March 07, 2008
Oh, Haven’t You Heard?
Michael Haeflinger
I’ve done cartwheels over subway cars,
spotted rashes on pocketed handkerchiefs,
tanned the daylight, ground
the sky into manure / I’ve
lit the match on the wood end,
forced it through the bottom
of the candle, pedaled
with my hands, steered with my nose
and fell over, once into a streetsign,
once, a guitar broke
my fall / I’ve coasted the Brown Line
hanging on a lawn chair, ate
at a dinner table on the S42,
brought a van load from Cincy
to D-Town to Illinoise to Leipzig
to Berlin and I could unload six more /
I’ve put more quarters in jukeboxes
than Fountain Square, burned
twenty-four hours with the blink
of somebody else’s eye,
ridden a horse backwards
into town, gave up on mountains
but reconsidered ocean,
chopsticked public parks, pierced
hundreds of unpopable eggs, dirt
sledded over calendar pages, broke
bones to pass time, I’ve crept across
traffic faster than others walked /
stopped myself with calves,
went over the bar at people
walking by, counted all
the ankles in the world, twice,
spanked the lunch
out of a dog, pushed a cat
around while sleeping,
played the same song twice,
used lots of names in vain /
I’ve made omelets of couch
cushions and mints / I’ve unscrewed
the light bulbs in the sun
and shook them for signs of life /
I’ve cleaned my fingernails
with ink, black
and blue / let it be heard /
let it be heard, o! /
let it be heard
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
February 29, 2008
Load-Out in the Rain (outtake from I'm Having Some Shape-Shifting Problems)
Chris Toll
A budget analyst
cleats the blues
and pleats the lies
that dress the pie chart
who plots to murder me.
My shopping mall
stands on a bridge
and studies the heedless river.
Three chords knock me down
and three chords pick me up.
+++
Get the chapbook I'm Having Some Shape-Shifting Problems below.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Chris Toll Mini-Chap: I'm Having Some Shape-Shifting Problems
We've quietly published a little chapbook series ("big package, mini chaps") for a couple years now... They're self-binding books made from one sheet of paper with this "folded eight" technique that's downright magic. We always wanted to share them on the web -- but couldn't find a way to give proper instruction. Hopefully the below is a start. Without further ado, snag yourself Chris Toll's great chap from the link. Print. Fold. Enjoy. Note: Turn off the "fit to margins" setting (if your machine defaults to that) when you print it out... or it will fold all wrong. Speaking of which: |  |
How To Make Chris Toll's Book at Home
We'll start rolling out the back catalog soon... so look out for chaps and mini-comics from Greg Fuchs, Dan Nester, and more.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Sirois Book Launch Reading in Baltimore
Come celebrate the release of homme de Narrow House Justin Sirois' new book, Secondary Sound, at the i.e. reading series this Saturday (March 1) where he'll read with a couple Rock Heals faves -- Gina Myers and Ken Rumble.
Here's a link to the i.e. reading series site for more info.
Here's a link to buy the book at Target(!) because we love that you can buy Secondary Sound from Target... but you should probably go to the publisher's site for it (BlazeVox) and follow it's link to Amazon. Then Geoffrey will get a cut(?) and use the dough to put out more great books.
Here's a blurb on Justin's book -- take that search engines!
An absurdist media firm hires a pirate to “create the most alluring ringtone known to man” – while the author takes a secondary role as this digital scallywag plunders and pillages his way through the book’s vexing text messages. Presumably the first manuscript of both poems and fiction to be licensed with creative commons, Secondary Sound questions the legal limits of electronic sampling, asks why zombies and pirates are so in vogue, and pushes the limits of poetry (and hopefully makes it fun again).
&nbps;
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
February 21, 2008
On Top of Spaghetti
not by Lisa Jarnot
Oh, turkey machines
Beside small Detroit.
Oh, three squirrels
Like turkeys I love you.
Okay, I’ll _______
On the _________
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Right-Away
not by Lisa Jarnot
James Joyce-shaped reverence
would pigeons hedgehogs chocolate climb
yarn and purple
At mile upturned
near spectacles lifting
up birds rounded
my material murmurs
Joi de human day
I hosted possums
Francais is under pass unleashed
if it is black.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
The God of Possibilities
not by Lisa Jarnot
That eater bandying:
First do right
First set things
First know people
Then see right.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 30, 2008
from Can't Schematic
Sara Mumolo
Mayan calendar,
2012.
III
Us, freaking a snake
procedural cliffs.
Lighthouse, whose man noises
with math, ease persistence.
Expired models, our magnitude tufts
a puffin apprehensive to dive.
Take our wing-beat cadence
file its pause under animals of sea.
Quality leisured
in just being of real-time
Our plumage loses
luster in air-spaces of temporal bone.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 23, 2008
Weighted Down by the River
Dustin Williamson
pocket observations poke cherub
we sink the shore to take bath in blight
skimming oars over sunken cars
spent allowance on busted kites
the language we leave to serve as constant
the math we use to remind of dream failure
bitter pillow borrows black water
not cartoon w/ cartoon pirates but canteen w/ real cola
torn color w/ fades insecure cicadas
rub energy run faithful kept flowing clover flower
over fake superpowers still sore from using
pulled spokes from wheel replaced w/ solid ego
ideas discussed call back into void
where we came from & toward which we go
w/ the egg that grew into an outlaw
out from a bosom better known as two tits
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Friends w/Free Medicine
Dustin Williamson
I just have to look at you, brinking on & off,
looking through glassed eyes
at various gasses rising from specific locations
along the East River, which I'm riding over
or was sometime ago
repeating my diction w/ a different syntax,
a caper in mind & you in mind w/ it.
I'd like to exhaust your experiences
before moving on & having to consider my own,
which are exhausting in their lack of experience,
as in I've done very little worthy
of committing to the memory of a paper trail
or a string of email correspondences
made w/ friends made out of convenience
who have briefly made you happy,
or at last less un-happy w/ brevity
& our contributions toward it
mostly not faking my way through us
and our horribly human take on things.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 16, 2008
from Lips of the Cherubim
Joey Cashiola
SEPTEMBER 7 2005
1437
meanwhile
sirens are heard
a schoolyard of asthmatic kids in uniform
somewhere near the highway
just below a billboard in south chicago
singing carefree spanish
in their eyes occupied hopscotch
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
GHOSTORIES.
Richard Kostelanetz
FOUND.
STRATAGEM.
LANGUAGES.
BLOWOUT.
MADHOUSE.
WHAT.
CALCULATE.
WHOSE?
DEIFY.
CLEAN.
CLEAN.
SOMETHING.
STINKS.
WORTHY?
WEARY.
DISTILL.
THERE.
PLASTICS.
RESIST.
CONJUNCTION.
DONE.
FUCKING.
GOLFING.
REALLY.
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
Saturday 9/16/06
**set 5, song 1 (Megan and John)
Megan McShea and John Eaton
our splendid hooves rush through
alleys after distant scrimages
rose up big ladders basted
over fi res to the twinkling
of the whole tribe skinning
imaginary whales.
the ’copters blades come off
beneath the twisted fragment
I can see a top 40 hit
too many parades like damage
Ape fog quiet and green
a tea frog ate its apples
grinning and long, hoarded
by rats in cat suits
Stand my corpse in a sun
it’s alto food it
shimmers
are we done?
I can never get enough salt either
through romania
out of gash and stinking
too many guns to name
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
December 13, 2007
Events and happenings
Chris Nealon
The system was breaking down
Even in Germany the system was breaking down
The system was breaking down: since then they have got rid of the House of Lords
His “superficial collection of data” led him to believe the system was breaking down
The system was breaking down after only 5 days
If the system was breaking down I could’ve gone back to the drawing board
The report highlighted four key areas where the system was breaking down
Perhaps knowing that the system was breaking down would encourage
parents to ensure their children studied math at home
I sensed that the system was breaking down when a border guard sauntered over to
the open train window to ask for a cigarette
It had to be determined where the system was breaking down and why
We had a terrible feeling that the system was breaking down
The system was breaking down and we were lost in the maelstrom
The system was breaking down (which the mathematical theory says must happen)
They still weren't acknowledging the system was breaking down, not to mention
screwing people over and having them banned for life on LIVE, look it up!
Heartfelt cries for a “ministry of truth” were heard from places where the system was
breaking down
By the Age of Fragmentation, the system was
breaking down
That the system was breaking down was not even "news"
The system was breaking down, crashing down all over the place
He became President, and quickly did their bidding, because the system was
breaking down
The predictive power of the system was breaking down
And here we thought the system was breaking down!
Today the system was breaking down. There was a crowd here
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
December 05, 2007
Working Definition of Man
Changming Yuan
They enjoy covering their ideas, feelings, actions, words as well as their body parts with various garments; they evolve by inventing new weapons to kill their own species; they eat each other without spitting out the bones; they run after fame and wealth besides sex and food; and they tell lies, often saying what they never mean to say, and meaning what they never say they mean.
They show interest in truth, beauty and good; they are self sufficient, capable of producing food and music; they can smile and love; they try to cage those most ferocious among themselves; and they accumulate knowledge as well as material.
They have created money as well as gods…
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:00 AM
Spectrum of Sensations
Changming Yuan
in the kaleidoscope of human life:
duo, rei, mi, fa, suo, lao, ti, duo
red, blue, black, white, purple, green, yellow
sour, sweet, bitter, hot, salty, puckery, greasy
wet, dry, soft, hard, smooth, sharp, cold
fresh, fragrant, foul, fishy, rotten, suffocating...
###
< Previously from Changming Yuan
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:00 AM
November 28, 2007
from Daybook of Perversities & Main Events
Frank Sherlock
outdated like equipment Timely dumb & still
necessary to sing into the temporary
technologies that the faceless women
have & have lost are losing faces
on his neck is protected by poems
carved into handles of knives Deep
greens are cut from the patio so
they can be pulled & eaten
of mysterious animals Murder is but
one method of making connection
Some skins are unstabbable There are
many doorways into a single skull
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
November 21, 2007
Skee Ball
Aaron Belz
It's true that I am experienced in the ways of freeform thought. However, others are equally, if not more, experienced than i. In fact, although I practice stream of consciousness in a professional way (if my way can be considered 'professional'), and often enjoy observing the way others' minds move about unhindered by reason, I'm better at doing other things, such as skee ball. Skee ball, to me, is paradigmatic. One rolls something toward an oddly confusing goal, the thing leaps unpredictably, and satisfies the 'demands' of the 'machine' to a greater or lesser degree. For some reason, my balls always hit 50 in the center, or 100 in one of the upper corners. I am what's known in the world of skee ball as a 50/100 roller. Hence, I take all the tickets; I get all the teddy bears. I am the skee ball king, if you will.
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
Upgraded Groupings of Animals
Changming Yuan
A pod of turtles
A goggle of swans
A flock of tigers
A bevy of ducks
A clutter of mice
A cast of snakes
A murder of peacocks
And a pride of humans
###
< Previously from Changming Yuan and Next >
(click back in time from there for a couple more...)
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
October 10, 2007
7.11.07
Gina Myers
the only way out is up
tie the curtains back
another load of towels
in the wash / the jagged key
of opening day &
another shedding of your
family ghosts /
light pins itself in the
corners / knocks the hallows
back / early morning melody
twists & binds, winds & unwinds
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
September 26, 2007
Sebastian Says
Andrew Lundwall
i've got big stairs
is what that is
that house is like that
get me house
where's my chalk
my refuse my face my fuse
suppose on the sidewalk
my bicycle recycled
all of this holy shack up the boy
is a fraction of what'll become
what about the boy said aloud
bring to me what was my catholic chalk
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Narrow House Hosts A Night of Poetry & Music in Baltimore, 9/28
Don't forget it!
official book fest site
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Recovery
Andrew Lundwall
who are you then
that i should
not recover
my eyes
realize please
that every tree
is its own apocalypse
and my mind's shuttered in
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
September 19, 2007
from The Way the Family Got Away
Michael Kimball
Listen to an excerpt (2:26)
Read it as a PDF (easier on the eyes)
This piece is an excerpt from Michael's novel, The Way the Family Got Away
My brother’s cradle and other baby stuff got us from Mineola to Birthrock. My mother’s necklaces and other dress-up stuff got us from Birthrock to Stringtown. This girl there got my sister’s doll people along with all the other things that went with her practice family. They told my sister she wasn’t going to need her doll-house and the doll people living in it anymore since we weren’t living in our house anymore. So my sister’s doll-house and everything in it got us from Stringtown to Albion. That was where this other man got my father’s pocketwatch and pocketknife along with some other things my father almost always kept with him whenever we went anywhere.
Those things from my father’s pockets got us from Albion and all the way out of Oklahoma to Hot Springs and our start through Arkansas. That was where this other boy got my baseball bat and baseball glove along with some other things they told me were too small for me. This other boy got all my clothes but for the handed-down-to-me suit of clothes they made me wear. That left me with a ways to go before it would fit me. My brother might have gotten the hand-me-down baseball stuff along with the clothes but he wasn’t ever going to grow up into any of it anyway.
So all my stuff got us from Hot Springs to North Little Rock and we stopped for that one night. That was where these other people got our pillows, blankets, sheets, and the other stuff that helped us sleep. We got from North Little Rock to Campbell Station and we kept going away. My mother’s purse along with everything she had left in it got us from Campbell Station to Biggerton. This other girl there got my sister’s locket and chain that had a picture of my sister in it from when she was a baby and sick and even though my sister did not die from that and that other girl getting it, that locket and chain still got us out of Biggerton and Arkansas and into Glenallen in Missouri. That was where these other men got my father’s wallet along with all the stuff my father had left in his wallet. There were the family pictures of us in my father’s wallet and the cards that had the names of other people and other places on them. There wasn’t any money left in my father’s wallet but we didn’t need any money anymore anyway. My father’s wallet along with all the stuff left in it got us from Glenallen to Anna, Illinois and left us in the middle of America with all those miles behind us and all those miles to go more in front of us.
Anna was where this other boy got my guns, my holster belt, and all the bullets that went in my gun or went in the loops of my holster belt and around my waist. My guns and other play stuff got us from Anna to Giantsburg and Old Shawneetown, over the Ohio River, all the way out of Illinois, and up into the hump of Kentucky that has Henderson in it. That was where my mother traded her wedding dress and wedding ring away to this other lady that wanted to wear them and get married. That other lady also wanted the veil to the wedding dress but my mother didn’t have it or any of her other wedding things left but my father. But my mother’s wedding things still got those two other people married and us from Henderson to Hendricksville. This girl there got all my sister’s clothes but for the dress my sister put on to wear out of Hendricksville, up through Six Points, Big Sheridan, Russellville, and into Bennetts Switch.
It was there that we got down to where my mother’s clothes were almost the last stuff of hers that anybody else really wanted and that got us from Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown. This other brother and sister there got the record player and records that my sister and me played in the backseat. The record player and records made somebody up out of words and songs but trading them away also got us out of Frederick Perrytown, out of Indiana, and up into Edwardsburg at the beginning of Michigan.
All this stuff so far got us up to where this man got the silver frame with the picture of our whole family in it – the picture that had all the old people in it that were already dead and some others of us that weren’t dead yet. Our family was going to need everybody we had left in it to get there. That silver frame with the family picture and all those dead people and us got us the miles that got us out of Edwardsburg, up through Schoolcraft, over to Battle Creek, and into Sunfield. That was where this other father and his family got our suitcases and the other things where we had packed our stuff up. Those suitcases, boxes, and crates were almost empty anyway and that other father and his family let us keep the things we had left in them – the underwear and the shoes, the doll parts, our dirty clothes, and some other stuff of ours that nobody else ever wanted but us. My brother was the only empty thing that we kept with us.
But there was all that other stuff that wasn’t ours anymore. There was that other family on their way to somewhere else in America. There was all our other stuff with all those other people and other families all over America. But all this stuff so far also got us out of Sunfield, into and out of Lyons and Hubbardston, and up into Far Town. These other people there got everything we had left in the glove box – the maps and our other car papers, the flashlight, a pair of sunglasses, some batteries, a sewing kit, a first-aid kit, some gloves, and some other small things that fit in there. All that stuff from the glove box got us all the way out of Far Town and up into Morrison. We traded our spare tire away to some men along the way, along with the hubcaps, the tire jack, the lug wrench, and some other tools that were in the trunk. Those men took our backseat for the back of their pickup truck and took our rearview mirror so they could see if anybody else was sitting down in it. The rest of our car got us up through Marceytown and Roscommon, on through Tom’s Mile, Bradford, and some other places that got their names from people that must have done stuff. Or maybe people got that far and then just stopped so that the town and everybody else kept growing up out of all those miles. We stopped in Gaylord and kept going – into its streets and up to the two-story house that was going to have Bompa coming out of it to take us inside it.
That was as far as all this stuff got us. There were all those towns that we stopped at and all those towns that we did not stop at until we got to Gaylord. We traded for the next town in Hot Springs and in Anna, in Henderson and in Frederick Perrytown, in places that never got big enough to get a name, and in all the other towns along the way that already had their names. We traded our stuff away for miles. We traded for the lives of other people, what might have happened to us for what did.
+++
The recording and a text excerpt originally appeared on Diaro with Italian translation of the text. See it here.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
August 31, 2007
Narrow House + Lame House Present...
We're joining forces Lame House Press in Brooklyn, to kick off the i.e. reading series with a bang.
Saturday, September 1st
8 pm
A Narrow House / Lame House Reading with:
Cathy Eisenhower | Arlo Quint | Dustin Williamson | Matt Hart | Jamie Gaughran-Perez | M. Magnus
Note the new location for i.e. readings:
CARRIAGE HOUSE
2225 Hargrove Street
Baltimore, MD
Map to the location
I hope this distracts you from the fact that, actually, there won't be a new Rock Heals to next week.
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:04 AM
August 23, 2007
The vice president
Adam Robinson
VP Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter
By Lynn Brezosky
Associated Press #151; Feb. 13, 2006
"The vice president
didn't see him,"
she said.
"The covey flushed and
the vice president picked out a bird and
was following it and
shot. And
by god,
Harry was in the line of fire and
got peppered pretty good."
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
peanuts have dead fish in them
Adam Robinson
peanuts have dead fish in them
dead fish in them made of peanuts
these fish have peanut flippers
that are so small and yet still peanuts
and still fish
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Poem Bag
Adam Robinson
Cat
Hey household pet,
work hard.
Do a good job.
All the little screws
All the little screws
have been put into boxes
and the tools are set
neatly onto shelves.
Couch
We found a headboard in the trash,
cut off the legs and moved them forward,
set a plank across the two,
and laid Theresa's cushion on the plank.
My Internet tendency
Yesterday I watched the Brewers
step on the skulls
of the Cubs.
Baseball
Everyday I receive more books about baseball
in the mail.
Poetry
I am waiting for someone to call
with my username and password
so I can follow the appropriate steps.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
August 15, 2007
The Bridge
Phil Rizzuto
(9/25/1917 - 8/14/2007)
Two balls and a strike.
You know what they had on TV today, White?
Bridge on the River Kwai
Everybody should have gotten an Academy Award for
that movie.
I don't know how many times I've seen it.
About forty times.
Alec Guinness!
William Holden!
Three and one the count.
I just heard somebody whistle.
You know that song?
That's what they whistle.
Nobody out.
And he pops it up.
May 5, 1987
New York at Chicago
Joe Niekro pitching to Carlton Fisk
Second inning, no outs, bases empty
No score
+++
Borrowed lovingly from O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, The Ecco Press, via the Cosmic Baseball Association (which has more from Mr. Rizzuto)
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Haiku
Phil Rizzuto
(9/25/1917 - 8/14/2007)
Ice, I can't stand it.
I cannot stand anything
Cold on my body.
May 31, 1991
Milwaukee at New York
Julio Machado pitching to Hensley Meulens
Eighth inning, no outs, bases empty
Score tied 2-2
+++
Borrowed lovingly from O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, The Ecco Press
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Legs
Phil Rizzuto
(9/25/1917 - 8/14/2007)
The legs are so important.
In golf, they're very,
People don't realize
How important legs are in golf,
Or in baseball,
And football, definitely.
Track.
O, in track.
All-important.
Jumping.
Soccer.
Is there anything, what?
Is there anything where the legs
Are not the most important?
+++
Borrowed lovingly from O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, The Ecco Press
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
August 08, 2007
Brick of Butter
Kirstin Richardson
Learn to fly.
Don’t be held down by Hell.
Line the walls with home theater systems.
The Hip Hop Block is hated.
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
Bread Maker That Chose Not To Be
Kirstin Richardson
Gloom and doom is not to be.
Fang Bang.
Snake bite earrings.
Work part time several times.
Green furniture in the sleeping building ends all.
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
Bratwurst
Kirstin Richardson
Meowing in the distance.
Lying in a cradle of filth.
Voices are consumed by laughter.
Snowboarders do not exist.
We all get a chance in the eye of the storm.
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
July 25, 2007
for she travels on false time and neptune horses
Mel Nichols
return to Earth in time to scrape my teeth
by sea and take him to my Neptune Pool
therefore your breasts are firm and sharks help keep
our oceans clean your breasts electric blue
she is discrete--she takes on mental tasks
the wide shield caught their cleaning instruments
the horse had kicked the dentist over and
the staff was seriously rude--and dishonest--
his fishing partners threw them overboard
he'll have to stick his toothbrush up his arse
the same dark dead false ceiling broken for
we know she travels on nocturnal hours
in the earth and barren sea--god of the deep--
Posiden--cleaner and protector of the teeth
+++
April 8, 2007 from The Beginning of Beauty
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Wolfowitz Resigns From World Bank
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Names spelled in brakes lights
Murk beyond mist and morning
This is how I go
+++
May 17, 2007 from Our Daily May
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
instance 028 - personal brain
Adam Good
there's this brain
apparently
non-existent
non-exoskeleton
non-exo-anything
really
apparently
smoke on the water
and such
and it says
orpheus orifice interface
again
and again
i am like yup
if ya got em
gettin good
then well, good
and such
cuts will re-un-resolve
quote some tones
cut and run
some somatic
non-re-runs
unwound
as any tape
taught
taut to
underfling
itself somehow
anyway
had some tones
like gunslinger
imagined some
semi-authomatic
interface
denial
(aren't you glad you used denial?)
but then well whatever
unnerved
sweeter sweater weather theater
thought soup
said 'sup?
AC/DC through these lines, duh
AC / the "duh" of anything looking at anything
and going "duh" at it
in the wild-I'd
NEWS
distracted again, mary
you're a character
alphabets have characters
mary's in the alphabet
quite non-contrary
contract
nubbins
all thee sighs
a tired mechanisms
unfold
un-unfoldable
never flossed in my life says the teeth of it
fetchingly
i never met a metaphor i didn't lick
bought a "want to" stick
and stuck it out
like the blind leading itself
to the window shouting things so very variously
at some suns
open interface
never a place
to rest said buck something about a place to rest
but there's somethin' in this hare brain barn don' wanna
donna
spitting something out fairly semi
regular like
a movement
and its ether
this other
things quote things it's the way of things
said the hammer
puttering about mattering
this happened when i was five
little girls
and spendid
at spelling out something obvious about JESUS
from my five trees in waiting
no, thought best thought,
that isn't write at all
ripening ever via
repetition with variation
a movement again
and again
i was all like, 'sup
thought
soup was like, 'sup turtle
(cause that's my name and now i'm an author)
from July 28, 2007, Hey June for Dummies
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Untitled from July Can Quit
Ryan Walker
I like barry bonds
he talks about something like a bubble
pamela anderson's bathing suit is very red
ken griffey jr's helmet is one of the reddest things
they've been putting him on barry bonds a lot
+++
from July 10, 2007, July Can Quit
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
July 11, 2007
BB
Aaron Lowinger
often I look up
there’s a runner on first
I don’t know how he got there
and I don’t care
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Zombie Haiku (with Julio Franco)
Mike Grau
julio franco
at 12:35 am:
brains, blood & base hits
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Geometry
Michael Kelleher
The
Home run
Arc
In silence
Its parabola
Must kill.
Play on,
Children.
Play.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Zombie Haiku (with Manny Ramirez)
Mike Grau
Manny swings the death
Crushing baseballs like cow hides
Kill George Steinbrenner
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
E7
Aaron Lowinger
please take me to game five
I want to yell at the right fielder
get lost in the bathroom
make friends with some older women
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
July 04, 2007
Tawrin Baker
Geoffrey Gatza
the high king of wool scarves, beloved professor of tomorrow
was asked if his poetry rhymed by a proletarian dishwasher. how
does anyone answer what their poems do but he didn’t laugh as
I was in my corner of the kitchen. he stopped and placed his tray
on the counter and his hand to his chin beginning a dialog of
things that could be
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
eight narratives out there (for Kevin Thurston)
Geoffrey Gatza
Kevin, I was just looking up the gauntlet online. I didn’t go through this during boot camp, although I did go through something similar to it. Our training and the training that they are now doing is very different. They have always taken pride in consistently updating training. In the Philippines we did a jungle warfare training, in California Mountain and Desert training, also winter mountain training as we were hoping to crush the Russians but this was before we knew they were incompetent, it was a real shame too.
But to answer directly about the gauntlet I went through was a hand to hand combat day which was great fun. The day ended with pugal sticks, a long padded staff held with two hands. I lost twice one on one but won twice against two on one. It seemed easier to distract one and hit the other. And in the jungle training we were left to our own devices to survive to graduate the class. It was very scary but I made it and ate a grub or two and am still here.
It mostly sucked. Like being in a community college literature class. There is only so far the conversation can progress. I could never believe that any of this was real, or was really happening as it was a lot of training and fucking up or off. I cooked mostly and didn’t match well with my unit. I was looking to be something bigger than what could ever be presented. There is no one, there is only the team. I was not the team and was a real asshole. I still am. This is me and that was me too but I don’t feel like that person today.
My point was this though. They plan and they train, teaching over and over to focus on the task in front of you, improvise, adapt and overcome. These are the values I have gained from them and I used them everyday. Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking that you could not achieve what I did. You have a bold perspicacity that would carry you through any physical or mental challenge. And the challenges I met in those years were designed to take one to the brink of themselves. Taking the body to that point and finding you can [ fin ]
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
June 27, 2007
Graveside
W.B. Keckler
So we are here together in this heat
before Astroturf in the cemetery.
I praise the Sushi bar's oblivion and air conditioning.
But I must offer praise for a lowered poet,
Nature's own earthworm:
"He was moist, bisexual, self-fertilizing...
like a Smurf." And she slapped me
as on the street in the thirties movies.
I felt privileged...
She had the lights of Dorothy
in her eyes, awake to the Rainbow
her beautiful lips
before the stupid Blazing Droning Ocean
which is our family....
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
Narrow House CD/Book Release Party: June 29 (Baltimore)
just a friendly reminder...
...food for search engines
Narrow House presents:
Annotated Artifcacts from the Doubles Museum
by Rick Royer with sound by John Berndt
Book/CD release party
June 29, 2007
7 p.m.
FREE
The Red Room
425 E. 31st St.
Baltimore, MD
(410) 243-6888
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
June 20, 2007
Sky Log
Joey Cashiola
1:29am
can you find them in the clouds an augury a crazy horse and his boogie band put their pencils to the sky and trace a pattern thereupon taste the ink of eulogy for tomorrow will worry about itself each day has enough trouble of its own strange nagging storm spinning with the zest of too much funk for a pelicanic vulning
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Sky Log
Joey Cashiola
6:00 p.m.
betray no motion without sound or similar instrumentation the picture on the wall a million millipede legs under it the wall itself a low geared conveyor belt recycling a gray exercise over and over again the almost inaudible purr betrayed by an arching a curving similar to the spine of a napping cat when touched by tarantula fingers
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Sky Log
Joey Cashiola
9:30am
in the sand on the oceans floor the look of layers tiny oxidized treasures embedded in the sediments lost to years of aimless current and jet stream islands scorched in the caribbean and thawed out of the arctic unknowing of time and distance heard in retired beachcomber headphones plugged into metal poles plugged into tan hands listening for that lost time and distance
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Narrow House CD/Book Release Party: June 29 (Baltimore)
...food for search engines
Narrow House presents:
Annotated Artifcacts from the Doubles Museum
by Rick Royer with sound by John Berndt
Book/CD release party
June 29, 2007
7 p.m.
FREE
The Red Room
425 E. 31st St.
Baltimore, MD
(410) 243-6888
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
May 31, 2007
[4]
Mike Grau
that's the lumpen part
the fixture fixed in the ceiling
old Victorian or cheap cut glass
lost, encrusted, for those with
a history of shoulder pain
stop and take a moment
to find your center, your
lifestyle target, your
wall mart and online too
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
May 16, 2007
Hate to Say
Brad Liening
It can be tough to tell what to make
of what washes up. The boa constrictor
stuck in the doggy door, its flat head
slowly swiveling across the front step.
The princess successfully avoids
marrying one she truly does not love
but finds herself in the dark wood.
Murderers with hearts of gold,
rats nesting in a gossamer gown.
I’ll confess that this can be easier
sometimes, like the time in college
we came home stinking drunk to find
a new sprinkler head on the living room
ceiling, reached up and grabbed a bat.
We drank the cheapest tequila
we could find and the next day
got shots for rabies. Enter fairy
godmother trailing celestial sparkles.
Enter actual godson trailing snot.
Enter intelligent life forms that have
come to Earth in peace from a distant
galaxy in order to share please some of
your planet’s fossil fuels. Enter friendly fire.
In cases of protracted warfare, the zoos
are pretty quick to go, and though
my friend believes god got it right
when he made lemurs, the annual
walleye festival my home town holds
is such a sorry joke it’s hard not to think
of glaciers crushing our colorful tents,
resetting our sad yearnings to zero.
We often carry our secret desires like
knives in boots and even mitochondria
have a job to do though I don’t have
a clue as to what it is. Who redid this
bathroom in black? Whose idea was it
to make the fire escape out of wood?
A cloud gets sucked down the chimney,
a bicycle snared in the power lines.
Posted by Rock Heals at 06:30 AM
May 09, 2007
Siamese Stanzas: On the Highway
Changming Yuan
| tender shines the night the moon looks foul and foolish when dreams come too close | |
| on the fairy road | failure to turn right |
| we drive | we must drive |
| our newly painted jalopy | farther and farther |
| with changed tires | straight ahead |
| no less slowly | in the wrong direction |
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Earthling Calling
we love; therefore, we are…
Changming Yuan
.--/.
.-../---/...-/.
-/..././.-././..-./---/.-./.
.--/.
.-/.-./.
.--/.
.-/.-./.
-/...././.-././..-./---/.-./.
.--/.
.-../---/...-/.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Elm’s Agenda in Autumn
Changming Yuan
| 5am – 7: | exhaling carbon dioxide together with fret and frenzy |
| 7am – 7:30: | reaching out its fingers to coop the first sunrays |
| 7:30am – 8: | getting ready to work |
| 8am – 10:30: | watching humans walking or working |
| 10:30am –10:45: | taking a shower break |
| 10:45am –12: | negotiating with crows and squirrels |
| 12am – 1pm: | taking a break from swirl winds |
| 1pm – 5: | taking off all decorations |
| 5pm – 6: | getting ready for the darkness |
| 6pm –10: | keeping standing as the dusk closes its huge wings |
| 10pm –5am: | witnessing dreams running rampant on the streets Chinese Chimes: The |
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
May 02, 2007
we'll stare at this until it speaks
Justin Sirois
post a head on a post for all to see, a reminder of power or power lost, power to the something 'ith degree, drippy frowning head on a wall hook or a pike – at the intersection of one day & maybe. Poor odorous sour puss head. Head like a thesaurus of mistakes. My head's has been through some really neat stuff lately. You're cropped portrait is the complete opposite, a blue-eyed cupid who's irises hemostat when the inbox cascades into the vanishing algorithms. How much future is left? There's no sharp point to plot this on. Post this for all to see, but wondering when the stop negates the maybe – I'll walk around the disaster for a full minute after they sever my picture from its doughy anchor, power de-gloved & defrocked from exposure, still trying to wrap my said around that one
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
not a labor movement – a thief in the Torrent
Justin Sirois
if nothing else works, starve yourself
lost enough of myself to know you can walk off
anything if you walk long enough
steal from yourself, shelf by shelf, for yourself
length of service & survivors' insurance premium
multiplied by length of intestinal track if unwound
from front door to cul-de-sac, around & back
like a un-spooled soundtrack
only measure my father by the way
he measures my mother
divide the sum
I stole my temper from him & don't let the timbre
perturb your pebbled skin
this instrument growls when plugged with
refinanced slow – you shop for kittens online
when's a good time for a new kitten?
starve yourself of impulsive theft
put back the green tea pellets & oatmeal soap
its not thieving when you're copping a copy
of a copy
kicking fits as the sheets teepee & recess
you & me, lets agree
the most criminal thing would be to steal a kitten
emotionally attached to a little girl maybe
the idea of kitten is so different than the actual kitten
you can steal ideas if there's an
infinite number of the same idea
infinite number of the same kitten
share folder full of milky eyed purring
in Dubai there's a man made island in the shape
of a stolen kitten
my temper is of a Persian origin
a house without an emperor is a house filled
with echo & heft
half Haight & half organically grown polystyrene
my violent people
nothing works unless you're a little selfish
my violent people
look the other way when I'm downloading
mother loads of free
in this virtual kingdom unicorns became popular
about the same time pirates did
but somehow they never met
united, they could have liberated every
college age sloth in
Half & Second Life
in my pocket
on the jump drive
there's a Living Will with burial instructions & last rights
rip & burn me like a Viking
the first pirates downloading wind &
shucking guts like corn
divide the number of corporate jets
by the number of sweat pants
throw the remainder into mum torrents
pray they don't prosecute
sever a head & it will broadcast
clear channels of satellite television
for ten sweet seconds
hold the head over your head for better reception
ask the head to open its mouth
teeth & tongue pointed at the fatherland
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
April 25, 2007
4/2 Daily treated spam: Cialis soft just for you
Rob Read
of works to hearts
seeing a point potion
with hypocrites and unbelievers death
nor life nor gel nor cialis nor powers nor invest with lead bodies emaciated also with sickness
worn out labor But I must turn against believers who esteem what is more accountable
your hearts by the holds
golden hold remember death until he come to words of the text,
“I determine not to know any thing They may perhaps impose upon the fellow- creatures
for a principle of a false self-love It is true,
he runs not.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
4/4 Daily treated spam: That’s interesting!
Rob Read
resting is doing something ACTIVELY
it is failing to interfere with the bird
and this indicates MOVEMENT
which has the effect of sliding
into the Accusative case
and changing into sentence
in a German newspaper
a sublime and impressive curiosity
occupies a quarter of a column;
it contains the art of speech --
not in regular order, but mixed;
it is built mainly of compound words
struck by the writer on the spot and not
in any dictionary I will cipher it out
THE rain is simply the quiescent state of being.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
4/17 Daily treated spam: do myself repeater
Rob Read
Take a look at this situation:
Alerts are broad over Power communication
use the power, deliver symmetrical voices
to this sector prepared by us
but not guaranteed.
not considered all inclusive opinion
risks and uncertainties
You could lose all your money
or underwrite a purchase
sell security
view cash
this advertisement this time
nothing
the shares discussed in this opinion
intend to rise or decrease.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
4/23 Daily treated spam: No herself throat
Rob Read
This gem is really
movable.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
April 18, 2007
total information awareness
Dear Norm,
There is something suspicious
in the Mireth Technology Corp.’s download server logs,
and on the sourceforge hosts’ of Darik’s Boot and Nuke,
and securedelete, panicware and cyberscrub dot com.
There is something suspicious in Google’s
user-linked query histories: ask it
what they asked it;
browse in the OLK and nibble their cookies.
There is something suspicious
in the international payment authorization
and settlement network records
corroborating
on government payment cards
or individuals’. (why not
earn double reward points while creating a documentary trail
of your efforts to delete evidence of criminal misconduct!)
There is something suspicious on no fewer than four
of the computers that each missing e-mail touched: the sender’s
terminal and mail server, Norm, and the recipient’s
should each have a copy, or evidence
of that copy’s deliberate deletion.
There are suspicious logs
of suspicious persons
surreptitiously replacing box after box
in the dead of night
at certain server colocation facilities
here, and in Canada,
and domain servers’ records of those replacements.
(and there are suspiciously interesting
“e-discovery” and jurisdictional issues)
There are unprecedented periodic workstation replacements,
suspiciously thorough equipment destruction
(and sale of the scrap abroad),
and suspicious records of too frequent
registry change and reboot
on the few yet undestroyed machines.
There are highly suspicious repeated mishaps
and what can only be described as
an improbably consistent
synchronicity of incompetence in the IT departments
at the White House, Justice and the RNC.
The IT guys, or their management.
Norm, I think you should conduct covert surveillance on
communications into and out of the White House and RNC to which
one party is a member of the White House and RNC or a member
of an organization affiliated with the White House and RNC.
Get Gonzales to authorize it!
He’s already intimately familiar with
their document retention policies,
ensuring compliance with legal technicalities
in the recordskeeping regs – Wait!
Not him. He’s suspicious, too.
Norm, it’s the electrons, stupid.
Cheers,
Don Hermes
++++
< Previously from The People’s Peaceable Assembly Line
Posted by Rock Heals at 06:30 AM
April 11, 2007
Zombie Haiku
Tyler Peterson
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
April 04, 2007
Evolution Markets
Greg Fuchs
Snakes on a plane
Chubby boobs
Chubby zeitgeist
So high is some life goal
For a teen in the ’burbs
Look it, you get here just a face
Book on company time
Adults who work my space
You’re on the air
Baby band tee shirt
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
Zombie Haiku (Mr. Ball's World)
Michael Ball
| siamese cats and twins brains for breakfast |
no you it isn't deja vu... we used this illustration from Jon Lee along with a Ric Royer haiku back in early November '06, but it was just so spot on we couldn't pass it up for re-use
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
March 28, 2007
Emergency Room
Bob Mezewski
(photos from all over)
There seems to be
No need for me to message you a snippet of conversation--
We consolidate any passion which we could share
Between our lives as a sacrifice to process.
A process beckoning
Our words into our actions in which mellow drama ensues
Cocktail party to happy hour to a show-- the habitat of Man
& Woman into the deep shallow end of a swimming pool.
The walls concave
As globs of afterbirth absorb into the soil – life process 101
The quietness rejoins loud shouting-- whispers nods of sleep
Cajole into a celebration of sickness a gloomy atmosphere.
A scent of sterile filth
Lingers seat to seat between all the coming and goings of all.
The madness in the smoking section all due to selective paperwork
spare me this for just a couple moments until I receive urgent care.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
Zombie Haiku
Ryan Walker
bad breath. Wrinkling their noses,
zombies pass me by.
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
March 21, 2007
Lament (A Zombie Haiku)
Tyler Peterson
Pumping lead into zombies
Crap, that was Grandma.
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Content (A Zombie Haiku)
Mark Wallace
all those refugees for lunch
time to take a nap
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Zombie Haiku
Nic Coivert
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
March 14, 2007
from Key Bridge
Ken Rumble
27.february.2001
I'm so hung-over
I could eat a live cat
and feel
better.
---
26.june.2001
There are answers
but they are complicated answers.
There are tables like cadavers
but they are metal-legged tables.
There is history
but it is temporary.
There is a hill like so:
(NE Georgia Ave –
driving into the city, reaching
the top of this hill, open your eyes, yes,
look ahead and right, don’t speed,
don’t speed, look, see,
open your eyes, yes,
to the city laid out
like directions.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
more from Key Bridge
Ken Rumble
24.december.2001
The return from there from her
Park Rd above the park
blue weight and location
blue 3am Tuesday taxis -- she that
she there
(she all that
good-ness visions sake slakes
there, above the zoo
(the zoo
the giraffe & elephant
(what?
the city & she
name, history, and stake
a stake in the world
an open hand there,
an open hand curled into the sign
for brick for sun for height for here for land
for land for this we
know: ether & the angles:
this woman this city this coincidence this apex this freedom this need
to call you in this first hour of this 27th Christmas
---
25.june.2002
-- Discord 36 --
"I am a patient boy"
"I am a patient boy"
"I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait"
"throw down your bulldog front"
"Free of suggestion"
"See me"
"Words"
"Words"
"Your hand to the wall at night"
"Tangle us, our desires"
"The water's burning"
"Right through me"
"I are one patient boy"
"until me wait for boy patient"
"moi, I wait for does not wait for"
"until me my time" "leaves to the base I"
"bulldog betrayal is quite" "bad entendement"
"why isn't my canned food free proposal base?"
"writewrite"
"to write"
"for promise"
"your hand" "writes down" "all night of you"
"our here is delivered"
"place condition confuse, look like" "see my"
"horizontal steel station"
"the box level skids"
"water, does not have the movement, does not have movement"
"toward the line"
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 07, 2007
from See it Everywhere
K. Lorraine Graham
This could be about all the people I’ve left and who’ve left, it’s not
about what? I’ve forgotten what it’s not about because everything feels
like it’s about everything, respect the need for delineation and
boundaries but I can never find them, only afterwards do I see an outline,
trace a ridge, note an imprint of someone on something or something on someone,
an argument about ways we might ride in a taxi and in what combinations.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 28, 2007
My Zombie Parents
Cheryl DeWolfe
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
February 14, 2007
In Which: A Short Novel of Ethical Pornography
Alessandro Porco
CHAPTER I – In Which Our Tale Begins, Its Heroine Enjoying a Meal
shesuCkstesticlesliketheyaremadeofblUeberrycheesecake
CHAPTER II – In Which Our Heroine Finds Herself in Peril
suddeNlyTheCocktUrNsonheraleThalpeniswhippingensues
CHAPTER III – In Which Our Heroine Hides in the Stables for Fear
laterridingreverseCowgirlsheshoUtsyoulikefuckiNgThatpussy
CHAPTER IV – In Which Our Resourceful Heroine Befriends Peter, the Stable Boy
theyfuCkedhotterthantwohornykittensinasweatsock
CHAPTER V – In Which Peter Saves Our Heroine From Her Perilous Past
hisdickswerveswithpleasUrelikeaplasticspooNonahoTdashboard
CHAPTER VI – In Which Heroine Doth Proclaim Her Undying Love
iwanttotastemyassjuiCessheexclaimsinthemiddleofavigoroUsatm
CHAPTER VII – In Which Our Heroine and Peter Live Happily Ever After
hesitsoNherTittieswithhisCockatherlipssUckmeofftheNsluT
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Special Friend (A Zombie Haiku)
J.S. Lohr
I would keep one as a pet.
His name would be Phil.
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 31, 2007
Zombie in Hollywood
Daniel Bradley
Botox and silicon stilled
Hollywood folk taste good
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 24, 2007
from VDB Wordlist
Kemeny Babineau
What do you want, how much
shall I give you
sinachkoo, to exorcise the devil
to make medicine
to heal
to ignite wood
It is burning
when shall you come back
I do not know
in the spring
den soomer
den winter
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku
David Durst
I give you my heart, my leg I must have you. Brains.
Everything I am
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 17, 2007
How It Claims Us
W.B. Keckler
A piece of sea glass cutting paper
a translation of the sky into sky
the voices of children mimicking adults
mimicking a beheading
that cycled around the internet
performed in soft whispers
the first orgasm in a prison
Gravestone markers invent the rules of spelling
and birdsong distracts your executioner-to-be
someone says "it's only a moment"
clear samples try forgetting again
try me
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku
Thomas L. Vaultonburg
inside my brawn
we're unstoppable
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 11, 2007
Zombie Haiku
Gopal Lahiri
I search for them here and there
I'm starved though gutless
< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 03, 2007
Zombie Haiku, A Tradition Continues
Can't get enough brains
I search for them here and there
I'm starved though gutless
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
( in the voice of d.g.eng )
| Jason Brown "I capped this one big ass mutherfucker right in his empty eye hole." |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku
| Mark Wallace feeding on a leg left by the side of the road-- the camera shudders
|
 |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
December 27, 2006
The Minutes (Pt. 2)
Alessandro Porco
Let's begin: satisfy your
maternal urge, adopt
a highway. I am a knot
in desperate need of deus
ex machina but this
ain't your daddy's Horace.
The word of the day is
not "ontology" (Nov. 20th). Jazz
hands. I saw mommy
kissing Santa Claus but
it wasn't on the mouth. Jazz
hands. #49 on my list
of 100 "must-read" books
of scholarship written by
certified Counts: Korzybski's
Introduction to Non-
Aristotelian Systems
and General Semantics.
I'm attracted to you.
Schlupp, schlupp, schlupp.
"Your lips look so de-
licious upon a tropical shore
before blizzard season."
Everyone misunderstands
the lyric. Like tulips in a pod.
On this day in history
the Anglo -licious (from
the Latin licia) is suffixed to
STD-related terms so as
to put a positive spin
on an otherwise bad situation:
herpelicious; siphylicious;
papillomalicious, clapalicious.
I'm seeing stars.
Meeting adjourned.
*
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 PM
December 20, 2006
(for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
._____
.____
.___
.__
._
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"anchor." (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
consider it contextualized |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"ANCHOR!" (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
consider it done. response assumes relation. you skips toward me. AT LAST, a tangent (etc.) a horse walks into a bar( o c nothing is hidden here. |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"[ang-ker]" (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
it's not a failsafe, but we could agree upon "win-win." prohibition-bauble prohibition-bauble agreed? prohibition-bauble |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"anger" (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
in part because disclosure breeds
nevermind no one will stumble across this
anyway i mean how many hits does this site get
anyway
this year my family asked me to bring this is all true. and in part because once recontextualized, (hello |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"Said 'anchor.'" (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
some cobbled we we've so gracefully... publication presumes uniqueness supposin' one don't want no trajectory? |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"Say, Anchor?" (for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
O, the yards of yards in my time to part the seas apart we graph the root the houses this sight has seen talking about the idea of talking point to play i almost gave away your dollar |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
"[ ]"
Lauren Bender
their steady weather at least colder and to think |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
(for a.g.)
Lauren Bender
_.
__.
___.
____.
_____.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
December 06, 2006
from T=I=D=Y language (1)
Daniel f. Bradley
haven't changed the developing world couldn’t tell you the status so far as i can see makes life slightly better for the middleclass and allowed them
to call themselves if they don't want to call compounded class mere gender threats to return soon you will be rock you will be rolled i think it was over slices of pizza and discourse was more a meta-commentary on conspiracy social phenomenon and how it fulfills a archetype
take back your mink take back your pearls of delinquency of a minor sentence infuriating an inspired smear long-but unproven plagiarism allegations
that beach party standard mass units present inappropriate damage who won easily a formal sexuality was once shot
and not buying anything you say
i was one of those ever get the feeling your being cheated in fact just don't have anything really very flattering to say many of us are well just elitist boot sweat
sweet not just your average smut laden foot
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
from T=I=D=Y language (2)
Daniel f. Bradley
integrity is a hard show when found within the puffiness of a dull sunrise
otherwise cocky and no customers sitting at any of the tables we were starting to formulate a plan stirred our slogan
or maybe somehow the state of c'mon girl it will make your volt meter sobbing your geiger crackle maybe half the passion maybe raw
babble plume rolling the bit up my walk for bravo lap dogs blame rhetoric unshackled and left to the back bees baby
i would type awfully tacky pastoral kill thy neighbor's on the dark end o you are going to sputtered in disbelief on the dance floor
removed by the council of masters as teacher they renounced the above-noted doctrines and most others went on eventually they went on best animal on show even today such caring kitty dogs fuck
and i do so love the boys showing off my long legs in a short skirt and giving the crew view of my less twat
too sophisticated i mean what's the problem with climbing up onto a big rig and taking a big rig complaining
one really knew she had trained in techniques of self growth wars famine and persuasive language
what obscure worker disciple party for the club without any proof of the beer hall atmosphere mass
or the blue brotherhood society of the truly initiated establish contact with the green dragon of the unknown
finishing a red tail in the sunset potted with spiked heels a thigh-length blue trench coat totally impractical for rain but perfect to show off
those curves them in action
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
from T=I=D=Y language (3)
Daniel f. Bradley
just before our hot bubble walked past the open door
how when she dreamed her blue language was suspended
an indication of truthfulness became juvenilia for a sign might as well end by saying he was going to bring up the eternal stand up flame
and spiting out steps out towards a image alert after rumors examined
stepping into my bathe the phone rang hello
kangaroo courts passport practiced meditation as he fingered hundreds of noncommissioned dabble officer enlisted men who sympathized
seminars on origin of fortune by private unknown pupils grew chaotic blues order chancellor hello
i was expecting a southern drawl hint nonetheless enough stuffing about time to take the plunge read a couple sure relaxed
well lubricated and to take it in the shower knelt down to the nether regions
had some trouble actually locating any sinister thought then came some advert for family perversion
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
November 29, 2006
My Apotheosis
Chris Toll
The flying saucer lands
behind a hill.
Two Grays walk slowly
toward the manger
where Mary nurses Jesus.
One Gray carries a jigsaw puzzle
that changes the past.
The other Gray carries a mirror
that shows the future.
A woman talks on her cell phone
at the corner of Market and Money.
Bankers are frying ozone
in front of City Hall.
A detective cleans his bifocals
and releases the safety on his automatic.
Elizabeth weeps just like an American.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Strange World (I'm Too Sad)
Chris Toll
The centipedes are the size of alligators.
They circle Caa'rong, a Green Lantern.
She's a living boulder.
She has six arms.
She aims her power ring at the largest centipede.
If fur were in insufferable,
I might discover an inn in infinite
(O Deluded Dilaudid Deadfall, I can find fur in insufferable
and there will always be an inn in infinite).
Caitlin drives a junker on the interstate.
All her possessions are in the trunk.
Her hair's tied up in a pink bandanna.
Her heart left a while ago,
now her body's leaving too.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Lost Moon
Chris Toll
A skeleton invents grace,
the ocean burrows under a bed,
and a hungry lantern
delivers a mirror to a river.
Your hospital pilfers an overpass
from the knife creeping toward a kitten.
A prayer dances with dust
where summer enchants a fever.
My factory smuggles tears
into the evil castle
while a laundromat lingers on a sailboat.
++++
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
November 15, 2006
Letters to Norm: Karma Bomb
The People’s Peaceable Assembly Line
citizen declared
unlawful combatant and
interrogated
oh designate my
sweet unlawful combatant
status, chief exec!
i'm unlawful too
designate me enemy
hide me in your hole
fly me to egypt
or another client for
interrogation
give me the head bag
sensory deprivation
electroshock, norm
take candid pix, feed
me to your few bad apples;
bring forth the body!
make me, good christian kid,
american, enemy
martyr for your foe
+++++
Ed. note: Over the years, we've occassionally published copies of letters from the People's Peaceable Assembly Line to Norm. According to PPAL, Norm is the man that receives calls on the Department of Homeland Security Tips Line. This particular letter takes the form of a series of haiku. Why? I have no idea.
< Previously from PPAL Next >
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
November 08, 2006
Zombie Haiku With Flowers
| Marcus Kyd lilacs on the lake lie still - still as your lucky face when I eat it |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Cats and Dogs
| Cheryl DeWolfe zombie cats and dogs cannot digest human flesh this makes them great pets |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Are We Not Men
| Diana Manister Are we not men, we lumbering, hungry, undead? | 
|
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku with Blake
| Blake Shoen The warm ones shoot us Do they think they are better? Zombies make no war. |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Flesh
Ric Royer
| flesh sometimes alive in my daily existence but flesh sometimes dead |
and thx again to JL for all the great drawings this week...
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
November 01, 2006
Same Mesa Boogie Woogie
Garrett Caples
The usual: arrows arose on the stem of our rose and we arranged them in teams or themes or rows of sorrow. A danger in terms of a stranger meat, like salmon: pink; has eggs, intricate bones. We tried to paint flu but the results were too painful. Tore them up but knew them by rote, like a tone stretched over a telephone. I’m not speaking in terms of the rotary dial; more how to keep a lid on the knot in your throat.
Sower of thorns, show me your secret north, how short it is on painted screens. Crease this dented crown. Cover me with sores and snow. Let numbness come all over me, and tell me to snub men’s company. The result is a store of luster.
++++
"Same Mesa Boogie Woogie" appeared in that great magazine Zyzzyva and can also be found in The Garrett Caples Reader (Black Square Editions, 1999). Last but not least, it is track 15 on Surrealism's Bad Rap. Obviously it's getting around.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
October 25, 2006
IV.
Megan McShea
spine train bleeding wisps of
the ideal derby how it's
all going on tomorrow in places
they drove through only yesterday
Sturdy breach fodder lined the
dark banks in small-boat splashings
as they failed to distract themselves
from the terrible time it takes to
tunnel through the electrified squall to the
barrier island, where was my box..?
where was Alex when I needed a...?
where were we there? out to picnic
a lake with its inevitable trees and
the clouds with their ineffable
archways, you take lips to center
you inch port clams for scuffling
you sip you bake it with sordid
smiles without me, without my
head there was smiling and singing,
my how you've changed look you're
ogling the blender, the geese have
come home and we're making our
favorite noises. We've got these
monitors hooked up to everything and
we're watching it carefully and
you know even tomorrow shows
up here even now look see it's parked
in the corner those green fields with
bright yelow blips, well, blinking
and you can tell what it's going to do.
In the pasture on Hare Street it's
incredible we're
raining
Those cycles they break you know
we're sort of free and we
think you're nice,
even if it's true what they're
saying and you
are ferocious bunnies.
++++
This is one of 5 improvisations Megan wrote at the High Zero music festival. She tells us it was written during a set of music by Dave Smolen, Rose Hammer, Alessandro Bosetti and George Lewis.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 18, 2006
accessories
Julie Ann Strand
fingers in a pool of pills she wonders
if canceled prescriptions should pour and
sift through plastic and hemp necklaces made
at youth group retreats old makeup powders
coating the trash bag tip trickle rain they
go the garbage can fills quickly before
the twist tie her hands fill with the pleasures
of ghostly torsos those who hid, gave, made,
swallowed, and wore one cannot remain
traumatized forever like a lost
statue cut off at elbows
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
After Issa (a zombie haiku)
Joseph Young
No! Don't blast the zombie,
losing his skin,
losing his face
---
| The hits keep coming. << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> | 
|
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 11, 2006
Academic Rigour 2
Daniel F. Bradley and Kevin Thurston
“The global picture suggests that 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since we began measuring world freedom in 1972,” wrote Arch Puddington in the democracy monitoring group's 2006 report.
How do you rate the amount Of Ranch Flavour?
READ LIST IF NECESSARY.
1: Like Extremely
2: Like Very Much
3: Like Moderately
4: Like Slightly
5: Neither Like Nor Dislike
6: Dislike Slightly
7: Dislike Moderately
8: Dislike Very Much
9: Dislike Extremely
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
In the Newborn's Weight and Possible Death Oven
Letha Kirby
…earnest petition. We parted. I have been with him, going on four year,
that I should call you so for the last time, lighted and thronged with wild-like character.
Some little time I raged about the streets, and told myself…
P_ and all her family were full of grief at our gentleman gone abroad, she knew not where, but the young lady…
The generosity of her. What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off.
…that when Miss M_ took preparation of it, laid it down beside him with such great faces. His death is as blithe news as ever I got.
I’m a-going, you see, to my brothers, first, for another of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holdings
But, on second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me. I began and wrote a note which dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was the common drudge fast settling.
…seemed to form a part of his respectability…
What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip, I said.
…besides ourselves, had I not chanced upon a reference to her father.
If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me. After shaking hands, his felt like a fish. I will be liking it none the worse, you may be sure of that.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Opportunity (A Zombie Haiku)
J.S. Lohr
Flesh eating zombie,
Crawling out of the graveyard,
Please kill my girlfriend.
---
| You may remember J.S. Lohr as the official winner of the zombie haiku contest (cast on back to see). One of the thing that edged him ahead of others was the sheer volume of greatness he sent our way. We never said we were about fairness, we're about awesome. << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 04, 2006
Ordinarily, subject is prepared for a rendition
in fond remembrance of habeas corpus
Michael Provost
We’re given the over heavy place
shackled underpants,
the stripped shirt,
facemask, tape ears.
Cotton Finally, with a belt,
Them or They were plastic,
were headphones,
had pair.
They were, were inserted.
prevent wear, air
knee before cotton
a blue,
then Foam hooded, a belt
was earplugs of around
to surgical sound-deadening
around waist,
to presumably them, blindfolded
and strapped from length;
They absorbent and hood
together were wrapped talking.
their movement.
pair bandage over to trousers, naked:
a mouth’s handcuffed legs
to prevent hands’ overalls.
covered and hood.
The end.
inserted a pair were
and the blue length
cotton were Foam, pair a pair.
wear earplugs and a waist, to bandage
a knee, Finally, legs
covered ears. belt the mouths.
we’re shackled, sound-deadening
naked facemask, a prevent hood.
plastic strapped shirt, given over with their movement.
had them presumably over all.
tape in,
They handcuffed surgical
to their hooded, around
headphones or cotton
trousers and hands underpants,
prevent blindfold was heavy of them
then were around They wrapped,
stripped
absorbent together
before were belt being
and over hood
talking. placed
++++
Two iterations of a process that subjects an April 5, 2006 Amnesty International report on the U.S. policy of rendition to various distresses and threat of arbitrary deletions.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Got Those Zombie Blues
| Thomas L. Vaultonburg | |
| a zombie stole my 67 GTO motherfucker | |
--- | |
Mr. V_ runs a small bar in Love Park, IL called Castaways and hosts Zombie Nights on Tuesdays. I bet you can guess what the drink specials would be. And another great drawing from John Shanchuk to go with it. | |
| << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> | |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
September 27, 2006
Concordance
Raymond Hsu
How a concordance is a book that breaks down all the words of an author and lists them alphabetically, according to how many times they appear, where they appear. Shakespeare, for example, says natural x number of times. Milton says God x number of times and Satan x number of times. Imagine having your own concordance: all your words indexed. You could find out how many times you said love. Or yes. Or your name. And what it would be like to find the concordance of whom you love left by your door one day in July. And what it would be like to hide it under your bed, afraid. And how long it took to look up your own name.
++++
From Raymond's Anthropy (2004)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
September 20, 2006
Bijou
Joseph Young
We were young and poor on a late Sunday morning, down near the square. A man had set up a table with many tiny jars he'd made, arranged on a linen cloth. "Try this one," he said, and with his hand, drew a breaking wave in the air. I took it from him and, yes, through the cuts of the glass we saw a swimming fish and a flying bird and a naked woman splashing in the sea.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Music
Joseph Young
You gave me a box. The hinge, you said, was made of a space-age metal, completely silent. I asked, Space age? Wouldn't that have been 1955? 1968? You said, Shh, listen. I had to admit, it was indeed the most beautiful quiet. Inside the box was a foresty shadow. You said, It came from the people of the early Russian taiga. I asked, Had they yet learned to forge bronze? You shook your head and closed your eyes. There was a bell somewhere in the morning.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
An Age-Old Story (Zombie Haiku)
| Mike Edwards | |
| Alas, had we met by last spring's willow-kissed pond. Ride the shotgun, freak! | |
--- | |
Hope you enjoy. And Rock Heals comrade John Shanchuk has started sending us some delicious zombie illustrations. OK, we begged him repeatedly for them. | |
| << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> | |
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
September 13, 2006
Zombies Are Stupid (no. 15 of 17)
Michael Provost
15.
zombies, lacking brains,
will swallow anything whole,
and go on eating
---
| Michael Provost went all kindsa crazy and sent us a sequence of 17 zombie haiku that tell quite a story. But publish them together? The decaying corpses beneath the stairs moaned, "dismember them...DISMEMBER THEM!" << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
August 23, 2006
Thought for Today
W.B. Keckler
During the Black Death
half the world
died in a short span.
But this was a solution
to unemployment,
made landowners of serfs
and nobles, for once,
broke their own backs at fieldwork.
Universities were born
and the Renaissance
began in earnest.
Basically, all got laid
out of either grief or joy.
God retreated for a bit,
appeared only as some quotes
on a calendar.
Today, I got wasted
and watched Jerry Springer's
karmic contortionists
for about three hours.
Then I masturbated
out of contrition for these souls,
somewhat disinterestedly
I should confess.
Still, I believe
like Oprah
that God has a plan.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Dismembering TKP's Zombie Haiku
Tyler K. Peterson
We awaken now
and rise from beneath the earth
The moonlight guides us.
---
| We're butchering TKP's 4 haiku run into parts. What more would you expect from any self-respecting undead magazine? << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
August 16, 2006
The Night River Phoenix Died
CAConrad
completely stoned
i'm having sex
with a man in a diner
against the restroom door
or was it against the
door to a dream since
no man could kiss
the way
i dream
his kiss
relaxed me
till i fell asleep
his tongue inside my
mouth a good two
minutes before
he heard me snore
he didn't take it well
didn't quite believe
it was the greatest
kiss of my life
i walked thru the diner
where the customers
and waitresses
knew where i had been
River Phoenix watched me
through the hole he'd chewed
in a piece of toast
i felt him read my thoughts
of walking on my knees to him
"forget it" he said "you
want to kiss me the way
i want to kiss James Dean
the kiss the dead kiss
would only put you to sleep"
"but those are my favorite kind" i said
and he slipped his tongue
through the hole in his toast
so i walked to his table
two feet shorter
on my knees
----
from CAConrad's latest... Deviant Propulsion (soft skull press)
... and he gets his blog on, too
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
One of Half a Dozen Zombies
Mark Wallace
people waving flags
my brain’s the one on empty
eating so much death
---
| Did you really think it would all be fun and games? We're talking about the motherfucking undead, people. Rock Heals, you're cussing too much this week. It cheapens you. << Previous Zombie Haiku Next >> |  |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
August 09, 2006
Thanks to Ryan Adams
Greg Fuchs
Didn’t you just start hating rock guys
It’s like ball freaks all about their balls
In the radio buzz or weed and gin
Why don’t you just shut up and sing
Who do you think you are? Enough already
I feel like I’m writing a poem with John
Coletti, he’s at Cori’s party tonight
For Paul but we’re home drinking daiquiris
Planning tomorrow’s party for Arlo & Christa
Instead the traffic jam on Delancy
Made me laugh at the Chinese report
Then of course think of Charles’s sadness
Relating to the other rock god that drowned
In the Mississippi making the place look
Fabulous again like Charles in charge
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Friday becomes a Saturday
Greg Fuchs
Swingers pick up the falafel guy in man cleavage
Down the avenue minces the chubby queen
In his workaday-wear winking with flowers
Nausea lives all over me in the bookstore aura
Of my friends’s and rivals’s great new releases
“Fagneck,” yells a boy in my general direction
Hazy heat puts a vaguely slutty light on the corner
Barefoot in Brooklyn dorks party on through lunch
Catch-22 casts a shadow on the baby-fat bikini bosom
Nestled in the monkey grass back of baseball diamond
Mobile phone rings out one way open for suggestions
Greenmarket renews a faith in the earth
Delphinium, fennel, baby squash, sweet cherry baskets
Please don’t take my sunshine away
The Beaujolais makes her crazy in the heat
At the foot of the park the luxury homes ring
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku With Crunching
Cheryl DeWolfe
crunching through his skull
I realized I didn't care
whether he loved me
---
| Can you see why it was so hard to pick a winner? So many delicious flavors of zombie haiku. At times we felt like we were trying to judge a ninja against a 4-week all-expenses-paid vacation in the tropics. How do you say one is better than the other? Cheryl sent a whole bunch that kicked ass. But she lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and perhaps jealousy got the best of us? |  |
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
August 02, 2006
When They Are Older They Will Pass This Place In Their Cars and It Will Seem Smaller and Boxier
Heather Rounds
Behind Hocking Valley's Rollerama the flimsy girls hunch firmly over bucket sized slurpees flavored with Absolute. They’re lined up like pigeons, curbside, and something leads one to say, "what's done is done" and they let out sleepy laughs and the sound makes its way down the alley, out into the thick fried air where a hemi engine revs and the fuzzy thumps of car speakers vibrate the June parking lot.
They are made from fathers who’d call this anything but music and mothers who just hate the noise because none of it is theirs.
The evening is turning to night and the clouds dim purple and endlessly move like wrinkles of lingerie and outside the Rollerama there are pearls and whistles falling from baggies, there are things shaken not stirred, things that dangle loose from the neck, flush as pompoms, things that tunnel up and jump off the tongue, things that unbuckle when least expected
and the slippery surface goes pounding and pounding.
Behind the girls, the exit sign of the building sluggishly blinks, green and malfunctioning and one's got a c-shaped scar on her belly and it's slipping from her shirt, one's got silver lips, the third’s scraping the curb with a quarter she's found and the fourth is flailing her arms at the sight of her boyfriend who’s just appeared out of no where--a tenuous expression under a stiff red cap. The girls rise from the curb quickly and if it wasn't for all the noise you would hear the swish of hot blood in their bodies and see the scars fly up easy as wasps.
----
Heather has a handmade chapbook out these days. Interested? Email her at:
secondbed at yahoo dot com
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:30 AM
Ugh! another zombie haiku?
Blake "Fifty Points" Shoen
My mother said "Don't bite."
That was a long time ago
Now she eats people
---
| Been a while since we've shared some of the great submissions. And with war still on our minds and TVs -- this one seemed fitting. Blake sent us a load of great ones -- thought we'd preserve his email subject line as a title for it. | |
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:30 AM
July 27, 2006
from St. Apples
Ken Rumble
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
July 12, 2006
Zombie Haiku: We Have a Winner!
It came in the dead of night with simple instructions: Write a zombie haiku. Send it this way. Be awesome.
And now 51 days later we've gathered over 70 entries; sifted and sorted and shared; taken smoke breaks; laughed and cried and fought; and finally settled on a winner.
But before we get there. We thank all who participated -- picking a winner was pretty much impossible so we made a last minute rule change. Everyone's a winner. In coming weeks we'll publish 'em all, doling them out to make sure they don't overwhelm other shite we publish and run off with everyone's brains. While today's winner gets a copy of Buck Downs' Pontiac Fever and random schwag, the rest will get random cool shit (think small and tscoschke-esque) -- and we'll announce what those things are with each new publishing.
Cuz really, we really enjoyed what we got and want to share that love.
And now onto the winner -- J.S. Lohr's aptly titled Zombie Haiku...
And we thank Buck Downs, Justin Sirois, and all of Narrow House Recordings for sponsoring our prize and telling us to come up with a cool-ass contest in the first place.
adorable zombie plushie from nopunchbacks
---
And P.S. check out tracks and more info on Buck Downs' Pontiac Fire over here.
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:00 AM
The Winning Zombie Haiku
J.S. Lohr
I don't mind the brains
or that rotting meat smell... but
fuck all this walking
---
| J.S. Lohr's excellent Haiku is the official winner of our 2006 Zombie Haiku contest and the proud new owner of the grand prize Pontiac Fire CD from Buck Downs and Narrow House Recordings. Listen to samples from the CD | |
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:00 AM
July 05, 2006
Trans-Galactic
Jason Wilkinson
my spaceship crashed
now what do I do maybe
I'll start a religion
have them
traipsing around on all fours
looking for me
under stones
ruined buildings
;give them stupid hats to wear
that never fit attractively
I'll tell them that
they are not animals that
they are BETTER that
a capitalist hierarchy is marvelous
because everyone is so full of charity
be advised:
fucking and sucking
are way too enjoyable (you need a
degree of separation between
master servant, don't you?)
-not till Heaven till
the bombs drag this little outhouse away
into vibrating strings
cracked eyes/bikini tops
petticoats till the sky is rouge certainly
anything named Babel was
ripe to fall
like Hitler and Mondale
Thalidomide and Free Speech
I'll prophesize Armageddon then
hand them the tools to achieve it
desert into glass rip out the page and
take it from the top!
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 PM
June 21, 2006
Zombie Haiku June 30 deadline looms
| |
The June 30 deadline for our Zombie Haiku Contest is fast upon us, so get yours in. Enter now. Enter again. submit at rockheals dot com Remember the winner gets copy of Buck Downs' excellent Pontiac Fever -- and we have our eyes on a few other prizes and ideas to reward the other runner up greats.
Moon over birch trees
that whisper my love's last words:
"Shoot its head! ITS HEAD!"
Mike Edwards
IN LIEU OF FLOWERS
I’ll be honest about the zombies.
They were meant as decoration.
I didn’t know they’d eat flesh.
Jon Lee
| Are you prepared? Do you have your shotgun? Your shovel? Don’t be left behind. submit at rockheals dot com Come on in the water's fine. | |
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
June 14, 2006
The War is Unwinnable (an excerpt)
Tom Orange
He talks about his realization that the war was unwinnable, about a private memo to the president, about whether he resigned or the president fired him
He used the “CBS Evening News” as a bully pulpit, particularly when he said in the 1960s that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.
Iraq has not had - and may never have - its moment when a news anchor travels to Iraq to inspect the situation and pronounces the war unwinnable.
But at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, gray-haired men and women in floppy boonie hats and faded green battle fatigues worried aloud that a new generation of veterans is being forged in a war as unwinnable as their own
For its part, the Sudanese government saw the war was unwinnable and wanted US sanctions lifted
They destroyed Britain’s air of invincibility and convinced many British leaders that the war was unwinnable
There was little he could do to convince the president that the war was unwinnable
Calling for the Defense Secretary’s resignation is as bad a signal as saying the war is unwinnable
To say this morning, while our troops are under enemy fire, while American blood is flowing on the battlefield, that this war is unwinnable is an insult to every man and woman who has ever fought and sacrificed under the flag of this nation
The Congressman, a former marine and staunch supporter of the Pentagon, caused consternation when he said last week that the war was unwinnable without a large injection of troops and more international help, neither of which are seen as attainable at present
Political fashion in Washington holds that the war is unwinnable
It was more a sense that the war was unwinnable and not being won and not worth the price
Some members of Congress -- either out of a passion to defeat the president, pique at not being listened to by his administration, or simply a need to hear their own voices -- are declaring the war “unwinnable” or “a quagmire,” or are demanding an “exit strategy”
The candidate has been wise to shun the advice of those telling him to detail an exit plan and to say the war is unwinnable
The author said that by early 1972, if not before, the administration had concluded the war was unwinnable
No amount of valor or heroism can conceal the fact that they were sent off under false pretenses to fight a war that is unwinnable
U.S. and Iraqi casualties continue to mount in a war that is unwinnable -- politically, if not militarily
This stupid, ill-conceived and unnecessary war is unwinnable and wrong, and it must end
Posted by Rock Heals at 05:00 AM
June 07, 2006
Zombie Haiku Contest: Second Wave
Unghlluhngfuuuhhngn-
grhhhhicckherrrmnglzli
(Chomp)mfggg...huuuuuuuqhhh
Tawrin Baker
Zombie guinea pig,
Even with that lust for flesh…
Still pretty damn cute.
J.S. Lohr
Dear Diary
Today makes one month.
I can see in the dark now.
Sunshine hurts my flesh.
Julie Fisher
---
We're all about the diversity right now. And so another fine back of entries to the Zombie Haiku Contest.
Keep 'em coming -- we're taking entries until June 30. Enter as often as you'd like. submit at rockheals dot com Remember the winner gets copy of Buck Downs' excellent Pontiac Fever. | |
<< Previous Zombie Haiku Next >>
Posted by Rock Heals at 02:00 AM
May 31, 2006
Herman Melville
Ted Pelton
Herman Melville was a creature of his time.
Melville, sporting a beard that hung six inches below his chin, hiked athletically up the mountainside in a famous trek with Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others.
Melville had not yet grown the beard that would later mark and signify him in portraits.
He had by this time lived at sea, and among cannibals, and fucked the native South Seas girls who swam out to fuck the men of visiting ships, who thought it lucky, or something we cannot now understand, perhaps that these men were some sorts of Gods, these women whom local custom forbade to travel in boats, and so Melville quite possibly left progeny in the island groups he’d visited, such were the conditions in those days.
Today you can visit the chimney in Massachusetts upon which he painted words, so much he loved sitting by the fire reading, and such comfort as domesticity affords men who in their youth have fucked lots of women in foreign lands who will never now find him, though perhaps he missed them, but there had been no future in it, such were the conditions in those days, though he also owed a heavy financial debt to his father-in-law, his own father having died, and his once-highly-regarded family having fallen into misery, madness, and illness (for instance, his famous brother, an architect of Manifest Destiny, dead at 31), so he never sat often comfortably before the fire really, probably, except that time he painted words of the fireplace, perhaps after drinking.
“What is most awful about being a writer,” I imagine Melville writing elsewhere, “Is the never-ending regression into that most infantile of all human needs, the child’s puling cries for constant attention.”
Shall I tell you the story of being on Chesapeake Bay with my brother and discussing our father, who had recently died, and who had been a sailor in the Navy, of how my father had said when he was in port, on leave, in Japan, he and the other men would bring with them packets of lemon juice, to be squeezed on the twats of pick-up girls just before the act, and if they jumped this would indicate sores, and not to go there?
My mother, much younger than my father, now remembers that just after they had married they had received a letter from a woman in Japan that claimed my father had left a child behind, unprovided for, but my father told my mother that women often wrote Americans such stories, that all they were after was money, and my mother believed him, such were the conditions in those days.
The man’s need to fuck and the desire to have his writing read are both irresistible, depend upon others, and can fill him with self-loathing.
A problem resides in that the simple desire to tell stories, if it can be separated out, seems by contrast dignified and deserving of compassion, even when the teller sports a beard.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Zombie Haiku Contest Update: First Wave
| |
Here's the first sampling of entries to the Zombie Haiku Contest. We're accepting entries until June 30, so get yours in. Get many in. Enter as often as you'd like. submit at rockheals dot com Remember the winner gets copy of Buck Downs' excellent Pontiac Fever -- though we might have to come up with more prizes cuz we've been getting a whole lotta awesome.
stumbling down the street
moonlight reflects off puddles
where is my left arm?
Jason Sweeney
Morose and lurching
Clawing at my front window
Zombies will EAT ME
jen
The warm ones shoot us
Do they think they are better?
Zombies make no war.
Blake "Zombie chow" Shoen
| Don't be fooled, there are also plenty of good ones about killing zombies, loving zombies, and making zombies. Come on. All the kids are doing it. submit at rockheals dot com You, too, can be the wind beneath our wings. | |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
May 24, 2006
NOTE: SOMETHING TO TELL THE ANALYST
W.B. Keckler
Last night I dreamt
my ex was preparing a massive trip
to Spain, flying
all his family across the Ocean.
We haven’t spoken in years.
If I told him this dream
( to test the filaments
of my psychic web)
he would go deeply in debt
just to make it real,
just to irritate me.
That’s the sort of person he is.
If he went to Spain,
he would probably die
there, in my dream-trap.
That’s the sort of person I am.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
May 17, 2006
This is my sock, and this is my body...
Ric Royer
The boxer has no shirt. Eventually he has no shoulders, no legs, no breath. We used him. We thought he could get us fireworks and cigarettes because he had his wits about him. He wasn't really the antichrist; he was only playing with one. His teeth, in reality, were long and loose, able to swing from side to side.
"Whenever I'm waiting, my molars seem to float." I thought this phrase was the center of a circular life. Perhaps it was.
The spiral in nature was my sister's sardine can driver's side door.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, June, 1985.
---------
originally appeared in Leather A, by Ric Royer (Ferrum Wheel Press, Buffalo, 2003)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Brother Frederick, 1988...
Ric Royer
Brotherhood of men
in leather, we protect our brood.
Our role in the animal kingdom
is defined by the pendulous way
we approach our mate.
We secretly dig it, this
uncomfortable sleep.
We are not built like men, nor do we have gigantic tits.
---------
originally appeared in Leather A, by Ric Royer (Ferrum Wheel Press, Buffalo, 2003)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
a mix-up between 'marvelous' and 'fabulous'
Kevin Thurston
oh, jamie. at one point i had an idea, an idea not fleshed out all the way. it involved ca conrad. ca conrad is my cut-man. he knows how to stop bruises because he can cause bruises. he is from rural pennsylvania, penn's woods, so i assume that scratches may have occurred from brush.
ca conrad is in my corner. he's my cut-man.
i'm neither a boxer, nor a transvestite, nor a transvestite boxer. i have never doubled up on 'nors' in a single sentence. i hope that's okay. i need a coach. jamie, you, you're, you are my manager. you got me this fight. my verse’s emptiness for as long as the pixels hold up. i also have a cut-man. his name is one of the following possibilities (as it is professional):
ca conrad
craig a conrad
craig allen conrad
c allen conrad
ca c
craig a c
craig allen c
that is not the full permutation, i'm sure, but my three minutes are up.
jamie, there's a birthday here! my favorite pugilist of all time. jamie, my original plan is shot to hell. it was gonna involve a cheap joke. a cheap joke could've occurred last sentence, it could've been 'it was gonna involve a cheap trick'. jamie, i mis-spelled occurred and it took my three guess. my three minutes are up. that's fine, i was frustrated this round by a defense i couldn't overcome.
jamie, i hope you know that i'm dedicated, but may lack stamina after being at work all day... conrad wants to build a philadelphia poetry hotel, but i'd rather see his transvestite boxer scheme come to fruition. jamie, maybe i can just tell the cheap joke, pull my cheap trick, and be done with it. it is an exhibition match for his birthday anyway. jamie, he's holding me, trying to tire me out. jamie, its working. i hope i can tell that joke. jamie, i need to return to the corner.
fuck.
conrad, i've just been accidentally head-butted. if this keeps up...
thanks, conrad. they actually stopped the round. briefly. this is a long exhibition. test-drives don't last this long. i wish there were cocktails between rounds.
jamie, maybe it wasn't gonna be such a cheap joke after all. is that okay? i'm changing strategy mid-fight. it is time to think about this. this is a potentially big step. there are alot of things i'm not sure i can pull off here. i'm certain that my jab is known as the bitch hammer. i'll use it to buy time.
thanks, conrad. the bruise is staying in check.
alright, here it is, the final round.
jamie, what was gonna happen was that there was gonna be this cheap joke that'd tie-in with conrad's call. its his birthday, not conrad's. hagler's. marvelous marvin hagler. the joke was going to center around a mix-up between 'marvelous' and 'fabulous'. it was going to be callous. i was gonna throw in a joke about nothing would be worse than to see an aging queen in drag in the spotlight. but that wouldn't be the worst thing. a big section of gay culture wouldn't like it, tho. they hate aging. gay baby-bommers are doubled-up on that hang-up. i know. i had known. perhaps the world is radically different now. tv is safe and bravo needs a pinch of gay in every reality show. but that, like the ring, isn't a real fight. it is a staged fight. this entire text's been staged. rockheals is staged too, it is my stage to wish marvelous marvin hagler (who did indeed defeat tommy the hitman hearns) a well deserved happy birthday.
a poet wishing a championship boxer a happy birthday. how gay.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
As in to lessen the force or effect of...
Ric Royer
The boxer has no shirt. Eventually he has no shoulders, no legs, no breath. If he comes to realize that the advantages of youth have left him, he might desperately apply technique. More things will go in and out of his head during three-minute rounds than before, and the bell ending each round brings a reason for quitting. But in the end, it's just boxing, and the boxer may come to learn that all he is doing is boxing.
During my last professional bout, I began a round whispering to myself, "proxemics" and "proxemics." I was trying to remember that a space is only capable because people are in(volved in) it. People become batteries for the animation of space.
It wasn't the way I fought that acted as reflective surfaces in which to view my own life, but the way other boxers fought me.
Boxing means I am alive. Games, experiments, pieces, and projects also. Only a living person may fight, write a song, send mail. The art of the self is to demonstrate it.
Looking at it this way, it's becomes routine to strip the performance down to a set of instructions in order to change them. Something my coach meant to say when he told me to "start acting like I'm not being hurt" is that emotions are public.
I am not only a boxer, I am a Caucasian welterweight. My chest gets cherry red when I'm desperate.
---------
originally appeared in Leather A, by Ric Royer (Ferrum Wheel Press, Buffalo, 2003)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
May 10, 2006
Enemy Fireworks
Donald Illich
A skull-shaped balloon rises over the village,
its skeleton string trailing close behind it.
The townspeople aren’t sure what they should do:
all the god slots have been filled by sports stars,
magnetic actresses, and the bitter politicians
who hand out the world but are empty inside it.
Shooting at the dirigible with special rockets,
sprinkling blue phantoms of destruction &
pushing the remains one more step toward ghost,
is considered but abandoned as too pricey.
Bombs need to be saved for enemy fireworks,
their dead are not appointed without them.
Meanwhile, the floating head expels cold air
circulating sleet over building and statues,
returning water to the earth to be defeated
by gravity, a mischievous boy digging canyons,
& thirst, sucking everything through a straw.
The bones start falling, scientists are unhappy.
They pronounce the true origins of the species
have nothing to do with childhood spirits,
make believe people release with tooth fairies,
magic bodies stored in the toy chest, let go.
Nonetheless, villagers feel objects above them.
Pins, no matter how sharp, can’t pop their skins.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
April 26, 2006
xxxii
Mike Grau
Little books walk the street
in unison, looking for a small piece
budding violent and crimson for morning
over the corner of Broadway and Beirut
older, colder and thirty years too late
mouthing the words as the bathtub upstairs
overflows and burns with dirt and beer
waiting we and me for Henry
with two loose teeth and a pale black canvas
as little books whisper all over town
pieces of goodnight, walking towards
some broad and far off place
under a dessert moonrise
so clear and dark and quiet and sleeping
(from a longer series of sonnets called Trade)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
xxiii
Mike Grau
St Henry St Henry who else saved you save mother?
de world de world its feeding girls
today, three weeks from today, that’s how it will happen
or at least how problems solve themselves
hold down poses for one more song, moments before
washing your feet in bleach, jelly-bodied
beneath the trading shadows
forever eight thirty-nine, forever eighty-nine
where Truman, Edison and Lenin once lived
If you forgive me politically, my dear
writing a land where corn don’t grow
felt by the hair above
your skin standing. Otherwise press zero now
Record at the tone
(from a longer series of poems called Trade)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
viii
Mike Grau
The stars people don't you see
along the streets and water everyday?
never seen the blueprint, although
cities don't melt when the grass is dry
and to think the cigarette butt I gave him
Work.
Henry and John are comic hero action books
made to work for love of
eighty-nine screaming
It's supposed to be beautiful
the steamer to the island
is suggestive, a part of Havana
to do whatever it’s supposed to
including the essence of a photograph
(from a longer series of sonnets called Trade)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
April 19, 2006
The Greatest and Most Important of Dinosaur Movies
K. Silem Mohammad
1969 seemed to be disturbed stuff
about cruel twin governesses
dropped off the face of the fetal houseboat
reading Elmer Fudd pornography
the horrible oblong length
of the sidelong baby butterfingers barrel
Kate is a neglected housewife who likes to cook bank robbers
and has a fetish for brushfire cryptography
which indeed if there is a fetish
opens avenues of detachment from materialism
for great bands like Black Flag, Hüsker Dü,
or Danielle Steele’s Bucket Wolves
I keep this account for radical politics
concerning sixteen ferryboat comparisons
quite content to be made seventeenth
as fur-loving commodore elks surround Baghdad
things any Connecticut housewife
would think in December
Get a print version (PDF)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Dirty
K. Silem Mohammad
if you could have any animal for a pet
what would it be
free kitten nice free kitten nice meaty pig
I said whaaat
Pennsylvania rules here in the world of crap
one lady I know her name I just can’t think of it right now
holds up violent chainsaw w/ fur
stabbed her mystery meat with a nametag
whaaaaaaa whack bash blaaaaaaaaah
expunge flange hinge impinge
quote are you wearing clothes muwhaha
start stabbing yrself hahaha Nike commercial
the word un-American
futuristic & modern
hardly achieving the abstract growing pathology
of the aesthetic vibe
& add some hard shit to it
especially the form of music known as liver tractors
bureaucratic satellite photographs of disco
heralded as the end of society
wow there is no February
I should go sit out in the rain for a week
munching the pokiness
as I have constant urges
KGB sponge bath don’t mind if I do
I am pretty dirty all right & aww man
I am 59% emo my socks don’t match what’s the point
with this freaky intense politically-motivated Africa yearbook
conservative locksmithing gots nothing on me
fond memories of my “pants”
forgive & forget folks
get useless kids
get up pig
Get a print version (PDF)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Land of Oh Boy
K. Silem Mohammad
what follows is made up
the locals call it “Land of Oh Boy”
Saturday morning, fixing bacon, watching cartoons
a brain-damaged veteran looked at the boy pirates burying a treasure
he can’t book a picture of obese clouds
the buzzy li’l Buckaroo cowboy was a white boy, obviously
it was all he could do to snort out the invading park chief
bouncing around on the Appalachian Trail
eep opp ork means don’t just dress up like the man
you were born with the ability to use language
babies do it by the way they cry down here
I notice a flash of the puny runt really shoots like a big boy
Duran Duran strife about the handsome land down under
if they give little boy guns to soldiers
for the war cries of a little helmet
insubstantial disturbed hard diving faces
cars, their drivers invisible, bringing robotic insecticide to earth
to measure a pipe and bathe in the rebuilt prime all day
the engine is a cooled four girl who didn’t do the walk
you kiss me, why oh why baby, cheap Lamaze grip-and-grab
why oh why child, tropical squeeze, until recently it’s very integrated
it was going to be bad, did we not only that
don’t clit like she was playing on groin
the smallest mammal is the bat of pig
the artists among you are right
I am a foolish glass of granite
I like sex or dishwashing
I like to have Pop Idol 2 UK
and Benedict Lust on my PC
with Juggy Vanessa Kay
or Holly Valance Down Boy
video on my PC at work
gala
let a boy cry gala
Get a print version (PDF)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
April 12, 2006
OMG I LOST MY VIRGINITY
Anonymous (folk traditional)
> 10 times.
because u just opened this u will have the BEST LUCK this week.
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
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and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and the week after
and then it iz all gone!!!!
ur gonna get a gf-bf
ur gonna get an A on all ur tests
ur gonna get 20 new friends
ur gonna fall in love
BUT u have to repost this bulletin with the name
"I'm Naked"
"NUDE PICS"
"Goldigger"
"We broke up!"
"my girl is pregnant"
"im 10 wks pregnant"
"i lost my virginity"
"im bi"
"We're breaking up"
"I need her bad"
"she ate me out!"
"i ate my gurl out"'
"Im getting married"
"I NEED A GIRL"
"I HATE HIM!!!!"
"I LUV HIM!!!"
"FUCK YOU!"
"I MISS HIM"
"I MISS HER
"yeah i cried"
"wanna have sex?"
[Ed note: Received this as a bulletin on MySpace from Lauren Bender. She claims to not have written it. This thing is gorgeous and perfect.]
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
April 05, 2006
Dances
Ric Royer
Do…
The Move
Feet trod upon heated plowshares.
Dance motherfucker.
The Hoody
Put a bag over your head.
Use the bag as an agent of release,
not as punishment or imprisonment.
Perform random gestures of freedom.
The Libido
Break things and laugh
marvelously while doing it.
The Spaz
Paroxysms of death transformed
into choreographic display.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Adventures of A Ten Minute Play
Ric Royer
Prologue
Have slicked back hair.
The Lovers Meet
Fleur Immortelle and the Foxy Daughter.
The question will always be asked: what was that inside of her?
The answer will always follow: I think jelly.
Tragedy Occurs in Real Time
The protagonist puts on sweater after sweater
until unable to move.
“Allow yourself to be smitten by the delicacy of a fabric.
Why complain only to fall prey to pain or pleasure?”
Death, Trump and Drum!
The Comedic Resurrection
The new brain doesn’t fit inside his or her old head.
But the hero is paraded around the stage and streets
regardless and without
regard.
The Lovers Find Some Time to Hang Out
Orbs in silhouette.
Fela Kuti.
The Audience Applauds
Hand out gold and expensive jewels to the audience.
Ask them not to clap during the curtain call,
but to throw the gold and jewels at the performers
as hard as possible.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 29, 2006
Snapshots At Ten
Rupert Wondolowski
Father has been finding: cabbage patch dolls, their
heads lanced by #2 Eberhard pencils; a helmet-sized
fishbowl filled with grape Kool-Aid, five tender
bellies floating in the purple; a ceiling of hanged
Barbies, gray shoelaces snug around their slender
necks.
Father asked: "When you do these things are you doing
them to me?"
She said: "These are things I do."
Father found her in the kitchen, sitting in the dark,
drinking a beer.
She said: "I'll take the punishment, I like the taste
of this beer."
Father thinks: I never wanted to be this old.
 Thx L.B. |  Bonus not from L.B. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 22, 2006
from sleep, number
Justin Sirois
[Ed note -- This is the first section of a larger interactive work. Follow the link at the end to dive into the rest.]
I.
most of your life
opportunities have come to you like automatic doors, butterflied panes of transformative glass that open towards the shopper, not into the vending space of vacant blazer sleeves & distressed Diesel. These portals leave your knees creaking like cracker barrels as they truncate the ankles decimals, dividing long against shaved shins that strut above the hem & carry mechanized women through floors of shoes
opportunities have come & gone
but there’s volumes of dough stacked between your rafters, books of cold hard capital in the shelves of your armpits, rows & rows of sorrowful dollars that are untapped, un-drilled, un-understood. We’re ready to let you access that hidden ore, a smiling grill of ice set in white gold, a spinning wheel or loaded dice rolling out of control. Her sleep number is different from my sleep number, her abacus snore rocks the house to sleep, peels the dream genie off her cartridge, nestles into card stocks & high thread counts. I toss
turn when the market is in weekend recess, I’m a fifty, she’s an eighty something. No, she’s a seventy five. Our speculation, the chicken little of it, rests on the cushion of a robust economy & steadily increasing GDP that avoids a sharp pin of
pitching oil prices during the peek energy months
a spiral of incendiary inflation
rising interest rates coupled with an impending real estate bubble
bear market woes
an impending recession, a dry river
& by river I mean something other than what it meant before, a flowing current running back to its source. I’ll wake in a night terror, shivering next to my husband with the windows like open refrigerators & my purse groans like a kristpy kremed kidney. Are we only miles away from sailing off the edge of the world? We worry about such trends too
(she whispers)
I believe you
continue @ pixelplus >
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 15, 2006
nonexistence
Kenji Siratori
The reptilian=HUB_modem that crashed a chemical=anthropoid=paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator that covered cardiac and compressed the acidHUMANIX infectious disease of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM to that mass of flesh-module murder game****I turn on the feeling replicant living body junk of her digital=vamp cold-blooded disease animals to the super-genomewarable to the DNA=channels of the biocapturism nerve cells corpse feti=streaming of a clone boy ill-treatment abolition world-codemaniacs of the terror fear=cytoplasm pluged-in the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV=scanners gene-dub of the corpse city technojunkies’ is debugged to non-resettable genomics strategy circuit that was processed to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator murder-gimmick of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM data=mutant of her abolition world-codemaniacs feeling replicant to a hybrid corpse mechanism FUCKNAMLOAD****the brain universe of the ultra=machinary tragedy-ROM creature system technojunkies’ reptilian=HUB to the acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the biocapturism nerve cells nightmare-script of a clone boy DNA=channel surrender-site of the terror fear=cytoplasm@tera of dogs were send back out to the mass of flesh-module of the hyperreal HIV=scanner form that was debugged the era respiration-byte of a chemical=anthropoid is installed the terror fear=cytoplasm gene-dub of the drug fetus of the trash sense to the corpse feti=streaming circuit DNA=channels of her digital=vamp cold-blooded disease animals mass of flesh-module insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV=scanners that was send back out to the murder-protocol of the biocapturism nerve cells reptilian=HUB@clone boy era respiration-byte of the corpse city plug-in....the abolition world-codemaniacs of the living body junk feeling replicant that chemical=anthropoid was debugged to the modem=heart of the hybrid corpse mechanism that turned on technojunkies’ ill-treatment hacking.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
(You’re a) Billion Dollar Algorithm (between my) Legs
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
for Sweetney... This is what a love poem (sometimes) looks like at the G-P household. The formatting mandates the PDF, sorry y'all.
Don't worry it starts with "Godzilla." What could go wrong?
See it. Read it. Enjoy. (PDF)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 08, 2006
Stand Up for Something
Ric Royer
Stand up for something you feel strongly about. Continue standing in the same place for 18 to 24 straight hours. An accumulation of fluid may develop in the tissue of the legs. This edema is produced by the extravasation of fluid from the blood vessels. If this does occur, expect your ankles and feet to swell to twice their normal size. This swelling may rise all the way up to the thighs. Large blisters might also develop which break and exude watery serum. Because of the swelling, circulation is impaired and urination ceases. If fainting occurs, which is very possible, you will have to start over if you hit the ground. Once you have completed the continuous standing, you may ride a person as if they were a horse. Ride strong and proud, ride as long as you wish.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 01, 2006
labia minora
Miriam Stewart
baila, mi amor
mail an oral marimba bomb
alarm! ram in a liminal limb
I’ll abandon normal brain
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
where are we in this poem?
Miriam Stewart
a quizzical sadness
that can ask the question of the sun
what is behind that last house?
where does this street
that I have driven down
my whole life
where does it lead?
and like the sun
you might diagnose the day by its response
a given hour to sit here or there
a piece of fantasy in which Eden
harbors two clauses of a definition
in which meaning hovers like a water bug
without breaking the current
I might posit the following:
armageddon. there might only be one piece of bread
left. or in the summer, when the days are hot
but only getting shorter, there might be
an uninhabited porch swing.
when you put pen to paper to write your name
you may instead be compelled
to draw a picture of a clock with no hands.
where, again, is this going?
across the street from the market
I saw a bird, dead on the sidewalk,
its feet curled stiffly around the lost branch
I think I am trying to tell you
why I can only point
away from what I love
I think I’m trying to say that I would send the authorities to your house
and sneak out the back door
hugging the stolen child to my chest
or just to tell you, by way of escape,
that the man on the corner who has no home
is holding his pants up with his thumbs
and singing “Holy, holy, holy” and “Mary, don’t you weep”
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 25, 2006
Goat
Leslie F. Miller
Goat.
Goat.
You could be a child's first word,
easy as dog, dada.
Goat.
Poor man's lawn boy,
frisky pet,
reason to take the rolls
we never eat.
On the way home from lunch
with daddy
I pick you for your looks,
black and white,
feed you bread
through chicken wire,
whisper secrets
over steady traffic hum.
Goat,
I can't afford my shoes.
Squishing my toes in the mud
didn't feel as good as it should have.
Being filthy rich would be nice.
I have lost my way.
I once loved a goat like you.
Took him home.
Named him Goat.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
labor day
Leslie F. Miller
a rat will rearrange things:
loaf of bread
now by the back door,
candlesticks tipped over,
cupcake in the sink.
and you—
you are in a soft chair
counting the spaces between pains
while it cowers behind the washer.
we’ll get him later you call
lovingly between contractions,
your husband on his knees
with a knife,
spurting words, muttering.
he has hacked off a pink foot.
blood on the linoleum
for you to clean later.
he has stabbed it dead,
kitchen chairs in disarray,
washer pulled away from the wall.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 18, 2006
Npurrrrrrrr
(a friend poem inspired by Frank O’Hara and the friend)
Marianne Amoss
Oh lord it’s noon
We’re just showering, just slithering
Out of bed and calling you
Bringing eggs, bringing coffee
Coconut pinky cat and fat old black man
Slide around under cabinets
We cuddle on borrowed bed
Chew on grounds and kiss our hands
You are warm like the buildings
You are like the buildings standing up straight
You are standing up straight
It is early afternoon Sunday
Afternoon in here I want you to know
That radio is the best sunlight
Plants are good electric blankets
As your pretty paintings pet you
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Poetry Reading, January 20 (Baltimore)
i.e. reading series presents
Catherine Daly, Jessica Smith & Moira Egan
Friday, January 20, 2006
7pm
Note the venue (not the regular i.e. reading series space):
AREA 405 Gallery
405 East Oliver Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
(410)-528-2101
info at area405 dot com
Catherine Daly is a poet & critic who has been publishing & reading her work for twenty years - Her works include DaDaDa (Salt Publishing, 2003), Locket (Tupelo Press, 2005), the eBook Secret Kitty (Ahadada Press, 2005) as well as numerous pamphlets & electronic chapbooks.
Jessica Smith founded the poetry magazine name in Buffalo, NY- & has written a chapbook titled birdbook. She has recently completed a manuscript Organic Furniture Cellar.
Moira Egan's first book of poems, Cleave (WWPH, 2004) was nominated for the National Book Award. Recent poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Notre Dame Review, Passages North, Poems & Plays, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Smartish Pace, 32 Poems, West Branch & many others- [phew!]
For futher information contact-
Michael Ball
mbball at verizon dot net
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 04, 2006
The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Inventions
Chris Toll
1.
The laboratory in the flying saucer
is so bright and sterile.
The werewolf can’t find a place to hide.
He crouches beside the circular hatch.
Soon the floor will be awash in purple ichor.
His captors are about to learn
just how wrong things can go
when a full moon rides the night sky.
2.
The Special Agent has lost so much.
She holds a flashlight and a 9 mm pistol
and kicks a door open.
She wishes she could pray to God –
but all she believes in
is what she can capture in her beam of light.
3.
The ninjas glide through the corridors of a starship.
The pilot turns
and finds her head ringed by the tips of seven swords.
The starship lands in a clearing.
The ninjas slip out of the airlock
and enter the forest.
The trees have red bark and purple leaves.
Each leaf has a mouth and howls at the five moons.
4.
I’m the clouds drifting over your roof.
I’m the traffic streaming past your windows.
I’m the floorboards creaking beneath your shoes.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
Lock And Load Blues
Chris Toll
A half-full baby bottle rolls around
on the floor of a bus.
A mother puts on body armor.
Why is a den in hidden?
Why is light in flight?
A son hides an IED
inside the rim of a discarded tire.
God is almost Good
and the Devil is almost Evil.
A father eats steak off a china plate.
I have five hearts –
three are on fire, two are broken, and three have wings.
Your heart is a book – be kind.
A daughter comes home in a bodybag.
The blizzard needs to find a new line of work.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:30 AM
Tears Made Flesh
Chris Toll
Perpetual melancholy
employs chaos processors
to bemadden the zoo
where a zebra inveigles a gazelle.
The tactician loses her barrette
and the theoretician adores her angora beret.
A spider knits a sparrow
while an exorcist excoriates the truculent fossil.
A drugstore loiters in the apathy epidemic.
A bartender mollifies the careworn pornographer
and an eavesdropper nullifies the carefree doctor.
The despondent castle goes on a crusade
to consecrate the wind
before a grammarian captivates handcuffs.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
December 14, 2005
rhp002: Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass?
It's new and beautiful -- the first chapbook from Rock Heals Press... Poems from faves Lauren Bender, Buck Downs and Jamie Gaughran-Perez. (Yeah that last one might be me. Whassup vanity pressin' muthafuckaz.)
36 pp, complete with unique-to-each polaroid cover and magazine inserts -- lovingly constructed
$4 - well-concealed cash, check (to Jamie Gaughran-Perez), or a measured handfulla stamps to:
Rock Heals Press
4523 Mainfield Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21214
(Yeah, our first chapbook is rhp002 cuz we've been taking a little longer on rhp001 than planned. But it's close, so close!)
from Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass?
... from Lauren Bender
from Extratutionalized, Buck Downs
(she's my) Little Q'n'A, Buck Downs
George Bush wakes up in a different world every day, Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
...
Lauren Bender
of course I can look like a young boy
dear political poem,
I never really got into history
Mine eyes watching a man blow himself up
as you say,
a field full of shoes between us
a revolving bookcase between us
his flesh slides down the front of the TV, obscuring Janet Jackson’s sunbursting forth
in some less civilized countries the dead are dismembered by their family
left vulgar to vultures or was it all a mirage?
I would make a good soldier
please find enclosed my scores from Minesweeper,
which would be higher if I didn’t have to
cover my windows all day long
and then go to the factory
Dear ARMY, please send 8 x 10 to my 5-year old
her first sexual fantasy involved neon TRON and empathy between men
let’s just make light of it
he’ll just have to start spinning a little earlier tomorrow
let’s just gesture it down under the motion sensor
photons between us
inappropriate gnashing of teeth between us
+++
from Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass (rhp002)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
from Extratutionalized
Buck Downs
tidal has-been
getting ready
to have been fired
all night like that,
a particle in the motion
20-to-life style and everybody
got their little brief to file
as motion impedes action
like I couldn’t tell
my judgement
was impaired.
I am ready
body snatcher
let me go
put me down
on my feet
there were gaps
in my signifiers
but I negotiated
them.
I played a stupid
game. and I won.
how stupid is that.
+++
from Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass (rhp002)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
December 13, 2005
(she’s my) Little Q’n’A
Buck Downs
she’s my little Q’n’A
bumping into
an invisible
door-frame
I say, on a non
existentent
bender fall forwards
as long as you’re falling
that’s where I start to find out
over the counter and
straight from the heart
mad to quit that mad shit and shit
previously improvised fate
I still call it a free-jazz
train wreck
but in a tender
and loving way!
+++
from Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass? (rhp002)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
George Bush wakes up in a different world ever day
(or) George Bush needs our love
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
George Bush wakes up every morning asking what he can do today for Saudi Arabia.
George Bush dresses the part of a physical, masculine and anti-intellectual he-man
George Bush brushes off his once-again fading poll ratings with another bout of name calling.
George Bush eats kittens, and more political facts
George Bush walks across the flight line at Kirtland Air Force Base on his way.
George Bush stops to shake hands with members of the Air Force’s Fighting 55th in Omaha, Nebraska,
George Bush stops the State Department from giving grants to international groups that provide abortion-related counseling,
George Bush stops and pauses for dramatic effect
George Bush Wonders How He Did It.
George Bush wonders when the funny stuff starts
George Bush asks us to get the flu for the good of the country, just like he will.
George Bush continues on this path of destruction
George Bush finds himself on the horns of a dilemma
George Bush breathes about 90 litres of air every 2 minutes.
George Bush Thinks Magic Johnson Smells Like Onions
George Bush squints at the river and replies “but I don’t see any bridge”
George Bush swings for the fences.
George Bush Runs Risk in Staking All on Terror War
George Bush tells Vladimir Putin about his vision of peace consolidation over the phone
George Bush Tells the UN: “Fuck You!”
George Bush tells the real story of George Bush’s conversion to evangelical Christianity
George Bush gets on TV and starts yapping about Social Security and Imminent disaster
George Bush eats assholes of Saudi Arabians
George Bush eats Hitler’s poop
George Bush eats children
George Bush wipes his face at rally in a hot and humid Florida
George Bush realizes that he has the blood of innocent insects on his hands, and that stuff usually doesn’t smell too good
George Bush needs a potty break.
George Bush needs a Technology Czar.
George Bush needs a more intimate relationship with the Truth, bless his heart.
George Bush wakes up every morning and says “Today I’m going to do something.”
+++
from Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass (rhp002)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
November 30, 2005
Saturday (12/3): Reading in Baltimore
the i.e. reading series presents:
Lauren Bender + Buck Downs + Jamie Gaughran-Perez
reading / kissing in a tree
Saturday, December 3; 4pm
Clayton & Co. Fine Books
317 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD
(410) 752-6800
[flyer image is a detail from a painting by Lauren -- Diptych -- that completely rocks]
Posted by Rock Heals at 06:00 AM
November 02, 2005
Bell: A Poem
Justin Sirois
Click to launch the poem and then start clicking around from there.
Gotta click "turn on links" first...
You'll have to Back your way to get to Rock Heals when yr done.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:30 AM
Reading @ DCAC, Nov. 20
Get over to DCAC (on 18th Street just below Columbia, Wash. DC) and check out the latest in the in your ear reading series.
To get a sense of what your getting into...
A free chapbook from Barbara Cole;
Sound works from Kristin Gallagher; and
Some pomes from Lauren Bender.
Find out more about the series and a few other great DC ones over at DCPoetry.com (and you can sign up for a notifications mailing list, too).
(Thanks for sending the links along, Lauren)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
October 26, 2005
Math-Rock-Scissors
Lauren Bender
etch-a-sketch
cloud ledger says winter, brothers grew beards and then shaved them
no more shall we speak his name
when you're on you're fucking on
and one thing's for certain
the righting was left on the wall with a brontosaurus
cat calls to the mourning dove
sheets for curtains
we just love those red rooms
she said, "equation"
undershirt sans pants
just like that, your penis, unassuming
just like that, your eyes, back in your head
finger up another’s nostril
still life with man in buttondown shirt
locks his feet under the radiator for sit-ups,
hungover
circle gets the square in first-person football
Ravi Shankar gets the overdub
you bet she fucks like a racehorse
after waking to gospel
on this beautiful sunday morning
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Lie to me, Pinocchio, harder. (for a.c.)
Lauren Bender
Knees. And on the diner stool the black pants the pants the only ever seen you wear. This screen/play (flim) flicker, dark living room, first division in the summer villa, finding blood in the evening long nap. Thought a softball on steps awake but slightly. Mediterranean discussion, the cohorts, the girls to ask identity, she ended up in Italy, pregnantly engaged. Hungary. Colorado. Hungry. Hold the elbow. Stories to tell down the sordid road, scratching post for speakers, roll of quarters for your thoughts. This place that quiets the evening and in the evening, to be anaesthetized, he was afraid, the teeth extracted, one for every season, one for quarters, the roll of quarters, the sticky bun, the killer biscuits, I’ve been shot with an urban legend, I’ve been nose-broken by a gerbil in flames.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 04, 2005
from Some Epistles
K. Lorraine Graham
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
September 21, 2005
"with short wings"
Lauren Bender
with short wings
harden
harden
an upward slope
to embrace
to hold
comfortably
to make
suitable
to settle
something
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:40 AM
WOMEN SEEKING
Lauren Bender
Shoe, beautiful, highly educated lady,
ALL very ill, full-figured,
Whenever She’s up to it.
Extremely small 900 pound loner,
With hiney in her hands till the end.
Sick kitty, plus-size, imagining
Black latex, fishnet stockings, and
Stiletto pumps!
Whips, chains and handcuffs!
Fine dining, travel and the upscale lifestyle.
Full-figure cook out with ME & Cancer,
Thick brown feet BM, with
Don’t be shy! Drop me a line!
Role-playing freckled chest, who wants it
All.
ORAL SEX ON THE BEACH
In ocean city and Bethany.
Oral fantasy on the beach,
Under moonlights.
Me? Call me, I’m waiting.
ME? Bottom, hirsute, shaved head,
& SPANKING
bubble buts, spanking My
really sweet, nice looking, sweet, understanding
me? REQUEST BACKUP.
Love, affection and endowment.
And French cultures.
Me? Set up the firm hand.
Horny, sexy, I’m in search of TV.
I’m very honest.
Love to wear short skirts for fun.
STOP BY WITH SUIT AND TIE.
Mr. Mom needs oral favors.
Tall, dark and handsome,
Hope you’re out there.
MUTUAL PLEASURE SEEKER
Who has his own SILKY THINGS,
Own DAYTIME LOVER,
HOT AND READY.
Hot movies, and healthy, and
Swimmer’s build, vasectomy-safe,
Household help.
HANDYMAN, handyman,
Help[s] out who he can,
Where he can.
PART-TIME slave-girl,
Part-time female slave.
Why I should accept you,
Hairy-chested bubble baths,
MALE EXHIBITIONISTS?
HARTFORD COUNTY handsome,
(minus plus),
naked, bound, gagged, sucking, kissing,
BACKDOOR body rubs and clean TV.
Short skirts and high heels, thigh-high
Special mind.
ME? Free.
Me? Orally.
Me? Overweight weirdo.
BACKDOOR average.
YOU
You
You
DO YOU LIKE GIVING HEAD?
CREAM LOVER?
PANTYHOSE BOTTOM?
MY HEAD would like some head.
NYLONS nylons. Your place.
SOMEONE HELP ME.
If you think you can help me,
Please call me.
Please be at least not an issue,
Watching videos, sitting around
Getting to know each other.
Let my big tool meet your big tool.
If you’re on the road like me,
I am a man and I love REALLY, REALLY GAY!!
Are you really, really gay? I am!!
Flaming homosexual!
Me?
Like,
you be the top, let me be the bottom.
Like,
just be down for whatever.
WE ARE educated.
LET’S PARTY.
Be very wild!
Fun & kinky!
Be into threesomes!
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:20 AM
"edge of a person less intimate"
Lauren Bender
edge of a person less intimate
a person who knows
acquiescing without protest
but sometimes takes to
her parents’ wishes
proficiency in math
AIDS
the act something grasping
free from duty
measurement
land in acres
caustic in language
skilled in
feats of agility
walk on tiptoe acrobatically
the moves of an acronym
a word
a name
AIDS
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:10 AM
September 14, 2005
2 from Trade
Mike Grau
ii
one more drink before giving
not much better than TV or talking
to a regular—just words, not friends
or a sixer and fourteen lines
obviously waiting for the
television thinking it was
Expect nothing. Distrust what comes
Henry knew what he was doing
She was obviously waiting and more
expensive, sure, but it’s better than
the Washington Avenue Bridge
(He must’ve planned that too, the fuck.)
Not that Cuba was a mistake. I’ve seen
the blueprint to nothing what comes. Work.
xxiii
St Henry St Henry who else saved you save mother?
de world de world its feeding girls
today, three weeks from today, that’s how it will happen
or at least how problems solve themselves
hold down poses for one more song, moments before
washing your feet in bleach, jelly-bodied
beneath the trading shadows
forever eight thirty-nine, forever eighty-nine
where Truman, Edison and Lenin once lived
If you forgive me politically, my dear
writing a land where corn don’t grow
felt by the hair above
your skin standing. Otherwise press zero now
Record at the tone
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:45 AM
A Night of Fast-Moving Theater: 9/27, DC
Taffety Punk Theatre Company presents
AND THEN IT FASTER ROCK'D:
Shakespeare's Collected Noise
September 27th, 2005
8:30 pm at the Black Cat $7
1811 14th Street NW, Washington DC
from the announcement:
We're remounting "And Then It Faster Rock'd" – whose previous incarnation landed the same night as a terrific snowstorm back in February. So we thought a reprise was in order. The show collects, in various distortions, Shakespeare's rock and roll classic SONNET 71, HENRY V (featuring George W. Bush and cabinet), HORATIO (possessed), OPHELIA (distracted), a surviving fragment from the silent movie version of TAMING OF THE SHREW, with many more surprises, and much more noise.
With guest artists Teresa Castracane, Tymberlee Chanel, Kate Eastwood-Norris, Shawn Fagan, Kimberly Gilbert, Scott Kerns, Josh Thelin, and an on-screen Foster Solomon; with company members Marcus Kyd, Christopher Marino, Erin Mitchell. Cameo by Paper Bag.
[ed note / full disclosure: RH resident Jamie GP tooka turn at being the geek of geeks for the original: the AV guy for a dramatic production and will do so again. And once again he'll be nervous about fucking it all up.]
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:35 AM
we'll never tire of Unabomber Haiku
Mike Grau
[ed note: This is the fourth installment of Mike's ongoing series of haiku on Rock Heals. Find previous installments by wandering RH like a lost soul on the moor.]
3.
The more disastrous
Will still be very painful:
It had best break down11.
Derogatory—
Almost anything is said
To reject the word20.
Notice the leftist
Down in front of vehicles
They provoke police37.
Avoid serious
Psychological problems
In attaining goals53.
Rapid change and the
Sources of social problems
Believe they are enough56.
Log cabin, outside
Of law and order and fed
Occurs in the life
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:30 AM
September 07, 2005
Parts
Reb Livingston
David says my bridesmaids' shoes are ugly.
It must be the man-part of him that forgets
it was my wedding and I selected those shoes along
with the tulips and chocolate cake.
Parts are parts, says the fast-food commercial
demonstrating that all parts are not
created equal and I agree
although I’m a feminist and believe all parts
should be given a fair shot.
Maybe it’s not the chicken beak’s fault
it’s not as tasty as the thigh and breast
and it should be allowed the opportunity
to be deep fried and delicious. Don’t we all deserve
that chance? But if the beak
can’t pass the yummy bar, feed it to the God-damned swine
and serve me my white meat nuggets.
No hard feelings, OK?
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:45 AM
And the Point Is?
Reb Livingston
Concerned about his mounting rejections
Pip’s parents suggest that if he’s going to be a poet
perhaps he should try writing something
people will want to read.
I’m God’s little cheerleader
always waving my pom-poms for practical advice
and sometimes I point out to Chris that if he wants
those kids to quit pounding their pogo-sticks
through our newly planted grass
he should either dig periphery trenches
or lay out some boards with nails.
In a few days they’ll stop
coming around. But Chris
says that’s a lot of liability
and he prefers screaming “Piss off, hole punchers!”
until the whole neighborhood grasps
the point of property rights.
One day, I’m sure, Pip will grasp his parents’ point
and he’ll write that popular poem
that will nourish our paltry lives
as we attack and ban it during our
P.T.A. meetings – mindless of the numbing hum
our potent slurps make as we preen and suck.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
Love, Sincere
Reb Livingston
Warned about the blisters in the biscuits,
I swore, only one wedding
no matter how many husbands.
Breakfast might be sweet
but there’s always lunch – the eating trail to obesity.
Who would love me then?
One ceremony, one vow
not a threat, not a sharp stick beneath the pillow,
my love, sincere.
If you leave me, I’ll call on pigeons
and their filth to rain my wrath.
If you leave me, I’ll burn the curtains.
A woman scorned is a home scorched.
Now get the lumber and glue,
build me that shrine to Vishnu.
Time to celebrate six years.
Let’s buy that bigger house,
fill it full of stuff,
never dust lamp shades.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:15 AM
August 24, 2005
Bui Chat, Translated by Linh Dinh
We visited NYC the other weekend, caught a great reading by Linh Dinh and immediately after having him to sign a copy of his latest book, complete with an obscene inscription to a friend, we asked him if he wanted to pony up to the Rock Heals bar.
And he got all like “hmmm.” And asked what about running some translations he’d been working on of contemporary Vietnamese poets.
Days later these from Bui Chat arrived and bam. Precocious little motherfucker out there ass-kicking and getting himself throwing in jail for the WORD. And then we realized he must be 25-ish, which I guess isn’t precocious anymore. We’re getting old. He’s rocking out.
 | Bui Chat is the pen name of Bui Quang Vien. Born in 1979 in Bien Hoa, he lives in Ho Chi Minh City. A member of the infamous Mo Mieng [Open Mouth] group, Bui Chat has been published on webzines and in group samizdats such as Six-Sided Circle (2002) and Open Mouth (2002), and in his own Disturbances Today (2003). In 2004, he and fellow poet Ly Doi were jailed for two days for passing out flyers at a poetry reading cancelled by the police. The poems here will be included in The Deluge: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry scheduled to be released in 2006 from Chax Press. |
| Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press 2004), and three books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003), American Tatts (Chax 2005) and Borderless Bodies (Factory School 2005). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. |  |
Poems from Bui Chat
Stab Skin
Kurrent State
Upside Down Pole
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:45 AM
Stab Skin
Bui Chat
I thro spit onto da wall
I luv women who are sewer rats
I see you wearing 33 cent panties bought on da sidewalk
books don’t make me better each Sunday
I see myself flyin in da sky
I torture myself three meals a day
I stab skin
I shout for words
I organize wars
I chant namyo to God
I lash ma tomb teeth in da mornin
I stab skin
I reform da uterus
I a divorce paper
(tr. from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:42 AM
Kurrent State
Bui Chat
nothing kan seize me from da hands
a look doesn’t korrespond to da fi fingers
between da rite and left eyes
not da blue runny nose
dis world kannot squeeze me
old images alter me same as new
attittude on toilet skuatting to drop one thing into water
don’t want to sneeze with da crowd
I am da pregnancy inside da belly of da gurl I luv
(tr. from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
Upside Down Pole
Bui Chat
All ways upside down
spread
da broom
some eyes writhing
look sideways
leening against wall I want feet to be head
I sing
about shorts coiled springs being sic in bed
da faulty sentiment of missing stuff
& apathy
dis bleek room has been ma breath?
I must lic da uneveness around stuff
den flip
upside down
all ways
how to do all things
spread nite and day I seduce da wall
hornily flap
da lips
never stepped ouside my shorts face
(tr. from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:35 AM
here housepainter
Lauren Bender
here housepainter, have a gradeschool shade of yellow,
have not enough pizza to feed even one person.
have a pocket pussy, or at the very least,
a dildo for a finger to point.
hve poop talk.
a lot of poop talk.
here houseguest, have an allergic attack
have a kitten polyp
have your shlong flop out on the air mattress
and a pillow balanced on your belly.
pop that belly out.
fart.
see a cactus.
call it tits.
call it a pipe.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:05 AM
Ms. Bender shares of life's sublime secrets
Directions for making a genital print:
1. Pants.
2. Dancin’ pants.
3. Salmon dancin’ pants.
1. Make fun.
2. Make stir fry.
3. Make reevaluate.
1. Dip (phone book).
2. Walk.
3. Slap (refrigerator).
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:02 AM
August 17, 2005
the meme of memory
Buck Downs
the meme of memory
and the plaything
(for Kevin)
I thought, I pushed
the panic button!? and all
my fat friends
were out on the panic patrol
we were wearing
special glasses
and so we could see
the E.S.P. in action
all the human lives around us
nothing simply happens
in the five floating sense
we call this world
all my life until now
has been advance-
preparation for
this new adventure
KI-YI-YI
I wrote,
NO PRACTICE
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:50 AM
Oh Ignorance, Don't Fail Me Now
an incantation to be sung in a sobbing whispered tone every night by a husband in order to procure a bearable married life. This piece comes from the oral poetries of the Weewankin tribe of Western Canada. It was first dictated in 1878 by A-A-Vo who heard his father, De-Vo lamenting before bed. Some tribe elders insist that the incantation was a spell originally intended to give jaundice to enemy cattle.
-- Ric Royer
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:45 AM
No More Jellybeans
Michael Ball
Kevin Thurston is an industrially waxed zucchini
the size of the Yucatan
Jet Tone Zippo
He is a harem of wind-up insurance clerks in
Day-Glow tweeds with a surrogate
rat anally attached
to each nose
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:30 AM
August 10, 2005
Tickle Torture
Justin Sirois
Tickle Torture combines text and images to describe what might be happening in major cities in Iraq or elsewhere. It is about torturing civilians within the confines of international law and the Geneva conventions. It is about soft fascism. It is about soft tacos. Click on the provinces to enjoy the poem.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:30 AM
July 27, 2005
Voiceover
Mel Nichols
in a minute you'll see the heart--it's very beautiful cut to the surgeon and the wax man yellow with his chest wide open red don't touch anything blue or green the profusionist said while the nurse writes the instrument count on the board the airplane pinned beneath a swath of water on your way to luxurious grass once again we enter the stream there is nothing I need or don't need
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:45 AM
Ghost Brain
Rod Smith
the sun like a toasted amarillis
tips lightly half-backward & ups
its likely faultlike effervescing forwarrd
four times & I find my socks.
the legalities
tumble then
twice &
loom, hippylike, out, final, serious, clumsily costumed --
the knuckles placate in’em, roost there, pals
encapsulate or a path opens
the hope which is poetry
& my heart maybe it
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
Poem
Rod Smith
our world, it is inappropriate
the land of the fee
kitty heads in the percussion cage
& great morphed insult-sized harbingers
a lastly alphabetbotlike feedback-loop &--
secret--
brazen then them awake
this totaled hope again
brazen then them awake
this totaled hope
this totaled hope
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:15 AM
Ghost Brain
Rod Smith
Big fun, like
a selected text. Moron
for example
or **nude twilight**
the dang adverb’s got
‘emsef a humbing-dandy
pre-poseishun.
jerkladen howdies
to yr mammy & pappy.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:14 AM
3 Poems
Mel Nichols
Day Poem
everything
snow cones
25 cents
please knock on door
two bolts in the mouth
and a pie in the face
while I am always sleeping
reading glasses found
under a bag of potato chips
a stack of Styrofoam cups
with the bottoms hacked off
an unmarked car
with a marked man
a girl with jacki-O hair and rectangle glasses
a new year
tell me tell me tell
me tell me something
I can hold onto for a week
or two
we are going to get serious
about project management
we are going to spend
a lot of money on project
management software to prove it
soy sauce mixed with wasabi
in a a disposable cup on the desk
hey hey someone’s got a new manpurse
hey someone’s got collapsible
chopsticks in his pocket
the beer was freezing
and we never finished building the igloo
I was totally under-prepared to
conjugate my –ir verbs but hey
I’m feeling lucky
***
Day Poem
don’t let the door slam can’t you
effing read don’t let the door slam
don’t slam it
guess they don’t get a lot of snow
in Kentucky
everyone kept telling the one about
the time they used a car hood as a sled
love of machines
love of country
love of the card game
love of while you were out
I wrote you a memo on
a pink pad of paper
He’s the George Burns of trance.
the roof was pulling
away from the walls
I can hear the pages turn
as you read
the rain was leaking in
***
Day Poem
I opened the door and saw
an entire chunk of roof had fallen
into the back yard
does it come with a TV mini-series
can it make a three-minute pesto
I wanted our keys to be
tangled up together in your pocket
there is rain in this and also fire and also snow
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
July 13, 2005
Phoenix Diaries: Simon and Carl
Jon Lee
SIMON: I want to fuck you.
CARL: You're so blunt.
SIMON: Damn straight I'm blunt.
CARL: I need a man who's subtle.
SIMON: I can only be so subtle with my tool.
CARL: I want a man who will romance me.
SIMON: Sweety, you know I can romance you.
CARL: Then talk about something other than your cock.
SIMON: I love the way your package sticks out of your shorts.
CARL: This is insane.
SIMON: Oh baby.
CARL: I'm dating a 12 year old.
SIMON: 12 year olds don't have cocks like this.
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:40 AM
Phoenix Diaries: Maryann and Ashton
Jon Lee
MARYANN: Blow me down.
ASHTON: Shiver my timbers?
MARYANN: It's the new thing to say.
ASHTON: Not new at all sweety. Popeye used to say that.
MARYANN: Who's Popeye?
ASHTON: You're too young for that.
MARYANN: You always say that, come on tell me.
ASHTON: No, sweetie. I mean. Ha. I mean you are too young to have
remembered Popeye. He was an old cartoon. Also a very contrived movie
starring Robin Williams.
MARYANN: I know Robin Williams.
ASHTON: There you go, now we have something in common.
MARYANN: Does Mom know who Popeye is?
ASHTON: No, no she doesn't sweetie.
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:30 AM
Phoenix Diaries: Ignoramus and Loser
Jon Lee
IGNORAMUS: Dood, you're such a loser.
LOSER: You stink.
IGN: Fuck yeah I do.
LOSER: I can never stink as good as you.
IGN: Fuck yeah you can. Run around the block.
(LOSER runs around the block.)
IGN: Woah, you don't smell at all.
LOSER: See?
IGN: Yeah. Huh. Run around the block again.
(LOSER runs around the block.)
IGN: Dood, I can't smell a thing. Come closer.
IGN smells LOSER's pits.
LOSER: Well, anything?
IGN: Nope. Nothing.
LOSER: Damn it. I wanna smell.
(LOSER runs around the block.)
LOSER: Damn I'm tired.
IGN: Um dood?
LOSER: Yeah?
IGN: You smell really good.
LOSER: Shit.
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:20 AM
July 06, 2005
from Little is the New Chicken
Adam Good
there are systems
we live among
and to see them
is to be redeployed
* * *
oh,
currents
* * *
your resources
are probably national
your auto-completion
yields “yours truly”
this is a stem-cell
statement
of material
poetics.
check it out,
late fees.
* * *
hogs
split
with
cause,
get
spilt
with
clause,
owls
do it
for the glory
* * *
one moves
between reading
and re-reading
and re-reading
and re-reading.
space begins
to happen.
* * *
there are no ambitious people
only trees
and scores
sweat’s dial
and the law
* * *
you can meet 25
of anyone
[Ed note: Just a sample from a longer work Adam is working on. Edited it down to what would work best here, but trust me, there is much more to see in this work wherever it does finally land.]
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
the gift
Adam Good
(6/22/05)
to
give with
brood what
studio of
food
the clouds are
pregnant and
almost present
pageantry amidst
the swallows
in flight from
fear or an occasionally
awkward silence
the monitors can't
prove
allow or provide
allowance for the kids
run with wind-up
dollies in the aisles
of recuperative volley
after remunerative
volley
time after time's
collateral
damage
reversal
i wasn't thinking
anything i was just
thinking
they try to tell you
things, railroads,
everybody working
on battery life
bar none
non
starters
for starters
aimless
flounder
in better ed
learned
eventually to
just click
on SPEAK
to commune
with the living
dead in the
splendid
flood
of plod
and west of
which &
what
is due
aurally de
parted rig
of trigger's
basic visual
lingo lingers
in the lick
of rhapsody
graphic users
interface
occasionally
as furniture
kick the habitat
back in homage to
the first formal exposure
to now playing
at controlling
the net
from the paint
by numbers
jet and data
set these thing
pieces touch
me with interest
building up
accounts of
what might
get started
in time
or in other
words
begin?
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
June 29, 2005
still more from Unabomber Haiku
Mike Grau
1.
Its consequences
Have been a disaster
For the human race15.
To hate anything
Strong, good, successful
Hate America21.
The drive for power
Hostile or dogmatic terms
Take such an approach34.
Hypothetical
Case of a man who can have
Everything he wants36.
Goals result in death
Compatible survival
And in frustration43.
It is true that some
Either drive for power
Or satisfy it
Read the first installment of Unabomber Haiku >
Then read the second
Ed note: Mike's mission to reveal the power of the poetry locked inside the Unabomber Manifesto continues. Rock Heals looks forward to bringing you more pieces of the puzzle periodically.
Posted by Rock Heals at 06:50 PM
June 22, 2005
2 plot devices:
Rupert Wondolowski
1. Bloody kleenex in the
campsite bathroom (turns out
to be clay).
2. Driving along the highway, run
into traffic jam. Put on bird
costume and run up hill clowning
(gets shot).
+++
This fine fine poem is the opening shot in Rupert's "The Whispering of Ice Cubes: New and Selected Pieces." It is unlike any of the other equally fine pieces in that book -- find it here.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
Meditations in a Thrift Store
Rupert Wondolowski
You are standing in front of a record display in a musty thrift store on the edge of the city. There is a drifting smell that moves on right before becoming disturbing. The wood pieces making up the record shelving seem massive and thick, like elementary school desks seemed to you as a child.
Next to you, feverishly flipping through the Ferrante and Teicher and polka albums is a thin nervous woman you once sort of knew almost twenty years ago. Little about her has changes. She still has that awkward but nervously energized adolescent-like presence that already felt too young for her all those years ago. She’s having a religious experience with these over-picked lps that feel like lifeless, dry taco shells to you at this time. You curse yourself for not having a coffee before coming in here or for coming in here at all. You suddenly feel the urge to be out in the woods away from all material goods, but the late winder sun is setting on slick gray streets outside and there’s always the Friday traffic to think about.
The store’s lighting has no personality, no nuances for you to gain some emotional traction with. It’s like a steady eye with no thought behind it, gazing and gazing at you.
The skittish woman next to you is now making gutteral moaning sounds and you see that she’s holding a Rick James album. Rick James, who was originally from Canada, was a R & B performer fairly big in the70s and 80s. It’s long been believed that the U.S. government unleashed him on American ghettos to spread the scourge of crack cocaine, processed hair and vile clothing, just as another Canadian performer, Leonard Cohen, was set upon the white hippies to deflate their revolutionary fervor and replace it with paralyzing romantic nihilism.
Even in the drab airless space of this culture graveyard, or maybe because of its drabness, Rick James’ processed hair jumps out from the record cover. It has a gellid, industrial squid presence that makes your stomach slide and your scalp itch. How did he maintain that chemical monstrosity through the day? How did it react to sweat? What foul marks did it leave on his coked-out lover’s pillow? Did it ever catch fire during a blurry marathon party, its burning smell like a cauldron of melted wax hobo feet?
A stevedore will tell you that the green bilge from the hold of a ship is the dirtiest substance on earth, that if it gets on your skin it crawls right through, but at this moment you picture the processed coils of hair gulping the bilge and sucking your flesh off at the same time, leaving you a quivering exo-skeleton.
It’s just as that earlier wrong smell starts to drift your way again and you start to wonder if it’s an olfactory hallucination connected to Rick James, that the nervous girl speaks to you. But when you turn to face her she has become that cute cheerleader from high school, the one from the other school in Howard County. She has the largest, most innocent eyes that shoot laser beams of goodness from behind large glasses that might have been at home on Wally Cox, voice of Underdog. She is holding an album of traditional Eskimo music and she asks you if you knew that Eskimos sing into each other’s throats. Your heart begins beating rapidly and when she turns to put the album back into the decaying wooden bin you notice she has the nicest ass you’ve ever seen. You blush, wondering if you’re evil for noticing such a thing about a young girl in a short, frilly pom pom outfit, but then you notice she’s around your age and that her smile indicates she can read your thoughts.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“Yes,” you answer. “I tried to eat at the Taco Bell earlier, but there was a huge fight going on about whose turn it was to the clean the toilet. It really brought me down.”
“Let’s go outside,” she says. “I’ve got something in my car.”
When you enter the battered VW buss there is a colorful spread of food waiting on the plaid couch covers, including steaks the size of catcher’s mitts and sparkling roasted vegetables.
As the two of you gorge on your feast you can see a carnival of red police lights flashing by outside and the bus sways as if on water whenever fire trucks come near.
Sometime during the double chocolate pudding the two of you decide that despite the over-chronicling of Paris in the 1920s, it was still the best place to be and that you would go there next.
“But first,” she says, ”there’s an out of control ice cream truck playing Grateful Dead music in Hampden about to crash into a backyard full of babies on blankets and I’ve got to stop it.”
+++
This piece first appeared in Shattered Wig Review #25. Learn how to get a copy.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
June 16, 2005
love prayers
love prayers {1
for you}
if I could give you all the love in the world, wrap it up in greasy butcher block paper & tie it tight with cable wire, put my ear to it & listen to the good bacteria breed like marmalade botulism. If I could hold the bundle of all the love in the world, the meat love & the organic vegetable love, the gentle panda & sizzling kidney napalm love, Bombay prostitute love & a new father’s love, it would swell like a sprinkler head & spasm like a bee without its dagger. I need to include the teenage vampire love, it’s a good kind I think. Holy Mary, Mother of Super Savings, I want a five hundred dollar stainless steal Japanese cutlery set, but can’t afford it with my current salary. Holy Harry, Father of High Fructose, please spare the ones who cannot read the ingredients on the sides of tractor trainers, the atom barbers who smash economies with nose hair scissors & bump reducing beard trimmers. If I could give you my real love instead of worrying about silent wars or smoking old cough ash alone in my boxers, if I could change the shape of my eye sockets by cracking these knuckles in a particular order, if the basketball brawl behind the sockets broke up & the punch drunk cameramen would strike, you would be on the top of the list, wayward & always wandering
Posted by Rock Heals at 05:00 AM
mister Cyclopes & the men I have grown to love
oh mister Cyclopes, big government is bad when you
watch TV all night, a cigarette is always a cigarette
no matter what happens to it. Sometimes I feel like
you’re the only real thing in my life, not (the
unchanging cigarette) just the kaleidoscope of
compliments & kisses you over night. Those swollen
tomahawks & talk show humorists, you smoking mini vans
& apache plagiarists, when does a riot cop decide to
write something intimidating on the front of his
helmet? He’s only been hit in the head a few times &
he hates it, this is a classified memo demanding that
you destroy the super flu samples, if the virus seeps
into our crown victoria we will all be turned into
headless vermin & they will use our little bodies to
mean streak red warnings of the apocalypse. A man is
always a man no matter what happens to it. The boy who
collects assault rifles is a worried boy, the girl who
uses the word frontline in conversation is a girl
whose calculus has been proven – now the can of
emergency drinking water has become a mushy slosh,
will you smooch him when we erupts like-
a busted spigot or a kevlar pig ready to kick heads?
Who is going to macromanage middle america? iPod One,
the little diction clipped to the president’s waist,
plays free downloaded pop, when I called the first
daughters blurry hurdy-gurdies I meant it like pretty
organ grinders, but I wasn’t talking about anyone
we’ve seen for real, just a singing photograph taped
to the cathode. Write to your congressman & ask them
how much a pound of hamburger costs, big government
means less freedom for the discounted calm diggers &
back to school items, we found her in the dvd bin, she
believed it to be a ball pit & sank down to lethal
weapons. Where do we fit into the remodeling success
story? He’s been hit in the soft drink a few times &
likes it
Posted by Rock Heals at 04:00 AM
Air Jordan XX
Ed note: Once again a (very brief) story from D_ that doesn't involve life on duty. But it does involve two topics we love: one-legged people and Air Jordans.
I was walking to the metro the other day on the way to work and passed by this homeless guy I always see out there.
He was asking for change -- didn't have any for him that morning -- and I come to notice he's wearing a brand new Air Jordan (Jordan XX, in this case the black ones) on his one foot. What?
It got better. Sitting next to him was the shoe that completed the pair, with a sign:
For Sale
Brand New
Never Worn
I was sorely tempted. Should have at least asked him how much. He'd have to throw in the sign in the deal.
Posted by Rock Heals at 03:00 AM
June 01, 2005
the Factory of Life and Consciousness
Ryan Walker
I’m tired of the whole idea of intense sex. I have to admit that cute sex or even boring sex has some appeal. Non-invasive or even non-noticeable sex seems worth trying. I’d like someone to tell me we had sex the other day, briefly, while I was distracted. -How was it? -It was ok. -Did I like it? -I think so. -Let’s do it again. -We already did. -Oh. How was it? -It was ok. In this way, we can have sex, if not constantly – which would be pointless – then at least frequently enough to restore wildness to the places where we send mail or refuse to purchase dry goods. …She’s mouthwateringly reasonable. I’m convinced there is a whole race of people in the cities and towns of this continent who simply are not aware of how reasonable she is, so they choose to go insane, not because of any romantic notion about incurring unnecessary risk or seeing across to the other side or living eternally in the final credits of a rockumentary, but rather because, in the wayward portions of our mutual instinct, the gritty monkeys that laze where the last inviolable toilet water flickers out, there the future conspires with fashion and our ideas are borned.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
one year
Ryan Walker
stop being a totem pole
a cloud moves, the sky brightens, a bird calls
my bird answers
shut up bird
you've ruined everything, sun
the sun ruined everything
and school ruined the rest
let me back in the sewer
the oxygen is chaffing my gills
I slit my last Tan-tan
in October, now I have nothing
if you ask what I'm wearing
Black Banana No. 4
I have many new feelings
necroflagelum
one of those little tails
dead people get
nice, yes, but she looked
like she'd just fallen
down the up escalator
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:30 AM
hatch
Ryan Walker
the part where I stop pretending
it's something I have volition over got edited
out of the halloween parade not by some
overzealous cinemetographer but by the gaping maw
that opened beneath me. I stand before you
a visitor from the overworld
where the light is kind
and yellow
and the tubas play
I can endorse the things I've purchased
I can be your parent
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
May 25, 2005
current(ly)
Score to a performance by Kevin Thurston
Live, I'd like to say Kevin's work plays with boundaries, but that's much too nice a term. And there is a whole universe of more colorful terms you just haven't heard much since 10th grade... skull-fucks boundaries?
Kevin stirs up a whole mix of presentations, performances and genres to then stir up a whole mix of responses in his viewers -- from engagement, to distnancing, to a general "what the fuck" that takes you a good place.
You may not realize it on first experience, but the kid is rockin' it. Or to keep with the 10th grade terminology, his stuff is tits [on glass].
(Click to enlarge/enjoy)
-thumb.jpg)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
May 18, 2005
Two Poems
Tracey Gaughran-Perez
By Numbers
Broadly then there are these, networks. Thought is actual, executed by several different parts while remaining actually indivisible. When he’s finally finished the last word on the matter what marks the memory is beyond dispute. What is authorized. Cause in effect we become ourselves later and later what held us commanded more or less than ourselves, always absorbing relevant sociopolitical and private marginalia. A sort of settlement built around the idea and its architecture, a cool, dry place. Comfortable means to end for each and everything allotted, with security and freedom in foresight. But even in precision and ease he cannot hear himself above the floor, ceiling and walls constantly referencing the spacious inclusiveness of design. When two hands meet halfway these bodies, in that gesture, rouse as if from sleep. One following another vertical and horizontal lines stretch out arms into the bright air and want for nothing.
How to Steal or Reinvent
She looks terrified barely visible under water; another flips her fingers in smoke and is kept light. Who wants her and why she is not noticed, these essential things that seem clumsy or awkward will be the better for it or we want to believe so. In momentary lapses her face was pretty if only, mirrors rearranged the unspoken. No, but I meant that in a good way. We eat rice and fish seriously, assume our positions change or are possible. What satisfaction for those chosen at the last, cowboy hats back in a slight twist at the knee, a wash of overwrought color. At this point she’d had just about enough and was looking for new forms, something stationary to pin hope on, but that was years ago. Those were wasted on someone else’s hypotheses and trust before in after; the haloed curtains now drawn against, a shadow folded neatly on carpet.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:06 AM
May 04, 2005
New Car Jacking Scheme
Lauren Bender
Imagine:
You walk across the parking lot, unlock Your
car and get inside. Then You lock all your doors,
start the engine and shift into REVERSE.
Habit!
You look into the rear-view window to back out of Your parking space and You notice a piece of paper, some sort of advertisement stuck to Your rear window. So, You shift into PARK, unlock Your doors and jump out of Your vehicle to remove that paper (or whatever it is) that is obstructing Your view…when You reach the back of your car, that is when The Car-Jackers jump out of nowhere…jump into Your car and take off—Your engine was running, Your purse is in the car, and They practically mow You down as they speed off in Your car.
BE AWARE OF THIS NEW SCHEME
Just drive away and remove the paper that is stuck to Your window later...and be thankful that You read this and that You forwarded it to Your Friends.
More in Week 8
all poetry from Lauren Bender
This Ain't No Damn Bingo! Shoot.
Water Weight; and
a certain trauma encoded in a time of year
Previously on Rock Heals
And on the 7th Week more Unabomber Haiku and the first edition of This Month in Search
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another installment of 911 Diaries, a photo from Raji, and a review of Katamari Damacy!
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:50 AM
This Ain’t No Damn Bingo! Shoot.
Lauren Bender
You stay here and I’ll go think about guns
Or duotone, or vegan mullets
Bring aspartame back for the children
Dump pillowcase booty onto living room floor and inspect for myth.
Couldn’t see my French Canadian for the fiberoptic trees
“he grabbed my hand, and 20 minutes later…”
Tea over a spit, the eucalyptic accompaniment
Open your eyes
I’m dreaming maps and spent drawings
Open your eyes
Meet up in the barrio
Open your eyes
Wake up in the ruins outside Mexico City
How did your boots get so dusty
How much does an I-Book cost
How does everything man owns fit into a 6x4 storage unit
Jack, your wife’s organ is missing
Jack, this poem is channeling nothing but a hangnail in my drunken country
10 signs you’re naively apathetic:
Jack, you’re as swayed as his new field jacket and just as inauthentic
Swigged yourself to death one starry evening
Shot as much as a carpenter can afford
Quoted yourself right down the information superhighway
Sidewalk chalk for her intellectual graffiti
I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it
Friends + 2,
Harborside view,
How did your boots get so dusty
More in Week 8
all poetry from Lauren Bender
New Car Jacking Scheme
Water Weight; and
a certain trauma encoded in a time of year
Previously on Rock Heals
And on the 7th Week more Unabomber Haiku and the first edition of This Month in Search
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another installment of 911 Diaries, a photo from Raji, and a review of Katamari Damacy!
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
Water Weight
Lauren Bender
i before e except
your middle names are obligation enough
to get the hell out of dodge
to get the hell off of the PA line
box full of wishes
box full of ashes
song on the radio
sung in the cemetery
if could do it all again
would do it just the same
the soggy cereal serial, “surreal?”
late for every funeral in the pouring rain
brown jacket
brown tie
brown sweater
brown tites
fish tank
travel magazines
1. the taj mahal is symmetric and best viewed in early morning
2. “take care now,” said the gravedigger
More in Week 8
all poetry from Lauren Bender
New Car Jacking Scheme
This Ain't No Damn Bingo! Shoot.; and
a certain trauma encoded in a time of year
Previously on Rock Heals
And on the 7th Week more Unabomber Haiku and the first edition of This Month in Search
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another installment of 911 Diaries, a photo from Raji, and a review of Katamari Damacy!
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
a certain trauma encoded in a time of year
Lauren Bender
a certain trauma encoded in a time of year
to perceive it
collect longitudinal data in sensitive faces over time
chart the overanalytic empathy
while looking for
a country code
an anonymous yearbook
a moving image inverted by its pinhole painter
vs.
some measure of anniversary in the round
vs.
57 or 65 hours without sleep
More in Week 8
all poetry from Lauren Bender
New Car Jacking Scheme
This Ain't No Damn Bingo! Shoot.; and
Water Weight
Previously on Rock Heals
And on the 7th Week more Unabomber Haiku and the first edition of This Month in Search
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another installment of 911 Diaries, a photo from Raji, and a review of Katamari Damacy!
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
April 27, 2005
more from Unabomber Haiku
Mike Grau
2.
Systems may survive
Permanently reducing
Cogs in the machine
7.
It’s not clear who can
Have in mind the correct types
Not so much movement
10.
We mean not feeling
But a whole spectrum of traits:
Such guilt, self-hatred29.
Real attachment
To integrate the black man
Couldn’t care less what kind
31.
Foregoing thumbnail
The real situation is
Complex, and anything
Read first installment of Unabomber Haiku >
Ed note: Mike's mission to reveal the power of the poetry locked inside the Unabomber Manifesto continues. Rock Heals looks forward to bringing you more pieces of the puzzle soon.
Also in Week 7
This Month In Search
Previously on Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another installment of 911 Diaries, a photo from Raji, and a review of Katamari Damacy!
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
April 20, 2005
I wasn't even on the clock...
D., as told to Rock Heals
So, I’m walking to my car and this homeless guy on the street stops me -- Hey, are you a doctor? (I was wearing my EMT shirt.)
Well, no. Not --
He didn’t really register what all I was saying -- he was onto his next sentence before I’d answered -- Can you look at something for me?
He was already bending down a little -- then he pulls his pant leg up and... Christ!
His leg was black. Not gangrene -- beyond that. (Ed note: don’t type “gangrene” into Google Images.) But more than anything it stank. I mean stank. It had gone through infection, through early gangrene with all its beautiful colors, through later gangrene where things turn chalky white, through gross, to just DEAD. I’ve seen things, but never have I smelled anything like this.
I tried to keep the all-pro face -- but it was clear that I was disgusted. I reflexively turned away with my hand over my nose and mouth.
After a moment passed, I was back and started asking him how it happened (heroin addict, injecting into a vein, vein collapses, keeps on injecting into the developing sore, straight up WRONG -- I’m piecing that together from a mess of an explanation), how long it was like this (2 weeks in that condition -- so it’d been dying for like a month), did it hurt (yeah, and it was “a little bit squishy”) and so on.
He asked me if it would go away. Now, mind you, this wasn’t going away. What was going away was his leg up to the knee. But this guy was straight-out thug and I wasn’t about to give him the good news.
Man you gotta see a doctor about that. And I’m just a student. You should go to the hospital and get that looked at right away.
We were walking along and happened upon some cops at this point, who more or less took over the situation and got the guy out of there.
Crazy.
POSTSCRIPT, three weeks later: I see the dude hanging out on the street, no leg to the knee and out-of-his-mind high.
Also in Week 6
Katamari Damacy: Tetris 2004? (a review)
Previously on Rock Heals
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:20 AM
April 13, 2005
April 20, Baltimore Poetry Reading (@MICA)
April 20th, 2005, 5:30 pm
@MICA -- in the Station Building
A Narrowhouse Reading with:
Kevin Thurston
Justin Sirois
Lauren Bender
Andrew Miller
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
April 06, 2005
911 Diaries: Blood Mystery
D., as told to Rock Heals
We’re called to the seen late on a Saturday -- your typical apartment complex. It’s an old woman (most everyone we deal with is old -- it goes with the work) who called 911 when her husband fell in the bathroom, and was bleeding.
That didn’t quite prepare us for what we arrived to.
The bathroom was covered in blood -- all over the shower tile, up the walls, the ceiling, and of course everywhere on the floor. Real horror-show stuff.
The gentleman in question is conscious, but a little woozy, as to be expected after losing all this blood. He isn’t complaining of any pain and is explaining to us that he doesn’t need to go to the hospital. Quick inspection doesn’t tip us off on where all this blood is coming from -- he’s covered from head to toe, but no obvious gushing.
We know he needs to go in, but we can’t force him to go under these conditions, believe it or not. So we need to convince him. My partner and I stand him up real fast -- he’s old, and low on blood, so of course he faints immediately. Unconscious patient? He’s gotta go in. The rules are the rules.
We load him up and take him in. To make a long story short, they hose him off in the emergency room and the only injury they can find is a small cut in his ankle.
There is no fucking way all that blood came from his ankle. His wife was there. We’d checked with neighbors while we were there, nobody seemed to be missing. Some shady stuff -- we reported it to the on-duty officer. Sounds like some Goodfellas type shit is going down in Bethesda.
911 Diaries, the Backstory
Soon after meeting D_, Rock Heals was treated to story after amazing story on what happens out there in the DC EMT scene. It’s some crazy living out there -- I imagine you’d hear the same or worse from the Metro PD… Consider this your chance to do all the rubbernecking you need to -- cuz when you rubberneck on the road your next, or just making my commute that much slower and pissing me off.
Some of the stories will be recent, some old, but all good. All good. Some whack shit is going on out there in your backyard. Every day.
Also in Week 4
Unabomber Haiku, Mike Grau
The Alphabet Song, M_GP
Also on Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another episode of 911 Diaries and a review
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
from Unabomber Haiku
5.
We give attention
We confine our discussion
And we have written
14.
Women are as strong
Clearly are nagged by a fear
Capable as men
22.
No social problems
Would have to invent problems
For making a fuss
26.
They goof off at work
The thought and the behavior
Results in a sense
33.
The need for power
We call it autonomy
Discuss it later
44.
But for most people
One does not have adequate
Eating disorders
Ed note: Mike's mission to reveal the power of the poetry locked inside the Unabomber Manifesto continues. Rock Heals looks forward to bringing you more pieces of the puzzle soon.
Also in Week 4
911 Diaries: Blood Mystery, D.
The Alphabet Song, M_GP
Also on Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another episode of 911 Diaries and a review
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:08 AM
March 23, 2005
to the woman in Wendy’s wearing the purple & black jersey listening to pop country.
if a series of clichés are strung together in an entertaining & theatrical way does it make them music? Does it make them art? If I could, I would like to sit next to your broccoli & nacho cheese baked potato & ask you all these things about beauty & the contemporary handy cap stall who’s copious square footage we enjoy only in the early morning hours before the truly physically challenged arrive at the office. I would ask you if an ironic mash of colloquial passé & flailing rhythm guitar really speak to the modern woman, if the grilled chicken sandwich should be smothered in a tangy drip whose origin must have been mayonnaise. One thing we need to discuss is Dan Rather’s premature & dishonorable forced retirement from his anchor chair, how, in an age of imbedded sellouts, this rare breed of bare knuckle reporting is dying fast, true investigative journalism replaced by biased programming, bloggers & Drudgery. We weren’t there to see the cameramen spit upon or their pancreases heel carved with the words “Nigger Lover” & “Yankee Liberal”, curb stomped cameras in rural Alabama, pressing hard on the posterior compartment of the thigh, hamstrings, and femoral arteries of soldiers as they wait for evacuation.
We weren’t snuck into Afghanistan to refill our soda cups either, that would have been a story. Should we not forget that Dave Thomas was an orphan & his fiery daughter a lesbian of urban myth? The teenage burger flipper turned entrepreneur died at age 69 of liver cancer in Florida, would he know if a string of clichés are sung together in a heartfelt way do they transcend the beverage fountain to twang deep fryers fantastically? Do these lyrics Wal-Mart the contemporary man who would rather eat in the cab of his new four wheel drive Sherman than mingle with silent dining room patrons? Maybe these are questions for a rare & special individual whose antennae vibrate with a notebook & pencil, the say, “show me a blue state shaped chicken nugget not good enough to eat”. True objective observation would expose you for what you really are, a compassionate conservative & constitution revisionist in the true sense of the word, with running linebacker’s surname woven on your shoulders, free to rename & sound byte what they’ve been repeating for decades, the reverberating chorus chiming through lowered ceilings, “two cons do make a right” Talk about trite
Also in Week 2
More from Justin Sirois
merrie melodies & the role models of termite terrace
Also on Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another episode of 911 Diaries and a review
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:24 AM
merrie melodies & the role models of termite terrace
sponge bob square pants is an unlikely model of existential
sensitivity { when I was young the drawings of John Kricfalusi
used to make me & my brother piss our pants, he obviously
did a ton of acid, he played in a surf rock band named the
Shit Birds & when nickelodeon ripped Ren & Stimpy away from
his creative control he went independent again with an alcoholic
neo conservative named George Liquor, an Elmer Fudd type
who’s experience in Korea & cinemax might have rattled a
few bolts loose & only wading pools of blended whiskey
can turn the furniture back into their proper shapes, he spends
the afternoon cutting down dead trees, Kricfalusi is obviously
way ahead of his time { sponge bob square pants is a sea
sponge with buck teeth, he’s the social outcast, the square,
but as a sentient being of an absorbent nature he is a
metaphor of complete social acceptance, a tolerant &
kind individual of constant reflection who not only soaks
in the environment around him, he is, in essence, this
environment, in an underwater world without boarders or
check points he is the ambassador to all species & races,
he is the wide eyed abstraction, a being who defies
categorization of genus or genetic origin { when we were
young the cartoons of Bob Clampett & Tex Avery seemed
too charged with anxiety, who’s afraid of a hovering pickaxe?
whose overalls are stuffed full’a TNT? obviously impossible
for us to see the art in it at the time when a sports car could
transform into a pistol & then a giant robot, after leaving Warner
Brothers in ’64, Clampett produced 78 episodes of his sea sick
sock puppet creation & boy companion in five years with his
children Bob Jr. & Ruth doing voice overs, Kricfalusi would
later try to revive the series after Clampett’s death, but ABC
would can the progressive animator for this hands on approach
to the medium { you, the Brita of contemporary apathy, slice
cells into a story board of estranged commentary, an art that won’t
be appreciated fully until the reels of commercialism slow &
the dazed adults understand who tried to tease away convention &
free young imaginations from the confines of capital, you, the
lower case artist, slip castor oil through the lips of authenticity &
throw anvils at vile television thrones, a big blown baby with a
baritone bravura of Hanna Barbaric proportion
Also in Week 2
More from Justin Sirois
to the woman in Wendy’s wearing the purple & black jersey listening to pop country.
Also on Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another episode of 911 Diaries and a review
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:24 AM
March 15, 2005
from PARTY IN MY BODY
Like Richard Nixon said on his last day in office, you can kiss my jowls goodbye. Let's steal jokes from cantankerous places. On another mundane day, I'm struck by revelations. With free tickets to a heartwarming comedy, instead we'll wander around outside. Here I am in public, taking a public role. I may not recommend action, but I'll certainly tell you what to avoid. Who can afford to be oversensitive? Security seizes this town like you've never seen before. Working for vacation time! Even when I'm standing close to them, these guys who run the world seem dumb.
*
Searching for something permanent, we missed the whole world. Noah's Ark leaves next Sunday. Now with more options than ever before. A sunny sharp day when diffusion, my hand on the side of a building, leaves me languorously lounging. Shall we have some fun while time keeps going? Challenging one's own exaggerations! When I can't focus, music helps me dream. No rehearsals and no arrangements and so they swung like crazy. I don't know how I got here, but right now I really don't care. Can you tell me how to exit the labyrinth?
*
Seeing endings as tragedy leads to more tragedy. One role, one life, one unavoidable dilemma. How do you feel about the locked door? Driving down the street in L.A., I kept having visions that weren't really visions. Cross the wires and pass the buck. You've left Jane for the bottom line? Singing the National Anthem to another sold-out stadium, I started to question my faith in talent. Is it worse to return to the scene of the crime? The right to suffer the consequences! Once we've streamlined the process, none of us will have to know anything.
*
I felt prophetic and abandoned until I answered the phone and the door. He had a sophisticated theory and a nasty personality. The news wonders why the young are upset but doesn't dare answer the question. I've not seen very much really, but I know what happens when we look past the world. What should we choose to break our hearts on? Talk with me in the sun for a day and maybe we'll get lost. Believing in solutions! There's as much night as there are ways to see it, yet people still lunge for their own piece of darkness. What are the things you can't make yourself say? At first it seemed funny, then it seemed like the place that I live.
*
Mark read in Baltimore on March 19, 2005 (a great sequence of selections from Dead Carnival), click the image to see the event flyer.
More from Rock Heals
Week 6 Is Habit Forming with another episode of 911 Diaries and a review
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk; and
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois
Posted by Rock Heals at 11:04 PM
