It sounds beautiful

A beautiful piece from Dinosaur Bees.

The Sound Effects Bible
Larry O. Dean

In the beginning God created the hammering and the electric shaver.

And the cavern was without footsteps, and vacuuming; and darkness was upon the dripping faucet of the sink. And the Spirit of God moved upon the sizzling of the frying pan.

And God said, Let there be light switches: and there was light switches.

And God saw the light switches, that it was good: and God divided the light switches from the doorbells.

And God called the light switches Click, and the dishwasher he called Swoosh.

And the distant plane and the match scratches were the first incoming fax.

And God said, Let there be a floor creak in the midst of the whistling, and let it divide the whipping cream from the washing hands.

And God made the busy signals, and divided the dial tones which were under the hang ups from the ringtones which were above the dogs barking: and it was so.

And God called the coffee grinder Growl. And the garage door and the gas stove were the spigot.

And God said, Let the snoring under the ricochet be gathered together unto one place, and let the alarm clock appear: and it was so.

And God called the toilet flush Gush; and the gathering together of the cheering called he Hooray: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let the cell phone bring forth vibrating, the chainsaw yielding buzz, and the modem yielding dial-up after his kind, whose sink draining is in itself, upon the suck: and it was so.

And the explosions brought forth glass, squeaking and breaking after his kind, and the cream yielding shaving, whose scraping was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And the chattering and the heckling were the studio audience.

And God said, Let there be bravos in the brushing of the carpet to divide the scissors from the sharpening; and let them be for screeches, and for splashes, and for dings, and yells:

and let them be for moos in the clearing of the throats to give ouch upon the eek: and it was so.

And God made two great kisses; the greater kiss to rule the mouth, and the lesser kiss to rule the cheek: he made the smooches also.

And God set them in the oven of the microwaves to give boiling upon the water,

and to rule over the slam and over the deadbolt, and to divide the zip from the zipper: and God saw that it was good.

And the splashing and the sploshing were the motocross.

And God said, Let the bathtub bring forth abundantly the frothing faucet that hath splatter, and keys that may drop onto the bazooka in the open jingle and jangle.

And God created great farts, and every spaceship takeoff that zoometh, which the hair dryer brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every camera click after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God blessed them, saying, Be boiling eggs, and bubble, and fill the gusting winds in the hurricanes, and let horses whinny on the slot machines.

And the beep and the burp were the heartbeat.

And God said, Let the ambulance bring forth the siren after his kind, shredder and aerosol can, and bang of the firecracker after his kind: and it was so.

And God made the dentist drill after his kind, and crackling campfire after their kind, and every thing that twangeth upon the train after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us crash hot rods on our speedways, after our horn honks: and let them have flat tires over the gravel of the roads, and over the screeching of the steel-belted radials, and over the noisy mufflers, and over all the rattling, and over every braking thing that braketh upon the pavement.

So God created ticker-tapes in his own image, in the image of God created he him; effervescence and gurgling created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be beep, and buzz, and bowl the ball, and smack it: and have dominion over the disposal of the garbage, and over the register of the cash, and over every flapping wing that flappeth upon the fire extinguisher.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every wine glass clinking, which is upon the tinkling of all the stemware, and every toaster, in the which is the propellor of everything Cessna; to you it shall be for throttling.

And to every jackhammer of the pneumatic, and to every blender of the liquefying, and to every thing that pureeth upon the velcro, wherein there is chopping, I have given every sputter for splat: and it was so.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

And the helicopter and the laser beam were the can-opener.

Catching My Interest

As of late mildly obsessed with

Dave Canterbury and Cody Lundin, rock on with your bad ass selves.

Hip Hop And R&B Top 20. Not too proud but it keeps my butt working out longer.

Margaret Atwood

Tom Robbins

Ronnie and Donnie. Let your freak flag fly boys.

Denny's Pacific Northwest Iced Coffee

Seamus Heaney

The smell of death lingers . . .

RIP Jim Carroll

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating
In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's synchronicity for you:

Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you

I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds

8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...

No matter that you felt betrayed by her

That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion

Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse

Check out the Village Voice.

And the Frank in the above poem is in reference to Frank O'Hara, oh my heart.

Speaking of Frank's heart, I had the immediacy of a bad movie . . . the big overproduced first-run kind this weekend. But don't take my word for it, here's what a real critic had to say about a film I'm so indifferent to it's not worth mentioning the title.

On a related note: Who's ever heard of one critic seeing or not seeing a movie based on the opinion of another critic? I'm not saying you should see a movie you don't want to see, I'm just asking since when do you need the opinion of another to back it up? We are such odd creatures . . .

The movie 9 was not without its flaws (the ending and the storyline being huge ones). But I think that any movie that touches upon the fear of too many technological advances being our downfall is NOT something to be overlooked. There was a certain earnest naivety to the film that I sort of enjoyed. I just wished Acker had woven it in deeper into the storyline and characters . . . it was just sort of there, looming over the film attached to a few anchoring words and phrases such as, "pieces of my soul." Don't take my word for it, see it for yourself and then tell me Acker didn't base 3 and 4 on my favorite Jersey born female twin savants Flo and Kay.


This Celtics Blog "POst" by Master PO made me smile. How is the view from that Lone Dr. Seuss Truffula Tree?

Simile time: Love is like a Brontosaurus. Sex is like a Velociraptor.

tunes from the left end, While You Wait for the Others, Grizzly Bear. Make it all worth while.
You Can Make Him Like You, The Hold Steady.
Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, Radiohead.
Ocean Breathes Salty, Modest Mouse. You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?

Spinning Yarns

Do you know how I know that you have no idea what MAKES a man?

Because I don't know. No one does. If we knew, what fun would that be?

A poem within a poem
a moment within a moment
Did you smell the burnt
remains
of your bagel as the girl behind the counter
cleaned the toaster, the cacophony of scrapes.
I found a song in that
crumbs are what will be left
of our New Yorker kind of breakfast
The newspaper article you point out to me
with the overly descriptive caption
The one lone car making its way
out--- I want out.
I want to be that car.
Not the driver, not the passenger
The car.
I want to feel your skin against my interior and hear you sing
along to the song blaring from my speakers
I want my bass to reverberate inside your chest cavity
keep my windows down so you can feel the breeze brush your face
with my sun roof those rays will always shine on you
when it rains I'll work hard to keep the view clear and light your way through any storm
I want to be able to see
you find friends, old and new
and hear you laugh
at inside jokes I may never understand.
And I want to see you cry.
I want to go so fast and break so many rules you beg to get out
I want to hear you scream and sense your panic
I want you to never forget fight-or-flight
you can make it
I will keep your heart pumping.


Update 08/15/09: This stays.

Update 08/16/09: This stays. I don't.

Poetry Corner

Claire De Lune

Gets me every time.




Although I cringed a little when it came up in Twilight . . .

Update: This will make up for the above fact.

Poetry Corner

MOON-CATCHIN' NET

I've made me a moon-catchin' net,
And I'm goin' huntin' tonight,
I'll run along swingin' it over my head,
And grab for that big ball of light.
So tomorrow just look at the sky,
And if there's no moon you can bet
I've found what I sought and I finally caught
The moon in my moon-catchin' net.
But if the moon's still shinin' there,
Look close underneath and you'll get
A clear look at me in the sky swingin' free
With a star in my moon-catchin' net.

- Shel Silverstein

Sunshowers please, fingers crossed

My Philosophy of Life, John Ashbery

My favorite line, "Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas."



Her Kind, Anne Sexton





Landscape With The Fall of Icarus, William Carlos Williams

Must be something in the water there . . .




somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond, e e cummings

Poetry Corner

Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Ahhhhh . . .

I want







this type of love.

Courage
Anne Sexton

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.


Pretty Sweet Analysis here (for those of you who hate poetry).

I wish I wasn't scared of this.

My love affair with couches

and the smell of felt came from Fat Cat, a live jazz club and pool hall on Christopher St. in NYC. Sink into one of those couches older than you and I combined and try to tell me you don't know what love is. Slip in and out of orgasmic pleasure as the sound proof walls bounce sound waves into your chest cavities. Feel your heart almost come out of your chest as the musicians (no one was playing to get famous) played until their fingers bled. Closing between 4 and 5 AM was a suggestion.
Taking a break a few times for some cloves, a hot dog and a pint . . . as long as you had that stamp, heaven was just a door away.

We Real Cool.

Poetry Corner

I feel like orbs.

Red orbs. Red Balloons fit nicely here.
And The Red Balloon. Great Balls of Fire!

The Ball Poem by John Berryman

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over—there it is in the water
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

Paul Weiss: the Original Scenester

I fell in love with a fugly little Jewish man from New York about . . . 7 years ago, and our affair has not ended. I think if Prof. Paul Weiss knew that in college campuses and house parties across the nation he would be deemed the ever so demonized, "scenester" he would get a good chuckle. Paul Weiss integrated himself into particular "scenes," most notably the one of the "creator" or "artist," in order to better understand the roles played out in those scenes. Method-philosophisizing. He wasn't doing it to be a dick or to prove any particular theory. He simply wanted understanding.

He would probably be a poser about being a scenester . . . woah, my head just exploded a little. I've never considered it to be a problem that I like a lot of different things. Nor have I ever felt a need to justify liking different things.

I will take the time to justify one of my loves: poetry.

Simply stated (though I could argue with my fancy schmancy training in Formal and Informal Logic) if you like music, then you like poetry. Please don't make me break it down for y'all.

::folds arms with a defiant head nod:: So there, you closeted Beatnik, you. Don't have a cow, man!

3 Cheers for JSTOR!!!!!!

Where the heart roams while I'm alone.

Bowery Blues

Dream a little dream

Ground
A New Poem
by Rae Armantrout

Custom content feed.

Let me tell you something personal.
As a child, I worried about quicksand.
I don't know why I mention this.
I feel no connection
to the child who had that fear,
instilled, as it was,
by '50s films about explorers,
hokey
and tainted now.

I hold out my hand.


*


Brownian motion;
primal shudder.


The way it's hotter


to go to bed with someone
while imagining


yourself
to be another person.

You got to cry without weeping

Little Girl Blue

All you can ever count on
are the rain drops that fall
but as the little boy
Caucasian
blows his
Hostess chocolate cupcake covered
nose
into his Grandpa's handkerchief
I have to believe there are creme-filled
moments one can count on fingers caked
in the delightful-ness of mess
followed by crumbs creeping in the corners
of a smile
always preferably licked
than wiped
clean
every sweet ounce
of a moment's morsel should be
savored
craved, remembered
relived
just as rain drops
they should at the very least
be counted, maybe not
as reliable as the rain
but go hand and hand with the tears
swept up in the hope
chest
they bring nostalgia
to the wanderlust


Again letting go of form on the blog, but never in my dreams. In my dreams as tangible as humid air I swim through each moment with you.

Dinner party with bubbles? Amazing.

If I collect anything . . . I would love to be considered a collector of moments.

Poem from Journal (orig.date 03/11/09)

I'm a napkin note kind of person. Pieces of these poems materialize all over, and come together and grow in ways even I don't fully understand. Taking a moment from the blood . . . this poem is still about breakfast.
Oh, and this one has a title already

Q & A: A New Yorker Kind of Breakfast

It was Fraser Field the last time
my legs got stuck on the bleachers
as my father and I watched the Mad Dogs
play like any other baseball team, major, minor
or little league, the game of baseball is the game of baseball
to me he seems so forced as he
sits there in his flannel over Venture Brother tee
his bear hat left on as he eats
his blueberry bagel with butter
baiting me with a pop quiz about hometown bliss
(or piss is more like it)
my banana-nut muffin starts out sweet, but hardens and cakes in my mouth
getting tangled in all the words I want to speak, but don't
the words he forces me to swallow
cutting
me off at the start of the race then
clinging
to each word as they scrape their way down my esophagus
churning
in the acid of my stomach
burning their way out
permeating
into the rest of me
where they explode, taking out other various parts of me
I catch him hacking away all the time
trying to get at those words I tried to get out
all on my own
break
I saw the stain on the back of his jeans as he ordered at the counter of the cafe
I focus on the image of it as we slip in and out of awkward silence, "The New Yorker has the worse comics," he says
I don't take the bait, instead I am remembering that stain,
those imperfections, those unintentional mishaps, those marks on his soul
that only I know, that even he doesn't know that I know
make me in some way invincible to the reality of this moment, guard me against his axe
make me love him that much more
but
he's far, far, far
from loving my mark.*

*I must say these poems lose something not in their forms. I love figured poems. Yum.

Because Fearless explained it . . .

and I love Fearless and his stories.

La Petite Vie
Alan Edward Butt

Love is the kindest
expression
of absence---

Or else
is a day
by the river,

in which by
motion
it becomes clear---

there have been
in an hour an
infinite train

of rivers, & which
did you want
to see? One

comes slowly
to realize
there is no evading things

(the heart will have
its way, though
its will go

unfulfilled),
& there is no shame
in this.

The pleasure in this world---
soft breeze, soft
thighs, a bit of music,

words, that make
a good sound---
suggest when taken

whole that the
thing
the body longs for

is not & never has been
some petite mort,
a true thing

known to grass
& the elderly man
with a kind word

in greeting. And
the woman saying
that she is about

to come, as in
going to arrive---
at last to fill

the body held so long
by stewards
in her name.

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day by giving y'all the same lesson in French that Det. Bobby, "Fearless" Smith gave Markie Mark's brother in Boomtown. La petite mort is the french expression for an orgasm. Its literal meaning is "the little death."

In the same first episode of Boomtown, Fearless tells another amazing story:
There was this wave way out in the ocean. He was just racing along having a great time. Sun light glinting, sparkling, just flying. Until one day he look ahead and he saw wave after wave in front of him crashing on the beach and he got scared. And this older wave in front of him said, "I know what your problem is. You've been having so much fun being a wave that you forgot you're just part of the ocean."

I'm one of the last people of my generation who has actually touched an 8-track. More specifically, this 8-track.



Favorite track from this album, In My Room. So in my room, on Fearless, I'm just catching waves (I literally own surfing sheets, they're pretty rad).

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

Another gem from Margaret Atwood.

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

Beth Hart's One eyed chicken for some reason goes nicely here.