Welcome to Ohio

The sky

this guy said

is immobile

secular and undeserving

as lackluster as a drugstore crucifix.

But he wears one around his shoulders.

For the Good Luck, he says.

On wheeled walks across America

He finds it hard to have good dreams

and there's hardly ever any company

in a seat behind a wheel

just an open beer bottle

softening him till he remembers

his father's eleven pointer

mounted sweetly in the basement

above a shelf of Christmas dishes

and a drawer of broken nails

bent backwards on the morning

of the day the garage was born. 

He curses the cowboys of the second dimension

and the cigarettes they give him in the third.

The pack atop his dashboard

will last barely through Missouri. 

Welcome to Ohio. 

Comfort

If any of you guys have the time, I highly recommend listening to/reading anything by Scott Carrier. This American Life just did a whole show of his stuff tonight. Here's the link:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=181

Frustration Rhymes

Molly smoked a cigarette 

for every plane she ever saw

Molly lived near a big airport

Now she doesn't live at all.

The night came and morning went.

Humanity still ferments.

I had weird dreams about people eating people

who made their homes in Cathedral steeples 

and with grace would happily devour

Bishops and Deacons,

Hour by Hour.

Michael asked for a chin-up bar

to give him strong arm muscles

but instead he got a brand new car

which gave him amputations.

God once choked on a plate of Wasabi

He coughed it up and named it Milwaukee.

Gary cannot ride a horse

but he has a big lawnmower

He rode it into a Great River

and now he does things slower. 

Martha's Bouquet of Flowers

Last afternoon,

I noticed the immobility of the photographs clinging to my living room wall

And recalled the point, when they walked in August

pulling true tears—fresh and from the package

out my eyes and to this age

curved and still

cold and true.

 

At the end of my war against gravity,

I found my silence and nothing else.

My silence—a martyr of newness and oldness.

In this place, I do little but listen.

 

And time’s rigid victim can indeed keep its quiet

as downstairs a load of laundry is spinning

and swiftly and surely,

Martha’s Bouquet of Flowers will be wrapped cleanly in perfect linen. 

Swim to Shore

Twenty seven well-dressed boys

ran aimlessly off a long pier this Thursday.

I wasn't one of them

and it doesn't take a newspaper to know

that the Swim to Shore

felt cold and unnecessary.

My Time on Venus

At the bus stop 

in between cigarettes

Monica asked me to justify Wonder Bread

and I, already in love,

rammed my explanation into a wall of futility

garnished it with childhood nostalgia

and punctuated it with Annie Hall inflection. 

Ultimately missing her point exactly

while acrobatically persuading strangers

of my insanity.

I don't even want to know.

But I doubt my time on Venus was spent well--

as it ended with a fall back to Good Old Planet Earth

where even my own fingernails seem weird

and most children have already said some form of the F word.

Culture

I bought fraud leather at a dusty secondhand store in Abilene

to wear gallantly to Sunday night rodeo

where I expected to be met with some form of Southern hospitality

and maybe something distinctly American

to photograph.

Dad told me all about it, an author of US history. 

He said: "Brace of a smattering of Culture"

My hands on the wheel of a Time Machine; a volvo

I barely noticed San Antonio’s florescent jungle disintegrate behind me

into a bright period on the horizon

If nothing else to serve as a testament 

to the safety of 2009

With nothing more than twenty-eight miles

I clapped as the radio yielded 

to the distant crackling of a strange chair

and the bruised country emerged

with visions of strange men on horses

In My Dream of the Soil

While asleep in the arms of an armchair

you passed a lit candle to eat

so I'd smile like a carved pumpkin

if it came we should dance 

as post-modernists dance

implied in a dream in the dream of another

time again and again

Two strangers in the kitchen

read a book without a spine

and cupboards wept paint, cried victory

and the slaughter turned to wine

And the field of crows said nothing worth noting

No caws about their meaning

or songs about my ending

just beaks through the blanket

in my dream of the soil.

accomplice

throwing ribbons round each other

we conversed loudly through a ballerina's mirror

my imagination coiled in my hands

when I remembered every prayer

the zoo I'd only thought of

materialized with a finger around mine

and the iridescent glow of 30,000 highways

dissolved the dream into this life

I ran for mine 

made a call to Chicago

shivered down Oakland

the act interrupted 

brought back to the senses

not sick to think

I could have an accomplice. 

HELLO

DITCHING THE DAISIES AND CUTTING THE KISSES.

HANDSOME DOUBT RAN AWAY FROM HOME.

THE POSSUMS BECOME GORGEOUS WHEN THEY EMERGE FROM WET SEWERS

AS JUNE BOARDS A BUS IN CALI-FORN-I-A. 

Bork Bork

Yo Dudes,

      I'm going to make this quick. I know this isn't the proper place for this, but it's been dancing in front of me for awhile and I just want to get it off the stage.

Another MKE kid  just drank himself to death a couple days ago. That makes four MKE kids this semester. I didn't know any of them at all. But it all seems so ridiculous and needless and just plain awful. These kids weren't junkies. They weren't idiots. All they're guilty of is possessing the necessary ignorance that accompanies our age and for whatever reason, death chose them. I find myself looking at their facebooks and seeing all the RIP posts and online memorials and just wanting to throw up. Where were all these people when the kids actually could've used them?  

These kids were 19 years old and that's all they're going to see. 

I can't stand that. 

These things get me, for whatever reason. They trigger a dark part of my imagination and I find myself not being able to think about anything else. And I'm not preaching, or at least not trying to. I need you to understand that this post is mostly for me. 

You all know it's not a good idea to mix prescription drugs with alcohol and you all do a really good job of taking care of each other. Just keep up the good work. 

                                                                              

                                                                                   Ben.

HIATUS

Decided to take a bit of a break.

 Weird pressure to write

through strange mountains. 

Forcing out a lot of poo poo.

Realized that John Henry's mentality

probably doesn't work with typewriters. 

Don't wanna die like he did, anyhow

Even if it did, somehow. 

Beer-Runs

aren't helping either. 

That's gotta go

for the time-being

along with Palls, Green

and afternoon Facebook vacations. 

Too much apathy.

Copying Vonnegut's cynicism.

Trying to be funny like Silver Jews. 

  Too much time talking and not enough hearing.

That's it. That's it. 

Gonna utilize the one perk

not going to an art-school has to offer

for me, at least

there are no creative deadlines

I have to make those for myself

and I've made too many

 

A few weeks or so. We'll see.

Got some new books. 

Got my old camera out

or at least a clone of it.

Meet Papa for breakfast a few times

Wave to the sisters and mom

Get a piano here

Gotta Work Work on Travelogue

Layouts and such

Gotta return Rimbaud to his home

and pay his late fees.

and fill out applications

for better places.

In the meantime or should I say in this mean time:

Been mapping out a project

and made it public today

ere' she is:

1

A sudden intense feeling of dissatisfaction, like when all the cute girls get off at the same bus stop and you’re left in your seat trying to remember their faces and imagine their phone numbers.

496-9848.

736-2839.

238-4830.

   It’s not enough. You look out the window to distract yourself. You see a sign advertising your college. It says: “Affordable.” You already want another cigarette. You just had one. You’re trying to quit. Your mom’s calling now.

476-1753.

  She wants to know what your wearing and if it’s clean or not. She wants to know if you’re coming home on Sunday and if you’ve called Dr. Ranowitz yet. Your medication’s running out. You know what happens when you don’t take it. You can’t do your homework.

“I love you”

“I love you too”

  Cigarettes do their job when you realize your inability to formulate a single meaningful thought. They do their job when you don’t understand a line of the poem you’re reading, but know it’s better than anything you’ll ever write. They do their job when your ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend “legitimately likes your band, dude.”

   And you don’t know where you’re going. You got on the bus for the sole purpose of leaving. The apartment you live in has become too familiar. Too many rituals. Your neighbors have sex every single night at 11:30, and every single night at 11:30 you sit in your living room waiting for them to finish and start the shower. You can hear all of this. Every thrust and moan. Not tonight though. Tonight you got on the bus and went south.   

  A man next to you reads a little green bible, which reminds you of the fact that you haven’t been to church in five months. The man turns to you and hands you a pamphlet with pictures of dismembered fetuses. He tells you to have a “blessed day”.

 You decide to get off the bus.

  A Promotional Red Bull car drives by slowly. Inside it, a girl with big sunglasses is nodding her head and singing along to a pop song. You wave at her and she rolls down her window. You try to be funny. You ask if she has any “samples”. She doesn’t laugh, but she throws you a can. You catch it and put it in your breast pocket. You salute her. She nods uneasily.

 As you open the can, you wonder if you will meet this person in the next life. That thought stays for a second before it is replaced with the bigger question of whether there is a next life. This is how your mind works. Small to big.

  An airplane passes overhead. It is a commercial plane. It doesn’t look real. It looks too small to be real. You’re not even sure if you believe there are people in it. Even though you know better, you begin to entertain the idea that planes are holograms and that passengers are actually teleported from point A to point B. You then remember one of the times you were on an airplane and admit the contradictions. Finally, you acknowledge the fact that airplanes do exist and intern realize what you just spent the last three blocks contemplating. You shiver and make a barfing noise. That’s a habit you have when you remember or recognize something regrettable.

   So, you are going nowhere. You need to make a plan. You’ve got to have a plan. You sit down on a bench and take out a notebook. You’ve had this notebook for years. It’s filled with plans. You’ve made a plan about every single day. You look at some of them. One for a trip to New York City, another for a novel about giants, another for building a canoe. You shiver and make three barfing noises. Pen to paper.

 

What am I going to do tonight/forever?

The Pear.

During my vacation in Eden,

My only confidant was a snake with legs—a native.

 

He talked to me

when no one else would

even though

we were on separate ends of the spectrum

politically.

 

He, romanticizing about old island socialism.

Me, still believing that the American Dream

can work everywhere.

 

We argued,

But both could agree

that if this was paradise

little could be said for it

and whatever created us

must’ve made boredom too.

 

(As for the purpose of the latter—we hadn’t a clue.)

So I bought a disposable camera

and took pictures of the Zebras and Dolphins

and of the snake

standing stoically beneath unbelievable trees.

 

And because I asked him  

the snake began to climb the tallest one

to pick me a souvenir

a pear

for my mother back in Wisconsin

He was spotted on the way down

by a policeman floating by on a hang glider

Who upon landing

promptly chopped off the snake’s legs

and fed them to the Zebras and Dolphins

and took me to the American Embassy

where I was informed of my deportation.

 

The pear made it past customs

nestled safely in my toiletry case

to my mother’s kitchen in Wisconsin

where it stayed till it rotted

six thousand years later. 

Go Outside

You know you need to go outside

when the process of opening a soup can

seems magnificently pornographic

Attitude Adjustment

On St. Patrick’s birthday

I walked myself down Oakland Avenue

wearing a green sweater both ironically and intentionally—an action

indicative of something 

my father would call 

“a bad attitude”

 

And God, did I feel lousy.

 

It was the discovery of pink earrings in my pocket

And some bite marks on my neck

and a pair of Hawaiian shirts hung in my closet

that had led me to undergo a serious reconsideration

of my future career choices

 

Specifically:  Any plans I had for ever making my own people.

 

But I brightened up

when

at a corner stop-light

an angel clad only in holy underwear

substantiated in an idle Buick La Sabre

and before disappearing

entrusted me with permanent custody of her Milwaukee Brewer’s t-shirt

which she tossed at my face through an open window.

Come with age

Your navel is the mouth

of an original cave

your boysmoke floats

listlessly towards heaven

but you can't shut up, can you?

even for a second

to enjoy and ingest 

your last cigarettes

and to feign your existence 

on the cool side of town

with the punks and the fairies

the queens and the bitches

puissantly cloaked

in vintage nightgowns 

No No

No No

No No

No No

You have got to be kidding me

You are actually considering:

the morbid implications

hostile contradictions

and potential resurrections

in the needed corrections

coming with age. 

Crane Rain

day less march---sudden fall

                     to the ice

                               and the ground

                      curve your lips

                                       Crane Rain

                                              tumble Up and Summer Salt

                       swing away, blindness

                                     from a pin-hole leaks light

                                     sunk teeth 

                                                in a sinking ship

                                                          coat ribs in armor. 

Bad Talk

fingers point

to figures in mirrors

guilty and sentenced

you menace

get out 

of here.

Blue Face

I stole a leather jacket crawled peevishly into your bed

And waited for you to come back

from wherever you were.

 

I struck up conversation with you diary

Who as it turns out, has never met me before.

 

Your bookshelf isn’t as crowded as your shoe closet is

 

You’re happier than I am.

 

Blue Face

Back home in Fall

I’ll go around too.

 

I’m sorry.