Archive for the ‘Not a Poet’ Category

Poetry

November 11, 2012

Perhaps it’s noticeable that I’m into poetry these days, but in case it isn’t, just let it be known that I am.  Also, I’ve been watching episodes of the British Office, which I forgot is beyond hilarious, and so when David Brent read a poem of his own, I realized I had to take the opportunity to post it here for all to enjoy:

Excalibur

I froze your tears and made a dagger

and stabbed it in my cock forever

It stays there like Excalibur

Are you my Arthur?  Say you are.

Take this cold, dark, steely blade

Steel it, sheath it in your lake

I drown with you to be together

Must you breathe?

Cause I need heaven.

Fiona Writing Poetry

October 31, 2012

Due to the travels of Super Sandy, I am gloriously shut up in my room like a voluntary Anne Frank.  In this time, I have been writing and blogging all the random shit I had planned on making good on for months now.  Here, below, is the full poem that served as the title for Fiona Apple’s second album, which is most often referred to in shorthand as “When the Pawn…”

 

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king

What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight

And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring

There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might

So when you go solo, you hold your own hand

And remember that depth is the greatest of heights

And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land

And if you fall it won’t matter, cuz you’ll know that you’re right

A New Book, Thank Goodness

October 27, 2012

“Of course, the survival instinct is the most vulgar of all human instincts.  And naturally, like Jesus, I felt a greater pull to crucifixion.  But where I was going to find Judeans ready to condemn me and witness my martyrdom with the appropriate gusto?  And there can be no martyrdom without an audience.  Which is why, in the end, I chose to go shopping instead.”

~ Viola di Grado, 70% Acrylic, 30% Wool

Melissa Broder

October 26, 2012

I saw Melissa Broder read her poetry at apex art space in Tribeca last year and was instantly in love.  Cute as a shiny new button, Broder read her poems with a twinkle in her eye and a lilt in her voice, and after reading the dark gems below, perhaps you’ll see why that might be compelling.

 

Powered

A lamp powered by blood is called

a miracle and a legend

powered by blood is called a church.

I am not against anything

not even infinity I

just don’t want to be made to watch.

My consort’s head is burning hot

so I take it off. This is not

how compassion works but it works.

What of next? Next the headless man

and I go dancing on a death

til we’re dumb dumb dumb and blonde blonde.

Oh how I love a dumb blonde neck.

No universe tells it to stop

and put an apple in its mouth.

 

 

Gold Lipstick and the End of Summer

Who knows what old ladies are?

They want their copies back

Some cannot recall past lives

This must be satisfying

I must be lazy

I can barely grow old

I am hiding in the bottom drawer

All my girls are there

 

Aloha girls

Road-stained warrior trucking girls

Ski holiday village girls

Girls with forks of fat

Saintly girls on rosary hum

Disco marigolds

Gingerbread goodie-goodies

Little punk rabbits.

 

 

A Peep of Pinter

October 17, 2012

I Know the Place

I know the place.

It is true.

Everything we do

Corrects the space

Between death and me

And you.

Sad Girls Zine

October 16, 2012

A ‘zine I wish I had edited, and that I will hopefully contribute to in the future?

Artist is Grace Lee.

Oh, that reminds me that I’m working on an epic post about the 90s and girl-dom, but it involves as lot of cutting and pasting, which is obviously really labor intensive and will take me approximately 3-4 weeks.

Holding Spot

October 10, 2012

For a long time, I lost this reference, and so now I am holding it here so that I can always find it when I need it.

“Indeed, the disciples of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov used to set aside an hour a day known as the Dead Hour, in which all business would cease and nothing structured was permitted, allowing the repressed soul to come to the fore and be free.”

DEAD TO ME –– UPDATED!

October 8, 2012


My brother IS sent me the most hilarious article in the Times the other day entitled “Unfriending Someone, Before Facebook.”  Below is an excerpt:

Nor were your choices in those days only friend or unfriend. There were levels of unfriending culminating in that magnificent big gun, “dead to me,” a phrase my family wrapped their mouths around with a relish other people saved for steak.

Dead to me was not achieved with a cowardly little click on the keyboard under cover of night. Dead to me took nerve, it took strength. It also wasn’t for children. You had to be an adult with a house and a job. You cleared a space in the conversation when a certain name came up – let’s use Marvin; waited three beats to make sure you had the attention of the house, and then, and only then, did you say, “He is dead to me.”

I have no choice here but to return to the master of the form, my mother. There came a time when she and her younger brother came to a fork in the road regarding religion, hers being our ancestral one, which eschews pork and enables us to write television comedy, my uncle’s newly adopted religion involving ringing doorbells and giving people pamphlets on Sundays. As he had moved to Los Angeles, this switch might have gone unnoticed but regrettably, one of his converts, returning home after visiting, was 13-year-old me.

My mother’s screams on the phone after she made this discovery are still remembered in Greene County. It remains one of the most powerful denunciations I have heard in my life.

“Aaron,” my mother said, “I never want to hear another word from you. You are dead to me.”

He remained dead to my mother for the rest of life, about 40 years, and from what I could see, she took great satisfaction from it. This was another reason unfriending someone before Facebook was so much better. You didn’t dispatch someone once and move on; you had a lifetime of satisfying moments in which you could unfriend them over and over again.

“So, Milli, what do you hear from your brother Aaron?”

“Dead to me.”

“Your brother still married to that nice woman?”

“Dead to me.”

“I was going out to L.A. and I thought maybe I would look up Aaron, you know we were in the Army together –”

“Dead to me.”

I enjoyed it so heartily that I began to imagine what weird, profile-less hermits like IS and I could do in lieu of “unfriending” and my mind turned to a company called Set Editions, which makes the beloved “Stop Talking” business cards, among other funny things.

I hand out at least once a day.

So I’ve written to Set Editions to ask them to consider making a DEAD TO ME card.  Here is my email pitch:

To Whomever Receives This Email:

I’m an enormous fan of your merchandise –– at the moment, I’m coveting just about everything on the site –– and a proud owner of the “Stop Talking” cards, which it seems are quite popular.  I have a small idea for you based on the below article, which is hilarious and short and should go down easy:

(I put the link here but I’m not going to do it again because that just seems excessive.)

I think it would be great to create a little card that says “YOU ARE DEAD TO ME” or, more succinctly, “DEAD TO ME.”  There also could be something in the idea of unfriending –– i.e. THIS IS ME UNFRIENDING YOU –– but I myself am partial to the “dead to me.”

Anyway, if this idea appeals to you at all, what I’d ask for in return is just one set of cards!

Again, big props.  You guys are hilarious.

Best,

Itinerant Daughter

Oh my, oh my, I DO hope they like the idea!

UPDATE:  They did!  The woman behind Set Editions wrote me the below:

ID,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write with your idea. I get to hear many ideas in the course of doing business, most of which are categorically not hilarious, but “Dead to me” is right up my alley. I will work on it and I promise to let you know if it comes to pass. I suspect it might. You’ll be the first to effectively kill off your friends if it does.

Thanks again. Set Editions is really just me at the end if the day and it still gives me huge pleasure that other people even notice.

Best,

AR

Yay!  I’m off now to inform Joyce Wadler of the Times.  While you’re waiting for these cards to come out, everybody support Set Editions and buy me these good grief glasses!

Get it?

800 Anxiety

October 3, 2012

GUYS.

Guess what.

This is my 800th post.

I’ve had a lot of anxiety about it, actually, because while there have been a bunch of things that I wanted to post about, none of them seemed “special enough” for this milestone.  Then I thought maybe I should just let it pass unmentioned, and finally I settled on revealing my anxiety so as to preemptively soften the judgments of my critical readers.  It’s this type of psychological gymnastics that keep me going, folks.

What I’ve opted to do is make a little list about the number 800 and pretend that, because it’s a list, there is some interesting interconnectedness to all these random facts.  Very Harper’s Index of me, I know.  Anyway, let us begin:

800 is a Harshad number.  A Harshad number, or Niven number in a given number base, is an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits when written in that base. Harshad numbers were defined by D. R. Kaprekar, a mathematician from India. The word “Harshad” comes from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver. The Niven numbers take their name from Ivan M. Niven from a paper delivered at a conference on number theory in 1997. All integers between zero and n are Harshad numbers in base n.

800 is the first year that the Anno Domini calendar became the dominant year-numbering system in Europe.  800 AD was a leap year that began on a Wednesday, and on Christmas of that year, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

In numerology, the number 800 carries the energy of 8 only, which possess the following “energies”: material possessions, abundance, authority, leadership, cosmic awareness, self-motivated, prosperity, and infinity.

1-800-222-1222 is the toll free number for every poison control center in the US.

In some Biblical Gematria shit… well, I can’t think of how to segue, so here’s an excerpt from the Bible Wheel Archives:

The historic Christian Church has traditionally associated the Number 8 with the entrance into the Covenant of God. This understanding comes from God Himself who commanded Circumcision – the Sign of the Covenant – to be performed on the Eighth Day. God used the same language – אות ברית (Ot B’rit, Sign of the Covenant) – when He gave the Rainbow (Genesis 9.13):

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

Genesis 17:10f

The word “rainbow” (קשת, qeshet) used in this verse sums to the Number 800 which also is the value of the Greek words “Lord” and “Faith.” It also is the value of the final letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega (cf. Eight and the Resurrection below). This is the essence of Faith – trusting in the Lord who will see us through to the very end, signified by Omega. This lifts us above our present state to behold our Shepherd who is Lord above all.

Given the extreme significance of Circumcision as the Sign of the Covenant, it is no wonder that the Rabbi’s have long expounded on the spiritual significance of the Number Eight and its relation to God’s Covenant. For example, on page 134 of his book Alef-Beit, Rabbi Yitzchak declares:

The Torah prescribes that the circumcision of a male child take place on the eighth day from birth. These eight days always include at least one Shabbat, the seventh day, which corresponds to the experience of perfect harmony with nature. The eighth day of circumcision represents the power of the soul to contact that light which totally transcends nature. Through circumcision the Jew is given the power, throughout his life, to overcome all the obstacles nature may seem to place in the face of his service of G-d.

The transcendence associated with the Number Eight – recognized by both Jews and Christians – ultimately manifests in the everlasting New Beginning found in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For the Olympics this past year, the London-based design firm BarberOsgerby designed a torch that was 800mm heigh, weighed 800grammes and featured 8,000 perforated circles representing the 8,000 torchbearers who would carry it on its journey.

A random urine osmolality should average 500–800 mOsm/kg.

No social security numbers with an area number [first three numbers] in the 800s or 900s, or with a 000 area number, have been assigned.

The Book of Kells is generally thought to have been created ca. 800.

In Wolof, a language native to the peoples of Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania, 800 is pronounced “juróom-ñetti téeméer.”

In California, the interim statewide Academic Performance Index target for all schools is 800.

The gardens of Versailles cover approximately 800 hectares of land.

In regard to the LIBOR scandal of earlier this year, the number Barclay’s fiddled with is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages.

In the Dewey Decimal system, 800 numbers are Literature, English Literature, American Literature, Rhetoric and Criticism.

And last but not leasts (as you’ve probably realized, this could go on for 800 mind-numbing years), in order to get your tickets to the annul Faerie Festival, please call 1 800 922 TIXX.  The 2012 festival featured “I-Knew-the-Maharishi-First” Donovan, Tricky Pixie, and what seems to be the incongruously named “Heavy Hammer.”

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

 

New Poet

September 24, 2012

Many of you (okay, 2/3 of you) know that I’m a big fan of tiny poetry –– i.e. poems, like Kay Ryan’s, that look like toothpicks laid out across the page, or ones that, like Ogden Nash’s, are quip-sized morsels of verse.  That’s why I was so pleased to stumble upon the work of Opal Miller, who it seems is a recluse with a checkered past to boot!  My favorite!  Below is a Ryan, a Nash, and a Miller, just because it’s Monday and I know it’s been tough for you.  (I’ve staggered them as well.  I thought that might be helpful for you.  You’re welcome.)

Eggs

We turn out

as tippy as

eggs.  Legs

are an illusion.

We are held

as in a carton

if someone

loves us.

It’s a pity

only loss

proves this.

(Ryan)

Always Marry an April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true —
I love April, I love you.

(Nash)

The Balloon

What happens if the black balloon

bursts as the tide goes out and

the wax drips and

she falls?

(Miller)