Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Daydreaming Life



powers of ancient Indian emperors
please me ah yes yet I
find myself reflecting on
Ethan Hawke's multi-task acting
in my memory of Great Expectations
green heartache aspiring artist

"a head should be a chimney"
yes, I say, it is so because
it is printed on onion skin
paper pleasant to the touch
and remains pleasing & delightful
I have seen here my whole life

suffering succotash I say: a phrase made famous
by Sylvester; Succotash, a Naragansett Indian
word meaning "broken into bits." Paparazzi
follow me around snapping random candids
say cheese fast like a Flaunt boy who reads
killer books has killer looks and a fierce left-hook

impossible recurrences of memory seem to me to
be remembered not by me but by someone I once
called myself: a contributor to the life I
find I am forced to live if not lead or lead
with pleasing memories of pleasant moments or even
unpleasant moments remembered fondly lovingly

a tale of childhood buddies a dark drama & sober
fall quietly in love a chaste romance tender
when writing a memoir expect swelling strings
while relating one's past inject human imperfection
this may please some disturb others leave some cold
I vow today to clean up big time at the box office

water fell on Lance Armstrong's finely tuned body
befriending a bartender a bosom friend a family
friend an archfiend with licentious purpose a
godsend breaking all formulas a beauty when people
first saw him jaws dropped greater than the sum
of his parts and resulted in Bruce Weber photos

to get the job done hire unqualified people in
Guess jeans kindred cats of coolness moon-risen
leafy trees completely covered in blazing radiance
put an end to evildoing controversy strife combat
hostility divisive talk longing malice false views
fears slander harshness compulsive activity & DKNY

it is part of our conditioning inherited from father
to son generation after generation the desire for
certainty a possession to love and be dominated by
quiet evenings on the front porch sipping lemonade
with Werner Fassbinder Brad Davis and Andy Warhol
having your picture taken by Christopher Makos

-- Jeff Wietor

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Mascot



La Mascotte is the title of a comic operetta written by French composer Edmond Audran in 1880.

The story is that of a a farm girl who brought good luck to whomever possessed her, so long as she remained a virgin. The title was French slang derived from the Provençal term masco, meaning witch. With a degree of musicianship rarely seen in such lighter productions, the operetta ran for over 1,000 performances between 1880 and 1882. This popularity led to it being translated into English and staged at the Comedy Theatre in London beginning on October 15, 1881, and the Gaiety Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts beginning April 11, 1882.

The title was translated into English as "The Mascot", which initiated the use the word 'mascot' in the English language to mean an animal, human, or thing which brought luck.



Act One

There it is: the head of heaven
A ghost of sunlight afternoon a bewitchment called Sunday.
No one wishes to be taken by surprise.
Three word-up 7:30 boys on the corner:
I'm miss'n the flow the polished heat the angles of today:
the last day of July 2005

You wonder about the limits
unable to begin
feeling the spirits enraptured w/sleep

spent the morning cleaning dried tears from eyeglasses
earthbound feeling the real need to phone-up Brad Pitt and lay down advice:
You've been dwelling over the future far too long.
It's dark, it's lonely and there's no way home.
Without periodontal surgery how can you expect anyone to take you seriously.
If you're groovin keep movein comeon sure it hurts deep inside.
Higher ideals don't mean the same thing to boilin dogs ya yo.
Beyond all that lost-to-your-friends-blue resides Orion. lay down ghosts.
You're my luck rabbit's foot in the palm of my hand in the form of a star.

Staring out at the lawn green witchery of the Civic Center lawn:
Dharana dhyana samadhi hypnosis whammy it hurts eating cake too.
Lies lies: when you hide the truth you get angry suck up universal bleak-days.

Ray Noble and his orchestra: the ultimate stamen double on the beat wicked on deck
I was only a child but I was expected to examine the big concepts such as God
who am I: stigmata in both wrists finely polished inanimate social halfglimpse
giving up everything everything bursts through with bucketfuls of more.

brightly colored bad girl sad girl early evening green sunlight awashes now
the clever hops of finch family out for late lunch on the fire-escape landing:
like everybody else you think breezily sensual tales of your best past sex episodes.

strong westerly breezes pick up speed racing in from the Pacific Ocean
as the evening unfurls just outside of town near where the sun is drowned
Civic Center Sycamore leaves so bright lushly verdant and robust a month ago
have begun their yearly decline into gray stained trance: first sign of autumn.
San Francisco mulling over itself with gossip and the voodoo hoodoo of SUCCESS
can be seen shopping for soft warm winter jackets reinventing the meaning of charm.

what worries you most is the nagging call it intuition you're living wrong and
everybody telling you you're not known and not living right you need an update.
call it a spurious glimpse into the terror just around the corner: closed-circuit TV
I wonder now where I'll be when the yearly BIG DISASTER that will arrive sure as
can be this autumn. every year the same thing: BIG AUTUMN/WINTER WORLD DISASTER.
like the Huns over the hills just you wait just you worry just you wait what up.
life is not logical. nature has an unknown logic. the soldiers will not be coming home

change nowadays means transform into more like us even if it's me I mean that
I can't help myself: the 808 kicks in the strings pluck hard & god knows I sing.
Now look: the Civic Center lawn throws up a bluff of suggestion: all is well.
Sam Spade fog puts on its hat and sky opens out into exactly nothing exactly

I try to wish my fears away but find I'm unable to prevent the door from opening.
I stare absentmindedly at the lawn of the Civic Center at the Sycamores at the
expired ideology of memory at far-off places: there's India looking like an
elephant head there's no substitute for love in the wait for you: I know I know:
dialectical materialism is old-fashioned the light I love now will turn to night
years glide by like clouds I dream of magic carpets why is the new generation doing
it's best to exterminate me the same old questions don't elicit new responses:
Marcel Duchamp's Door as a Substitute for Two Doors is my mascot today.

after my good life I phoned James Joyce, residing now at the Don't Bother Me Hotel
he put the sway of the train into perspective: Let us leave theories there and
return to here's hear. O Jimmy I said I could just hug you. Don't he said.

---------------


Act Two

I'm all alone staring into space.
It's freezing. Sagittarius has suddenly entered with a smile on his face attempts
to form a physical bond with underlying metaphysical messages:
the expiring day the evening is spread out against the sky like a

sing-along to the bouncing ball


----------------


Act Three

it's the word.
the weakness of human flesh is heir to
that unfeathered two-legged thing

kettle drums at midnight

My friends, believe me, there will be no other like you
wish fervently for a place with better views, greater ceiling height and 24-hour room service
the more religious-minded, happily enscounced in a "position" will assure you
in heaven bacteria will grow to the size of giant moths which will chew holes in you
they will insist you prepare for life-eternal by wearing cashmere

I was asked to observe this:
see it but pretend to not be noticing
the hunter pursues the hunted but the hunted
must not ever know it is being pursued: it is the story of two boys walking along
the bank of a wooded stream following the movements of fish swiming up-stream
looking up one boy notices across the bank an older boy pursuing them with an
arrow tautly strung in his bow. the hunter must be nothing in search of something.

we're condemned to be forever blessed with what approaches us
I wasn't happy with this explanation but I thought to myself: human misery
you may kiss the head of a burning candle but you won't like it

evening has grown still more gray
Pacific Ocean breeze has calmed to a gentle breathing
frail and weak a feeling of the infinite surges through my mind
then lies down to be petted

I imagine myself on a diesel locomotive made of days
passing through the Great Southwest
the train stops for a thirty-minute body wash in Albuquerque
I picture myself buying a turquoise wish-bringer from a sandy-faced craftsman
my mind blushing like a strawberry-gold god about to burst into a guitar solo
I imagine myself to be the product of divisions and multiplications of a single cell
I can make your body shine

--------------------------

Epilogue

tomorrow is another day

New Order Blue Monday
I will step out

into the deep sleep
suffering the pursuit of dreams
arrow poised

hungry

turquoise in my pocket

-- Jeff Wietor

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Hermes 3000



My thoughts aflutter today
fixated on getting the Hermes 3000
fixed scrubbed rubbed oiled

agonized: my feelings --
dogged dreamish fractious
fueling my dreams feeding
my four-leaf clover ambitious wishes --

the whole mental construct
frangible as dried spaghetti
a broken freight train with
frequent stops a milk train of
memory a free and easy foray into
maybe this time maybe this time
the machine will dance with
the highlights of imagination
and two-step the fragments of poetry
into a rag-time frieze of perfect pitch --
chocked with Balanchinesque movement

but why why why get the Hermes 3000
fixed rub-a-dub repaired squeaky-clean
to hear the clack clack music the clack
in three-quarter time; to hear the magical
staccato Morse Code of making poems
with the beat beat beat of that ole
alphabetical rhythm each
stroke put down sensually
a little romantic interlude of fancy
harking back to the gone with the wind
days of setting type by hand: I imagine "Yes"
as if I with Gutenberg were in the same room
and the smell of ink and paper and
well polished gears and keys and the
free lance nature of listening as well
as dreaming of thinking out loud
and playing the alphabet equated to
pounding aurora borealis rhythms on a drum
and Geofroy Tory busied himself
designing resplendent letters of the alphabet
in the far corner and time & artisans
were alive again for a while a little
as if now was then and then again

who knows why or when or what
I just want to:

Hermes 3000 repairmen are
hard to find
& going to a place called
Apollo Typewriter Repair
over the Parnassus Heights hill
out on Taraval

does have a ring to it.

-------------------------------------------------

more later.
I'm on an adventure
sunny and autumnally summery in
San Francisco today

Suprematism



I don't want to walk without sunshine either --
attention falls between forgetfulness and certainty like
a fire-youth walks on water hankering for star-filled midnight

Tallulah Bankhead in Cleopatra: (it is written) barged down the Nile and sank
exploits of trumpet virtuoso his rigid upbringing sinless passion
axe-blows bursting from log as for instance little abstract rainbows

"I" anchors reader immersed in darkness he navigates his very simple boat
turtleneck fashion St. George confronts a dragon the divine bark afterlife
serpent with two heads and four paws: he who unites faces dug deeply into rock

dancing on roof dressed in Malevich black
overheated sky angels prayers wipe off silence
orange lilies in Amy Lowell moonlight gibbous moon tonight:

sky operatic cast in stark bone-white cold combined regally
noble blue virility stallion bark of midnight sun mummified morning
this is body of If and remains in world of dead

I've lost track of night sky where stars where moon having moved
having stayed having stilled knowledge of our unknown mission
why is our army so large why have we not achieved victory

If we can know our response, see in ourselves what we have received
from a work, that is a way to understanding abysmal depth of sky
weave a rope of sand grow grapes from thorns cry for the moon

male divinities on their knees with arms raised in adoration I miss you
deceased sun vanished after-life tonight nocturnal body brilliant
it is here some will remain devoured by revered memory by mere black

everything happens to everybody eventually we know our work we receive
we perceive we remember to bear an oar travel together in vestibules
yesterday originates in tubular anus of an oyster spirit and matter

mind and life: ready it was ready readily readily refrained from it to
within hearing mainly as if in presently if it was left to them usefully
usually very easily in referring in fact in fact to it. Any award will do

kill each day darkness bleeds around our sleep crocodile eyes barking
dogs across town some hint hiss of a bus passes empty full of light
driven across sky blindfolded remembered no more beautiful lines

perceiving is the same as receiving and it is the same as responding
boat is burning like a huge torch we can't put the fire out it's too late
process of life reaches to the farthest star a matter of light

we had nothing to do with starting a fire a monster did it you can swim
we have reconciliation to hang on to we are in midst of reality
responding with joy "Ms. Lane have you heard from Mr. Kent?"

this square is a living regal infant a first step of pure creation a
surface lives it has been born gentle wise white a square gesture of distinctions
without difference observed knower known no longer stand apart

comics you've been collecting are now worth a lot of money:
reconcile inner life with outer experience: no more likenesses of reality
nothing but desert: inner oscillations of night sky: stars

ashes cover the golden body of a male deity: dances: a thousand and one
nights a thousand and one questions a thousand and one monsters a thousand
and one answers full of impossibility: crocodiles, dogs, humans asleep

each morning there are teeth marks on his thigh he reincarnates into a body
he remembered having the day before yesterday he attains its memory: life keeps
out of mischief and a similar but different question knocks polyhedraly:

can you see anything ahead? I feel I have been standing sky-clad on this cold
damp beach waiting to find who locked the door. I feel that nothing exists
but then void presents itself. how will I learn to swim to bark to live?

nothing can be construed as a clue. great Jupiter. where is my walkie-talkie.
will I speak this language? a great deal will happen. our predicament will
occur again tomorrow at the same time same way. we have become valuable

what will my cat look like in the fourth dimension? a famous question not mine.
deeply abysmal night sky moon driven penetrating to hidden noumenal reality
underlying phenomena: initiated on amethyst altars tied in spider web

I can play piano and outwit desperate criminals and make it sound glamorous
with big blue eyes and tall; learn to climb; think with the head of a crocodile
or dog and disclose a living sense to that silent self you insist upon calling "I"

little busy-body named Moon continues oaring through sky
yapping at stars; sense of infinite is first and most terrible trial
before initiation on the Island of the Blessed; dress in purple spider webs

I am become Death destroyer of worlds: I have a rough idea you'll break
rules you meant well we liked you. stay away from white in Morocco
violet in Egypt black in Greece. Nothing is expression of absolute like zero.

ashes cover gold; our life is a radio station; I am not the doer; but what
of that silent self; we are a mystery hiding human image from ourselves
sky-clad or dressed in Malevich black enacting a role he not I became.

Kasimir Malevich's Suprematism, 1920 watercolor/gouache on paper.
11.5" by 8.5". Los Angeles County Museum of Art purchased with funds
provided by Day Sage Tanguy, Rosemary B. Baruch and Mr. & Mrs. Charles Boyer.


-- Jeff Wietor

Friday, August 26, 2005

from Wild Daffodils



I don't have night dreams, nightmares or dream sweat.

When I'm asleep darkness happens and within this coziness the little nobody inside of me becomes resilient, impervious to fear and rests in the big overstuffed chair of perfection.

The problem comes when I'm awake; when I close my eyes to escape the visual bombardment of the world around.

My mother appears extruding bananas from her vagina saying to someone who looks like me: see this is what happens if you're a bad boy.

I don't have one father, I have two: one, instead of a head has a shotgun attached to his shoulders and the other has baseball bats for arms.

They're not images on a screen either.

The images are holographic, three dimensional and sometimes there's a kitchen table around which people are talking about the poor young man who drove his car into a tree and lost all of his teeth: a pity they agree he had such a nice smile.

Or there are some children playing under a house.

They are playing a game using urine and feces: the little girl who is bulky with a slant mouth says look at this and she rubs shit all over my face and I scream, begin to urinate and realize I'm lost inside a small room with a spoon digging into the furry hide of a dead mink or bear.

The holography of the images frightens me the most, the three dimensionality of the situation unsettles me making me restless; the engulfment of the substantial nature of the characters creates a nonsensual pain; the vicious vitality of the characters tears into me like a screeching high pitched tone that will not stop; the message or meaning is lost to my capacity to "understand" because I get it I really do "get" it but my "getting" the message does nothing to heal the cause because I don't know the cause and the cause happened a million years ago and I'm unwilling to travel back that far.

Sometimes in the middle of the day I'll be sitting quietly in front of a list of numbers trying to make all the numbers match up and a short man grossly, gruesomely fat but is socially accepted as Somebody, and talks slick as a banker enters and lectures me about Business: business he says should be the standard for living, we will organize we will order the room we will order the world I am not your boss I have been reading I have been reading Books On Zen I think we should order the world with compassion, mindfulness and kindness.

I hear him say this but what I hear is: I am a puppet who has memorized words in a book and you will kiss my Italian silk suit and adore my business like order because I am a very large man.
Oddly, I would, if the laws of karma could be reversed, turn rabid, maul him to death and devour him all the while slurping his wine flavored blood so as to remove all evidence of his existence.

Yum.

Eating without forks, spoons, knives, plates or crystal goblets.

Mouth, teeth, paws & claws

The trouble with cities being "like" a jungle is that in fact it is not a jungle.

I would prefer to live In a Jungle and eat monkeys, lope through vegetation and move with the natural grace of predatory stealth: primal, perfectly attuned to the demands of the moment and free.

Alas, as you can see I don't know the difference between phantasm and symbolic reverie.

I wonder if there's a third option, a "place to be" and what will it cost to get there or where it is?

-- Jeff Wietor

Mark Allen Verbal Portrait



Full Measure

He’s a nose nestle nuzzler wildebeest ceaselessly giving to men their remote control
He’s a crossbow chapeau travel at his side gather up sobs low stones good fortune connoting
He’s an earlobe choir-robe moon beam basket behind him an harmony brouhaha galore

He’s one more need not in need a luck-of-the-draw throaty Omaha Panama Choctaw Cherokee
He’s what we think we believe we need we think we hear in the ignoble Chernobyl
He’s an approachable heart-throbber grave robber traveler Greek god hot-rod burst of tears
He’s a bomb squad artist antler eared Oduduwa connoting denoting irresistibly

He’s a probable lobster hunter fraught good fortune stoutly persistent: is not beautiful beautiful?
He’s a heavenly body magna cum laude hot-rod cum laude summa cum laude trampoline
He’s an formidable earthly adventure erotic hypnotic able lame lamb ably treading water

But the moment these words were uttered
the lamp went out: when houses were alive they could fly

He’s a pizzicato lowdown showdown aficionado telephoto lens mingling in polka dots
He’s a long long trailer with a Polaroid eye and a purchase order for green pens and purple pencils
He’s a not much that matters but greatly like light soldered to a stained glass window
He’s a nanosecond intelligent testimony hardwired interface ahoy to Broadway permanence online

But the moment these words were uttered
the lamp went out: when houses were alive they could fly

-- Jeff Wietor

Thursday, August 25, 2005

with Breughel



with Breughel everything matures


star saturated here & now throughout night
oranges & lemonade strawberry pie banana
cream morning sun showers distant thunder
great showers torrid muggy summer fairs

all of that speaks to him at the same time, discreetly

to smooth them feel them does and doesn't talk
loose hair tongued teeth amazement the strength
train engines legs wrapped around him rain lovely
the muggy nights smell of wet towels corn fields

how can he perceive all the leaves of the trees

high atop the Ferris wheel I felt something go
through me falling into the neon roses the neon glow
those shadows along the lake I who shall be in him
powerless amazed weltering in the heat very serious

torpid summer has its odor of hay and of sweat

I stand there at the dull-as-a-devil house of mirrors
waiting remembering a moment of winter in the stark
darkness of lethargy muggy damp in a new madras shirt
wondering where stars come from from whence tonight

living in each one of the atoms whose obscure functioning assures harmony

barefoot a little troubled about the two headed goat
the bearded unicorn the every now and then moist thoughts
I hold dearly the beauty of things washing hair pouring down
soap I touched his hair as he rose from the pool awash

attracted toward it as they were

broiling clouds massed moving fast flap flags picnic
with his new white bucks reading that summer: Swamp Fox
basking in the sun I could see his chest sunbathing the blood
flowed firm a source of joy like breathing tickling him

a sumptuous and fraternal accompaniment for the scenes in the foreground

he ever dreamt in the summer lethargy time ticking away sounds
loose caboose in the freight yard his grandfather moose hunting
up North soft moccasins blooming squash feet bare trod the long
morning grass beads of sweat napping but not asleep on a towel

earth flows over one like a strong, slow wave


trains again passing on the other side of town more than
stimulation more than beauty he whistles the tune from Bridge On
The River Kwai sunburned in the tent in the middle of night
watching with the lights out a mosquito the smell of warm canvas

with equal interest

Mark in new Bermuda shorts; Bobby in new white shoes;
Mark with silver blond hair; Bobby with fresh muscled arms;
Mark an acrobat blue as Picasso; Bobby like a rose owl dream.
Beethoven piano in the morning; Beethoven piano all day long.

so much mystery, submitting simply to the rhythm of the seasons

cows grazing just outside of town; a bat swoops through elm tree
shadow; summer rowing in the mist roving over a northern woods
lake deep reverberations of a loon shocks morning air;
sitting so still we created the world from silence the magic

carpeted in summer with warm grass

mouthwatering rhubarb stringy wet juice slurpy trembles
mowing grandmother's lawn mower blades shearing
grass emerald bright cuttings along the north side of the house
tidy forest of tiger lilies breakfast: eggs, go snip chive

-- Jeff Wietor

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Velasquez's Vulcan



disentangling describes your situation in terms of acquiring the capacity to act spontaneously and confidently.

its symbol is casting out a plague demon.

----------------------------------------------------------

Hephaestus craftsman. maker. heartbreak.
worker. actor. blue-collar. skilled. journeyman.

in a sweat. metalsmith. dexterity. practical.
crackerjack wunderkind. genius for resistance.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Spain. religion. war. burnished plateaus.
military. flames. frenzy of walls. cruelty.
melancholy. obscure. choirs. sudden expansion.

---------------------------------------------------------

I am very unhappy tonight.
think of a silent revenge.
if you don't everything will be lost.
worry. it will save you. worrisome details will be forever with you.

----------------------------------------------------------

wander off the subject. you were meant to.

Hephaestus

He thought of invisible threads
wrapping two lovers
leaving them immobile

The naked bodies of the characters
add a certain sensuality
suitable for the moment

----------------------------------------------------------

Apollo, the main character of the painting, announces his message.

so tired. a beautiful dog. I know what you're thinking.
seeing: see eyes see self.

listening: see ear.
Segovia. simplicity.
silence.

----------------------------------------------------------

so let's not complain of fears or
become discouraged at
seeing our nature
weak and without strength.

the thought comes to me now.

so angry with perfection I beg.
the flesh is very fond of comfort.

----------------------------------------------------------

vessels on the mantelpiece of the chimney
glitter of the forge.

a meditation based on conquest.
Teresa of Avila had just finished burning
the last ashes of her flesh.

----------------------------------------------------------

I no longer believe there is such a thing as "abstract
paintings," I do however believe there is such a thing as
Art that "makes the visible visible," and "art" that
rehashes the same old recipes, over and over.

There seems to be a real dilemma between "searching for
meaning," and "trying to belong"

----------------------------------------------------------

barbarous mystic. a single stroke.
odor of orange blossoms. Portraits of unknown men.
you can't blame yourself.

The anvil laid diagonally adds a certain perspective

it can't be
he saw our faces
we can't let him walk

----------------------------------------------------------

When I began
my intention was simply
to explain
how you can find
comfort
when you hear
some words

----------------------------------------------------------

we crave the food that will bring us death

----------------------------------------------------------

-- Jeff Wietor

Hermes' Tantrums




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