a tree!” she would scream,

She craved a line they could climb; she was

heaving them up and wrapping his palms around bare winter branches.

Tie a line to her and they may swing into a river come summer.

She grabs her waist, retracing a bone, her bark.

When the wind picks up, her rooted body

will remain.

But she knew seasons;

When the wind begins

his leaves will drop.

She owns nothing but what grows,

and as he falls to grass

she realizes the impermanence of

natural belonging.

Biemann Manor

2010-01-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

New PANNNINGG.

2010-01-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

New Boyscouts Record

2010-01-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

click ^

it's for you

2010-01-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

I tried in too many ways

which crossed over one another as unsuccessful freeways,

leaving the cars

we didn’t know how to control

wrapped and ruined

around a telephone pole.

That was the end of phone conversations.

People die, after all, in several ways.

And I've managed to witness them.

I intended to be graceful,

with loss, with love

but look at me

wrapped thoroughly

around anything I can imagine.

Bent and jutting.

This is not grace.

Thanksgiving

2010-01-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

Slivers of white meat

stick to the windows of my Uncle's glasses.

The Knife

as seen on T.V.

runs on AA batteries

and is based off the design

of actual chainsaws.

I hear my mom laughing in a far off room.

"He's way to smart to smoke," she says.

The right leg makes a slurping noise

as my uncle wrenches it from the animals body

and it's about here where my youngest cousin enters

screaming through the kitchen door.

He's swapped his glasses for a pair of swimming goggles

and tied his old socks around his neck.

Like a noose, I think

before telling myself to cut it out.

Suddenly he stops

and turns to us.

"Look at my scarf," he tells us.

Eulogy

2009-12-30T00:25:00.000-08:00

She's the reason him and I took the long way home from school

and I wish I had some better way to show this

now that we all choke amongst scholars.

Maybe some way to say her without using that word

which is dirtier than all words as it carries a vulgarity

inspired by its own semantic decay:

A cup of water in July. A picture of rocks on a beach

or more recently: the last rat of summer

flattened like bloody dough beat

into the pavement.

Suffice to say: I am not kidding when I speak of a time

in which I had aesthetic problems with the concept of the modern Umbrella

but because of Her and High School and Rain and...

ceramics final

2009-12-23T21:04:00.000-08:00

Approximately 16"

coil built, stenciled, slip glaze

HAH!

2009-12-22T01:09:00.000-08:00

Everything is slippery except slipperiness,

but to say that is probably just indulging the stupidest part of the universe

Maybe a truck will come along and stop me

and say hello

and say hello do you need a ride? and I could say anything really at that point

but I would probably say no

because that would be the most real truck to

nowhere

To be accurate

I am joy incarnate

and also a couple of other things

yep

Nah On High

2009-12-22T00:48:00.000-08:00

Is leopard print punk transcendence?

Am I just short of being an angry victim?

May I write the shape of alphabets

domestic and non on your skin...?

From Far, and Hills, and Mountains, and Farther, and Farther Than That, and Valleys and Smokey White City Gleam and Steam, and Now, and Then, Whenever and All Shuddering Westward Riding the Jet stream, Drawn by noise, Force and All.

I was answered

Resounding

Nah oh high.

Up so late all the time these days...

2009-12-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

Ive been working at the opposite of meditation for 5 days now

hoping to slip in to a field or stream of consciousness

delivered simply by the mercy of the universe and strictly on merit of persistence

I don’t think I’ve ever yawned so many times alone

Now, this is not a cry, no

now this is something bad

now this is something not worth speaking of, no

now this is something worse

now this is building steam, no

now it is time to move or more likely wish you had moved

now my tiredness has a vigor of its own, a tenure for as long as it sees fit to stay, no

now I wish I had gone, or wish I was going

now I am gone nope nope nope, no

now impossibility meets at the point of function and leisure

and its infuriating

brilliant light, and probability swoons at its

feet, red and full

New Work

2009-12-17T23:33:00.000-08:00

Shitty shots but oh well

"Here and Now, Now I am Here"
"I Don't Believe You"

Installations Final

2009-12-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

Machine and Hand Sewn, Hand Dyed Fabric, Stuffed with Polyfill

Through it All

2009-12-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

Finality

2009-12-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

I draw a blank now

with nothing to say

most often.

I told you I wonder.

We said a lot of

with charm

and coincidences.

None of that.

I might

not recall

the way I recall you

but in order

I remind myself

you were

young.

And I will know

that I barely knew how young I was, now.

Is everything still valid,

or was it written in chalk

somewhere we did not intend rain.

A situation.

As I watched myself

sit down to you

or stand against him

or lay beside another one,

I came to a

compromise with my nature;

If you were asking me to leave

then I was going away.

If our heads collided

in a different place

it would still only be a collision.

It wasn’t too important I see;

I just saw it pass

a little later than you.

That situation.

The Best

2009-12-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

I made a Blog

2009-12-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

Its called "Both Hands"

http://bothhandskj.blogspot.com/

Just this

2009-12-02T16:56:00.000-08:00

Technology of the Gods

2009-12-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

The psychic parrots
won’t stop staring at me.
This world is a mousetrap,
it’s best to keep moving.

See how I’m moving?
See how I crouch,
weep into a small tape recorder.

My recordings of clattering forests.
My recordings of laughter from backstage.

Then I light a pipe on burial grounds
before ducking into the rain,
parting the group of yawning trainees.

“No one understands,”
I tell my wife
as she begins to serve
a rippling meal!

My recordings of lost bus drivers.
My recordings of a kiss on the balcony.
There are trapdoors on Earth.

I bury a little feather
while Angels die and are born,
twirling overhead.

(beginning of a short story..)

2009-11-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

At the corner

on the end of the block

there is a large white house.

We took our belongings

and placed them inside.

We put the bedroom furniture

in the living room

so none of us would ever sleep alone.

We made the kitchen into a greenhouse

and the closets into personal spaces.

We lost most of our things

in rough natural disasters

but we had windows

and extra beds

so everything was alright enough.

We moved here two years

after the really big fight.

I thought we might each find

someone else

But we ended by staying

in this big house together.

Our previous disagreements

seemed rather insignificant

in the very bad weather.

We all had to come inside and dry off.

And it was reason enough

to let the past out into an open backyard.

It took two years

but we decided it was best

to live together again.

2009-11-19T20:40:00.000-08:00

New Art School Stufff

2009-11-19T19:53:00.000-08:00

-"Small Note 12"

-"Small Note 3"

"Something About an Elegy"

the forest

2009-11-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

She chased them into the corner,

growing wheat hid her lower legs

which were barefoot

and on tiptoe, ready to move.

Between a hard corner

of wooden fence,

she had them trapped.

The wild things were ravenous.

They growled for her,

to enable, to consent.

Glared with seductive eyes.

Behind this pasture,

surrounding

the farmhouse,

lining the fences,

were woods.

Thick and unpredictable.

This was the view.

These wild things

did not come from the view.

They came from her posture

and her imagination.

They were real.

And right now

she has them tense.

Her hair is down and

messy from the recent exploration.

She had fallen into a forest that

may have been forbidden.

The little cuts, the bruised knees

and sore body

had her curious.

She had found a river. She did not swim

but she took her clothes off and

let the water rise to her shoulders.

The newly stumbled into water

had redefined longing.

She leaves the home

when she pleases now.

But the woods are vaguely familiar,

she has been sleep walking in and out of them for years.

Perhaps awake

Whenever she leaves,

she has to come back.

She has to lighten her belongings

to walk farther out.

She also has to trick, tease, scratch and burry

the wild things.

They are what kept her at a window

watching beauty

rather than struggle with it,

rather than drink it, rather than touch it

and become.

Behind glass she would watch

the creatures roam through her fenced acre.

When she was young

they would come inside

and force other things

and stretch her body

or flatten it. Control it.

But she has brought things back from the woods and

they have caused.

So now she lunges forward, laughing.

They cower against the splintery corner.

She dances forward

with her toes in the mud.

Finding light is complicated

but she has it wrapped into her body, her mouth, her hands.

She moves, smiling, taunting,

wielding it to her desire.

Her quiet side wonders, along with tangled strands of hair

and a sore inner thigh

what this could be,

what it is.

Thinkers

2009-11-16T13:34:00.000-08:00

The rotting Buick Le Sabre
cowers in the uncut grass of my Uncle’s backyard.

My cousin hands over the rifle:

“I’m tired.” he says.

Through the scope, I can see beyond the fence

across the neighboring field to the curtain of the woods

I imagine a back road Christian cheerleading squad emerging—chanting:

Go Jesus! Go Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Go Jesus!

Something clicks behind me, and I can smell my cousin smoking.

“You’re like your dad,” he says.

I aim at the rust annexed 82' front plate--

"What do you mean?" I ask

“You’re both think--

Something to Remember, That I Usually Forget

2009-11-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

Walking on Rocks

2009-11-04T18:16:00.000-08:00

St. Joseph's Hospital

2009-11-02T12:25:00.000-08:00

When Uncle Steve and Oma

took us to St. Joseph’s to see Dad

they didn’t wear seatbelts. “Don’t you

know if we crashed you guys would die,” I said

and my sister told me to shut up.

Somehow it had snowed in the parking garage

and when my sister got out of the car she slipped

and hit her head. Oma picked her up and

took her into the lobby. Uncle Steve lit up a cigarette

and I asked him how old he was when

he started and he said 12.

There was a pretty hot nurse on the elevator

to the ward where dad was and after she got off

Uncle Steve said I was checking her out and that

made my sister laugh so I punched her in the arm and then

Uncle Steve told me to not feel bad because he was checking

her out too and then Oma grabbed my sister and me and started to

teach us how to pray us the Rosary.

Oma was mixing up the Glory-Bes with the Hail Marys

but I didn’t say a word because everything on the ward

was real quiet and I was scared that If I spoke too loud the

patients would wake up and get heart-attacks. A man with

yellow legs and green skin rolled by on a wheelchair and I

plugged my nose. Oma slapped my hand away and said:

“Germans only pick flowers.”

Mom was standing outside dad’s room with her

thumb in a copy of the Women’s Devotional Bible.

We ran up to her because we hadn’t seen her for a few days

and asked if we could see dad but my mom said we couldn’t

because he was sleeping. She gave Uncle Steve ten bucks and

told him to take us to the cafeteria to get sodas.

We started walking and Uncle Steve started telling us

the story about how he once tricked mom into eating

an Oreo filled with toothpaste. I had heard it before so

I turned my head around because I wanted to see if I could

catch a glimpse of Dad but Mom and Oma had already went

inside and the shades were drawn and all I could see were

shadows and the T.V flickering.

“There’s your girlfriend,” said Uncle Steve as he pointed to

the nurse who had been on the elevator before and I leaned forward

to give him a good fist to the nads but he picked me up and carried

me on his shoulders as my sister jumped at my legs and stuck her

tongue out all the way to the cafeteria.

Berries

2009-11-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

I heard when she followed

some path decided on

into the woods

berries jumped down her mouth

as frogs into a puddle

and they rolled down her little throat

into her wavy stomach.

These ripe red things

swished around her concave middle

in tornado spins. As she walked,

having decided on the movement, the entered

berries became barriers in her vine veins

and then grew in bundles wherever they happened to latch.

I heard she sat in the middle of bushes and tree stumps

slowly watching her knees

transform from bone to stem.

I heard she found it was easier to sway

and grow back this way.

She decided early the contradictory weather

was reason enough to walk,

but she did not realize her body

would have to become the decision.

Her arms leaves. Her eyes pollen.

Her stomach a clearing

surrounded in wood.

She became.

As a collection of bushes

she could die in the winter

and come back in the spring,

she could flourish in the summer

and be eaten,

she could provide nourishment in early fall.

She could change her colors naturally,

at ease with the yearly death

that made her beautiful.

And most importantly, when it did frost

and when it did snow

she could be dormant with the knowledge

she would grow back in Spring.

I don’t know where she entered,

what path, what kind of berries animate

themselves enough to jump off stems

and into a child’s throat.

Maybe she ate them; picked them

with curious hands and put them on her innocent tongue.

But I heard they came alive, plunged themselves into her mouth.

I heard they came alive. I heard she

was happy with the result,

proud to have allowed a little girl’s body

to be taken by roots

and swallowed by the ground.

Her knew self could sway in the contradictory wind

and she preferred the ability to bend.

Two Days Isn't Too Far Behind

2009-10-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

I eventually came to a reluctant conclusion-- I was two days behind. Two days behind? That means it's today! The thought was simultaneously accompanied by a fearful cringe that drip tripped down my arms and slid south like premature pudding, finding its home in the center of the ol' bread basket. Reality sandwiches me between a bed rock and a hard face so I peered at the dust encrusted clock radio. Two hours ago. Irritated, with being awake, I dropped back into fiery warmth. Even in my sleepy state, I can realize how absurd it is to place this much importance on something so insignificant. Right? The corners of the rectangle radio clock reflected brilliant intensity of mid-morning. Coursing Fall crashed into tired flood-shot retinas like Niagara and damned my soul like the devil. Hell, I thought time was circular.

NEW BLOG NEW WORK NEW BLOG BIG JOKE

2009-10-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

I'M THAT ALSO

On the Way to Antigo

2009-10-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Miller Time

2009-10-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

All I Can Say

2009-10-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

Sitting cross-legged in a cross-stitched basement
over relationship coffee
when somebody says
“chew on this, it tastes
like Childhood”
and I accept something sticky
from a puppet’s mouth

I sense
the opinion on flip-flops is not high here.
Is that a good enough reason
to wear them

The right tattoo
can make you appear as if you have something interesting
to say.
So I got one on the bottom of my big toe (seven stars)
as a greenhorn
and for a week I let the rain dress me
but even that seemed sterile
after the press conference.

Sooo
who here can knit?
Um
(Knitting is stupid)
can you knit me small hat?

My dad said “gay”
at a family party
in a dream
and I woke up and our city
had a good baseball team
and I encountered
a fiery wheel in the basement

warning me:
When you see the forked tongues of last year
you must resist drawing your knife
to slice them

and your golden bare body
is not to be trusted
tomorrow or ever

as it speaks of safaris in Texas with maidens
from Memphis in the wagon,
wiping eye gunk from my eye
reading a poem called “Monuments Pt. V”
or altering the course of man’s bowels.

It’s already busted.

In this moment I am picturing my ex-girlfriend
as a constellation.
In another moment a toad will hop over my foot.

Okay.

Next time the world ends, it won't be so bad

2009-10-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

Laughing is good

Smiling is ok

I woke up from a dream about how Mt. Dewmsday

looms way above eye level. And what can

you say?

I'm going to turn into a stoner and I'm going to die.

Not that I foresee either of these things actually happening.

In my dream, swine flew like vultures,

pink encircling pale blue, feathered with clouds.

Impossibly beautiful,

the colors made me think of

female and male babies.

And my stoner eyes

without the pupils.

So I set to staring at them.

And bet that scaring me

was all they needed to do

to make me feel

dead.

As an empty bag of shit.

So I quit paying attention,

giving guilt the shoulder like ice,

and started feeling ok.

Looks like yer in paradise,

smell its bouquet.

Its piss-colored

citrus flavor

dooms you

to stay awake.

Smiling til you feel good

then laughing the gloom away.

Picture Milwaukee Places

2009-10-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

I've been all about this website lately. It just has a bunch of photos of interesting and often out-of-the-ordinary places in Milwaukee. Anyone can email the website photos for submission.

http://www.picturemilwaukee.org/newpage.html

Champs

2009-10-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Come on thunder, please.

2009-10-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

She often

takes the living room

and unscrews the lamps,

the furniture, detaches the

table tops from the legs

and asks you

what it means in this state.

She asks you

to put it all back in the

exact same order,

the same way her mother had it,

the same way her older sisters had it,

the same way she read and felt about it.

Sew the fabric over the cushion

and lay the legs strait

to attach the slabs of polished wood.

She consumes them like water.

And it runs through her miracle veins

splintery and solid.

She is spread as jam on the carpeting

and you go to lick

up the sweet leaking residue

in attempt to begin

the reconstruction.

What she also knows

wont hurt her;

You happen to have

arms made of

heavy things

and when they

walk into the house

and see what

she has done to serenity,

you will leave.

Even when she knows

her heavy thing legs

could rebuild with ease

what your arms could never carry.

A bear explains hibernation to its cub

2009-10-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

“Hibernation is just seasonal deep rest, son”

“Deep rest? Why do we do that?”

“Because life is unbearable enough, why be conscious for the worst three months of the year?”

He Was

2009-10-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

I can't remember

how fast it went

but it happened,

red leaves

stay in their October piles

white snow

melts into the ground and feeds

yellow flowers

casting shadows in the

green grass

SWAP

red leaves

and then that morning

401 people thinking about Descartes

I am at least absolutely certain

the he has failed to perceive anything

for about 500 years,

he was,

therefore he is not,

and my ears stopped working

my mind frantic

looking at the absence

of everything

it pulls out your connection

to anyone

temporarily

you are somewhere else

trying not t o b e

so i hid

from the souls in the soil

in an old brick building

thinking someone's gonna die

several days a week

i forgot to not think about it

and like i said

my ears stop working

when that happens it feels

like floating out of

equilibrium

as if hovering

over a quiet patch of snow

in the darkest month of January

stuck and cold

Reading

2009-10-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why I asked him for more

As I sat cross legged on the floor beneath him.

His wooden wired body

lifted another book from the pile.

I had chosen them from

a library.

He opened the first page and

re read the Title.

My eyes gaped open when he began;

staring at his narrating face

and seeing the woods unfold around us.

The carpet was brightly colored

and squared off to

teach me about the alphabet.

His rocking chair

swayed with the bend in his knees.

He read and read and read

and when he stopped

I had learned how to read to myself

so I read and read and re read

until we both

got glasses and paper skin

to match our

failing lungs.

A Song About My Boy

2009-10-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Now by this time

My boy had determined

That he was quite tired

Of himself

Compounded by the realization

That he was older than nearly

Every house cat on the planet

His long term prospects quickly

Thinned

To nothing

Or to joining

A Wednesday night youth group at

Church

Where they played songs and spake most heavily

But he had a few bucks

And therefore

Decided to go to a movie -

A comedy

This would be easier to explain to

Old friends

And the ending might yet be unknown

Electric Guitar at an Acoustic House Show

2009-10-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

Electric Guitar at an Acoustic House Show

whatever you say you gotta say it sorta slow

I won't play long and it won't be tight

this song's about a headache I've had for nineteen years of my life.

Electric Guitar at an Acoustic House Show

Sometimes before, I get so nervous I choke

on vomit

in the bathroom

You want to hear that shit?

I didn't think so.

Here's a line about my bike:

I don't ride it.

Electric Guitar at an Acoustic House Show

This is why I started to smoke:

I saw a picture of Bob Dylan doing it once

so I bought a pack of Pall Mall's

and now I'm in the process of dying

slowly

slower than slowly

hopefully

Something you've found if you fuck around with Stupid English Majors like Me:

We feel like our feelings are something someone should feel something about:

I wrote a poem about my haircut this morning in the shower

but I still haven't texted sister back...Am I bastard?

Well to some degree I think all of us are bastards

I'll write a paper...about the bastards

send it to Harvard...to all the bastards

it'll get published in a journal and be read

by all the readers

And I can't sing in front of people

the way I sing in front of myself

It's a theory

I played at the CCC

and only 8 came to hear me

that's a fact

Here's another:

everybody else was throwing water balloons at each other

and the girl got her hand slammed in the doorframe

in came her father

he was dressed up

like the devil

for some reason

I stopped playing

no one said nothing

they were watching

for what would happen.

New York Last Weekend

2009-09-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

Monica Ann Noonan

2009-09-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

In grade school we were all going to be such good girls. We were all going to wait and keep all sorts of insides clean, pure and pink. But as I followed mine, she followed hers. Her curly blond beauty was split and my copper was rusted to ashy compartments. But we had both planned to be such good girls. All clean, pure and pink.